There was a gradual change from the assumption of the ubiquity of the apprehension and content-apprehension schema. One original comment, written in the years 1907–1909 approximately, was that “nicht jede Konstitution hat das Schema Auffassungsinhalt—Auffassung”, (X, 7, fn) as a brief aside indicating that Husserl had changed his mind on the universal applicability of the higher schema since Logical Investigations. It was the turn of the years 1905–1908 that produced the second schema of syntheses and pre-reflexive presences that applies to the pre-reflexive whole of the non-egoic immersion in everyday presence (I, 77, III, 181 fn, IV, 102, X, 82, 326–327, 369–372, 378–382, XI, 125, 186, 287, 389–90, XVII, 253, XXIII, 265–276). The exemplary comment on pre-reflexive presencing is the example of the child who learns the sense of the object scissors and who thereafter “sees at the first glance as scissors—but naturally not in an explicit reproducing, comparing, and inferring. Yet the manner in which apperceptions arise—and consequently in themselves, by their sense and sense-horizon , point back to their genesis—varies greatly”, (I, 141). Pre-reflexive presence in the world in an immediate way is where a pre-understanding of living bodiliness and the continual syntheses of retentional and anticipatory consciousness produce, for the most part, a seamless meaningful whole of the unification of self-presence, quasi-presence and world-presence (Cairns 1976, 45, 94). The word “presence” is used because what is being referred to are senses that are literally before reflection and intentional analysis begin. The scissors example is also a model for the important work of pre-reflexive empathising and learning of necessary associations that are held, and without which there would be no higher egoic thought or action. The various forms of intentional implication and intentional modification , concerning intersubjective intentional implication between consciousnesses, create an on-going sense of being in an always already sensuous and meaningful world of temporal duration. So much so, that for the most part, when the ego turns its attention to what is given (temporally-enduring potentially meaningful presence and sensation), in a split second it is found meaningful, recognisable and ready to be analysed and spoken about.

In the terminology of 1911–1917, the second schema that identifies retentional consciousness is comprised of the “Quer-intentionalität” synthesis , in the original temporal field towards quasi-presence , where additions come from the “Längs-intentionalität” synthesis of the pre-reflective absolute source of the constituted flow time (X, 78–83, 377–381). These Cartesian co-ordinates of the fluxions of the absolute stationary present are Quer, towards objects of attention, and Langs, from the future across the now and into the past, where retentional consciousness holds each successive new moment. This explanation is mentioned mainly in Time but is present elsewhere (X, 77–83, 291, 292, 319, XI, 363, fn, XVII, 251, XXIII, 188, fn). It is also related to the comments on how language expresses nonverbal experience in Experience and Judgement (EU, 276) and Formal and Transcendental Logic (XVII, 18) in relation to the workings of anonymously functioning passive consciousness . However, as Husserl interpreted the way that contemporary moments ‘flow’ across the immediate now, and move into the just-past form of retained givenness , he got absorbed in the detail of the genuinely immanent reduced noemata and their constituting noeses . He realised that the Quer and Längs passive anonymous processes operate according to a different schema altogether than the higher one he had defined in 1901. By attending to the detail of what must be accomplished involuntarily and all at once, by syntheses that operate implicitly and without the direction and consent of the ego but present conclusions to it. The account of the second schema explains the set of pre-reflexive presences outlined in the years 1905 to 1909 and recorded in the abstract considerations of Time (Notes 39–50, Welton, 1983, 192–193, 243–244). In short, the all at once “horizonal”, “implicit” unconscious set of Quer and Längs syntheses work in the direction towards noematic-presences of consciousness and across the quasi-flow of consciousness as each successive now gets added to the temporal accumulation, producing the passage of contents across the lifespan that become the contents of the personal history . For the most part, the ego merely passively receives what its mental processes and habits provide for it, with respect to understanding others and understanding itself in relation to them which can be empirically investigated (Hassin et al. 2005; Wilson 2002). And whether we call these fast psychological processes of making-meaning “pre-reflexive”, “unconscious” or “implicit”, it is nevertheless the case that they are highly influential for the ego and the creation of the senses of self and others, and what it chooses and decides upon. What happens is that, for the most part and always already prior to reflection , the “hyletic presences” in enduring constituted time that carry meaning constituted by the stationary time, conspire in each new perceptual moment to create the meaning of what appears to vision, audition, leiblich proprioception and the tactile kinaesthetic sense of physical things to the living body . Thus, the lower syntheses and presences are conditions of possibility for higher objects to occur. Perception is a mixed representation in that perceptual senses are clearly identifiable. Of course, reflected-on objects of attention occur alongside other passive non-egoic awarenesses and the higher acts of conceptual dialogue of the internal voice of the I who speaks and rationalises in language. The second pre-representational theory after 1909 is an explanation for what the ego receives, the objects that consciousness is aware of (what it sees, hears or feels, imagines, empathises). It is interpreted as having given sense to what is always already there, the presences that are immediately grasped by subliminal attentiveness.

On the one hand, there are higher acts that objectify the sensations , through interpreting Auffassung, “apprehension”. They objectify what was previously merely sensual material and take the pre-reflective presences, and turn them into higher composite meaning. On the other hand, the more fundamental lower syntheses and the constitution of inner time itself are concluded as obeying the second schema. Perception and the temporality of the now, the original temporal field , form a set of phenomena for analysis. Studies of what gets added to perception, apperception , are many. Intellectual work finds what comprises the species and genera of the lower syntheses. It is assumed that many noeses and syntheses co-occur to enable the current context that makes sense (I, 79, 82, VI, 160–161). However, that is far from the whole story. Let’s return to consider an ambiguous visual gestalt once more. The next two sections explain what this means in reference to how meaning is experienced.