It is only in so far as a particular good comes to be taken by persons not specially dealing in it, taken for the purpose of using it as a price-good to get something else which they desire, that a thing has the character of money.

The thing called money thus is a durative good passing from hand to hand in a community, and completing its use in turn to each possessor of it only as he parts with it.
The use of money is of such social importance, that it would be impossible for modern industrial society to exist without it.

The discussion of money touches many interests, it raises many questions of a political and of an ethical nature.

There are perhaps more popular errors on this than on any other one subject in economics, but the general principles of money are as fully understood and as firmly established as are any parts of economics.
Sec.2.

#Qualities of the original money-good#.