Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/868

 854 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

market (rather than the entire supply of goods). Throughout this dis- cussion the author emphasizes money functions in expressing value relations between concrete goods. Stability in the value of money is greater as the use of the money material is restricted to the expression of these relations,. and complete stability would be attained when the only function of the money material is to express these relations ; or, to express this thought in paradoxical form, the more a substance is money, the less is the necessity of its being money.

Professor Simmel throws a most interesting sidelight upon the his- tory of the Hebrews. A stranger entering a social group is likely to establish his first relations through the agency of money. The Jew was a stranger. He had no organic connection with the economic group which he had entered ; consequently he turned toward trade and "sublimated" himself in purely monetary transactions.

Economy begins with a differentiation of the personal and material elements of service. In the process of this differentiation individual freedom emerges. From this point of view the author discusses the question of individual freedom aud the function of money in its devel- opment. Money was the most powerful factor in driving apart land and personal service. It brought about a change in individual duties, which is the essence of freedom. Money assisted in the development of the individual, and in the extension or enlargement of the social group, which in turn goes hand in hand with increased individualiza- tion. The landed aristocracy disliked the declassifying tendencies of a money economy, while the peasants saw in it an advance.

The author presents elaborate analyses of the phenomena of ava- rice, love of money, wastefulness, and extravagance, and their relations to the nature of money. He discusses domestic relations and family virtues from the point of view of money, showing how the nature of money together with the amount of money in consideration unite in degrading or elevating the individual in the estimation of the com- munity. Nowhere in the volume does Professor Simmel's great power of psychological analysis show to better advantage than in these chapters.

Taken as a whole the Philosophic des Geldes is worthy of most care- ful study. No student of economics or sociology can read it without getting a great deal out of it. The book is full of valuable sidelights. The illustrations are generally illuminating and the generalizations skillfully wrought. The volume being without mountains and valleys, the reader will be obliged to maintain a uniform pressure from the first to the last page. Professor Simmel deserves the thanks of all