Whether money is to be retained among egoists?--To the old stamp an inherited possession adheres. If you no longer let yourselves be paid with it, it is ruined: if you do nothing for this money, it loses all power. Cancel the _inheritance_, and you have broken off the executor's court-seal. For now everything is an inheritance, whether it be already inherited or await its heir. If it is yours, wherefore do you let it be sealed up from you? why do you respect the seal? But why should you not create a new money? Do you then annihilate the ware in taking from it the hereditary stamp? Now, money is a ware, and an essential _means_ or competence. For it protects against the ossification of resources, keeps them in flux and brings to pass their exchange. If you know a better medium of exchange, go ahead; yet it will be a "money" again. It is not the money that does you damage, but your incompetence to take it. Let your competence take effect, collect yourselves, and there will be no lack of money--of your money, the money of _your_ stamp. But working I do not call "letting your competence take effect." Those who are only "looking for work" and "willing to work hard" are preparing for their own selves the infallible upshot--to be out of work. Good and bad luck depend on money. It is a power in the _bourgeois_ period for this reason, that it is only wooed on all hands like a girl, indissolubly wedded by nobody. All the romance and chivalry of _wooing_ for a dear object come to life again in competition. Money, an object of longing, is carried off by the bold "knights of industry."[194] He who has luck takes home the bride. The ragamuffin has luck; he takes her into his household, "society," and destroys the virgin. In his house she is no longer bride, but wife; and with her virginity her family name is also lost. As housewife the maiden Money is called "Labor," for "Labor" is her husband's name. She is a possession of her husband's. To bring this figure to an end, the child of Labor and Money is again a girl, an unwedded one and therefore Money, but with the certain descent from Labor, her father. The form of the face, the "effigy," bears another stamp. Finally, as regards competition once more, it has a continued existence by this very means, that all do not attend to _their affair_ and come to an _understanding_ with each other about it. Bread, _e. g._, is a need of all the inhabitants of a city; therefore they might easily agree on setting up a public bakery. Instead of this, they leave the furnishing of the needful to the competing bakers. Just so meat to the butchers, wine to the wine-dealers, etc.