e. bring it home upon himself, and consider it as
present, and there take its true dimensions? This is the way we
usually impose on ourselves, in respect of bare pleasure and pain,
or the true degrees of happiness or misery: the future loses its
just proportion, and what is present obtains the preference as the
greater. I mention not here the wrong judgment, whereby the absent are
not only lessened, but reduced to perfect nothing; when men enjoy what
they can in present, and make sure of that, concluding amiss that no
evil will thence follow. For that lies not in comparing the
greatness of future good and evil, which is that we are here
speaking of; but in another sort of wrong judgment, which is
concerning good or evil, as it is considered to be the cause and
procurement of pleasure or pain that will follow from it.
66. Causes of our judging amiss when we compare present pleasure and
pain with future. The cause of our judging amiss, when we compare
our present pleasure or pain with future, seems to me to be the weak
and narrow constitution of our minds. We cannot well enjoy two
pleasures at once; much less any pleasure almost, whilst pain
possesses us. The present pleasure, if it be not very languid, and
almost none at all, fills our narrow souls, and so takes up the
whole mind that it scarce leaves any thought of things absent: or if
among our pleasures there are some which are not strong enough to
exclude the consideration of things at a distance, yet we have so
great an abhorrence of pain, that a little of it extinguishes all
our pleasures.
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