Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/69



A thousand years ago, for instance—and, by the way, I am somehow always on the trot back to that particular time—we used gold and silver for money. But afterwards we extricated our currency from that coarse and troublesome, special and costly kind of circulating medium, and substituted in its place our universal trading article, Energy, which was thus alternately, at the holder's option, either money for exchange and value-measuring purposes, or ready available force for current business use. This Money-Energy was conveniently intensified or accumulated into small Leydens, having much the appearance of school-boys' marbles, only of much lighter weight. We still keep up those old names of a thousand years ago, such as the Leyden jar for electric accumulation, and the Liebig for the chemical apparatus, by which the organic is created out of the inorganic, and our food supplies obtained by far prompter and more direct ways than the old slow-coach, circuitous and exploded ways of natural growth. These names, Leydens and Liebigs, are still indeed the same, but otherwise how much all is changed, and how different now are our advanced processes and results!

Our money basis, then, is Energy: and we have two kinds of money—namely, that of account, which is decimally dealt with, and represented by paper; and that of action, or the intrinsic money, which is the Energy itself, ready for use as either money or