cocoa-seeds

Updated: May 8, 2025

Then this long, cumbersome, inconvenient method gave place to a more ingenious invention the employment of "standard values," beings or material objects serving as a common measure for all the rest: their choice varied with the time, place, and people e.g., certain shells, salt, cocoa-seeds, cloth, straw-matting, cattle, slaves, etc.; but this innovation held all the remainder in the germ, for it was the first attempt at substitution.

Th. (Théodule) Ribot - Essay on the Creative Imagination