ces, and thus to dispense with zeal and eloquence.
I shall assume, therefore, that you propose to be reasonable concerning
this moral affair. By this I mean simply that you shall directly
observe the facts of life, report candidly on these facts, and fully
accept the implications of any judgment to which you may commit
yourself. I may phrase your pledge of reasonableness thus: "Show what
is right, and that it is right, and I will accept it. I mean my action
to be good, and ask only to have the good demonstrated to me, that I
may intelligently adopt it."

{43}

II

It is commonly believed that whereas the logic of _prudence_ is
unimpeachable, there is a hiatus between this level of morality and
those above. To drink one's self to death is a species of folly that
the poorest intelligence can understand; but the folly in meanness,
injustice, or impiety is a harder matter. Believing as I do that the
folly is equally demonstrable in all of these cases, I propose not to
accept your ready assent in the simpler case until its grounds have
been made as clear and definite as possible. I feel convinced that
prudence is not so simple a matter as appears; in fact that it involves
the whole ethical dialectic.

I find you, let us say, eating an apple with evident relish; and I ask
you why. If you are candid, and free from pedantry, you will doubtless
reply that it is because you like to. In this particular connection I
can conceive no profounder utterance. But we may obtain a phraseology
that will suit our theoretical purposes more conveniently and serve
better to fix the matter in our minds. Your eating of the apple is a
process that tends within certain limits to continue and restore
itself, to supply the actions and objects necessary to its own
maintenance. I have proposed that we call such a process an
_interest_. In that it is a part of that very complex physical and
{44} moral thing called "you," it is _your_ interest, and it also has,
of course, its special subject-matter, in this case the eating of an
apple. It involves specific movements of body, and makes a specific
requisition on the environment. Now, still confining ourselves
strictly to this interest, we shall doubtless agree to call any phase
of it in which it is fulfilled, in which its exercise is fostered and
unimpeded, _good_. And we shall doubtless agree to attach the same
term, although perhaps in a less direct sense, to that part of the
environ