The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 · William James
WE HAVE NO SENSE FOR EMPTY TIME.
Let me sum up, now, by saying that we are constantly conscious of a certain duration--the specious present--varying in length from a few seconds to probably not more than a minute, and that this duration (with its content perceived as having one part earlier and the other part later) is the original intuition of time. Longer times are conceived by adding, shorter ones by dividing, portions of this vaguely bounded unit, and are habitually thought by us symbolically. Kant's notion of an _intuition_ of objective time as an infinite necessary continuum has nothing to support it. The _cause_ of the intuition which we really have cannot be the _duration_ of our brain-processes or our mental changes. That duration is rather the _object_ of the intuition which, being realized at every moment of such duration, must be due to a permanently present cause. This cause--probably the simultaneous presence of brain-processes of different phase--fluctuates; and hence a certain range of variation in the amount of the intuition, and in its subdivisibility, accrues.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.