Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/69

 SIMM EL'S PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY 55

money becomes a symbol and loses the character of a mere substance ; this is illustrated by an abundance of deep psycho- logical examples and analogies, till at last we come to the con- clusion that at the beginning money is made fit for its function because it has value, but that in the end it has a value only because of its function.

The third chapter treats of " Money in the Succession of Purposes," it proclaims money to incorporate the purest idea of a mean entering into all purposes merely as an instrument. Totally indifferent, money stands above all objects, and because it has no purpose it is everywhere means. The character of money is its want of character, which lets it play its part in relation to everything merely in order to fulfil its purposes. Especially dear and perspicuous seems to me the representation of the dependence and connection between value and purpose. We see that from a psychological point of view we can even identify the two. Purpose as valuable in itself projects its value on the mean that leads to it, just as we confer the impor- tance of the satisfaction of a need from the subject to the satisfy- ing object. In an absolute sense a value or a purpose is always in existence when a process of will stops. Value and purpose are only two sides of a phenomenon, the idea of an object which in its theoretical emotional significance is a value in its practical volitive significance becomes a purpose. It is impossible to overrate the importance of this teleological view. For it has been truly said that thinking, feeling, and will cannot be separated, but are three inseparable elements in the stream of conscious life. What I have just felt or imagined as a value becomes afterward as a purpose the motive of my action.

But money also ceases to be merely a means and degenerates into a purpose. This dislocation of means and end is illustrated by the problems of avarice, of ascetic poverty, and of cynicism.

In the following part Simmel shows how a quantity of money can become of qualitative significance. Here he investigates the problem of the household of economic consciousness, a thresh- old of quantity the height of which designates our scale in the estimation of economic, or better money, questions. It is a very