The Moral Economy | Page 7

absolute or ultimate peril. What does it profit a man to gain a bit
here and a bit there, if he is foreordained to loss on the whole? If he
squanders his moral patrimony he has no means of {9} recouping his
fortunes; he has wasted his supporting vitality and forfeited his general
livelihood.
And now if this be true it is of more than passing or sentimental
importance. It needs to be vividly realized if morality is to make its
saving appeal. Morality is only discredited through being sanctioned;
its proper merits are more eloquent than its friends and borrowed
auspices. If it can be simply proclaimed as it is, it cannot be denied.
This is one of the things which I undertake to do. But to understand
what morality really is, to recognize its claims, is to understand also its
application, its critical pertinence to art and religion, to all the great and
permanent undertakings of men. Such application I shall in the later
chapters undertake to suggest, partly as an amplification of the meaning
of morality, and partly as a programme of further reflection looking
toward a moral philosophy of history. I can do no more in the present
chapter than broadly present the structure of morality, leaving the logic
of its appeal and its more important applications for the chapters which
follow.
II
The moral affair of men, a prolonged and complicated historical
enterprise, is thrown into historical relief upon the background of a
mechanical cosmos. Nature, as interpreted by the {10} inorganic
sciences, presents a spectacle of impassivity. It moves, transforms, and
radiates, on every scale and in all its gigantic range of temporal and
spatial distance, utterly without loss or gain of value. One cannot
rightly attribute to such a world even the property of neglect or
brutality. Its indifference is absolute.

Such a world is devoid of value because of the elimination of the bias
of life. Where no interest is at stake, changes can make no practical
difference; where no claims are made, there can be neither fortune nor
calamity, neither comedy nor tragedy. There is no object of applause or
resentment, if there be nothing in whose behalf such judgments may be
urged.
But with the introduction of life, even the least particle of it, the rudest
bit of protoplasm that ever made the venture, nature becomes a new
system with a new centre. The organism inherits the earth; the
mechanisms of nature become its environment, its resources in the
struggle to keep for a time body and soul together. The mark of life is
partiality for itself. If anything is to become an object of solicitude, it
must first announce itself through acting in its own behalf. With life
thus instituted there begins the long struggle of interest against inertia
and indifference, that war of which civilization itself is only the latest
and most triumphant phase.
{11}
Nature being thus enlivened, the simpler terms of value now find a
meaning. A living thing must suffer calamities or achieve successes;
and since its fortunes are good or bad in the most elementary sense that
can be attached to these conceptions, it is worth our while to consider
the matter with some care. An interest, or unit of life, is essentially an
organization which consistently acts for its own preservation. It deals
with its environment in such wise as to keep itself intact and bring itself
to maturity; appropriating what it needs, and avoiding or destroying
what threatens it with injury. The interest so functions as to supply
itself with the means whereby it may continue to exist and function.
This is the principle of action which may be generalized from its
behavior, and through which it may be distinguished within the context
of nature. Now the term interest being construed in this sense, we may
describe goodness as fulfilment of interest. The description will perhaps
refer more clearly to human life, if for the term interest we substitute
the term desire. Goodness would then consist in the satisfaction of
desire. In other words, things are good because desired, not desired

because good. To say that one desires things because one needs them,
or likes them, or admires them, is redundant; in the end one simply
desires certain things, that is, one {12} possesses an interest or desire
which they fulfil. There are as many varieties of goodness as there are
varieties of interest; and to the variety of interest there is no end.
Strictly speaking, goodness belongs to an interest's actual state of
fulfilment. This will consist in an activity, exercised by the interest, but
employing the environment. With a slight shift of emphasis, goodness
in this absolute sense will attach either to interest in so far as nourished
by objects, as in