And yet when I pronounce the last syllable of the
word the two first ones have already been pronounced; relatively to
this one, which must then be called present, they are past. But this
last syllable "sion" was not pronounced instantaneously; the time,
however short, during which I was saying it, can be split up into
parts and these parts are past, relatively to the last of them, and
this last one would be present if it were not that it too can be
further split up: so that, do what you will, you cannot draw any line
of demarcation between past and present, and so between memory and
consciousness. Indeed when I pronounce the word "discussion" I have
before my mind, not only the beginning, the middle and the end of the
word, but also the preceding words, also the whole of the sentence
which I have already spoken; if it were not so I should have lost the
thread of my speech. Now if the punctuation of the speech had been
different my sentence might have begun earlier; it might, for
instance, have contained the previous sentence and my "present" would
have been still further extended into the past.
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