XLII If man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely an- 
thropological phenomena in the [narrower] sense, but truly 
ontological™ affirmations of being (of nature), and if they are only 
really affirmed because their object exists for them as a sensual object, 
then it is clear that: 

(1) They have by no means merely one mode of affirmation, but 
rather that the distinct character of their existence, of their life, is 
constituted by the distinct mode of their affirmation. In what 
manner the object exists for them, is the characteristic mode of their 
gratification. 

(2) Wherever the sensuous affirmation is the direct annulment of 
the object in its independent form (as in eating, drinking, working 
up of the object, etc.), this is the affirmation of the object. 

(3) Insofar as man, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the 
affirmation of the object by another is likewise his own gratification. 

(4) Only through developed industry—i.e., through the me- 
dium of private property—does the ontological essence of human 
passion come into being, in its totality as well as in its humanity; 
the science of man is therefore itself a product of man’s own 
practical activity. 

(5) The meaning of private property—apart from its estrange- 
ment—is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of 
enjoyment and as objects of activity. 

By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the 
property of appropriating all objects, money is thus the object of 
eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipo- 
tence of its being. It is therefore regarded as omnipotent.... Money 
is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his 
life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, 
also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the 
other person. 

“What, man! confound it, hands and feet 
And head and backside, all are yours! 
And what we take while life is sweet, 
Is that to be declared not ours? 
Six stallions, say, I can afford, 
Is not their strength my property? 
I tear along, a sporting lord, 
As if their legs belonged to me.” 

Goethe: Faust (Mephistopheles) * 
Shakespeare in Timon of Athens: 

“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, Gods, 

I am no idle votarist! ... 

Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, 

Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant. 
. Why, this 

will lug your priests and servants from your sides, 

Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads: 

This yetlow slave 

Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed; 

Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves 

And give them title, knee and approbation 

With senators on the bench: This is it 

That makes the wappen’d widow wed again; 

She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 

To the April day again. Come, damned earth, 

Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds 

Among the rout of nations.” 

And also later: 

“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce 
*Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler 
Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars! 

Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer, 
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow 
That lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God! 

That solder’st close impossibilities, 

And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue, 
\|XLII] To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts! 
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue 

Set them into confounding odds, that beasts 

May have the world in empire!”* 

Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money. To 
understand him, let us begin, first of all, by expounding the passage 
from Goethe. 

That which is for me through the medium of money—that for 
which I can pay (i. e., which money can buy)—that am I myself, the 
possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the 
extent of my power. Money’s properties are my—the posses- 
sor’s— properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am 
capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, 
but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore lam 
not ugly, for the effect of ugliness—its deterrent power—is nullified 
by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but 
money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. 
I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, 
and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its 
possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being 
dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. | am brainless, but 
money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor 
be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he 
who has” power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do 
not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart 
longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, 
therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary? 

If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to 
me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of 
all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also 
the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as 
well as the real binding agent—the [...]° chemical power of society. 

Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of money: 

(1) It is the visible divinity—the transformation of all human and 
natural properties into their contraries, the universal confounding 
and distorting of things: impossibilities are soldered together by it. 

(2) It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and 
nations. 

The distorting and confounding of all human and _ natural 
qualities, the fraternisation of impossibilities—the divine power of 
money—lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and 
self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind. 

That which Iam unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all 
my individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by 
means of money. Money thus turns each of these powers into 
something which in itself it is not—turns it, that is, into its contrary. 

If I long for a particular dish or want to take the mail-coach 
because I am not strong enough to go by foot, money fetches me 
the dish and the mail-coach: that is, it converts my wishes 
from something in the realm of imagination, translates them from 
their meditated, imagined or desired existence into their sensuous, 
actual existence—from imagination to life, from imagined being 
into real being. In effecting this mediation, [money] is the truly cre- 
ative power. 

No doubt the demand also exists for him who has no money, but his 
demand is a mere thing of the imagination without effect or 
existence for me, for a third party, for the [others], || XLIII| and 
which therefore remains even for me unreal and objectless. The 
difference between effective demand based on money and ineffec- 
tive demand based on my need, my passion, my wish, etc., is the 
difference between being and thinking, between the idea which mere- 
ly exists within me and the idea which exists as a real object outside 
of me. 

If I have no money for travel, I have no need—that is, no real and 
realisable need—to travel. If I have the vocation for study but no 
money for it, I have no vocation for study—that is, no effective, no 
true vocation. On the other hand, if I have really no vocation for 
study but have the will and the money for it, I have an effective 
vocation for it. Money as the external, universal medium and faculty 
(not springing from man as man or from human society as society) 
for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image, 
transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are 
merely abstract notions and therefore imperfections and tormenting 
chimeras, just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras— essen- 
tial powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the 
imagination of the individual— into real essential powers and faculties. 
In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the general 
distorting of individualities which turns them into their opposite and 
confers contradictory attributes upon their attributes. 

Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the 
individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be 

entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into 
hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into 
master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence 
into idiocy. 

Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, 
confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and 
confusing of all things—the world upside-down—the confounding 
and confusing of all natural and human qualities. 

He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As 
money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one 
specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for 
the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint 
of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every quality for 
every other, even contradictory, quality and object: it is the 
fraternisation of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace. 

Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a 
human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for 
trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically 
cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other 
people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging 
effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to 
nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of 
your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking 
love in return—that is, if your loving as loving does not produce 
reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving 
person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is 
impotent—a misfortune. || XLIII|