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MONEY AND THE STYLE OF MODERN LIFE 243
tionships and an increasing proximity in the impersonal,
objective relationships.
The microscope and the telescope have brought the
world of nature nearer to us in a purely rational sense, but
this distance in its subjective aspect has become greater
than it ever was in the days of anthropomorphism and
mythology. The relations of man to his social environment
 show this same tendency. He differentiates himself
more from his immediate circle and approaches the widest
circles. The growing individualism means a weakening of
family ties and a strengthening of purely rational bonds
with the widest circles.
The function of money in this double process is visible
first of all in its service in the conquest of distance. Only
the transformation of values into money makes possible
the existence of economic relationships which are independent
 of space. Only money makes possible and creates the
situation wherein a German laborer or a German capitalist
becomes interested in a change of cabinet in Spain, the
production of African gold mines, or the results of a South
American revolution. But the function of money for the
opposite tendency is even more significant. The dissolution
 of the family is the result of the relative self-sufficiency
of the individual members, and the latter is possible only
in a money economy which can give them a subsistence
 even if they fully specialize their particular one-sided
talents.

With regard to the distance between man and his cultural
 products, between man and the factual contents of
life, money fulfils a function similar to that which it fulfils
 in the case of the distance between man and his fellow-man.
 This function of money has already been referred
 to in the preceding pages, and we need therefore
only mention here that in that field of life the tendency to