Money is the instrument through which the economic order exerts continuous pressure on the individual. The age treats it as the final criterion of success and of personal worth. The differentiated individual refuses that criterion. He does not refuse the necessity of money. He refuses the claim that money determines the rank of a man or the legitimacy of his orientation. The permanent measure remains prior. Money is subordinate to it.
The practical demand is independence of judgment regarding both acquisition and expenditure. The man who rearranges his entire life around the continuous increase of money has already accepted the horizontal standard in a decisive form. The man who spends without reference to any higher purpose has done the same. Competence in the economic domain is useful. Dependence on the favor of that domain is a form of surrender. The higher type seeks the former and refuses the latter.
Young men are formed in an environment that equates financial anxiety with seriousness and financial display with achievement. The higher type holds a different relation. He acquires what is required to maintain freedom of movement and the conditions necessary for the interior work. He does not acquire in order to be measured by the acquisition. He spends according to the same measure that governs every other decision. The surrounding culture will misread both the restraint and the selectivity. The misreading is accepted without adjustment.
Examine the place of money in the ordinary day. Note where it dictates decisions that should answer to a higher principle. Correct those points without the need for public statement. The relation to money is one of the quieter tests of the type. It is also one of the most continuous. The man who remains ordered here has already refused one of the primary instruments of the leveling process.