210 THE PATH OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



system of weights. A survival of this primitive 

 condition existed in Roman law, and even when no 

 use was made of them, the custom of bringing a 

 pair of scales survived as a legal formality in the 

 sale of slaves at Eome. 



After the time of the Punic wars, the aes, 

 which originally equalled a Roman pound in 

 weight, diminished rapidly, until it became re- 

 duced to the weight of an ounce. The Romans 

 had naturally reverted to weighing the metal, and 

 the ces grave was money reckoned by weight, and 

 not by tale. Generally speaking, whatever be the 

 inconveniences of the method, currency by weight 

 is yet the natural and necessary system to which 

 people revert whenever the abrasion of coins, the 

 intermixture of currencies, the downfall of a State, 

 or other causes, destroy the public confidence in a 

 more highly organized system. 1 



It is plain then that the more recent developments 

 in the coinage system are the first to disappear. 2 



The disappearance of money altogether and the 

 return to a system of exchange would represent a 

 much farther advanced stage in degeneration. 



1 See Stanley Jevons in Money, International Scientific Series. 



2 There is no silver money and only a little copper in China. 

 Nowadays, Mexican piastres, on reaching the country in payment 

 of commercial transactions, are melted down into bars as 'soon as 

 they fall into the hands of the merchants, and these bars are then 

 imprinted with the Chinese stamp. This was the usual system 

 employed amongst civilized peoples before the invention of money r 

 See Thorold Rogers in "The Economic Interpretation of History." 



