s critical and corrective, substituting a conscious reconstruction of
interests for their initial movement. It is this fact which gives to
duty that {77} sense of compulsion which is so invariably associated
with it. Duty is opposed to the line of least resistance, whenever
life is dominated by any motive short of the absolute good-will. Thus
among the Greeks, _dike_ is opposed to _bia_.[2] This means simply
that because the principles of social organization are not as yet
thoroughly assimilated, their adoption requires attention and effort.
And a similar opposition may appear at either a higher or lower level,
between the momentary impulse and the law of prudence, or between the
habit of worldliness and the law of piety.

In connection with this broad difference between the material and
formal aspects of life, it is interesting to observe a certain
difference of leniency in the popular judgment. Materialism is more
heartily condemned, because he who is guilty of it is not alive to the
general good. He is morally unregenerate. Formalism, on the other
hand, is good-hearted or well-intentioned. He who is guilty of it may
be ridiculed as unpractical, or pitied for his misguided zeal; but
society rarely offers to chastise him. For he has submitted to
discipline, and if he is not the friend of man, it is not because of
any profit that he has reserved for himself.

In the arrangement which follows I shall use this difference between
the material and formal {78} aspects of morality to supplement the main
principle of classification, which is that difference of level or
range, of which I have already made some use in the previous chapter,
and which I shall now define more precisely. In morality life is so
organized as to provide for interests as liberally and comprehensively
as possible. But the principles through which such organization is
effected will differ in the degree to which they accomplish that end.
Hence it is possible to define several economies or stages of
organization which are successively more complete. The _simple
interest_, first, is the isolated interest, pursued regardlessly of
other interests; in other words, not as yet brought under the form of
morality. The _reciprocity of interests_, represents that rudimentary
form of morality in which interests enter only into an external
relation, through which they secure an exchange of benefits without
abandoning their independence. In the _incorpora