_A._ You have not made that point quite clear. What then is meant by a present interest, by the gratification of the present moment, as opposed to a future one? _B._ Nothing, in a strict sense; or rather in common speech, you mean a near one, the interest of the next moment, the next hour, the next day, the next year, as it happens. _A._ What! would you have me believe that I snatch my hand out of the flame of a candle from a calculation of future consequences? _D._ (_laughing._) A. had better not meddle with that question. B. is in his element there. It is his old and favourite illustration. _B._ Do you not snatch your hand out of the fire to procure ease from pain? _A._ No doubt, I do. _B._ And is not this case subsequent to the act, and the act itself to the feeling of pain, which caused it? _A._ It may be so; but the interval is so slight that we are not sensible of it. _B._ Nature is nicer in her distinctions than we. Thus you could not lift the food to your mouth, but upon the same principle. The viands are indeed tempting, but if it were the sight or smell of these alone that attracted you, you would remain satisfied with them. But you use means to ends, neither of which exist till you employ or produce them, and which would never exist if the understanding which foresees them did not run on before the actual objects and purvey to appetite. If you say it is habit, it is partly so; but that habit would never have been formed, were it not for the connection between cause and effect, which always takes place in the order of time, or of what Hume calls _antecedents_ and _consequents_. _A._ I confess I think this a mighty microscopic way of looking at the subject.