could name who unite a cool head with a warm heart. They, if anybody, should be disillusioned, for they, more often than the rest of us, witness frailty and frustration close at hand, yet they are most unshakenly respectful of the common man. XV THE MIXED MOTIVES OF BUSINESS It is necessary to distinguish between the qualities of the industrial system and the qualities of the men who run it. It is true that they have created it, that they endeavor to express themselves in it, and that they interpret themselves by their own creation; but it does not follow that they have succeeded particularly well in expressing themselves, or that their interpretation of themselves is adequate. There was a time when our ancestors expressed themselves in idols, the work of their own hands and imaginations, and interpreted themselves thereby, even offering human sacrifice as a normal part of the system. But we know that the wants of these worshippers outran the prayers that, for the time being, they were able to frame. The man was better than his religion. May it not be that industrial man is better than industrialism? And if so, is it not conceivable that the mechanism of business that now tyrannizes over us as ancient religions tyrannized over their worshippers may yet go through transformations as profound as those that separate the Druid from the believer in ethical monotheism? The gravitation of the _system_, we have seen, is towards a depressing view of human nature, and unquestionably the system is to some extent forming men in its own image. But even as they yield to economic custom, they make excuses for yielding, and they hunt up excuses for the system that coerces them just as the idols of old coerced our ancestors. Such a system is as imperfect an index of the nature of man as would be a motor car running away down a hill because the brakes have been allowed to get out of order. In such a car human nature is both represented and misrepresented. If, under such terms as “love of money,” “desire for gain,” “profit motive,” or “economic motive,” we think to explain the “go” of business, we shall be caught in an abstraction or over-simplification. It is as if one were to say that the reason why any man buys an automobile is that he desires to ride rather than walk. This is not misleading, but it is abstract and inadequate. The experience of riding, it is true, may beget a desire simply to ride and ride, and similarly the experience of making money may become a source of direct satisfaction; but any concrete situation is almost certain to be far less simple than this. The motives of business--later we shall see whether the same is true of the worker--are decidedly mixed. Let us see.