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 the first to break the long silence. In Aristotle, the fount of medieval philosophy, he naturally looked for light on the economic question now with the growth of towns again beginning to present itself. In his treatise on the origin, etc., of money, following and expanding Aristotle, he speaks of it as "an artificial instrument invented for the easier exchange of wealth." He does not fall into the common error of supposing that money is the only form of wealth, but writes: "All moneys are artificial wealth, and not otherwise, for it may happen that a man has abundance of them, and yet may die of hunger"; and he quotes the story of Midas, previously cited by Aristotle in his "Politics," to prove this. He goes on to show what make gold and silver the most suitable substances to use as money, and the evils which result from debasing the coinage. After Oresme, who died in 1382, there is again silence until the small treatise by Copernicus, previously mentioned, which appeared in 1526. Both were directly inspired by the necessities of taxation, the one by those of France, and the other of Poland.

Toward the close of the sixteenth century, when the conditions of medieval, were rapidly giving place to those of modern, life, attention begins to be directed, in various quarters, toward economic problems. Almost simultaneously in Italy, France, and England we find the first modern economical treatises published. Unconsciously in the minds of men a theory of commerce had grown up, based upon the simplest and most superficial observation of economic phenomena, to wit, that the precious metals were the concentrated form of all wealth, and this