普林斯顿大学辛格（Peter Singer）教授撰文，言及幸福、金钱、散财；

当然，千金难买快乐的说法了无新意。诸多宗教劝诫世人，物欲太盛者并不快乐。披头士乐队提醒世人，金钱买不到爱。即使亚当·斯密认为，世人享用晚餐，并非出于肉贩恩惠，而出于私利，也将获取财富的虚荣感称作 “幻觉”（尽管这可 “激励人们勤勉劳作”）。

此段涉及亚当·斯密《国富论》篇一第二章：世人果腹，并非因肉贩、酿酒师及面包师仁慈，而缘其私利。我等满足所需，并非因其慈悲，而因其自私，因此，切勿因一己之需而责备其获益。世间惟行乞依靠施舍，也并未赖以为生。

以及《道德感论》篇四第一节：天性或以此影响吾侪。惟此幻觉足以激励人类奋发/勤勉劳作，促使人类耕种田亩、建造房舍、兴建城市和公民社会，以及开创并改进所有科学与艺术领域。这一切使人类生活升华并美化，让地貌全然改观，将莽林垦为良田，把荒凉海域辟为求生之途，通衢连接各国。

辛格教授设问：然而，这其中自有矛盾之处。为何各国政府总是致力于提高国民人均收入？如金钱不能使人快乐，为何众人还拼命挣钱？

或许答案在于，人类天性使然，先祖必须努力劳作，养活自己、找寻伴侣并抚养孩童，人类由此演化而来。在游牧社会，无须拥有无法携带之物，然而，世人一旦定居并建立金钱机制，便难以遏制贪欲。

中国早在商、周时期即使用“货贝”，“朋”为单位；至春秋战国时，铸币流行，币形各异，如刀币、布币、爰金、环钱、蚁鼻钱；秦国一统币制，以黄金及铜钱为通货。

考制钱必铸时王年号，自宋而始。唐以前钱法式样轻重，因时而易。唐《食货志》曰：“武德四年，铸开元通宝钱，径八分，重二铢四，累积十钱重一两。”又曰：“开元钱之文，乃给事中欧阳询制词及书，时称其工，字体含八分及隶。其词先上后下、次左后右读之，若自上及左回环读之，其义亦通，流俗谓之开元通宝钱。”马永卿曰：“开元通宝钱，有唐二百八十九年独铸此钱，故开元钱如此之多。而明皇纪元年号，偶与相合耳，非自开元而始也。”《旧唐书》高宗乾封元年四月庚寅，改铸乾封泉宝钱。二年正月，罢乾封钱，复用开元通宝钱。（福格《听雨丛谈》卷五）

唐宪宗时，以商贾至京师，或钱重难携，许委钱于进奏院及诸军司，轻装趋四方，合券乃给，谓之“飞钱”。宋太祖时，许商人入钱左藏库，以诸州钱给之。真宗时，张詠镇蜀，蜀人铸铁钱，钱重不便贸易，乃作交子，以楮为之，一交一缗，以二年为一界而换之，二十年为十界。高宗绍兴三十年年，又造会子，亦谓之“钱引”，又谓之“关子”，又谓之“关会”。内外流转，合发官钱竝许兑，会子亦与交子同。金置交钞，自一贯至十贯五等，谓之“大钞”，自一百至七百五等，谓之“小钞”，以七年为限，纳旧易新。其后罢七年厘革之限，字有昏者方换之。交钞之制，外为阑作花纹，中书贯，例左书号、右书料，其外篆书“伪造者斩，告捕者赏”，衡阁下书中都交钞库，准尚书户文移，及纳钱换钞，纳钞换钱等官司，四围画龙鹤为饰。宋之交、会，用徽池纸。金元钞，用桑皮纸。元又造中统元宝钞，以千计者四等，以百计者三等，以贯计者二等。每一贯同交钞一两，两贯同白银一两。至元间，又造至元宝钞。终元之世，钱几废矣。明洪武初，欲行钞法，禁民间行使金银。八年，造大明宝钞，圆钱十串为一贯，准钱千文，银一两。民皆重钱轻钞，有以钱百六十文折钞一贯者。成化中，钞益贱，一贯仅直钱一文，故银一两当钞千贯。弘正已后，钞遂废不行。明初止有商税，未有船钞。至宣德间，始设钞关，盖藉以收钞而通钞法也。后钞虽废，而关则不废也。（吴翌凤《逊志堂杂钞》）

商朝晚期“铜贝”，比吕底亚诸王首次铸币早几个世纪，而吕底亚人铸币，“或因便于证明其纯度与含金量，或仅适于克罗伊斯后裔及迈达斯友邻炫耀。金属硬币压印商标，仅为本埠虚荣、爱国或广告，并无深义，也从未流行于某些重要商业区。托勒密王朝之前，埃及从未铸币，白银虽为中国的价值标准，但一般而言，直至近期才用以铸币。迦泰基人或因涉外活动才勉强铸币。犹太人对货币本质的直觉最为敏锐，仅关注银币印戳与重量，从不操心铸币假象，这只能满足北方的金融外行，因而，无须铸造塔兰特或谢克尔银币”（A Treatise on Money《货币论》by John Maynard Keynes）

弗格森（Niall Ferguson）著《货币溯源》（The ascent of money  A financial history of the world），概述世界金融史。

 Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal，无论称为现钞，抑或铜臭，都与金钱相关。基督徒认为，钱乃万恶之源；将军把钱充作军费；而革命党人将钱视为劳工枷锁。

