Paul, dreading this part of the subject, interrupted him with,—
“Well, but why have any commodity at all? If we cannot find any existing thing which all would agree to value alike, why not have an imaginary thing? Instead of saying that my bow is worth a pound of cinnamon, and a pound of cinnamon worth three pairs of scissors, why not say that the bow and the pound of cinnamon are worth nine units, and each pair of scissors worth three units? What could be easier than to measure commodities against one another thus?”
“Commodities whose value is already known, I grant you, Paul: but what would you do with new ones whose value is unknown? It is to measure these that we most want a standard.”
“We must estimate the cost of production of the new article, and compare it with——”
“Aye; with what? With some other commodity, and not with an ideal standard. You see it fails you at the very moment you want it. When we measure our lances against one another, we can express their comparative length by saying that one measures three and the other four spaces,—a space being merely an imaginary measure; but if we want to ascertain the length of a pine stem which has fallen across our path, we must reduce this imaginary measure to a real one. Nothing can be used as a standard which has not properties in common with the thing to be estimated. That which has length can alone measure length; and that which has value can alone measure value.”
“How then can an ideal standard of value be used at all?”
“Because an ideal value alone is referred to it. But that abstract value is obtained through the reality which is ascertained by the comparison of commodities. When this abstraction is arrived at, an abstract standard may serve to express it; but new commodities must be measured by a standard which is itself a commodity or a tangible sign which is, by general agreement established in its place.”
“Then, after all, we must come round to the point that coined metals are the best kind of money, admitting, as they do, an ineffaceable stamp of value, and thus uniting the requisites of a sign and a commodity.”
“The best, at all events, up to a certain point in the progress of society, and, in general, till all societies which make mutual exchanges have reached that point. Neither we, nor the travelling merchants of Siberia, nor the cultivators with whom we deal, have yet reached this point; and there is no doubt that it would be greatly for our advantage to be possessed of coined metals as a medium of exchange. As we cannot have them, these mammoth bones must answer our purposes. They promise to do so better than any device we have yet made trial of.”
Some one suggested that a metal medium might be procured by a little trouble and expense, if it should be thought worth while. Most of the Mongolian women they saw had small weights of virgin gold or silver fastened to their braids of hair, and might be easily prevailed on to part with them; and some persons in the present company had chanced to pick up morsels of silver in the beds of streams, and among the fragments of rock on the mountain side. Where would be the difficulty of impressing marks upon these, and thus instituting a sort of rude coinage? It was, however, agreed that the temptation of clipping pieces of precious metal of an irregular form would be too strong to be safely ventured; to say nothing of the cost of production, which must be disproportionately heavy in the case of a small society which had no apparatus for facilitating the work of coining.