318 Science of Money. [July> 



itself, in addition to the distinct advantage of variety, by 

 superior keeping qualities, and especially by being an article 

 readily realisable when the value, thus, as it were, safely but 

 temporarily stored up, is wanted for some actual — some per- 

 manent — investment. In this way arises a system of inter- 

 mediate or temporary holding of a kind of value that is con- 

 sidered most convenient and suitable. These instinctive 

 efforts to provide for surpluses initiate the system of whole- 

 sale dealing. Practically the surpluses are offered at so 

 much discount; and out of this dealing, as we shall see fur- 

 ther on, emerge loanable capital and banking. 



In a considerable aggregate of a market such as we are 

 supposing, a good many different kinds of articles may at 

 first seem, to the free fancy of the different traders, about 

 equally suitable, on considerations special and general, for 

 this temporary holding. But practical experience gradually 

 dispenses with many of these as less generally suitable than 

 others. The tendency is ever to a limitation of choice, and 

 the action in this direction is the more decisive with the ad- 

 ditional demand for these articles — their additional negocia- 

 bility, as the result of this extended business. In short, the drift 

 of the market is towards some one kind of article, which com- 

 mending itself previously by being in constant and general 

 use, has now such a further market as to be the object of 

 purchase and sale much more than any other, and thus to 

 present quite a surpassing negociability. Let me add, from 

 historical fact, that a society arrived at this commercial stage 

 has always come into the use of the commoner metals — iron 

 and bronze, or copper. These metals, in their wide-spread 

 use and with their qualities in other respects, are so mar- 

 kedly superior to most, or indeed to all other articles alluded 

 to, that one or other of them has generally come into the 

 prominent position in question ; and this position, we shall 

 presently find, is no other than that of money. 



Let us now turn to the early Greeks and realise how 

 iron came to be used by them as money. Iron had come 

 into general commercial use ; it was the raw material of 

 two chief trades, that of the fabrication of arms, and that of 

 agricultural implement making. For both purposes the 

 manufacture of the metal would go on in common up to a 

 certain stage, whence there would be a divergence respec- 

 tively to the sword and the ploughshare. Comprising at 

 this stage the material of the two chief vocations, there 

 would be relatively a great trade in the iron, which would 

 consist most probably of bars conveniently portable and of 

 moderate value, and as much alike as possible. Such a 



