360 
DUTTON. 
impulses so strong and so constant through successive gen¬ 
erations that it seems a fair question whether there be not 
an evolved and hereditary money instinct in the human 
mind. Certainly the small child grasps the significance of 
the money function in a way that suggests as much. But 
in the progress of society the uses of money have been grow¬ 
ing more and more complicated. While the great mass of 
mankind still use it in the ancient, simple way, with an ac¬ 
tion which seems instinctive, the financier, the statesman, 
and the economist find upon inquiry that the growing 
complications give rise to many phenomena which are un¬ 
known and unperceived by those who have not analyzed 
them. The ordinary individual judges of the properties of 
money by his own limited experience, and, unless he be more 
than ordinarily observant, extends his reasoning without 
limit or qualification to all men and to all money. But the 
economist, who studies and endeavors to integrate the results 
of all men’s actions in using all the money of a community, 
quickly discovers that the ordinary reasoning either fails 
wholly or is radically qualified by the total action of forces 
and conditions which are imperceptible in one individual 
transaction. Thus the ordinary person says one dollar will 
buy me so much and two dollars twice as much. Why may 
not this reasoning be extended to any practicable limit in 
the same relative proportions? The economist knows that 
it cannot be. What is generally true in the individual ex¬ 
periences of men, when it is sought to apply it to all men 
and to all money fails, and at once fallacies make their ap¬ 
pearance. 
The fallacy that money and wealth are one and the same 
thing is the fallacy of antiquity. It has during the last 
century been for the most part relegated to the same class 
of delusions as perpetual motion, and though on rare occa¬ 
sions it still raises its head, as does the idea of perpetual 
motion, yet it is now so nearly eradicated from human reason 
that no one cares to waste his breath upon it. But as old 
theorems give birth to new ones, so do old fallacies leave be- 
