Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/239

Rh Say, whom the French have proclaimed prince de la science—like Johann Christoph Gottsched, who proclaimed his Schönaich a Homer and himself a Pietro Aretino to the terror principum and lux mundi—has with great pomp raised this not altogether innocent oversight of Adam Smith to a dogma. It must be said, however, that his hostile attitude to the illusions of the mercantile system prevented Adam Smith from taking an objective view of the phenomena of metallic circulation, while his views on credit money are original and deep. As in the eighteenth century petrification theories there is always felt the presence of an undercurrent which springs from either a critical or apologetic attitude toward the biblical tradition of the flood, so there is concealed behind all the money theories of the eighteenth century a secret struggle with the monetary system, the ghost which had stood guard over the cradle