204 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
fineness, which can be easily done, so that equal’ weights of them 
have practically equal values. They can be easily divided into 
the weights and fractions desired so as to express large values 
and small values. They have a very large degree of stability 
of value, not so much perhaps as wheat, but more than most 
articles which could be employed as money. And lastly, they 
are readily recognizable and cannot be easily counterfeited, and 
above all, are soft enough and yet hard enough to be coinable, 
“so that a portion, being once issued according to proper regu- 
lations with the impress of the state, may be known to all as 
good and legal currency equal in weight, size and value to all 
similarly marked currency.”* 
The precious metals are simply those commodities which 
experience has shown to be the most suitable for general money 
purposes. This, or that money article, may have this or that 
money quality in a higher degree than gold or silver, but taking 
them all in all, the precious metals have been found to be the 
most suitable. They have survived, not because of any prejudice 
in favor of the metals, but because they have shown themselves 
to be the fittest to survive. 
*Jevons : Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, p. 40. 
