The article focuses on antecedents of double-entry in bookkeeping. It is proposed in this paper to follow the genealogy of bookkeeping back beyond those parental ancestors whose respectability was so ably proved at the time. The purpose here will be to trace out those blood-lines of preparental inheritance which finally converged at a certain time and place, there to confer certain characteristics upon the offspring. In trying to perceive the forces which produced double-entry, two questions, must be answered in the process. First, what were the antecedent elements out of which double-entry finally evolved. An answer is needed to this question, so that one may better appreciate how closely accounting has been, and still is, related to several collateral fields. Second, what surrounding conditions were necessary to give vitality to these antecedent elements? The antecedents of double-entry, those factors which in time became so interwoven as to render double-entry inevitable, are all familiar quantities; some of them are very old and some are very obvious, but all of them are, in the writer's opinion, indispensable. The art of writing is an indispensable antecedent, since bookkeeping is before all else a record; arithmetic is essential also, since bookkeeping is a sequence of simple computations, even though they are cast into certain forms; private property, since bookkeeping is concerned only with recording the facts about property and property rights.

This article presents two fables to illustrate some principles of accounting. A natural series of events described in one fable put into the hands of a character, called T, the characteristic elements of real double-entry book- keeping. This man, intelligent and observant by hypothesis, could not have been long in finding out that every transaction gave rise to a double recording, that every sum written in the debit of one of the two accounts figured also in the credit of the other, and that as a consequence, the total of the debits were equal to the total of the credits, and finally, that the debit balance of one of the two accounts was in reality, and of necessity, equal to the credit balance of the other. The principles of double-entry were thus clearly formulated at first without the men who conceived them comprehending their significance. The other fable tells that there was in the old Roman law, a very definite procedure of contracting a binding debt and a set form of preliminary conversation. There was an equally definite procedure for transferring a debt to a third party.