1755. At this point one will perhaps object that the emergence of many of the above-mentioned cultural initiatives and cultural assets is not due to any particularly unselfish spirit. They are created by the principle of business. Have they not largely proved to be enterprises that could provide a living and a profit, and have not many people or the originators of such large, job-creating or public utility institutions or companies become fabulously wealthy or rich by having created them? Is it not a well-known fact that there are enterprises within industry, car manufacturing and the production of other engines that began in very modest and primitive circumstances and have ended up being gigantic concerns with thousands of workers and have made their originators the world's most wealthy people? Has it not been precisely the thought of attaining this wealth that has been the incentive for these originators rather than benefitting or serving mankind? Is there anyone who believes that it is usual for any of the fellow beings of these wealthy beings –except personal friends and for reasons of snobbery – to get a share of the assets and accumulated capital of this great source of wealth without paying for it? Have not the workers in such companies had to strike or exert a lot of energy and start disputes to get a sufficiently large share of this great income to cover at least the most essential necessities of life? Are not all of these big concerns based mainly on the possibility of gaining wealth? Who sets them up for purely humanitarian reasons? Do the originators of such gigantic concerns not usually live in large palaces with parks and gardens, and have a staff of domestic servants? Do they not live a life of lavish indulgence in all cultural assets, indeed, sometimes to the point of life-threatening gluttony, while their workers would have to perish in slavery, destitution and misery, if they had not gradually understood the need to seek protection through workers' organisations and trade unions? This does not seem to indicate any fellow-feeling that is different to, and of a higher nature than, the animal's.
      It is very true that the purely superficial driving force in these concerns is not in most cases a marked display of unselfishness, but, on the contrary, the product of the intention of gaining wealth and of the drive for self-preservation in the superior and subordinate beings concerned. But the real and true analysis of things does not end in a mere superficial local analysis. Life must be viewed from an even higher perspective in order to be judged truly and justly. This higher perspective is the place and purpose of the things in the whole. And here it surely cannot be denied that a hospital is built not merely in order to give the builders and other craftsmen something to do, just as it cannot either be logical to assume that such institutions are built only in order to create a living for doctors and nurses. A hospital must be an institution whose ultimate purpose is to help the sick and injured return to health or vigour, as far as this is possible. Is it not the same with the building of schools and colleges? There is surely no one in this case either who believes that these are built solely in order to provide the master builders and craftsmen involved, and later the teachers, with a living? The ultimate purpose of creating these phenomena must surely be to create the greatest possible general access to education and knowledge. The legal and judicial system with its police force has also a higher purpose than merely providing a living for this service's superior and subordinate beings. Is not the purpose of this service to safeguard and protect the beings' rights to life or human rights as far as this is possible? If we consider the actual governments in the world, then it surely cannot be said of them either that their highest purpose is to create a living for kings, presidents, ministers, members of parliament and so on? Is not the highest and true purpose of all governments without exception to create ordered, cultural social conditions? Is this not so with all cultural phenomena in modern society? The extent to which these institutions and phenomena attain or are able to fulfil their particular aims is only a matter of evolution. But it cannot be denied that their sole common aim is to improve social conditions. Their innermost and strongest core of life consists thus of forces that without deviation go in the direction of humaneness, unselfishness or neighbourly love. Indeed, these work so clearly behind even the outwardly most egoistic or selfish enterprises that they, in most cases, even manage to turn these more or less in a humane direction. Is it not sometimes the case that large private enterprises, businesses based on all-pervading, ruthless exploitation, have used their superior economic power to subject many smaller companies and business enterprises to their plundering dictatorship or to force them into bankruptcy and ruin? And have they not, by piling up the assets acquired from these enterprises on top of their own private fortunes, made these grow to gigantic proportions? And has it not ended up with the originators of these gigantic fortunes in the evening of their lives wholly or partially having given these riches acquired from society back to society in the form of large amounts of capital for cultural purposes? Here too the cycle applies. The assets that have been acquired or usurped will always in one way or another sooner or later return to society. Nothing can go on being private property in the long run or for ever, even though a possession can be passed down by inheritance through several generations. Thus we see how gigantic private fortunes to an ever increasing extent slip back to society. Gigantic concerns that have hundreds or thousands of workers and exist on the basis of speculation in the satisfaction of people's drunkenness or unnatural craving for intoxicating drinks have simply had to set up institutions or funds through which a part of the concern's profit of millions flows back to society again as support for art and science and other cultural purposes. The taxation authority of a state is of course also an institution that has not come into existence either in order merely to create a living for its staff. The purpose of the taxation authority can be only to become an institution or an instrument through which the state can regulate society's assets in such a way that they do not pile up far too high as private property at the expense of this society. The fact that this regulation of capital or assets by the taxation authority is not yet perfect, indeed, at times can be perceived as downright extortionate and unjust, is of course also only a matter of evolution, which time and experience will gradually remedy.
      As we have seen here, all private and public schemes and enterprises thus point in a humane direction, even if they in many ways superficially still create concern, sorrow and suffering, and, as already mentioned, in many cases seem to be downright unjust. There is thus no getting around the fact that, behind all these official and private phenomena, forces are at work, forces that are fundamentally absolutely not "animal" or selfish and that for this very reason work in an unselfish way in the direction of creating an improved social order, entirely regardless of whether the private, religious and political spheres of interest from which they have emanated may be superficially very selfish, each working at the expense of others to obtain only the material advantages from the state that are in their favour. Even if the behaviour of all the various originators of private, religious and political organisations has thus a tendency towards selfishness or egoism, just as the single individuals in their dealings with one another also to a great extent prefer to work only in their own interest, unselfish forces and private and public enterprises and institutions that are more or less unselfish and that have been created by these forces are nevertheless revealed behind their collected manifestation.