might shared measures and collective experiences of duration arise from the indeterminate and widely varying conditions that generate the succession of ideas in individual minds? And second, what kind of a sense of endurance might we have when our attention, senses, or memories are disabled or significantly altered?
The first question is especially pressing, for throughout his discussion Locke emphasizes our need for shared public measures of time. The mind, he argues, naturally searches for “some measure of this common Duration, whereby it might judge of its different lengths, and consider the distinct Order, wherein several things exist, without which a great part of our Knowledge would be confused, and a great part of History be rendered very useless. This Consideration of Duration, as set out by certain Periods, and marked by certain Measures or Epochs, is that, I think, which most properly we call Time” (187). But how do we arrive at such “Measures or Epochs”? How might we agree on such standards if our primary sense of duration varies contingently? Just as Locke does not explain how we construct and arrive at consensus about language or money, he also does not offer detailed conjectures on how we construct and arrive at consensus about temporal measures. But he does suggest that there are, after all, ways for us to asses durations we do not experience, and this makes possible agreements about conventional measurement. If we need not consult our widely varying experience in our assessments of time, then consensus about extensities becomes much more readily available.
There are many occasions in which we do not experience duration as it passes, Locke points out, the most common of which is sleep. And so he explains: “Though a Man has no Perception of the length of Duration, which past whilst he slept or thought not: yet having observed the Revolution of Days and Nights, and found the length of their Duration to be in Appearance regular and constant, he can, upon the supposition, that that Revolution has proceeded after the same manner, whilst he was asleep or thought not, as it used to do at other times, he can, I say, imagine and make allowance for the length of Duration, whilst he slept” (183). We may remember that night follows day, follows night again, but in order to recognize “the length of their Duration to be in Appearance regular and constant”—which, of course, contrary to Locke’s assertion, they are not—we must have already abstracted a sense of measure from their occurrence. This abstracted idea of periodicity serves a double function: first to validate the observation that at stake is not simply succession but also, more specifically, equable succession, and second to deduce how long we have slept. Locke readily acknowledges how the abstracted idea of periodicity serves the second function—how we “imagine and make allowance for the length of Duration, whilst he slept.” The first function of our abstracted idea of periodicity—that we “found the length of their [Revolution’s] Duration to be in Appearance regular and constant”—remains only indirectly implied. But once we recognize that we would need an abstract measure to assess the revolutions of day and night as recurring at the same intervals, we must also acknowledge that the move from our “sense of duration” to “time”—that common measure in Locke’s vocabulary—involves the superfluity of our primary sense of duration: in order to measure the length of succession we need a standard independent of our experience of this succession. It thus turns out that counting time relies on abstractions that may or may not validate experiences but that do not arise from these experiences. Measures of time, then, rely on stipulated standards that make an actual primary experience of duration irrelevant.
Throughout Locke’s discussion we find such tension between a reliance on abstractions for measuring time and a lingering commitment to sensation. On the one hand, Locke points out the arbitrariness of our conventions. “Minutes, Hours, Days, and Years,” he reminds us, “are then no more necessary to Time or Duration, than Inches, Feet, Yards, and Miles, marked out in any Matter, are to Extension” (191). On the other hand, he privileges those conventions that seem as though they are verified by direct sensory evidence. Thus, for example, he prefers the temporal estimations of a blind man who can smell, taste, and feel seasonal change over those generated by calendars:
Thus we see that Men born blind, count Time well enough by Years, whose Revolutions yet they cannot distinguish by Motions, that they perceive not: And I ask, whether a blind Man, who distinguished his Years, either by heat of Summer, or cold of Winter; by the Smell of any Flower of the Spring, or taste of any Fruit of the Autumn, would not have a better measure of Time, than the Romans had before the Reformation of their Calendar by Julius Cæsar, or many other People, whose Years, notwithstanding the motion of the Sun, which they pretend to make use of, are very irregular: and it adds no small difficulty to Chronology, that the exact lengths of the Years that several Nations counted by, are hard to be known, they differing very much one from another, and, I think, I may say all of them, from the precise motion of the Sun. (189)
And yet, the heat of air, the blossoming of flowers, and the ripeness of fruit are no less “irregular” than “the motion of the Sun” that underwrites the old Roman calendar, which Locke here criticizes. What drives Locke’s privileging of the blind man’s temporal estimations in this passage is the sheer sensual abundance of his description. That the blind man relies on three senses that connect his estimations of the passage of time to nature’s seasons suggests to Locke that he can “count Time well enough”—even better than those whose estimations of the sun’s motions in their calendars turn out to be faulty. The fewer mediating apparatuses between our perceptions of the external world and our temporal estimations of length, Locke indicates, the more reliable our estimations of time will be.
That Locke prefers notions of time passing that more directly arise from sensation becomes even clearer as he proceeds to discuss the measures afforded by the new technology of pendulum clocks.7 He writes:
Though Men have of late made use of a Pendulum, as a more steady and regular Motion, than that of the Sun or (to speak more truly) of the Earth; yet if any one should be asked how he certainly knows, that the two successive swings of a Pendulum are equal, it would be very hard to satisfie himself, that they are infallibly so: since we cannot be sure, that the Cause of that Motion which is unknown to us, shall always operate equally; and we are sure, that the Medium in which the Pendulum moves, is not constantly the same: either of which varying, may alter the Equality of such Periods, and thereby destroy the certainty and exactness of the measure by Motion, as well as any other Periods of other Appearances, the Notion of Duration still remaining clear, though our measures of it cannot any of them be demonstrated to be exact. (190)
It is especially striking that Locke should emphasize the unreliability of a pendulum in ordinary conditions of experience immediately after privileging the blind man’s sensual estimations of time passing. The majority of the passage points out that in most circumstances a pendulum will not deliver to our senses an idea of regular motion. For this reason, Locke concludes, temporal measures that rely on a pendulum cannot “be demonstrated to be exact.” And yet, he continues to insist, “the Notion of Duration still remain[s] clear”—as though our sensual experiences of day and night, heat, and ripening fruit, have already settled everything we might want to know about the passage of time. The tracking of seasonal change mediated only by the personal senses seems to him more reliable than any knowledge mediated by technologies whose workings many of us cannot directly observe or understand. This, Locke indicates, makes measures not only imprecise but also experientially suspicious. What Locke less than fully acknowledges here, but that arises indirectly and yet persistently from his discussion, is that the experiential confidence that we have about duration might be best described as feelings of intensities—of temperature, of fragrance, of sweetness.
I am suggesting that Locke’s privileging of firsthand sensual experience in his discussions of the various ways in which our succession of ideas supports conventions for assessing temporal length indicates a dimension of time that his concern for and vocabulary of counting eludes. If sensual experience lends certainty to our sense of duration where abstract measures cannot, then the certainty it furnishes is one that assesses qualities more than quantities—one that gauges feelings and intensities rather than the counting of expanses. Such qualitative dimensions of our sense of duration
