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THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
by the same author
GENERAL ECONOMIC HISTORY
by Ernst Troehsch
THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
I
MAX WEBER
THE PROTESTANT ETHIC
AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
TRANSLATED BY
TALCOTT PARSONS
Tutor in Economics, Harvard University
WITH A FOREWORD BY
R. H. TAWNEY
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
LONDON:
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
FIRST PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN IN I93O SECOND IMPRESSION 1 948 THIRD IMPRESSION I95O
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention
No portion of it may be reprodttced by any process without written permission. Inquiries to be addressed to the publisher
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME AND LONDON
CONTENTS ^^c,
Translator's Preface jl. j \N 3 L. j^
Foreword C C P , ^ i
Author's Introduction 13
PART I
THE PROBLEM
CHAPTER
I. Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification 35
II. The Spirit of Capitalism 47
III. Luther's Conception of the Calling. Task of the
Investigation 79
PART II
THE PRACTICAL ETHICS OF THE ASCETIC BRANCHES OF PROTESTANTISM
IV. The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism 95
A. Calvinism 98
B. Pietism 128
C. Methodism 139
D. The Baptist Sects 144
V. Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism 155
Notes 185
Index 285
Vll
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Max Weber's essay, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, which is here translated, was first pubHshed in the Archil für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik^ Volumes XX and XXI, for 1904-5. It was reprinted in 1920 as the first study in the ambitious series Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, which was left unfinished by Weber's untimely death in that same year. For the new printing he made considerable changes, and appended both new material and replies to criticism in footnotes. The translation has, however, been made directly from this last edition. Though the volume of footnotes is excessively large, so as to form a serious detriment to the reader's enjoyment, it has not seemed advisable either to omit any of them or to attempt to incorporate them into the text. As it stands it shows most plainly how the problem has grown in Weber's own mind, and it would be a pity to destroy that for the sake of artistic perfection. A careful perusal of the notes is, however, especially recommended to the reader, since a great deal of important material is contained in them. The fact that they are printed separately from the main text should not be allowed to hinder their use. The translation is, as far as is possible, faithful to the text, rather than attempting to achieve any more than ordinary, clear EngHsh style. Nothing has been altered, and only a few comments to clarify obscure points and to refer the reader to related parts of Weber's work have been added. The Introduction, which is placed before the main
R ix
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
essay, was written by Weber in 1920 for the whole series on the Sociology of Religion. It has been included in this translation because it gives some of the general background of ideas and problems into which Weber himself meant this particular study to fit. That has seemed particularly desirable since, in the voluminous discussion w4iich has grown up in Germany around Weber's essay, a great deal of misplaced criticism has been due to the failure properly to appreciate the scope and limitations of the study. While it is impossible to appreciate that fully without a thorough study of Weber's sociological work as a whole, this brief intro- duction should suffice to prevent a great deal of misunderstanding.
The series of which this essay forms a part was, as has been said, left unfinished at Weber's death. The first volume only had been prepared for the press by his own hand. Besides the parts translated here, it contains a short, closely related study, Die pro- testantischen Sekten und der Geist des Kapitalismus', a general introduction to the further studies of particular religions which as a whole he called Die Wirtschafts- ethik der Weltreligionen ; and a long study of Confucian- ism and Taoism. The second and third volumes, which were published after his death, without the thorough revision which he had contemplated, contain studies of Hinduism and Buddhism and Ancient Judaism. In addition he had done work on other studies, notably of Islam, Early Christianity, and Talmudic Judaism, which were not yet in a condition fit for publication in any form. Nevertheless, enough of the whole series has been preserved to show something of the extra-
Translator's Preface
ordinary breadth and depth of Weber's grasp of cultural problems. What is here presented to English- speaking readers is only a fragment, but it is a fragment which is in many ways of central significance for Weber's philosophy of history, as well as being of very great and very general interest for the thesis it advances to explain some of the most important aspects of modern culture.
