, or
principle of action, according to which _interest allies itself with
interest in order to be free-handed and powerful_ against the common
hereditary enemy, the heavy inertia and the incessant wear of the
cosmos. Through morality a plurality of interests becomes an
_economy_, or _community of interests_.

I have thus far described the situation as though it were essentially a
social one. But while, historically speaking, it is doubtless always
social in one of its aspects, the essence of the matter is as truly
represented within the {14} group of interests sustained by a single
organism, when these, for example, are united in an individual
life-purpose. Morality is that procedure in which several interests,
whether they involve one or more physical organisms, are so adjusted as
to function as one interest, more massive in its support, and more
coherent and united in the common task of fulfilment. Interests
morally combined are not destroyed or superseded, as are mechanical
forces, by their resultant. The power of the higher interest is due to
a summing of incentives emanating from the contributing interests; it
can perpetuate itself only through keeping these interests alive. The
most spectacular instance of this is government, which functions as
one, and yet derives its power from an enormous variety of different
interests, which it must foster and conserve as the sources of its own
life. In all cases the strength of morality must lie in its liberality
and breadth.

Morality is simply the forced choice between suicide and abundant life.
When interests war against one another they render the project of life,
at best a hard adventure, futile and abortive. I hold it to be of
prime importance for the understanding of this matter to observe that
from the poorest and crudest beginnings, morality is _the massing of
interests against a reluctant cosmos_. Life has been attended with
discord and mutual {15} destruction, but this is its failure. The
first grumbling truce between savage enemies, the first collective
enterprise, the first peaceful community, the first restraint on
gluttony for the sake of health, the first suppression of ferocity for
the sake of a harder blow struck in cold blood,--these were the first
victories of morality. They were moral victories in that they
organized life into more comprehensive unities, making it a more
formidable thing, and securing a more abundant satisfaction. The fact