Humanly Speaking | Page 8

we are
not so civilized as we sometimes think.
For example, we have never carried out to its full extent the most
important invention that mankind has ever made--money. Money is a
device for simplifying life by providing a means of measuring our
desires, and gratifying a number of them without confusion.
Money is a measure, not of commodities, but of states of mind. The
man in the street expresses a profound philosophy when he says, "I feel
like thirty cents." That is all that "thirty cents" means. It is a certain

amount of feeling.
You see an article marked "$1.50." You pass by unmoved. The next
day you see it on the bargain counter marked "98 cents," and you say,
"Come to my arms," and carry it home. You did not feel like a dollar
and a half toward it, but you did feel exactly like ninety-eight cents.
It is because of this wonderful measure of value that we are able to deal
with a multitude of diverse articles without mental confusion.
I am asked to stop at the department store and discover in that vast
aggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and having
found it bring it safely home. Now, I am not fitted for such an
adventure. Left to my own devices I should be helpless.
But the way is made easy for me. The floorwalker meets me graciously,
and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directs
me to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire. I find
myself in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles
to molest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is
simplified to fit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn
lamb for the tempered wind.
At the silken shrine stands a Minerva who imparts her wisdom and
guides my choice. The silk thread she tells me is equivalent to five
cents. Now, I have not five cents, but only a five-dollar bill. She does
not act on the principle of taking all that the traffic will bear. She sends
the five-dollar bill through space, and in a minute or two she gives me
the skein and four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I go out of the
store a free man. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did not
buy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because
I did not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the great
invention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five cents represented
one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices which I might
reserve for other occasions.
But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In all
these things of the higher life we have no recognized medium of

exchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bring
all our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endless
dickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are at
once reproached by all the traffickers in similar articles for not taking
over bodily their whole stock in trade.
For example, you have a desire for culture. You haven't the means to
indulge in very much, but you would like a little. You are immediately
beset by all the eager Matthew Arnolds who have heard of your desire,
and they insist that you should at once devote yourself to the
knowledge of the best that has been known and said in the world. All
this is very fine, but you don't see how you can afford it. Isn't there a
little of a cheaper quality that they could show you? Perhaps the second
best would serve your purpose. At once you are covered with
reproaches for your philistinism.
You had been living a rather prosaic life and would like to brighten it
up with a little poetry. What you would really like would be a modest
James Whitcomb Riley's worth of poetry. But the moment you express
the desire the University Extension lecturer insists that what you should
take is a course of lectures on Dante. No wonder that you conclude that
a person in your circumstances will have to go without any poetry at
all.
It is the same way with efforts at social righteousness. You find it
difficult to engage in one transaction without being involved in others
that you are not ready for. You are interested in a social reform that
involves collective action. At once you are told that it is socialistic.
You do not feel that it is any worse for that, and you are quite willing to
go on. But at once your socialistic friends present you