Large numbers of otherwise sensible people feel that there is some
unavoidable conflict between the ideal and the real, between what they
call the sacred and the secular, between the things they would like to
do and to be and the things they actually have to do as part of their
daily affairs and duties.

Probably the greater number try to meet the difficulty by dividing
their lives and interest into separate parts. They say, business is
business; religion is another thing altogether; I will work hard and
honestly at my business and look forward to the comforts and pleasures
of religion and ideal things.

So it happens that there are those who feel that to speak of religion
on a week-day reveals a lack of the sense of the fitness of things,
while other good people are quite sure that it is a wholly irreverent
thing to speak of business on a Sunday. We tend to dwell alternately
in two sets of apartments, the practical and the pious.

Even where there are no such sharp lines through the life we feel that
manufacture and the market, money-making, and trading tend to blunt the
finer sensibilities and act as a hindrance to the realization of our
ideals, while, on the other hand, we are sure that the life of ideals
is unfitted for business.

The result of this separation and apparent antagonism is that we cannot
develop our lives symmetrically; we are torn by conflicting purposes;
we fail to see any ideal ends in business or to find any practical
values in religion. Religion without business tends to dreamy,
purposeless moral enervation; business without ideal ends and aims to