Page:Georg Freidrich Knapp - The State Theory of Money (1924 translation).pdf/7

viii than it received. For myself, I came to give up any attempt to influence public men, and I give the first place to the theory or philosophy of the subject, at the risk of displeasing both schools of monometallists, not to speak of the bimetallists, who will not be any better satisfied.

On the other hand, I hope for the approval and perhaps the help of those who take the monetary system (or, better, the whole system of payments) to be a branch of political science. I hold the attempt to deduce it without the idea of a State to be not only out of date, but even absurd, however widely these views may still obtain. To avoid polemics, I have always called this the metallistic view, and have opposed metallism as such without naming its supporters, and also without opposing the use of metal.

I began to develop the State Theory of Money in September 1901, and I dare not confess how many false starts I made. A theory must be pushed to extremes or it is valueless. The practical man can, nay, must, content himself with half-truths. The theorist who stops short at half-truths is lost.

In order to attain my end and replace the metallistic view by one founded on Political Science, I was forced to invent a terminology of my own, Even if new expressions could have been formed in German, it seemed important that in this branch of science, which has nothing national in if, terms should be found that could go easily into any language, as being