"The story is a fiction, -- the coinage of the brain, -- the book a reality."
— Hare, John Innes Clark (1816-1905)
Work Title
Place of Publication
Boston
Publisher
Published by Little, Brown
Date
1889
Metaphor
"The story is a fiction, -- the coinage of the brain, -- the book a reality."
Metaphor in Context
The argument was admirably stated by Judge Sharswood in Borie v. Trott, and subsequent writers on the same side have done little more than put it in other words.3
note 3. "The word 'coin' is one of well-settled meaning. The primary sense of the noun, according to Dr. Webster, is ' the die used for stamping money;' and the undisputed signification of the verb, according to most if not all the lexicographers, ia ' to stamp metal and convert it into coin.' In Wharton's 'Law Lexicon' (ad verbum) it is said: 'Strictly speaking, coin differs from money as the species differs from the genus. Money is any matter, whether metal, paper, beads, shell, etc., which has currency as a medium in commerce. Coin is a particular species, always made of metal, and struck according to a certain process, called coining.' It was urged at the bar -- I do not know whether seriously or not -- that printing is stamping; and these notes might therefore literally be said to be coined. No such use of the word in any author has been shown. We may say, figuratively, ' to coin a story,' meaning to invent one, but never 'to coin the book' in which it is printed. The story is a fiction, -- the coinage of the brain, -- the book a reality. Surely, however, no one will contend in earnest that if a sufficient number of clerks had been employed, and these notes had all been written with the hand, they would have been unconstitutional, but that printing them makes them valid. To state the case thus is to reduce the argument to an absurdity. It may seem like laboring unnecessarily a very plain proposition, but I will hazard some further illustrations.
(p. 1244)
note 3. "The word 'coin' is one of well-settled meaning. The primary sense of the noun, according to Dr. Webster, is ' the die used for stamping money;' and the undisputed signification of the verb, according to most if not all the lexicographers, ia ' to stamp metal and convert it into coin.' In Wharton's 'Law Lexicon' (ad verbum) it is said: 'Strictly speaking, coin differs from money as the species differs from the genus. Money is any matter, whether metal, paper, beads, shell, etc., which has currency as a medium in commerce. Coin is a particular species, always made of metal, and struck according to a certain process, called coining.' It was urged at the bar -- I do not know whether seriously or not -- that printing is stamping; and these notes might therefore literally be said to be coined. No such use of the word in any author has been shown. We may say, figuratively, ' to coin a story,' meaning to invent one, but never 'to coin the book' in which it is printed. The story is a fiction, -- the coinage of the brain, -- the book a reality. Surely, however, no one will contend in earnest that if a sufficient number of clerks had been employed, and these notes had all been written with the hand, they would have been unconstitutional, but that printing them makes them valid. To state the case thus is to reduce the argument to an absurdity. It may seem like laboring unnecessarily a very plain proposition, but I will hazard some further illustrations.
(p. 1244)
Categories
Provenance
Googling "coinage of the brain"
Citation
Hare, John Innes Clark. American Constitutional Law. Vol. 2 of 2. Boston: Little, Brown, 1889. <Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
02/23/2009
