Nothing secular has an aura more seductive than money, which, when one thinks about it, yields a qualified metaphor for man. Human beings are supposed to possess a certain value, just by virtue of being human, whatever they do with their lives, however morally soiled they may become. A five-dollar bill is worth five dollars, however torn and crumpled, worn and frayed. Those bills of humble denomination retain their worth, however many hands they may have passed through, whatever indignities they may have suffered. It cannot be an accident that we use the word "redeem" in connection with souls and money.

—Arthur C. Danto, Embodied Meanings: Critical Essays and Aesthetic Meditations