For the pain or pleasure being just so great and no greater than it is felt, the present good or evil is really so much as it appears.

And therefore were every action of ours concluded within itself, and drew no consequences after it, we should undoubtedly never err in our choice of good: we should always infallibly prefer the best.

Were the pains of honest industry, and of starving with hunger and cold set together before us, nobody would be in doubt which to choose: were the satisfaction of a lust and the joys of heaven offered at once to any one's present possession, he would not balance, or err in the determination of his choice.
61.

Our wrong judgments have regard to future good and evil only.
But since our voluntary actions carry not all the happiness and misery that depend on them along with them in their present performance, but are the precedent causes of good and evil, which they draw after them, and bring upon us, when they themselves are past and cease to be; our desires look beyond our present enjoyments, and carry the mind out to ABSENT GOOD, according to the necessity which we think there is of it, to the making or increase of our happiness.

It is our opinion of such a necessity that gives it its attraction: without that, we are not moved by absent good.