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 later coins does not contradict the mercantile significance of 

 the 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/f- 



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. 



