David Hume

“ This easy progression of ideas favours the imagination, and makes it conceive its object in a stronger and fuller light, than when we are continually oppos'd in our passage, and are oblig'd to overcome the difficulties arising from the natural propensity of the fancy. A small degree of distance in the past has, therefore, a greater effect, in interrupting and weakening the conception, than a much greater in the future. ”

“ Accordingly we find in common life, that men are principally concern'd about those objects, which are not much remov'd either in space or time, enjoying the present, and leaving what is afar off to the care of chance and fortune. ”

“ As none of our actions can alter the past, 'tis not strange it shou'd 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 thro' the points of space and time, we have another peculiarity in our method of thinking, which concurs in producing this phænomenon. 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. ”

“ When we reflect, therefore, on any object distant from ourselves, we are oblig'd not only to reach it at first by passing thro all the intermediate space betwixt ourselves and the object, but also to renew our progress every moment ”

“ Twenty years are certainly but a small distance of time in comparison of what history and even the memory of some may inform them of, and yet I doubt if a thousand leagues, or even the greatest distance of place this globe can admit o£ will so remarkably weaken our ideas, and diminish our passions. ”