compelling aura of it disappeared. Samuel Butler in Erewhon  
(1872) gave clear indications in his treatment of the 
mysterious prestige conferred by precious metals. His ridicule of 
the money medium took the form of presenting the old reverent 
attitude to money in a new social context. This new kind of 
abstract, printed money of the high industrial age, however, 
simply would not sustain the old attitude:

          This is the true philanthropy. He who makes a 
     colossal fortune in the hosiery trade, and by his energy 
     has succeeded in reducing the price of woollen goods by 
     the thousandth part of a penny in the pound—this man is 
     worth ten professional philanthropists. So strongly are 
     the Erewhonians impressed with this, that if a man has 
     made a fortune of over £20,000 a year they exempt him 
     from all taxation, considering him a work of art, and too