The work of the Stock Exchange

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1831284952

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-225876

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Meeker, James Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/126597340

Title:: The work of the Stock Exchange

Edition:: Revised edition

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Ronald Press Company

Year of publication:: [1930]

Scope:: XVI, 720 Seiten; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XVII. The stock exchange and American business

Collection:: Economics Books

474 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE ness, is not and never will be deeply moved by abstract phil- osophers or recondite economists. We all of us base our opinions on every conceivable subject, not upon the results of hard, slow, and painful thought and study, but upon the whis- pered rumor, the contagious suspicion, or the vehement, pic- turesque, and reiterated accusations of the fiction-writer. More- over, being still only some hundred generations removed from barbarism and savagery, we all still have deep in our methods of thought that instinctive habit of personifying everything, which the scientists call “anthropomorphism.” For primitive and ancient man always personified as human beings those abstract forces in life and nature which he could not otherwise comprehend, and modern man in hundreds of ways still follows in his footsteps. The ancient Greek, for example, without our scientific knowledge, was naturally puzzled in trying to determine why the sun rose and set, why there were storms over sea and land, or why the seasons recurred in endless succession. As we know, he finally concluded that in each instance some semi- human, semi-divine person was responsible for it all. The sun consequently came to be thought of as a charioteer who drove flaming horses across the sky, and the winds as winged beings who flew through the air. Thus, a whole pantheon of pagan gods finally resulted from the primitive man’s inability to think in abstract, scientific terms about the universe. So, too, the American Indian who could not understand the destructive and terrifying force of the lightning, finally decided that there must be a personal devil behind it, who, for all his evidently superior powers, was after all only another Indian like himself with a more cruel and disagreeable disposition. This natural theory proved so satisfactory that thereafter he had not the slightest doubt that he really understood practically everything worth while knowing about lightning. Modern Myths and Myth-Makers.—This plunge into ancient myths and myth-making is not such a digression from

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