The motivation of the economic order is related, likewise, to our consciousness of the shortness of life. I am fleeting, but my property will be here after I have disappeared; can I not put the stamp of myself upon it? A college president repeatedly remarked to a man of wealth, “Mr. M, if I were in your place, I should build myself a monument.” This, and nothing more, time and again, until the man of wealth remarked one day, “Doctor, I have decided to build myself a monument, namely a building upon your campus.” To identify myself with something that will speak in my name when I am gone, something that will act upon men so that I still count with them--this, in some cases at least, is a constituent of the desire for gain. It may take the form of ambition merely to build up a great estate that shall bear my name; to perpetuate this estate in its integrity as long as the law permits; not only to endow my children and grandchildren with wealth, but also to prevent them from dissipating it; by my beneficence to be really good for something in the long future; to cause my name to be gratefully spoken of by future generations, forever, if possible. Again, how like religion, with its interest in survival after death! All things are yours, whether ... life or death. Make to yourself friends of unrighteous Mammon (said Jesus derisively) so that they may receive you into everlasting habitations! Clearly, then, we shall only partly understand the driving power of the economic system if we fail to perceive that, like science, art, and religion, it contains aspirations to be free, to be recognized by others, to fulfil the impulses of family affection, to enthrone personality above circumstance, to be a creator, and to baffle the grim Reaper. The industrial revolution wrought havoc within this garden of motives. Factory production separates the experience of producing from the experience of consuming, thereby concealing something of the meaning of both. Moreover, in place of face-to-face dealings between men, which keep the human factor in the foreground, we now have mass or group relations between persons who never meet one another, and these relations are mediated on the side of capital by laws, rules, standards, and officials that represent a somewhat-less-than-human interest. The dominant assumption is one that can be expressed in a balance-sheet, which is merely a summary of the non-human aspects of a business--a summary, that is to say, of that to which no _meanings_ are as yet assigned. Was there ever anything more abstract than a balance sheet? The business man, his family and friends, his employes, his country, his church, the whole human race might be blest or injured to any extent by his business, but the balance-sheet would not yield the slightest hint of the fact. Yet the balance-sheet--this abstraction--is taken as the main guide of business conduct!