MONEY AND THE STYLE OF MODERN LIFE 249

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may mean infinite duration, existence beyond time, timeless
 existence. The simplest illustration of this is the concept
 of natural law. The content of the known natural causality
 may change in the course of time, but the meaning,
the conception, the idea of natural law remains unchanged.
It is the concept of absolute validity, of timeless uniformity
 beyond and above all partial and incomplete realizations.
 The opposite of this peculiar form of absolute persistence
 is the concept of absolute movement, of timeless
change. The concept of timeless persistence or absolute
duration finds its opposite in the concept of timeless change
or absolute non-duration.
For the absolute mobility of the world, money is the
most adequate symbol. Its significance and meaning lie in
the fact that it moves, that it changes hands, in its mobility.
 The moment it rests, it is no longer money in the specific
 sense of the term. And even the influence which it
then exerts consists only in the anticipation of its renewed
mobility. It is nothing but a bearer of movement from
which everything that is not movement has been excluded.

But money is also a symbol for the opposite way of
making the world intelligible. It is symbolic for persistence
as it is symbolic for movement. The single quantum of
money is in incessant movement because the value it represents
 is related to the valuable objects as the general law
to the concrete forms in which it is realized. The general
law, however, is above and beyond all the movements of
which it is the form and basis. In a similar fashion the abstract
 money value of which money is the bearer is the form
and the basis of all economic movements. Money value,
wealth, is the abstract general concept for objects in so
far as they are economic goods. They are not necessarily
economic goods, but they can only become economic goods