BOOK II PART III
tance in the past has, therefore, a greater effect,
in interupting and weakening the conception,
than a much greater in the future. From this
effect of it on the imagination is derived its in-
fluence on the will and passions.
There is another cause, which both con-
tributes to the same effect, and proceeds from
the same quality of the fancy, by which we are
determined to trace the succession of time by
a similar succession of ideas. When from the
present instant we consider two points of time
equally distant in the future and in the past, it
is evident, that, abstractedly considered, their
relation to the present is almost equal. For
as the future will sometime be present, so the
past was once present. If we coued, there-
fore, remove this quality of the imagination,
an equal distance in the past and in the fu-