ABSTRACT
The great thinkers of antiquity, and following them a long series of the most eminent scholars of later times up to the present day, have been more concerned than with any other problem of our science with the explanation of the strange fact that, as civilization develops, a number of goods (gold and silver in the form of coin) are readily accepted by everyone in exchange for all other goods, even by persons who have no direct requirements for them, or whose requirements have already been fully met. A person of the most ordinary intelligence realizes that the owner of a good will give it in exchange for one that is more useful to him. But that every economizing individual of an entire society should be eager to exchange his commodities for small discs of metal, which ordinarily only a few men can use directly, is something that is so contradictory to the ordinary course of events that we cannot be surprised that it appears “mysterious” to even so brilliant a thinker as F. K. v Savigny. The problem that science must solve is thus the explanation of human behavior that is general and whose motives do not lie clearly upon the surface.
