VI

A TREATISE ON MONEY

monious with one another. The ideas with which Ihave finished up are widely different from those withwhich I began. The result is, I am afraid, that thereis a good deal in this book which represents the processof getting rid of the ideas which I used to have and offinding my way to those which I now have. There aremany skins which I have sloughed still littering thesepages. It follows that I could do it better and muchshorter if I were to start over again. I feel like some-one who has been forcing his way through a confusedjungle. Now that I have emerged from it, I see thatI might have taken a more direct route and that manyproblems and perplexities which beset me during thejourney had not precisely the significance which Isupposed at the time. Nevertheless, I expect that Ishall do well to offer my book to the world for what itis worth at the stage it has now reached, even if itrepresents a collection of material rather than afinished work.

In the second place, I have attempted, perhapsfoolishly, to combine a systematic Treatise, bothPure and Applied, with a number of discussionswhich might have been the subject of separatemonographs. The most important of these quasi-digressions are Book II. on Index Numbers andBook VI. on Fluctuations in the Rate of Invest-ment. Book II., in particular, holds back for manypages the main progression of the argument to-wards the fundamental theory which occupies BooksIII. and IV.; perhaps some readers may prefer toomit these chapters or to return to them later on.

Another disadvantage from which I have sufferedhas been the absence of any models to guide me to theright order and arrangement of the various topics.