TALCOTT PARSONS
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. January 1930
XJ
FOREWORD
Max Weber, the author of the work translated in the following pages, was a scholar whose intellectual range was unusually wide, and whose personality made an even deeper impression than his learning on those privileged to know him. He had been trained as a jurist, and, in addition to teaching as a professor at Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Munich, he wrote on subjects so various as ancient agrarian history, the conditions of the rural population of Prussia, the methodology of the social sciences, and the sociology of religion. Nor were his activities exclusively those of the teacher and the student. He travelled widely, was keenly interested in contemporary political and social movements, played a vigorous and disinterested part in the crisis which confronted Germany at the close of the War, and accompanied the German delegation to Versailles in May 1919. He died in Munich in the following year, at the age of fifty-six. Partly as a result of prolonged ill-health, which com- pelled him for several years to lead the life of an invalid, partly because of his premature death, partly, perhaps, because of the very grandeur of the scale on which he worked, he was unable to give the final revision to many of his writings. His collected works have been published posthumously. The last of them, based on notes taken by his students from lectures given at Munich, has appeared in English under the title of General Economic History}
' Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight, Ph.D. (George Allen & Unwin). A bibliography of Weber's writings is
1(a)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
f The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published in the form of two articles in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904 and 1905.) Together with a subsequent article, which appeared in 1906, on The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism^ they form the first of the studies contained in Weber's Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. On their first appearance they aroused an interest which extended beyond the ranks of historical specialists, and which caused the numbers of the Archiv in which they were published to be sold out with a rapidity not very usual in the case of learned publications. The discussion which they provoked has continued since then with undiminished vigour. For the questions raised by Weber possess a universal significance, and the method of his essay was as important as its conclusions. It not only threw a brilliant light on the particular field which it explored, but suggested a new avenue of approach to a range of problems of permanent interest, which concern, not merely the historian and the economist, but all who reflect on the deeper issues of modern society.
The question which Weber attempts to answer is simple and fundamental. It is that of the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilization. Capitalism, in the sense of great individual undertakings, involving the control of large financial resources, and yielding riches to their masters
printed at the end of the charming and instructive account of him by his widow, Max Weber, Ein Lebensbild, von Marianna Weber (J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1926), See also tlconomistes et Historiens: Max Weber, un komme, une ceuvre, pqr Maurice Halbwachs, in Annales d'Histoire ^conomique et Sociale, No. i, January, 1929.
i(b)
Foreword
as a result of speculation, money-lending, commercial enterprise, buccaneering and war, is as old as history. Capitalism, as an economic system, resting on the V^cxUr organisation of legally free wage-earners, for the purpose of pecuniary profit, by the owner of capital or his agents, and setting its stamp on every aspect of society, is a modern phenomenon.
All revolutions are declared to be natural and inevitable, once they are successful, and capitalism, as the type of economic system prevailing in Western Europe and America, is clothed to-day with the unquestioned respectability of the triumphant fact. But in its youth it was a pretender, and it was only after centuries of struggle that its title was established-» For it involved a code of economic conduct and a system of human relations which were sharply at variance with venerable conventions, with the accepted scheme of social ethics, and with the law, both of the church and of most European states. So questionable an innovation demanded of the pioneers who first experimented with it as much originality, self-confidence, and tenacity of purpose as is required to-day of those who would break from the net that it has woven. What influence nerved them to defy tradition? From what source did they derive the -^principles to repKce it ? " '^ i
The conventional answer to these questions is to deny their premises. The rise of new forms of economic enterprise was the result, it is argued, of changes in • the character of the economic environment. It was due to the influx of the precious metals from America in the sixteenth century, to the capital accumulated in
* 1(C)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
extra-European commerce, to the reaction of expanding markets on industrial organisation, to the growth of population, to technological improvements made pos- sible by the progress of natural science, Weber's reply, which is developed at greater length in his General Economic History than in the present essay, is that such explanations confuse causes and occasions. Granted that the economic conditions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were, in some respects, though by no means in all, unusually favourable to an advance in economic technique, such conditions had existed from time to time in the past without giving birth to the development of capitalist industry. In many of the regions affected by them no such development took place, nor were those which enjoyed the highest economic civilization necessarily those in which the new order found its most congenial environment. The France of Louis XIV commanded resources which, judged by the standards of the age, were immense, but they were largely dissipated in luxury and war^The "America of theeTghteertth CiJfltUty was economically primitive, but it is in the maxims of Franklin that the spirit of bourgeois capitalism, which, rather than the grandiose schemes of mercantilist statesmen, was to dominate the future, finds, Weber argues, its naivest and most lucid expression.
