  The confinement of immediate experience to a momentary present has a long and distinguished pedigree. In the preamble to his Lectures on the Consciousness of Internal Time Husserl tells us ‘The analysis of time-consciousness is an ancient burden for descriptive psychology and epistemology. The first thinker who sensed profoundly the enormous difficulties inherent in this analysis, and who struggled with them almost to despair, was Augustine’ (1991: 3). Irrespective of whether he was the first to dwell on such matters, Augustine’s labours in Book XI of the Confessions led him to espouse a position that is at least highly suggestive of the Cinematic conception outlined in §1. Augustine subscribed to the doctrine of Presentism (as it has latterly become known), i.e., he held that only what is present is real: