On the other hand, the incompatibility of the parts of time in their real existence separates them in the imagination, and makes it more difficult for that faculty to trace any long succession or series of events.

Every part must appear single and alone, nor can regularly have entrance into the fancy without banishing what is supposed to have been immediately precedent.

By this means any distance in time causes a greater interruption in the thought than an equal distance in space, and consequently weakens more considerably the idea, and consequently the passions; which depend in a great measure, on the imagination, according to my system.
There is another phaenomenon of a like nature with the foregoing, viz, the superior effects of the same distance in futurity above that in the past.

This difference with respect to the will is easily accounted for.
As none of our actions can alter the past, it is not strange it should 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 through the points of space and time, we have another peculiarity in our method of thinking, which concurs in producing this phaenomenon.