We find in human nature three characteristic impulses which serve as the mainspring and motive power in the gaining and spending of money: the passion for acquisition, the instinct for absolute property, and the desire to excel. No one would suggest that the passion for acquisition can be destroyed: it is neither possible nor desirable, but it can be prevented from running wild, and it can be controlled, though it does not seem to have occurred to many people that such control is expedient. The instinct for absolute property is very much overestimated, and this arises from the fact that we are accustomed to a system which hardly allows any satisfactory intermediate stage between property and positive need. The craving for complete possession on any considerable scale only enters into the minds of those who covet their neighbours’ possessions. What a man wants and has every right to expect is security in the enjoyment of his necessaries and comforts, but this is precisely what in the vast majority of cases he does not get; and his want remaining unsatisfied is converted into a craving for absolute property. The desire to excel, which can undoubtedly be one of the finest human qualities, is in itself vitiated by the measure of money, which sets up an utterly false standard of excellence and converts pure ambition into a desire for material pre-eminence. However far we may travel, the problem will be continually resolving itself into some variation of the question as to how these impulses had best be regulated, and to what extent they have broken out beyond their legitimate bounds. But although the causes of the faith in money may be reduced to moral and psychological terms, there are economic as well as moral results, and it is not the metaphysical origins, but the practical results which must be looked into.