And this weighing of one kind of value against another will take place largely in terms of money, which exists for the very purpose of facilitating such transactions. Thus honor is one of those values which many would place outside the pecuniary sphere, and yet honor may call for the saving of money to pay a debt, while sensuality would spend it for a hearty dinner. In this case, then, we buy our honor with money, or we sell it, through money, for something lower. In much the same way are the larger choices of society, as, for example, between power devoted to education and power devoted to warships, expressed in pecuniary terms. In general we do, in fact, individually and collectively, weigh such things as friendship, righteousness, and beauty against other matters, and in terms of money. Beauty is on the market, however undervalued, in the form, for example, of music, art, literature, flowers, and dwelling-sites. A friendly personality has a market value in salesmen, doctors, writers, and teachers; indeed in all occupations where ability to influence persons is important—and there are few in which it is not. I notice that if there is anything attractive about a man he soon learns to collect pay for it. And not less is it true that the need for righteousness finds expression in a willingness to pay a (reasonable) price for it in the market-place. Convincing preachers and competent social workers command salaries, and great sums go to beneficent institutions. The truth is that the values we think of as absolute are only, if I may use the expression, relatively absolute. That is, they so far transcend the values of every-day traffic that we think of them as belonging to a wholly different order, but experience shows that they do not. Life itself is not an absolute value, since we constantly see it sacrificed to other ends; chastity is sold daily by people not radically different in nature from the rest of us, and as for honor it would be hard to imagine a kind which might not, in conceivable situations, be renounced for some other and perhaps higher aim. The idea of the baseness of weighing the higher sort of values in the same scale with money rests on the assumption that the money is to be used to purchase values of a lower sort; but if it is the indispensable means to still higher values we shall justify the transaction. Such exchanges are constantly taking place: only those who are protected by pecuniary affluence can imagine otherwise. The health of mothers is sacrificed for money to support their children, and the social opportunities of sisters given up to send brothers to college. In the well-to-do classes, at least, the life of possible children is often renounced on grounds of expense.