To appeal, as an explanation, to the acquisitive nstincts, is even less pertinent, for there is little reason to suppose that they have been more powerful during '?!k.the last fe\y centuries than in earlier ages. "The notion that our rationalistic and capitalistic age is characterised by a stronger economic interest than other periods is
i(d)
Foreword
childish. The moving spirits of modern capitaUsm are not possessed of a stronger economic impulse than, for example, an Oriental trader. The unchaining of the economic interest, merely as such, has produced only irrational results: such men as Cortes and Pizarro, who were, perhaps, its strongest embodiment, were far from having an idea of a rationalistic economic life." ' The word "rationalism" is used by Weber as a term of art, to describe an economic system based, not on custom or tradition, but on the deliberate and systematic adjustment of economic means to the attainment of the objective of pecuniary profit. The question is why this temper triiimphed^ver the conventional attitude which had regarded the appetitus divitiarum infijiitus — ^the unlimited lust for gain — as anti-social and immoral.^ His answer is that it was the result of movements which had their source in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century.
Weber wrote as a scholar, not as a propagandist, and there is no trace in his work of the historical ani- mosities which still warp discussions of the effects of the Reformation J Professor Pirenne,^ in an illuminating ^ essay, has argued that social progress springs from below, and that each new phase of economic develop- ment is the creation, not of strata long in possession of wealth and power, but of classes which rise from humble origins to build a new structure on obscure foundations. The thesis of Weber is somewhat similar.
' Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight, PP- 355-6.
* Henri Pirenne, Les P^riodes de VHistoire Sociale du Capitalisme (Hayez, Brussels, 1914).
1(e)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
The pioneers of the modern economic order were, he
,] argues, parvenus y who elbowed their way to success in
the teeth of the established aristocracy of land and
commerce. The tonic that braced them for the conflict
was a new copcf^pti^^" ^f rpliginn^ wKi^ih taught them
to rpgrard the_purs,ijjt^ pf wealth as, not merely an
.^acLvantage^ but a_ duty. This conception welded into
a disciplined force the still feeble bourgeoisie ^ heightened
its energies, and cast a halo of sanctification round its
LjConvenient vices. What is significant, in short, is not
T^ the strength of the motive of economic self-interest,
^ which is the commonplace of all ages and demands no]
1! explanation. It is the change of moral standards which
converted a natural frailty into an ornament of the
spirit, and canonized as the economic virtues habits
which in earlier ages had been ^
1 The force which produced it was the creed associated V \s^ith the name of Calvin. Capitalism was the social {^ .counterpart of Calvinist theology.
"X The central idea to which Weber appeals in con- firmation of his theory is expressed in the characteristic phrase **a calling." For Luther, as for most mediaeval theologians, it had normally meant the state of life in which the individual had been set bv Heaven, and
(
against which it was impious to rebel. 'l"o the Calvinist, Weber argues, the calling is not a condition in which the individual is born, but a strenuous and exacting enterprise to be chosen bj^himself , and to be pursued with a sense of rehgimis responsihihty. Baptized in the bracing, if icy, waters of Calvinist theology, the life of business, once regarded as perilous to the soul — summe periculosa est emptionis et venditionis negotiatio — 2
Foreword
acquires a new sanctity. Labout-js_-QüL.03erely an economic means : it is a spiritual end. Covetousness^ if '>^ 2l danger to the^oul, is a less formidable menace than sloth. So far from poverty being melito^rious, it is a duty to choose the more profitable occupation. So far "/ Ifoift-there^beingan inevitableconflict between money- making_and43iety Tthey^are^ natural^ alJl^ for the virtues incumbent on the elect — diligence, thriit^ sobriety, prudence — are the_jnost reliable passporL to com- mercial_2ros2erity. Thus the pursuit of riches, which ^ once had been fe3red^;aSLllit:_iUieiy]f;;;5|HP&l4gion , was I now_3:dcmn£d.-_.as_Jts__ally--^The habits "and^insti- tutions in which that philosophy found expression survived long after the creed which was their parent had expired, or had withdrawn from Europe to more congenial cn^es.' If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie , it ends, Weber suggests in his concluding pages, as an orgy of materialism.
