The consciousness of time is inseparable from that
of change. But while the awareness of change as one
of the most pervasive and omnipresent features of
human experience is present on the lowest level of
human and also probably subhuman intelligence, the
consciousness of time, especially in its conceptual form,
appeared much later. Just as it was difficult to separate
space conceptually from its concrete content, it re-
quired a considerable effort of abstraction to differen-
tiate time from changes and events “taking place” in
it. The mythological image of time as a person which
drags all things into a ceaseless flux was the first crude
step in this direction.
