Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/223

 mentioned, but are the standards derived from the latter specially for silver, in the ways shown a little lower down.

Modern analysis of electrum from Tmolus shows that it consists of 27 per cent. of silver and 73 per cent. of gold. It consequently stood to silver in a different relation from that of pure gold. Thus while gold stood to silver as 13·3 : 1, electrum would stand at 10 : 1 or thereabouts. Mr Head considers that "this natural compound of gold and silver possessed some advantages for coining over gold. In the first place it was more durable, harder, and less liable to injury and waste from wear. In the second place it was more easily obtainable, being a natural product; and in the third place, standing as it did in the proportion of about 10:1 to silver, it rendered needless the use of a different standard of weight for the two metals, enabling the authorities of the mints to make use of a single set of weights, and a decimal system easy of comprehension and simple in practice" (p. xxxiv.). The second of these reasons is probably the true one, the first being a good example of the tendency of even the most able modern writers to ascribe to early times ideas which are only the outcome of a far later period. The idea of getting a metal which will be more durable in circulation is purely modern, and not even received by Orientals in modern times. Thus the gold mohurs of India down to their latest issue were of pure gold, free from alloy (in consequence of which they are still sought after by the native Hindu goldsmiths in preference to the English sovereign, as the addition of alloy makes the latter less easy to work up into jewellery).

I allude to this here because we shall find in the course of our enquiry that most of the errors into which metrologists have fallen, are the consequence of their failing to recognize the great gulf which is fixed between the habits and ideas of a primitive community, slowly evolving principles which are now part and parcel of the common heritage of civilization, and an era like our own, when all progress is effected by the development and application of scientific principles long since discovered.