time controlled by a regard for a higher or more comprehensive
interest. This is the distinguishing quality of all that wins moral
approval: thrift and temperance; loyalty {19} and integrity; justice,
unselfishness, and public spirit; humanity and piety. To the further
discussion of these several virtues we shall have occasion shortly to
return.

Moral procedure, then, differs from life in its more elementary form,
through the fact that interests are organized. Morality is only life
where this has assumed the form of the forward movement of character,
nationality, and humanity. Moral principles define the adjustment of
interest to interest, for the saving of each and the strengthening of
both against failure and death. Morality is only the method of
carrying on the affair of life beyond a certain point of complexity.
It is the method of concerted, cumulative living, through which
interests are brought from a doubtful condition of being tolerated by
the cosmos, to a condition of security and confidence. The spring and
motive of morality are therefore absolutely one with those of life.
The self-preservative impulse of the simplest organism is the initial
bias from which, by a continuous progression in the direction of first
intent, have sprung the service of mankind and the love of God.

{20}

IV

There is an old and unprofitable quarrel between those who identify,
and those who contrast, morality with _nature_. To adjudicate this
quarrel, it is necessary to define a point at which nature somehow
exceeds herself. Strictly speaking, it is as arbitrary to say that
morality, which arose and is immersed in nature, is not natural, as to
say that magnetism and electricity are not natural. If nature be
defined in terms of the categories of any stage of complexity, all
beyond will wear the aspect of a miracle. It would be proper to
dismiss the question as only a trivial matter of terminology, did not
the discussion of it provide an occasion for alluding to certain
confused notions that have obtained wide currency.

Thus there is an ancient belief that it is natural to be licentious;
that man is at heart unruly and wilful, wearing the artificial good
behavior of civilization as he wears his clothes. Nietsche has
contributed not a little to the glorification of this pro-natural and
anti-moral monster. And yet no one has recognized more clearly than
he, that restraint and law are not only in life from the begin