Money: mysterious the way in which we all accept its existence, though it is in fact a specter, less real than all the things we sacrifice for it. Yet almost all of us have the feeling that we are making a tremendous nonsense of our days on earth; two-thirds of all the work we do during a lifetime is unnecessary and therefore ludicrous, all the more so because we do it with such solemn faces. It is work purely for its own sake. Looking at it from a materialistic point of view, one could perhaps call it organization; from a moral point of view, virtue. Virtue as a substitute for joy. The other substitute, since virtue by itself is seldom enough, is pleasure, which is equally an industry, equally part of the cycle. And all in order to keep our anxiety neuroses at bay through ceaseless activity. There is only one truly natural thing about this Babylonian enterprise that we call civilization: it always manages to exact its revenge.
Translation by Geoffrey Skelton