54. But how far that which is valid in science is thought as valid by the social will, we still have to consider briefly, after we have first dealt with a most important other sign.
55. It is almost traditional in philosophy to compare words (or “concepts,” only then we merely mean the names of the concepts) with money; as indeed we have already done in this essay, when—e.g.—we said that conventional forms of speech are sometimes taken for “sterling coin”. The analogy is really far-reaching. It is essential to the word as to money that it is a sign, and that it shall be “valid” (in German gelten from which the word Geld), i.e. that they shall be through the social will substitutes for the objects of which they are signs. The word is the sign of objects as images or ideas; money is the sign of objects as values; i.e. in so far as they are thought of as useful-agreeable, and therefore make an impression upon what we may call in men will or endeavour, in short are affirmed. But we can without difficulty extend the analogy to the different senses in which money, like the word, has “meaning”. In case A, it has its meaning through the natural social will, i.e. all coined money; in case B, through the artificial social will, that is all paper money. Just as the names of concepts may empirically be almost all derived from natural language, so also paper money has empirically a meaning through the fact that it is referred to “natural money”; but as in idea the names of concepts refer directly to artificial, constructed, and therefore equivalent objects, so also paper-money may be necessarily thought of as referring directly to artificial values, e.g. to equal hours of human labour. The antithesis demands somewhat closer consideration. As the word develops out of something which is not yet a word, so money develops out of that which is not yet money. Money is originally not different from other values, and then only slightly different. It is well known that in lower stages of economic development many values have the functions of money. “How quickly the saleability of an object makes it possible to naturalise it as money, is shown in innumerable instances by the reports of modern travellers” (v. Phillippovich.) Here the social will differs little or not at all from social practice, just as the individual will at its lowest stages is only the feeling of activity and the feelings necessarily developed from it of checked activity (pain) and facilitated activity (pleasure). But (2), “practice and custom have gradually raised the most saleable commodity (it should be the most saleable commodities) to a universally used medium of exchange (rather, to universally, i.e. within certain circles of intercourse,
