The cause of this phaenomenon must evidently lie in the different properties of space and time.  Without having recourse to metaphysics, any one may easily observe, that space or extension consists of a number of co-existent parts disposed in a certain order, and capable of being at once present to the sight or feeling.  On the contrary, time or succession, though it consists likewise of parts, never presents to us more than one at once; nor is it possible for any two of them ever to be co-existent.  These qualities of the objects have a suitable effect on the imagination.  The parts of extension being susceptible of an union to the senses, acquire an union in the fancy; and as the appearance of one part excludes not another, the transition or passage of the thought through the contiguous parts is by that means rendered more smooth and easy.  On the other hand, the incompatibility of the parts of time in their real existence separates them in the imagination, and makes it more difficult for that faculty to trace any long succession or series of events.  Every part must appear single and alone, nor can regularly have entrance into the fancy without banishing what is supposed to have been immediately precedent.  By this means any distance in time causes a greater interruption in the thought than an equal distance in space, and consequently weakens more considerably the idea, and consequently the passions; which depend in a great measure, on the imagination, according to my system.

There is another phaenomenon of a like nature with the foregoing, viz, the superior effects of the same distance in futurity above that in the past.  This difference with respect to the will is easily accounted for.  As none of our actions can alter the past, it is not strange it should never determine the will.  But with respect to the passions the question is yet entire, and well worth the examining.

Besides the propensity to a gradual progression through the points of space and time, we have another peculiarity in our method of thinking, which concurs in producing this phaenomenon.  We always follow the succession of time in placing our ideas, and from the consideration of any object pass more easily to that, which follows immediately after it, than to that which went before it.  We may learn this, among other instances, from the order, which is always observed in historical narrations.  Nothing but an absolute necessity can oblige an historian to break the order of time, and in his narration give the precedence to an event, which was in reality posterior to another.

This will easily be applied to the question in hand, if we reflect on what I have before observed, that the present situation of the person is always that of the imagination, and that it is from thence we proceed to the conception of any distant object.  When the object is past, the progression of the thought in passing to it from the present is contrary to nature, as proceeding from one point of time to that which