货币从何而来，又流向何处？从两河文明，到当今中国，简言之，货币兴起，乃促进人类进步动力之一：其创新、调节、整合过程，错综复杂，而其重要性不亚于科学进步与法律普及，使人类免于生存农业困苦，以及马尔萨斯陷阱。

The Ascent of Money  A financial History of the World byNail Ferguson

Loan Sharks

   Northern Italy in the early thirteenth century was a land subdivided into multiple feuding city-states. Among the many remnants of the defunct Roman Empire was a numerical system (i, ii, iii, iv . . . ) singularly ill-suited to complex mathematical calculation, let alone the needs of commerce. Nowhere was this more of a problem than in Pisa, where merchants also had to contend with seven different forms of coinage in circulation. By comparison, economic life in the Eastern world - in the Abassid caliphate or in Sung China - was far more advanced, just as it had been in the

time of Charlemagne. To discover modern finance, Europe needed to import it. In this, a crucial role was played by a young mathematician called Leonardo of Pisa, or Fibonacci.

   The son of a Pisan customs official based in what is now Bejaia in Algeria, the young Fibonacci had immersed himself in what he called the 'Indian method' of mathematics, a combination of Indian and Arab insights. His introduction of these ideas was to revolutionize the way Europeans counted. Nowadays he is best remembered for the Fibonacci sequence of numbers (o, i , i , 2, 3, 5, 8, 1 3 , 21 . . .), in which each successive number is the sum of the previous two, and the ratio between a number and its immediate antecedent tends towards a 'golden mean' (around 1.618). It is a pattern that mirrors some of the repeating properties to be found in the natural world (for example in the fractal geometry of ferns and sea shells). But the Fibonacci sequence was only one of many Eastern mathematical ideas introduced to Europe in his path-breaking book Liber Abaci, 'The Book of Calculation', which he published in 1202. In it, readers could find fractions explained, as well as the concept of present value (the discounted value today of a future revenue stream). Most important of all was Fibonacci's introduction of Hindu-Arabic numerals. He not only gave Europe the decimal system, which makes all kinds of calculation far easier than with Roman numerals; he also showed how it could be applied to commercial bookkeeping, to currency conversions and, crucially, to the calculation of interest. Significantly, many of the examples in the Liber Abaci are made more vivid by being expressed in terms of commodities like hides, peppers, cheese, oil and spices. This was to be the application of mathematics to making money and, in particular, to lending money. One characteristic example begins:

   A man placed 1 0 0 pounds at a certain [merchant's] house for 4 denarii per pound per month interest and he took back each year a payment of 30 pounds. One must compute in each year the 30 pounds reduction of capital and the profit on the said 30 pounds. It is sought how many years, months, days and hours he will hold money in the house . . .

   Italian commercial centres like Fibonacci's home town of Pisa or nearby Florence proved to be fertile soil for such financial seeds. But it was above all Venice, more exposed than the others to Oriental influences, that became Europe's great lending laboratory. It is not coincidental that the most famous moneylender in Western literature was based in Venice. His story brilliantly illuminates the obstacles that for centuries impeded the translation of Fibonacci's theories into effective financial practice. These obstacles were not economic, or political. They were cultural.

   Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is based on a story in a fourteenth - century Italian book called Il Pecorone ('The Dunce'), a collection of tales and anecdotes written in 1378 by Giovanni Fiorentino. One story tells of a wealthy woman who marries an upstanding young gentleman. Her husband needs money and his friend, eager to help, goes to a moneylender to borrow the cash on his friend's behalf. The moneylender, like Shylock a Jew, demands a pound of flesh as security, to be handed over if the money is not paid back. As Shakespeare rewrote it, the Jewish moneylender Shylock agrees to lend the lovelorn suitor Bassanio three thousand ducats, but on the security of Bassanio's friend, the merchant Antonio. As Shylock says, Antonio is a 'good' man - meaning not that he is especially virtuous, but that his credit is 'sufficient'. However, Shylock also points out that lending money to merchants (or their friends) is risky. Antonio's ships are scattered all over the world, one going to North Africa, another to India, a third to Mexico, a fourth to England:

   . . . his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies; I understand moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath, squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks.

   That is precisely why anyone who lends money to a merchant, if only for the duration of an ocean voyage, needs to be compensated. We usually call the compensation interest: the amount paid to the lender over and above the sum lent, or the principal. Overseas trade of the sort that Venice depended on could not have happened if its financiers had not been rewarded in some way for risking their money on mere boards and men.

   But why does Shylock turn out to be such a villain, demanding literally a pound of flesh - in effect Antonio's death - if he cannot fulfil his obligations? The answer is of course that Shylock is one of the many moneylenders in history to have belonged to an ethnic minority. By Shakespeare's time, Jews had been providing commercial credit in Venice for nearly a century. They did their business in front of the building once known as the Banco Rosso, sitting behind their tables - their tavule - and on their benches, their banci. But the Banco Rosso was located in a cramped ghetto some distance away from the centre of the city.

   There was a good reason why Venetian merchants had to come to the Jewish ghetto if they wanted to borrow money. For Christians, lending money at interest was a sin. Usurers, people who lent money at interest, had been excommunicated by the Third Lateran Council in 1179. Even arguing that usury was not a sin had been condemned as heresy by the Council of Vienna in 1 3 1 1 - 1 2 . Christian usurers had to make restitution to the Church before they could be buried on hallowed ground. They were especially detested by the Franciscan and Dominican orders, founded in 1206 and 1 2 1 6 (just after the publication of Fibonacci's Liber Abaci). The power of this taboo should not be underestimated, though it had certainly weakened by Shakespeare's time.