Un England the great industry grew by gradual ^ increments over a period of centuries, and, since the English class system had long been based on differences of wealth, not of juristic status, there was no violent contrast between the legal foundations of the old order /) and the new. Hence in England the conception of ^, <^ capitalism as a distinct and peculiar phase of social *^%i, ' development has not readily been accepted. It is still ^^ -^ possible for writers, who in their youth have borne ^ with equanimity instruction on the meaning of feudal- ^ - ism, to dismiss capitalism as an abstraction of theorists or a catchword of politicians.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
The economic history of the Continent has moved by different stages from that of England, and the categories employed by Continental thinkers have accordingly been different. In France, where the •site on which the modern economic system was to be erected was levelled by a cataclysm, and in Germany, which passed in the fifty years between 1850 and 1900 through a development that in England had occupied two hundred, there has been little temptation to question that capitalist civilization is a phenomenon differing, not merely in degree, but in kind, from the social order preceding it. It is not surprising, therefore, that its causes and characteristics should have been one of the central themes of historical study in both. The discussion began with the epoch- making work of Marx, who was greater as a sociologist than as an economic theorist, and continues unabated. Its most elaborate monument is Sombart's Der Modertie Kapitalismus.
The first edition of Sombart's book appeared in 1902. Weber's articles, of which the first was published two years later, were a study of a single aspect of the same problem. A whole literature ^ has arisen on the subject
* See, in particular, the following: E. Troeltsch, Die Sozialen Lehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (1912); F. Rachfahl, Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus {Internationale Wochenschrift, 1909, i. III); B. L. Brentano, Die Anfänge des Modernen Kapitalismus (1916) and Der Wirthschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte (191 1); W. Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirthschaftslehen (191 1 . Eng. trans. The Jews and Modern Capitalism, 1913), and Der Bourgeois (1913. Eng. trans. The Quint- essence of Modern Capitalism, 1915); G. v. Schulze-Gaevernitz, " Die Geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen der Anglo- Amerikanischen Weltsuprematie. III. Die Wirthschaftsethik des Kapitalismus" {Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Bd. 61, Heft 2); H. S^e, *' Dans quelle mesure Puritains et Juifs ont-ils contribuö au Progres du Capitalisme Moderne?" {Revue Historique, t. CLV, 1927)
.11
I Foreword
discussed in them. How does Weber's thesis stand to-day, after a quarter of a century of research and criticism ?
The interpretation of rehgious beHefs and social institutions as different expressions of a common psychological attitude, which Weber elaborated in his Aufsätze zur Religionssociologie^ is no longer so novel as when he advanced it. Once stated, indeed, it has the air of a platitude. The capacity of human beings to departmentalize themselves is surprising, but it is not unlimited. It is obvious that, in so far as doctrines as to man's place in the universe are held with conviction, they will be reflected in the opinions formed of the nature of the social order most conducive to well-being, and that the habits moulded by the pressure of the economic environment' will in turn set their stamp on religion . Nor can Weber's contention be disputed that Calvinism, at least in certain phases of its history, was associated with an attitude to questions of social ethics which contemporaries regarded as peculiarly its own. Its critics attacked it as the sanctimonious ally of commercial sharp practice. Its admirers applauded it
and Les Origines du Capitalisme Moderne (igzb) ; M. Halbwachs, " Les Origines Puritaines du Capitalisme Moderne " (Revue d'histoire et Philosophie religieuses, March-April 1925) and "ficonomistes et His- toriens : Max Weber, une vie, un ceuvre " (Annales d'Histoire Eco- nomique et Sociale, No. i, 1929); H, Häuser, Les Debuts du Capitalisme Moderne (igzj); H. G. Wood, "The Influence of the Reformation on ideas concerning Wealth and Property," in Property, its Rights and Duties (1913); Talcott Parsons, " Capitalism in Recent German Literature" (Journal of Political Economy, December 1928 and February 1929); Frank H. Knight, "Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Problem of Modern Capitalism" (Journal of Economic and Business History, November 1928); Kemper Fulberton, "Cal- vinism and Capitalism" (Harvard Theological Reviezv, July, 1928).
5
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
as the school of the economic virtues. By the middle of the seventeenth century the contrast between the social conservatism of Catholic Europe and the strenuous enterprise of Calvinist communities had become a commonplace. "There is a kind of natural inaptness," wrote a pamphleteer in 1671, "in the Popish religion to business, whereas, on the contrary, among the Reformed, the greater their zeal, the greater their inclination to trade and industry, as holding idleness unlawful." The influence of Calvinism was frequently adduced as one explanation of the economic prosperity of Holland. The fact that in England the stronghold of Nonconformity was the commercial classes was an argument repeatedly advanced for tolerating Non- conformists. .
