hapter I shall discuss three of its principal
terms--Wealth, Capital and Money--with a view to showing that the current
meanings and interpretations of these familiar terms must be very greatly
deepened, enlarged and elevated if they are to accord with facts and laws
of human nature and if the so-called "science" which employs them is to
become a genuine science properly qualified to be a branch of Human
Engineering. It is to be shown that the meanings currently attached by
political economists and others to the terms in question belong to what I
have called the period of humanity's childhood; and it is to be shown that
the new meanings which the terms must receive belong to the period of
humanity's manhood. It will be seen that the new meanings differ so
radically from the old ones as to make it desirable for the sake of
clarity to give the new meanings new names. But this, however
scientifically desirable, is impracticable because the old terms--wealth,
capital, money--are so deeply imbedded in the speech of the world. And here
comes into view the very special difficulty alluded to above and which led
me to request the reader's special cooperation in this chapter. The
difficulty is not merely that of destroying old ideas that are false; it
is not merely that of replacing them with true ideas that are new; it is
that of causing people habitually to associate meanings that are new and
true with terms associated so long, so universally, so uniformly with
meanings that are false.

The secret of philosophy, said Leibnitz, is to treat familiar things as
unfamiliar. By the secret of "philosophy" Leibnitz meant the secret of
what we call science. Let us apply this wholesome maxim in our present
study; let us, in so far as we can, regard the familiar terms--wealth,
capital and money--as unfamiliar; let us deal with them afresh; let us
examine openmindedly the facts--the phenomena--to which the terms relate and
ascertain scientifically the significance the terms must have in a genuine
science of human economy. Examine "the facts" I say--examine "the
phenomena"--for bending facts to theories is a vital danger, while bending
theories to facts is essential to science and the peaceful progress of
society.

Human beings have always had some sense of values--some perception or
cognition of values. In order to express or measure values, it was
necessary to introduce units of measure, or units of exchange. People
began to measure valu