202 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
bility used as money and represent an earlier shell, probably 
tortoise shell currency.* 
In time the mercantile significance of these symbols was 
forgotten, and a religious interpretation placed on them. But 
even in the peculiar deities of a district we may often trace the 
history of its early commerce; and the religious symbolism of 
the iater coins does not contradict the mercantile significance of 
tne images on the early ones. Early peoples, and later ones: 
very easily discover grandiose explanations for what in their 
origin are commonplace facts. To take but one instance. The 
famous iron money of Sparta, which, according to tradition, 
Lycurgus caused to be dipped in vinegar while red hot to render 
it worthless as a commodity, thus to restrain the cupidity of the 
citizen soldiers, was in all probability not adopted from any 
ascetic motive. The current explanation was, without doubt, an 
aetiological myth, a grandiose explanation long after the com- 
monplace event. The iron money was the survival of a time 
when iron was a favorite article of exchange, as it was in the 
Homeric age, and as it still is, as we have seen, in Africa to-day. 
But the Spartans were a very conservative people, and clung to 
their primitive money long after the superiority of other metals 
for coinage had been demonstrated by experience; and long 
after the real origin of their money had been forgotten. To 
explain their own backwardness, they gave, as so many other 
peoples have given, a religious and moral sanction to their own 
lack of progressiveness.+ 
After the introduction of metallic money there was room for 
a long process of development. Man had still to determine 
which of the metals was the most suitable for his purposes ; 
and the actual selection which civilized man has made is the 
result of the survival of the fittest. There are certain qualities 
which we have come to look for in money, qualities which all 
metals seem to possess in a greater degree than any one sub- 
stance, but qualities which all metals do not possess in the same 
*Del Mar: op. cit., p. 147. 
tEnc. Brit., Art. Money. 
