PLAIN LIVING AND HIGH

THINKING.

I have named what I am about to say on the use of money a homily, in order to ward off at the outset any possible criticism from the students of finance; and also to assure my readers that I do not propose to touch the subject by the use of any word that shall remind them of those questions of currency and monetary standard that distract the country. But I must be allowed to make one or two general statements that belong

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quite as much to a homily as to a treatise on finance. I will begin by asserting that a study of the function of money as a circulating medium, of the principles under which it is to be secured, of the extent to which accumulation of it may be made a motive, of the way in which it is to be held and used, is the most important study that life sets before us, for the simple reason that human society in its civilized state is based upon it, and moves on under it. And I will also assert that as money is the means through which men are brought into the most constant and widest relation to one another, it

creates the chief field for the play of character, and to such a degree that the use of it becomes almost synonymous with social virtue.

An hour of reflection on the fact that money is the only possible means by which we can live together in civilized ways, is enough to drive every mean and trifling thought which one may have had in respect to it out of one's mind. What is money? Something upon which men agree as a means of the exchange of values. What is money for? It is something that enables one to give to another a value that each wants. In this way I am able to distribute among

others any value that I may have personally worked out, making each one of them better off, while I get from each something that enriches my life. I live for them and they live for me. We are all better off than we should be without the exchange, but there could be no exchange of values, save in a limited degree, without a circulating medium as a representative of value.

Money stands for civilization; it is the means by which men serve one another in mutual ways; and it has no other use. It is perverted as all good things are; and the best things are the most perverted -love, for example. But the