68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
itself also by the most individual language of the book, leaves a feeling of restlessness behind. Simmel's language is rich in analogies, and it cannot be denied that analogy is a justified, even an important, medium of science. But it seems to me that an intellect in which the tendency to analogies and similarities is so strong as in Simmel's is easily led to overrate their argumentative power. If Schmoller blames Simmel for not excluding credit from his treatment of monetary phenomena, it seems to me that it is impossible to separate money from credit, yea that the true meaning of money only becomes evident by credit. Money has not yet reached the highest stage of development; Simmel wanted to show the tendency in which it is going to develop. But that regards only one part, and not even the most import- ant one, of his book.
Whoever refuses to accept Simmel's rationalistic interpreta- tion of being must refuse to accept this book ; whoever does not will have hours of pure enjoyment and infinite instruction in reading it. It is not of importance whether this book has found a solution for all the problems it has touched, but the fact that it gives an infinitely deep psychological interpretation of life makes it valuable for all time. It might be said of it what Simmel himself wrote on a different occasion. Only the narrow pride of|a scientific bureaucracy can refuse to accept the instal- ment of knowledge which is presented here in the form of artistic intuition. " Simmel himself is distinguished by what he has praised in Nietzsche, by the subtlety of feeling, the depth of causal analytics, the exactness of expression, the boldness of his attempts^to express the undertones and intimacies of the soul, which no one before ever dared approach. The circle of those for whom he has written will unfortunately be small, and the Philosophy of Money ought to be introduced by the words with which Henry Beyle ends one of his works : " To the happy few."
S. P. ALTMANN. BERLIN, GERMANY.
