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Fundamental notion of a culture of traders.—We many watch the multifarious growth in our days of a social culture the very soul of which is trading, just as personal rivalry was that of the Greeks, and war, victory and law that of the Romans. The trader knows how to estimate anything without making it, and, indeed, to estimate it not according to his own personal requirements, but to those of the consumers. "Who and how many will consume this?" is his question of questions. This type of estimation he now instinctively and constantly applies to every thing, including the productions of art and science, of thinkers, scholars, artists, statesmen, nations and parties, in fact of the entire age; in connection with everything produced he inquires into supply and demand in order to fix the value of a thing. This, when once it has become the character of a whole culture, being worked out in the minutest and nicest details, and stamped on every volition and faculty, will be the thing that ye people of the century to come will be proud of, provided the prophets of the commercial class are right in making the century over to yon. But I have little faith in these prophets. {{italic|Credat Judaus Apella—to speak with Horace.
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The criticism on the ancestors.—Why do we now forbear the truth about even the most recent past? Because there is always a new generation which feels in
