the silver standard too is carefully studied, and we have paid more attention to paper money than has been its lot hitherto. For on close consideration it appears that in this dubious form of “degenerate” money lies the clue to the nature of money, paradoxical as this may at first sound. The soul of currency is not in the material of the pieces, but in the legal ordinances which regulate their use.
All money, whether of metal or of paper, is only a special case of the means of payment in general. In legal history the concept of the means of payment is gradually evolved, beginning from simple forms and proceeding to the more complex. There are means of payment which are not yet money; then those which are money; later still those which have ceased to be money.
What then is a means of payment? Is there a wider concept under which means of payment can be subsumed?
Usually, “means of payment” are explained by recourse to the concept “exchange-commodity,” which presupposes the concepts “commodity” and “exchange.”
In defining one must start from some fixed point. We will venture to regard “commodity” and “exchange” as sufficiently elementary ideas.
It we assert, “Every means of payment is an exchange commodity,” we are altogether wrong, for in the course of history we meet with means of
