Financial Legislation and its Limitations. 35 



side — what ought to be done, what are the moral obligations 

 under the circumstances? 



The former point of view, the objective scientific, is also 

 rather the individualistic. It asserts that while money is some- 

 thing certified to, as to weight and fineness, by government 

 authority, every man must determine upon his own responsibility 

 what he will do with it, how much he wants to take or is willing 

 to give; and that this freedom of individual action is just as 

 important in the case of a " debt " as it is in the case of the cash 

 sale of goods. 



And again, the objectivity of the former should lead over into 

 an objective treatment of the second or moral point of view. Is 

 there not some rule enforced by society by which the relation of 

 the debtor to the creditor is practically and organically regulated, 

 in case the government leaves them free to determine between 

 themselves, in their private capacity, how much money is to be 

 paid at the future date? Has society, as such, not set up any 

 rule positively and outside of legislation f Here, again, the appeal 

 would run to individualistic economy. If society has set up such 

 a rule, it must work out somehow through the relations of in- 

 dividuals with each other, for the hypothesis is that the govern- 

 ment does not interfere. 



The unobjective point of view concerning the moral situation 

 is socialistic or at least legislational. It says, in the first place, and accom- 

 that " society " should guarantee to the debtor and to the creditor IdraTisti/de- 

 that in the future, whenever debt is incurred, only the same ^g^^f 'fumi^' 

 value shall be paid back again ; that " society " should look out "^ent. 

 for it, no matter how many mistakes of calculation an individual 

 may make, in contracting, say, to pay $i,ooo in the future, and 

 should guarantee to him, that he have only to pay back the value, 

 not the dollars, of the loan that he received. Then, the field is 

 opened wide for surmise, of what does pure value consist, in 

 and of itself? That is an obstacle that the persons who set in 

 circulation these moral conundrums little suspect, for they too 

 commonly suppose the nature of value to be self-evident. The 

 attempt to demonstrate that men organically strive to return equal 



149 



