(1) If we take away from the _present_ the moment that is just gone by
and the moment that is next to come, how much of it will be left for
this plain, practical theory to rest upon? Their solid basis of sense
and reality will reduce itself to a pin's point, a hair line, on which
our moral balance-masters will have some difficulty to maintain their
footing without falling over on either side.
(2) A treatise on the Millennium is dull; but who was ever weary of
reading the fables of the Golden Age? On my once observing I should like
to have been Claude, a person said, 'they should not, for that then
by this time it would have been all over with them.' As if it could
possibly signify when we live (save and excepting the present minute),
or as if the value of human life decreased or increased with successive
centuries. At that rate, we had better have our life still to come at
some future period, and so postpone our existence century after century
_ad infinitum_.
(3) In like manner, though we know that an event must have taken place
at a distance, long before we can hear the result, yet as long as we
remain in Ignorance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, and suffer
all the agonies of suspense, as if it was still to come; but as soon as
our uncertainty is removed, our fretful impatience vanishes, we resign
ourselves to fate, and make up our minds to what has happened as well as
we can.