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 the case of hunger
appeased, or to objects in so far as assimilated to interest, as in the
case of food consumed. It follows that goodness in a relative sense,
in the sense of "good for," will attach to whatever _conduces_ to good
in the absolute sense; that is, actions and objects, such as
agriculture and bread, that lead directly or indirectly to the
fulfilment of interest. But "good" and "good for," like their
opposites "bad" and "bad for," are never sharply distinguishable,
because the imagination anticipates the fortunes of interests, and
transforms even remote contingencies into actual victory or defeat.

Through their organization into life, the mechanisms of nature thus
take on the generic quality of good and evil. They either serve
interests or oppose them; and must be employed and assimilated, or
avoided and rejected {13} accordingly. Events which once indifferently
happened are now objects of hope and fear, or integral parts of success
and failure.

III

But that organization of life which denotes the presence of morality
has not yet been defined. The isolated interest extricates itself from
mechanism; and, struggling to maintain itself, does, it is true, divide
the world into good and bad, according to its uses. But the moral
drama opens only when interest meets interest; when the path of one
unit of life is crossed by that of another. Every interest is
compelled to recognize other interests, on the one hand as parts of its
environment, and on the other hand as partners in the general
enterprise of life. Thus there is evolved the _moral_ idea