Were the pains of honest industry, and
of starving with hunger and cold set together before us, nobody
would be in doubt which to choose: were the satisfaction of a lust and
the joys of heaven offered at once to any one's present possession, he
would not balance, or err in the determination of his choice.
61. Our wrong judgments have regard to future good and evil only.
But since our voluntary actions carry not all the happiness and misery
that depend on them along with them in their present performance,
but are the precedent causes of good and evil, which they draw after
them, and bring upon us, when they themselves are past and cease to
be; our desires look beyond our present enjoyments, and carry the mind
out to absent good, according to the necessity which we think there is
of it, to the making or increase of our happiness. It is our opinion
of such a necessity that gives it its attraction: without that, we are
not moved by absent good. For, in this narrow scantling of capacity
which we are accustomed to and sensible of here, wherein we enjoy
but one pleasure at once, which, when all uneasiness is away, is,
whilst it lasts, sufficient to make us think ourselves happy, it is
not all remote and even apparent good that affects us. Because the
indolency and enjoyment we have, sufficing for our present
happiness, we desire not to venture the change; since we judge that we
are happy already, being content, and that is enough.
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