This belief, which amounts almost to an instinct, may vary in intensity, it may cloak itself under many insidious disguises, but it is very rarely if ever completely absent. It takes all conceivable forms, from undisguised greed to simulated contempt. There are those who devote their lives to amassing more money; there are those who, having sufficient, assume outwardly an indifference as to its power, while they retain inwardly a profound and unwavering faith in it; and there are those who struggle for it so as to avoid social and sometimes even actual death from need of it. It insinuates itself into the minds of men who have no confidence in material advancement because they find that our whole social system is based on this belief, and if they do not want to be left behind in the struggle they must accept the creed. Not only by individuals separately, but by the people collectively it is accepted as a concern of supreme importance. Our lives, our marriages, and therefore our very birth are regulated by it, our occupations, our industries and our arts, everything but death depends on it, and even death itself can be hastened or postponed by it. So national is the reverence for it that our holidays are not fixed on saints’ days, or to commemorate episodes from the rich part of our history, but they are _Bank_ holidays. The closing of our banks is the one signal that for twenty-four hours we are free. The multifarious aspects of the theme are most bewildering. As Sir Henry Taylor said, “So manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and character of mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. For if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up, honesty, justice, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge that goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity.” It is certainly true that the amazingly extensive nature of the subject might lead one away into perfectly relevant discussions of almost every field of human activity; and nothing renders argument so unsatisfactory and inconclusive as to have unlimited scope. But in these pages the issue must be narrowed down and the question confined so far as possible to a very brief examination of one particular aspect of the subject, which will be created by formulating a deliberate contention and pursuing it by argument into some of the main channels of this perplexing problem. Even so it is likely that deep water will be reached, but, after all, a suggestion need not be driven to its utmost limits in all directions in order to establish its significance.