"The like false reckoning of time may proceed from an opposite state of mind. In a reverie, where ideas float at random without making any impression, time goes on unheeded and the reckoning is lost."
— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London and Edinburgh
Publisher
Printed for A. Millar, London; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, Edinburgh
Date
1762
Metaphor
"The like false reckoning of time may proceed from an opposite state of mind. In a reverie, where ideas float at random without making any impression, time goes on unheeded and the reckoning is lost."
Metaphor in Context
When one is totally occupied in any agreeable work that admits not many objects, time runs on without observation; and upon an after recollection must appear short, in proportion to the paucity of objects. This is still more remarkable in close contemplation and in deep thinking, where the train, composed wholly of ideas, proceeds with an extreme slow pace. Not only are the ideas few in number, but are apt to escape an after-reckoning. The like false reckoning of time may proceed from an opposite state of mind. In a reverie, where ideas float at random without making any impression, time goes on unheeded and the reckoning is lost. A reverie may be so profound as to prevent the recollection of any one idea: that the mind was busied in a train of thinking, will in general be remembered; but what was the subject, has quite escaped the memory. In such a case, we are altogether at a loss about the time: we have no data for making a computation. No cause produceth so false a reckoning of time, as immoderate grief. The mind, in this state, is violently attached to a single object, and admits not a different thought. Any other object breaking in, is instantly banished, so as scarce to give an appearance of succession. In a reverie, we are uncertain of the time that is past: but in the example now given, there is an appearance of certainty, so far as the natural measure of time can be trusted, that the time must have been short, when the perceptions are so few in number.
(I.ii.5, pp. 210-1)
Categories
Provenance
Reading in ECCO-TCP
Citation
11 entries in ESTC (1762, 1763, 1765, 1769, 1772, 1774, 1785, 1788, 1795, 1796).
See Elements of Criticism, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Millar, London; and A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh, 1762). <Link to ESTC><Link to Vol. I in ECCO-TCP><Vol. II><Vol. III>
Reading Elements of Criticism, ed. Peter Jones, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). [Text based on 6th edition of 1785]
See Elements of Criticism, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Millar, London; and A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh, 1762). <Link to ESTC><Link to Vol. I in ECCO-TCP><Vol. II><Vol. III>
Reading Elements of Criticism, ed. Peter Jones, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). [Text based on 6th edition of 1785]
Date of Entry
11/18/2013
