There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé attitude. This attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves. A life in boundless pursuit of pleasure makes one blasé because it agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that they finally cease to react at all. In the same way, through the rapidity and contradictoriness of their changes, more harmless impressions force such violent responses, tearing the nerves so brutally hither and thither that their last reserves of strength are spent; and if one remains in the same milieu, they have no time to gather new strength. An incapacity thus emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy. This constitutes that blasé attitude which, in fact, every metropolitan child shows when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus.

This physiological source of the metropolitan blasé attitude is joined by another source which flows from the money economy. The essence of this attitude consists in the blunting of discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is the case with the halfwit, but rather that the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blasé person in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over any other. This mood is the faithful, subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money.