288 



DISCOVERY 



and clear-minded reflection upon it, and to forget, 

 in the beauty and perfection of its presentation, that 

 such a view is essentially the idios^Tici atic expression 

 ot a particular temperament ; for this regret over the 

 fleetingness of life seems to be a projection on to 

 external things of the writer's uneasy feeling of his 

 own mortality, and in the older poets the general 

 " moralisation " often leads on naturally and naively 

 to some such personal reflection as ; 



" Thow I be of muche prise, 

 Fair of face and holden wise. 

 Mine fleich schall faden as flour-de-Iys 

 Whan I am ded and leid in cley. " ^ 



It is not the love of life, but the fear and the renun- 

 ciation of life, that begets the fear of death, and it is 

 significant that the Abbot of a Benedictine Monastery, 

 writing recently in the Chronicle of his Order, records 

 that the greatest difficulty which he has to combat 

 in securing the peace and tranquillity of mind 

 among the monks under his charge is the fear of 

 death. 



The temperament that holds itself aloof from life 

 merges into the neurotic, and in this sphere we find 

 the fear of death occurring fairly frequently as a 

 symptom and from various causes, but they are of 

 more technical than general interest, and are fully 

 dealt with in the textbooks of psychopathology. 



We have tried to show that, firsth', the fear of death 

 is largely compounded of the fear of dying, upon which 

 we have, in imagination, concentrated a generalised 

 instinctive reaction to danger and especially to violence. 

 We are entitled to say " in imagination " because, 

 except in comparatively rare cases, neither the im- 

 minence nor the process of death seems to cause fear. 

 Secondly, that a sense of mortality, that is tolerably 

 common and easily deepens into a fear of death, is 

 the expression of an inadequate reaction to life. 



But over and above there remains a fear of death 

 as the unknown, and the unknown is of itself a powerful 

 cause of fear, especially in primitive races. But, with 

 increasing mental development and with the growth of 

 intellectual curiosity, the unknown as such loses its 

 capacity for inspiring terror ; it is an instinctive form 

 of fear that belongs essentially to the childhood of 

 man and to the childhood of the race, and one day, 

 perhaps, it may be to a great measure outgrown, and 

 the traditional " phflosophic " attitude towards death 

 become common to everyone. Meanwhile, as an 

 example of such an attitude, we may do worse than 

 take the fine common sense of Mantaigne : "I would 

 have a man to be doing and to prolong his lives offices 

 as much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me, 



> Author unknown. MS. of the beginning of fifteenth 

 centur\'. (Early English Lyrics. Chambers and Sidgwick.) 



whilst I am setting my cabiges, carelesse of her dart, 

 but more of my unperfect garden." ^ 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



The Adventure of Death. Mackenna. (John Murray.) 

 Aspects of Death in Art and Epigram. F. P. Webber. (Fisher- 



Unwin.) 

 The Diary of a Dead Officer. Being the posthumous papers of 



Arthur Graeme West. (Allen & Unwin.) 



Inflation and 

 Unemployment 



By Douglas Knoop, M.A. 



Professor of Economics in the University of Slieffield 



Records extending over a considerable number of 

 years show that before the war the state of trade in 

 the principal industrial countries tended to be alike. 

 When trade was good in the United Kingdom, it 

 tended to be good simultaneously throughout Western 

 Europe and the United States, and similarly when 

 trade was bad. Since the war, this tendency to 

 similarity of trade conditions in different industrial 

 countries no longer holds good ; the striking contrast 

 during the last two years or so between trade con- 

 ditions in the United Kingdom and those in Germany 

 has been a matter for general comment. The cause 

 of the difference almost certainly lies in the fact that 

 Germany continued to pursue a policy of inflation 

 after it had been given up in this countrj-. If inflation 

 has such a favourable influence on trade condition^ 

 and on the state of unemployment, it may not un- 

 reasonably be asked, " Why should not we adopt the 

 same policy in this country ? " The object of this 

 article is to examine the connection between inflation 

 and trade conditions, with a view to showing why a 

 policy of inflation is not to be recommended as a method 

 of dealing with unemployment. 



Inflation consists in increasing the amount of 

 currency in circulation in excess of that which is 

 needed to perform the transactions of the community. 

 So long as a country's currency is based on a genuine 

 gold standard, i.e. so long as its paper money is im- 

 mediately convertible into gold and so long as that 

 gold may be melted down or exported without restric- 

 tions, there can be no real question of inflation. It is 

 true that the amoimt of credit instruments may be 

 increased somewhat, but the total amount of credit 

 that can be erected on a given quantity of currency 



2 Montaigne's Essays. First Booke, chap. 19. Trans. 

 Florio. 



