801. Another reason why Dutch people live in these particular parts of the Christian central region is that their highest love and goal is doing business, and they love money only as a means that serves that higher goal. This is a spiritual kind of love to have.
If money is the ultimate goal people love, however, and doing business is loved only as a means that serves that ultimate goal - a situation found among Jews - this is an earthly kind of love to have; it leads to insatiable desire for wealth.
The reason why loving to do business is spiritual when it is the ultimate goal is that business is useful and serves the common good. Yes, their own benefit is also part of the equation; when we are thinking from our earthly selves it may even appear more important than the common good. Nevertheless, when being in business is the goal, it is also what is loved the most; and the goal that we love the most is what is considered most important in heaven. The goal we love the most is like the leader of a country or the head of a household; all the other loves are like that leader's subjects and servants. The goal we love dwells in the highest and inmost regions of our mind. The intermediate loves we have are below and outside that highest love; they follow its commands.
The Dutch, more than other people, have this spiritual type of love. Jews have an inverted version of it; therefore their love of doing business is merely earthly in nature. What lies deep within it is not the common good but their own benefit.