So, by way of a concluding illustration, it may be pointed out that money, for instance, is normalised in terms of the legitimate economic tendency. It becomes a measure of value and a medium of exchange. It has become primarily an instrument of pecuniary commutation, instead of being, as under the earlier normalisation of Adam Smith, primarily a great wheel of circulation for the diffusion of consumable goods. The terms in which the laws of money, as of the other phenomena of pecuniary life, are formulated, are terms which connote its normal function in the life history of objective values as they live and move and have their being in the consummate pecuniary situation of the "natural" state. To a similar work of normalisation we owe those creatures of the myth-maker, the quantity theory and the wages-fund. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by permission from _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Vol. XIII, July. 1899. [2] Bonar, _Philosophy and Political Economy_, pp. 177, 178. [3] "Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.... By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." _Wealth of Nations_, Book IV, chap. ii. [4] The discrepancy between the actual, causally determined situation and the divinely intended consummation is the metaphysical ground of all that inculcation of morality and enlightened policy that makes up so large a part of Adam Smith's work. The like, of course, holds true for all moralists and reformers who proceed on the assumption of a providential order. [5] "In the political body, however, the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man; in the same manner as it has done in the natural body, for remedying those of his sloth and intemperance." _Wealth of Nations_, Book IV, chap. ix. [6] _E.g._, "the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities." _Wealth of Nations_, Book I, chap, v, and repeatedly in the like connection.