Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/72

 58 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

thoughts just in this part of the book, as for instance, the idea of the connection between the growing importance of money and individualism. Money widens the circles, because the individual enters into every relation with part of its ^0only; it leaves room for a greater individualization. Closer bonds presume equality; they check the process of individualization. Very obvious seems to me the truth of the argument that if we look upon socialism as a rationalization of society, the peasant must be farther removed from it than the industrial laborer, because his labor is less regulated than any work dependent upon machines.

In the following chapter, " The Money Equivalent of Personal Values," we are led into the region of historical facts in their psychological relation to money. Money and man, the highest created being and the most impersonal of objects, are put into a relation, a comparison; the value of the man becomes measur- able by money. The fact, so repellent to any more delicate feel- ing, that the totality of man is prized by money, is illustrated by three of its most interesting forms by blood-money, slavery, and marriage by purchase. Many a light is thrown on the vary- ing conceptions of man and of the human soul it was left to Christianity to represent as something absolutely valuable. The double sense and origin of punishment from society's need of protection and as a compensation for damages done is clearly shown. Also our modern system of law is drawn into the range of the investigation, a system in which all crimes reducible to money-interests have to suffer much higher penalties than others the impunity of which is directly opposed to our ideas of justice.

The tendency of money to strive after ever-growing indiffer- ence and mere quantitative significance coincides with the ever- growing differentiation of men which individualizes them more and more ; and thus money becomes less and less inadequate to personal values in man. An important part money plays in the purchase of women, which cannot be said to have anything dis- honoring in a lower state of society, but rather denotes a rising from sexual relations akin to promiscuity the pure existence of which may, moreover, be doubted. Here it is possible to