You cannot give this difference precisely in figures as you can an index number, because nobody can precisely calculate the number of categories nor the respective importance of each, but the least knowledge of history shows you that in Henry VIII.’s time, in 1536, the number of categories was very much smaller than it is to-day. So the man to whom Henry VIII. paid £100 a year as salary for looking after one of his castles, though the purchasing value of his income--the amount of rye or pork or what not that he could buy with it--was what we should call to-day £2,400 a year, had a much higher income _relatively to the people of the time_ than has a man with £2,400 a year to-day. He counted much more than a man to-day counts who has five thousand a year. But this second point is not all. There is again a third point, as we have seen, and we must next turn to that. 3. _The purchasing value of the whole community._ The third factor in the making up of the social value of money is the relation of any sum to the total wealth of the whole community. That of course depends upon two things: the average of wealth of each family in the community, and the number of those families. Supposing, for instance, with things at their present prices, you consider two communities: (1) the people of Iceland, (2) the people of Australia. In both countries you can get pretty much the same amount of stuff for an ounce of gold, and though there are less categories of purchasable things in Iceland than in Australia, yet most of the things a civilised man requires can be got in Iceland--at least in the capital, or can be imported there by the inhabitants if they need them or can afford to pay for them. Both communities are of our own race and of much the same standard of culture and the same idea of how one should live. But Iceland has only four thousand families, and these families are poor for the most part. Australia has a million families, that is, 250 times as many, and they are much richer than the families in Iceland on the average. There are much worse differences of rich and poor in Australia than there are in Iceland. There are far more miserable and starving people in Australia than there are in Iceland; but the _average_ wealth of a family in Australia is much higher than that in Iceland.