permanent values are easily accepted as money; where development is more advanced only pieces of metal. But these the individual must test as to content and weight, until the guaranteeing stamp facilitates currency, and makes money the equivalent of all values. Generally no doubt is raised, although forgery endangers every one who partakes in the interchange. Paper-money is strictly speaking only a reference to money, thus a sign of a sign, but it may be a complete substitute for it, hence also it may stand for all possible values. It is still more exposed to forgery than coin; but more especially the danger is heightened of an injuriously increased output, which depreciates each unit, i.e., depresses the actual value which is recognised as reasonable below its “nominal value”. We may compare here the superfluity of words which is fraudulently or carelessly issued by orator or writer; and credulous commentaries thereon may well be estimated as the simplicity of one who has let himself be talked into accepting assignats, and thinks that they must be accepted from him again at their full value, because this value stands there printed and confirmed by stamp and signature.
61. In this context it still remains to explain the sense in which we have determined “science” as a form of the social will; the sense therefore whereby conceptual names receive their meaning, or let us say their currency. For this sense is in its normal form completely conditioned by the methods of handing on and interpreting such meanings. At earlier stages this is not the case. It is true that at all stages teaching is combined with the other ways in which the public or secret meanings of words are made known or become known; but at none does it exclusively form the essence of the social will, so that this will arises, is maintained and propagated by teaching. But of this nature is science. By teaching a community forms itself, which shares in the possession of its concepts; i.e., in knowledge of their meanings, and in the art of operating with them. We found that for the (corresponding) third stage also teaching was characteristic; but there it is only the appropriate form of tradition which, in its less developed form, promotes spontaneous imitation by leading up to it. The social will, which we there defined as belief, exists before it and itself conditions it. But here it is thought—this again is only an ideal limiting-case—that the social will is primarily represented only by the individual person of the teacher; around him there gather the scholars, who acquiesce of their own free insight in the recognition of the concepts formed by
