to the original agreement binding you to be and
remain open-minded. And you are now as concerned as I to solve the
problem by defining a reorganization of the situation that would permit
of an action unequivocally good, that is altogether conducive to the
fulfilment of interest.

To understand what would constitute a solution of this moral problem it
is important to observe, {52} in the first place, that an action
_wholly conducive to both interests_ would take precedence of an action
which fulfilled the one but sacrificed the other. Were it possible for
you to eat the apple now and go to the play to-morrow, your rational
course would be to allow your present impulse free play. You would
thus be alive to the total situation; your action would in reality be
regulated by both interests, or rather by a larger interest embracing
and providing for both. An action thus controlled would have a more
adequate justification than an action conceived with reference to the
one interest exclusively, and merely happening to be favorable to the
other interest also. Or suppose that, by substituting a different
species of apple for the one first selected, you could avoid
disagreeable consequences, and without loss of immediate gratification.
In this case you would have corrected your original action and adopted
a course that proved itself better, because conducive to the fulfilment
of to-morrow's interest as well as to-day's.

We have thus arrived at a very important conception, that of a higher
interest possessing a certain priority in its claims. The higher
interest as I have defined it is simply the greater interest, and
greater in the sense that it exceeds a narrower interest through
embracing it and adding to it. Your interest in the fulfilment of {53}
to-day's interest _and_ to-morrow's, is demonstrably greater than your
interest in the fulfilment of either exclusively, because it provides
for each and more. In this perfectly definite sense your preference
may be justified.

Let us now apply this principle of preference to the more complex case
in which there is no available action which will fulfil both interests.
Suppose that you cannot both eat apples to-day and go to the play
to-morrow. How is one to define a good action in the premises? In the
first place the good act originally conceived in terms of the free play
of the present impulse is proved to be illusory. There is no good act
until your interests are reor