First, as to proximity of time, every one knows that any melancholy incident is the more affecting that it is recent. Hence it is become common with story-tellers, that they may make a deeper impression on the hearers, to introduce remarks like these; that the tale which they relate is not old, that it happened but lately, or in their own time, or that they are yet living who had a part in it, or were witnesses of it. Proximity of time regards not only the past but the future. An event that will probably soon happen hath greater influence upon us than what will probably happen a long time hence. I have hitherto proceeded on the hypothesis, that the orator rouses the passions of his hearers by exhibiting some past transaction; but we must acknowledge that passion may be as strongly excited by his reasonings concerning an event yet to come. In the judiciary orations there is greater scope for the former, in the deliberative for the latter; though in each kind there may occasionally be scope for both. All the seven circumstances enumerated are applicable, and have equal weight, whether they relate to the future or to the past. The only exception that I know of is, that probability and plausibility are scarcely distinguishable, when used in reference to events in futurity. As in these there is no access for testimony, what constitutes the principal distinction is quite excluded. In comparing the influence of the past upon our minds, with that of the future, it appears in general, that if the evidence, the importance, and the distance of the objects be equal, the latter will be greater than the former. The reason, I imagine, is, we are conscious that as every moment, the future, which seems placed before us, is approaching; and the past, which lies, as it were, behind, is retiring, our nearness or relation to the one constantly increaseth as the other decreaseth. There is something like attraction in the first case, and repulsion in the second. This tends to interest us more in the future than in the past, and consequently to the present view aggrandizes the one and diminishes the other.
What,nevertheless,gives the past a very considerable advantage,
is its being generally susceptible of much stronger evidence than
the future. The lights of the mind are, if I may so express myself,
in an opposite situation to the lights of the body. These discover
clearly the prospect lying before us, but not the ground we have
already passed. By the memory, on the contrary, that great luminary
of the mind, things past are exhibited in retrospect: we have
no correspondent faculty to irradiate the future: and even in
matters which fall not within the reach of our memory, past events
are often clearly discoverable by testimony, and by effects at
present existing; whereas we havenothing equivalent to found our
arguments upon in reasoning about things to come. It is for this
reason, that the future is considered as the province of conjecture
and uncertainty.
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