320 Science of Money. [July, 



intended for. He receives balances of bars from the other 

 traders for safe keeping until wanted ; and, as this gives him 

 an average available stock of them on hand, he can lend the 

 bars to others, or discount the time-contract notes expressed 

 in bars. This trader is no other than a banker — the rude 

 prototype, indeed, of the dignified personage of to-day, who 

 deals only in a highly artistic value derived from the subse- 

 quently distinguished " precious metals," or in his own not 

 less artistic bank-notes. But our original is none the 

 less a banker, and none the less is he dealing with money, 

 which has now come into veritable existence in the commu- 

 nity. 



We of to-day, indulging in the facilities of ex post facto 

 views, can perceive that, rude as the materials are to our 

 highly-educated sense of money, these bars are nevertheless 

 being used as money, for they have evidently a sphere of use 

 of their own that is quite distinct from and independent of 

 their original use for manufacture. Indeed, so evident is 

 this to us, that we are apt to take for granted that our early 

 community see it also. But this by no means follows. 

 We must bear in mind that they have had no help whatever 

 to such an idea, because the bars are still in the form in 

 which they go direct to the forge or the factory. No doubt, 

 some reflecting banker of that time may have noticed that 

 the stock of bars in existence seemed greatly more than the 

 manufacturer could want. But it must also strike him 

 that the whole stock goes eventually, sooner or later, to 

 the factory. " To-day in the till, to-morrow in the fur- 

 nace," might be his concluding reflection as he dismissed 

 this part of the question. Like some theorist of our own 

 time who wondered at the huge stocks of modern trade, he 

 would simply conclude that somehow the modes of business 

 required them all. I do not hesitate, therefore, to assert that 

 the probabilities are decisively against the view that at this 

 stage money was detected, even after it had come into full 

 existence. 



But the banker, although he has as yet failed to perceive 

 money, can from his vantage ground see clearly some of its 

 effects : he sees that these bars repeatedly come back upon 

 his hands. Perhaps out of mere curiosity on this point he 

 has marked a number of them ; and although he learns, as 

 of course, that some of these marks have yielded up a brief 

 life at the factory, yet others, probably much the larger pro- 

 portion, go for some time at least to and fro between himself 

 and the other traders. A convenience therefore suggests 

 itself to his mind : he doubles the bar into a ring for the 



