1831.] 
Answer to E. R. 
357 
tions to get money. Some few promised to try a fall 23 in our favor, but invaria- 
bly pitched upon an unlucky verse ; and when we applied to the Vazir, to whom 
and the Prince I had brought introductory letters, requesting him to vouch to 
some merchant for our respectability, he wrote in answer a most elegant epistle, 
in which he swore by the fortunate head of the point of the world’s adoration (the 
Shah) that there was no money in Mesldd. At last we were relieved through the 
assistance of a Mullah of Herdt, an excellent man, who had come on a pilgrimage. 
Though he had no money himself, he persuaded a young Yezd merchant, desirous 
of visiting his relations at Herlit, to advance us 200 tomauns, to be paid to his 
partner at Tehrdn : this worthy merchant assisted us at a profit of 200 per cent, 
and took some other advantages of our situation. We dispatched a efisid to Tehran 
with pressing request for money, and he engaged to go there in 12 days, and to 
follow us to Her&t. On going to take leave of the Vazir, he commended me to the 
protection of two or three chiefs of Kamrdn’s army, and we paid our debts, and 
dismissed our servant, who would accompany us no further, giving as his reason 
for parting from such excellent masters, Sheik Sadi’s fable of the two cats, a story 
inimitably well told in the “ Sketches of Persia.” 
( 
III. — Answer to E. R . 
To the Editor of the Gleanings in Science. 
Sir, 
As the investigation of truth is my object; and this too in a science of e ast 
practical importance, which, to my apprehension, is at the present day greatly 
misunderstood ; the notice of my crude lucubrations, which appeared in No. 32 
of the Gleanings, has given me pleasure ; inasmuch as it has assured me that 
some, at least, of my heavy papers had been read through. 
This notice, it is true, contained nothing but censure ; much of it, no doubt, well 
merited ; and much which, whether deserved or not, I was sorry to see ; not so 
much because my self-love was thereby hurt, as because the far greater part of the 
observations were not directed to points of real importance to the science of political 
economy. What occasion was there, for instance, to waste moie time on the 
question, of whether we are justified or not, in using, in ordinary conversation 
au d composition, the term value, metaphorically ? Or of what moment is it, 
whether the employment of the term value, (with reference to that quality thereof , 
which is indefinite, and not susceptible of appreciation,) is a metaphorical emp oy- 
ttent of the term or not ? My opinion is, that this is by no means a metaphorical 
use of the term ; for I feel assured, that in the infancy ot society , whe n terms ar ® 
htst employed, a perception of value must universally ha\ e been uia e » " 
n ' us t have been indefinite in its nature ; from the absence ot any c h 
st andard whatsoever, whereby specifically to arrange various products. I he 
employment of the term in an indefinite sense must therefore have been usual m 
ever y language on the face of the earth, long before the perception ot s pen tic '» u ® 
c "uld have been made. Nay further, in the most refined societies o t ie p 
^ where the application of a standard of value to every useful product 
°ng familiar, still the perception of indefinite value must precede the percep ion o 
which is definite; because man must ever apprehend that qua *ty w 
generic; in its nature, before he perceives that which is specific. u a L ’ 
re peat, is the importance of the discussion ; particularly in a eiiticis 
22 In the manner of the Sortes \ irgilian®. 
