Without pursuing the question farther at this point, it should be evident that the bias of the pecuniary culture must on the whole act with pervasive force so to bend men’s knowledge of the things with which they have to do as to lessen its serviceability for technological ends. The result is a deflection from matter-of-fact to matter of imputation, and the imputation is of the personal character here spoken of. The dominant note appears to be a differential rating in respect of aggressive self-assertion, whether in human or non-human agents. Theological preconceptions are commonly strong in the pecuniary culture, and under their rule this differential rating developes into a scheme of graded powers and efficacies vested in the phenomena of external nature by delegation from an overruling personal authority. Such a bent is necessarily prejudicial to workmanship, and it may seem that the ubiquitous repressive force of this metaphysics of authority and authenticity should serve the same disserviceable end for workmanship as the more genial and diffuse anthropomorphism of the lower cultures, but with more decisive effect since it runs in a more competently organised, compact and prescriptive fashion. Where the pecuniary culture has been carried through consistently on the predatory plan, without being diverted to that commercial phase current in the latterday Western civilisation, the conclusion of the matter has been decay of the industrial arts and effectual dissipation of that system of matter-of-fact knowledge on which technological efficiency rests. In the West, where the predatory phase proper has eventually given place to a commercial phase of the same pecuniary culture, the general run of events in this bearing has been a decline of knowledge, technology and workmanship, running on so long as the predatory (coercive) rule prevailed unbroken, but followed presently by a slow recovery and advance in technological efficiency and scientific insight; somewhat in proportion as the commercialisation of this culture has gained ground, and therefore correlated also in a general way with the decline of religious fear.