Panic is a disease of the mind, and it most often proceeds, like disease of the body, from excessive indulgence in a disease-producing cause. It will suddenly arise as an offspring of wild gambling and frenzied speculation, and it will infect people in a healthy condition who fear they will be victims of the scourge. And it is not only the duty of the State, but the highest wisdom of the State, to come to the help of the healthy. We have seen how the State has performed this duty in the past, in the days when banking was immature, and we have seen how it has performed its duty, with perfect and instantaneous success, when the country became involved in the greatest crisis it has ever faced. And this is an experience from which, it seems to me, valuable lessons may be learnt. CHAPTER XII BANKING WEALTH Having proceeded so far we may now be able to test, perhaps, with more sureness the kind of wealth a bank does transform, and the kind of wealth it should transform. On the character of the wealth sound banking should depend. Wealth has degrees. There is the highest wealth and the lowest wealth, with infinite degrees between. How are we to distinguish the highest from the lowest wealth, to know the quality of that product which comes into being from the satisfaction of desire? I think it is _time_ that will enable us to judge. That is to say, wealth is to be judged by its enduring qualities. The highest wealth is permanent, or lasting wealth; the lowest is fleeting, or transient wealth. The most permanent wealth is food and air, because without this wealth humanity would perish, and banking systems with it. But air cannot be transformed, from reasons well known; but food can, and food satisfies the most lasting of human desires. Only universal death can destroy that desire. Let us examine with closer scrutiny the typical bank balance sheet given in a former chapter. First of all comes gold. Now we regard gold as the most permanent form of economic wealth. What alone gives it this permanency is the law. It is not inherently permanent; inherently, it is no more permanent than are diamonds or corals. We know that the quantity of gold in the earth is limited, and that gold is perishable, and that it cannot be got below certain depths, because men cannot live beyond those depths. The time will come when gold will be exhausted, and it will then be necessary to find another substance to perform the functions allotted to it. As law has made it permanent wealth, so law could to-morrow, by its arbitrary decree, make it impermanent wealth. If gold were allowed to be, like diamonds, a mere commodity, then it would come in a low degree of wealth.