The magical qualities of money transfixed the philosophers of the ancient and medieval eras. The quest to turn base metals into gold eluded the greatest of ancient minds. It was the modem bourgeoisie which was to discover the secrets of the philosopher's stone. The class that laid naked the superstitions and chauvinism of the ancient world established themselves as the first great sorcerers in history: a class apparently able to conjure money out of itself through the self-expansion of money. The bourgeoisie solved the mysteries of money and this resulted in the abandonment of philosophical explanations of money. The intellectual representatives of the new magicians established money as an essential component of the natural order and thereby made the philosophical enquiry into its origins and expansion an irrelevant endeavour. Through the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and J. S. Mill, money was subsequently reduced to a mere derivative of a rational process of exchange, and the apparent power of money reduced to the powerful rationality of a system based on exchange and mutual equivalence. These writers could not, however, adequately account for the process of accumulation which was a central feature of the emergent capitalist system.