The ultimate ground of validity for the thinking of the business classes is the natural-rights ground of property, — a conventional, anthropomorphic fact having an institutional validity, rather than a matterof-fact validity such as can be formulated ' in terms of material cause and effect ; while the j classes engaged in the machine industry are / habitually occupied with matters of causal se1 quence, which do not lend themselves to statement m anthropomorphic terms of natural rights and which afford no guidance in questions of institutional right and wrong, or of conventional reason and consequence. Arguments which proceed on I material cause and effect cannot be met with arguments from conventional precedent or dialeei tically sufficient reason, and conversely.
The thinking required by the pecuniary occupations proceeds on grounds of conventionality, whereas that involved in the industrial occupations runs, in the main, on grounds of mechanical sequence or causation, to the neglect of conventionality. The institution (habit of thought) of
CIVILIZATION AND THE MACHINE PK0CE8S 319
ownership or property is a conventional fact ; and the logic of pecuniary thinking — that is to say, of thinking on matters of ownership — is a working out of the implications of this postulate, this concept of ownership or property. The characteristic habits of thought given by such work are habits of recouTBe to conventional grounds of finality or validity, to anthropomorphism, to explanations of phenomena in terms of human relation, discretion, authenticity, and choice. The final ground of certainty in inquiries on this natural-rights plane is always a ground of authenticity, of precedent, or accepted decision. The argument is an