scover; and the next time they counterfeit,
remember what you have already discovered, and be no more abused.[3]

There is a second source of overindulgence, in the ever-increasing
complexity of the moral economy. The more numerous the interests; the
more difficult the task of attending to their connections and managing
their adjustment. Not only is the need of prudence never outgrown; it
steadily acquires both a greater urgency and a greater difficulty.

If incapacity may be said to be the metaphysical evil, the taint of the
cosmos at large, overindulgence may be said to be the original sin, the
taint of life itself. It is life's offence against itself, the denial
of greater life for the sake of the little in hand. It is the
perennial failure of the {87} individual interest to unite itself with
that universal enterprise of which it is the microcosmic image.

III

The simplest _moral_ economy is that in which two or more interests are
_reciprocally adjusted_ without being subordinated. The principle of
organization which defines such an economy is _prudence_. Prudence
becomes necessary at the moment when interests come into such contact
with one another as provokes retaliation. Thus, for example, interests
react on one another through being embodied in the same physical
organism. Each bodily activity depends on the well-being of
co-ordinate functions, and if its exercise be so immoderate as to
injure these, it undermines itself. _Moderation_ gains for special
interests the support of a general bodily health.

But bodily health is not the only medium of interdependence among the
interests of a single individual. His interests must draw not only
upon a common source of vitality, but also upon a common stock of
material resources. The limitation of interests that follows from this
fact is frugality or _thrift_, the practical working of the principle
that present waste is future lack, and that, therefore, to save now is
to spend hereafter. Thrift involves also a special emphasis on {88}
livelihood, since this is a source of supply for all particular
interests.

The social relation makes interests externally interdependent in a
great variety of ways. Interests must inhabit one space, exploit one
physical environment, and employ a common mode of communication. If
any interest so acts as unduly to divert one of these mediums to its
own uses, it must suffer retaliation from the other interests that
like