Three powerful elements of human nature work together in sustaining the value of the metals which become widely used as ornament:
(3) the spirit of rivalry, or competition.
In these three we have, perhaps, the firmest basis which it is possible to construct for the value of anything! When religion is added, as has often been the case with the precious metals, the basis becomes solid indeed! Modern social psychology has increasingly made clear the power of the first. Social expectation can take the raw stuff of human nature, and mold it into almost any form it pleases. Original, hereditary differences remain. Some raw stuff is so inferior that no high social organization can be built out of it. Some stuff cannot respond very effectively to the social stimuli. But _qualitatively_, the tendency is for men to become what society expects. Individuals succeed more or less in meeting social expectation. But the very elements of individual aspiration and ambition, the very self of the individual, are molded to the social pattern, and, with the same racial stock, vary almost indefinitely from time to time and from place to place, with the _mores_. If ornament confers distinction,--and almost everywhere it does--men will seek to possess ornaments.
Commonly it is for the sake of the other sex that men seek ornaments. Ornaments are an aid in wooing! Men gain wives by being able to give them ornaments.--Not that this is the whole story!--And social expectation, almost everywhere, requires that men decorate the wives that they have won. Wives usually reinforce social expectation in this matter.
Further, the desire for ornament is competitive. One's women must be _better_ ornamented than the women of one's neighbors, if _distinction_ is to be gained thereby. But this sets a faster pace for the neighbors, and the standard of social expectation is raised as to the necessary amount of ornament. It is the same sort of competition that arises among armed nations. A new battle-ship for one requires that all increase their naval strength. New armies in Germany call for new armies in France. A vicious circle is created. The desire for ornament, unlike the desire for food, becomes insatiable. And hence, the value-curve for the metal used as ornament sinks very slowly, being reduced, not by satiation of want, but by limitation of economic resources. I need not elaborate these notions further. They are of the same sort that Veblen has developed in his _Theory of the Leisure Class_. They rest on fundamentals in human nature, however much they differ from the psychology of the "economic man." They give assurance, I think, that, unless radical change in tastes and fashions come in, which displace gold and silver from their position as ornaments and as means of display, we may expect the value of gold to maintain itself at a high level regardless of great increase in quantity. I do not share the view which Carlile himself seems, at times, to express[464] that gold does not sink in value with the increase in quantity. It seems to me easily demonstrable that it has sunk, and does sink. But I should expect the value of gold to survive the shock that might come if gold were entirely displaced from monetary use vastly better than any commodity which serves wants of a different character could stand a similar shock. The demonetization of silver has, of course, not entirely displaced silver from the monetary employment. It has, however, made it necessary for the arts to absorb a greatly increased proportion of the new silver,[465] and not a little of the old silver. The demonetization of silver, moreover, was accompanied and followed by a great increase in silver production. But silver has stood the shock amazingly well.[466]
