138. Fourth section. In the terrestrial human community we also find a type of person for whom trade and business have become a speciality or chief interest in life. It is true that all other terrestrial people can also be considered, more or less, as business people because, as previously mentioned, all existence or material maintenance of life is actually a form of trading. However, in this respect it does not manifest itself as a chief interest in life, but appears to a certain extent as a reality which has been forced on them owing to circumstances, and is more or less a "necessary evil". The business principle is certainly not a particular favourite for the poor man, whose main contact with it consists of selling his work power for a relatively undervalued payment just in order to live. Neither is the business principle especially attractive to the advanced and spiritually developed terrestrial person, because a refined and developed consciousness clashes with the coarser thought climates on which terrestrial mankind's business world is based and in which the previously mentioned "masked robbery" can be manifested. But, because of the struggle for existence, there are many people who, although more developed, nevertheless still have to live in the primitive zone of consciousness of that world, having to conduct various important business deals, or finding themselves in comparatively important positions in large firms. But for all such people it can be said that their profession in life is to some degree an evil from which they are trying to escape at every possible moment of their leisure time, aiming for higher and purer zones of thought where they can rest in an atmosphere harmonizing more with their highest moral sense and perception of life than with the earth-bound and egoistic thought climate which they have to frequent during working hours. However, these particular people are not dealt with here because, in varying degrees they belong to other sections and categories. People in the fourth section on the contrary, are those who are in their element in the business world. This means that their qualifications and stage of consciousness in all areas fit into that combination of imperfect and primitive thought climates of which the terrestrial business world consists. As these thought climates consist mainly of all-pervading egoism, greed, lust for power, ruthlessness, meanness, hypocrisy and ambition, it is easy to understand that people who can be particularly in their element in a zone composed of such energies, must also possess a correspondingly similar mind; they must be people with a faculty of feeling so primitive that it is still only able to express itself mainly in the above-mentioned thought climates. But a life in a zone of consciousness consisting of such thought climates is bound to develop intelligence, and so we see that these people possess a highly developed standard of intelligence co-existent with their primitive faculty of feeling. As this forced development of the intelligence has made them long ago outgrow religious concepts and ideas, and their faculty of feeling is still too primitive for susceptibility to any higher religion, then in the field of religion that faculty is dormant or temporarily put out of action. On the other hand, the same people have developed a genius for displaying the hypocrisy and insincere kindness which find their culmination in advertising. In truth, this is of such a dishonest and false nature that sometimes it even appears as the equivalent of most ingeniously constructed financial "traps" and "pitfalls" for customers.
      Consequently, terrestrial people's daily life is in reality a coming and going among these traps and pitfalls, and merely in order to secure their daily needs, they are forced to fall into those traps again and again. Their experiences of the masked selfishness appearing in advertising as unselfishness, and the masked "animal nature" appearing as "humaneness" arouse antipathy to the character and nature of the business world. As antipathy, when analysed, is itself an undermining element, all this indicates that, to the same degree as it creates antipathy, the present business world is really in the process of undermining itself; so it is actually taking part itself in promoting the establishment of an international world administration and authority.
      Since people in the fourth section can only have an interest in those factors in legislative and practical measures which are able to stimulate and support their own methods of prospering and their more or less obvious egoistic ways of trade, they are bound to become opponents of the new world impulse which combats all those concerns which are self-seeking and which undermine the community.
      As the cosmic world economy is of such a nature that absolutely nothing can go to waste, but on the contrary, everything is made use of, then terrestrial mankind's vices and excesses are also taken into the service of the world economy. Terrestrial mankind's inclination for strong drink and intoxicants, for tobacco, for meat-eating and for health-undermining entertainments has been the basis for a number of trades which mean "daily bread" to millions of individuals. As the energies from the new world impulse will increasingly undermine terrestrial mankind's inclination for those harmful products, it is quite understandable that many people whose living is actually maintained by them will come to feel that their very existence is threatened, and therefore they are bound to oppose the new cosmic forces. However, one has to consider that terrestrial mankind cannot be changed in days, weeks or months. The transformation can come about only gradually in the course of decades; terrestrial mankind's consumption of those harmful commodities of life cannot end suddenly, but only by degrees. So no one will suddenly see himself losing his job or finding his existence threatened on the basis of the new world impulse, but he will be given time enough to finish and free himself from the above-mentioned trades in a natural way as they gradually come to offend his moral sense and his conscience. Every form of opposition against the new world impulse can therefore appear only on the basis of naïvety and so is foolish by nature, particularly because it is directed against a force opposed to which it is as inferior as it is to the power which determines the orbit of the Earth round the sun.