TIME IN ART AND SCIENCE
327
us to the view that every actual fonn is but a temporary fonn and
which therefore emphasizes the idea of transfonnation rather than
that of preservation. But the idea of constant change, variation, and
revaluation, underlying the Impressionistic conception of time,
is
perhaps even more closely connected with the facts of technical de–
velopment. The continual and increasingly rapid replacement of old
instruments and articles by new ones leads to a certain indifference
in men's relationship not only to material but also to intellectual
possessions, and accelerates not only the speed at which technical
innovations and changes in fashion occur, but also the pace of intel–
lectual development and psychological reactions. Modern technology
introduces an element of dynamism into the whole of men's spiritual
life and it is, above all, this new experience of speed, change, and un–
rest that creates Impressionism as an artistic style. The closest analogy
is, however, the idea of the perspective nature of truth which domi–
nates Western thought in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The "psychology of exposure," that is to say, the unmasking technique
in the analysis of human attitudes, is a common method of the
most influential thinkers of the period. Nietzsche and Freud agree
in assuming that the manifest life of the mind, in other words, what
men know or think they know about the motives of their reactions, is
often merely a concealment and distortion of the real motives of their
behavior. But Nietzsche and Freud, whatever they knew or thought
of Marx when they were developing their ideas, followed the same
technique of analysis and interpretation as had first been used in
historical materialism. Marx also emphasized, as they do, that men
see the world in a biased way and from a perspectively distorting
angle. The concept of "rationalization" in psychoanalysis corresponds
exactly to what Marx and Engels understand by the formation of
ideology and "false consciousness." The Impressionistic character of
all these theories is evident. The idea that men spend their lives con–
cealed from themselves and others, that the truth of human knowl–
edge is at best truth from a certain point of view, that reality only
makes itself known to us in ever-changing and never generally valid
forms, is nothing but Impressionistic thinking.
Proust's conception of time originates in this climate of thought;
it is a principle of change and perspective view. Proust is still a man
of the nineteenth century in so far as he interprets time as an element
of dissolution, and our life as a continuous fight against time, against