/ In cmphasTzingrtherefore, the connection betwee^
religious radicalism and economic progress, Webei called attention to an interesting phenomenon, atP which previous writers had hinted, but which none, had yet examined with the same wealth of learning and|- philosophical insight. (The significance"to~be'äscnbedto it, and, in particulaf;ihe relation of Calvinist influences to the other forces making for economic innovation, is a different and more difficult question. His essay was confined to the part played by religious movements in creating conditions favourable to the growth of a new type of economic civilization, and he is careful to guard himself against the criticism that* he under- estimates the importance of the parallel developments in the world of commerce, finance, and industry. It is obvious, however, that, until the latter have been examined, it is not possible to determine the weight to 6
1
Foreword
be assigned to the former. It is arguable, at least, that, instead of Calvinism producing the spirit of Capitalism, ,/ both would with equal plausibility be regarded as different effects of changes in economic organisation and social structure.
It is the temptation of one who expounds a new and fruitful idea to use it as a key to unlock all doors, and to explain by reference to a single principle phenomena which are, in reality, the result of several converging causes ."^~Weber's essay is not altogether free, perhaps, from the defects of its qualities. It appears occasionally to be somewhat over-subtle in' ascribing to intellectual and moral influences develop- ments which were the result of more prosaic and mundane forces, and which appeared, irrespective of the character of religious creeds, wherever external conditions offered them a congenial environment. / "Capitalism" itself is an ambiguous, if indispensable, word, and Weber's interpretation of it seems sometimes to be open to the criticism of Professor See,^ that he simplifies and limits its meaning to suit the exigencies of his argument. There was no lack of the "capitalist spirit" in the Venice and Florence of the fourteenth century, or in the Antwerp of the fifteenth. Its develop- ment in Holland and England, it might not unreason- ably be argued, had less to do with the fact that they, or certain social strata in them, accepted the Calvinist version of the Reformation, than with large economic movements and the social changes produced by them.
t ' H. S^e, " Dans quelle mesure Puritains et Juifs ont-ils contribu^ |au Progrfes Capitalisme Moderne?" {Revue Historique, t. CLV, ii927).
' 7
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
**Ce que MM. Weber et Troeltsch," writes Professor Pirenne,» "prennent pour I'esprit Calviniste, c'est precisement I'esprit des hommes nouveaux que la revolution economique du temps introduit dans la vie des affaires, et qui s'y opposent aux traditionalistes auxquels ils se substituent." Why insist that causation can work in only one direction ? Is it not a little artificial to suggest that capitalist enterprise had to wait, as Weber appears to imply, till religious changes had produced a capitalist spirit? Would it not be equally plausible, and equally one-sided, to argue that the religious changes were themselves merely the result of economic movements ?
If Weber, as was natural in view of his approach to the problem, seems to lay in the present essay some- what too exclusive an emphasis upon intellectual and ethical forces, his analysis of those forces themselves requires, perhaps, to be supplemented. Brentano 's criticism, that the political thought of the Renaissance was as powerful a solvent of conventional restraints as the teaching of Calvin, is not without weight. In England, at any rate, the speculations of business men and economists as to money, prices, and the foreign exchanges, which were occasioned by the recurrent financial crises of the sixteenth century and by the change in the price level, were equally effective in undermining the attitude which Weber called tradi- tionalism. Recent studies of the development of economic thought suggest that the change of opinion on economic ethics ascribed to Calvinism was by no
' H. Pirenne, Les Periodes de VHistoire Sociale du Capitalisme (1914). 2
8
Foreword
means confined to it, but was part of a general intel- lectual movement, which was reflected in the outlook of Catholic, as well as of Protestant, writers. Nor was the influence of Calvinist teaching itself so uniform in character, or so undeviating in tendency, as might be inferred by the reader of Weber's essay. On the contrary, it varied widely from period to period and coimtry to country, with differences of economic conditions, social tradition, and political environment. It looked to the past as well as to the future. If in some of its phases it was on the side of change, in others it was conservative.
Most of Weber's illustrations of his thesis are drawn from the writings of English Puritans of the latter part of the seventeenth century. It is their teaching which supplies him with the materials for his picture of the pious bourgeois conducting his business as a calling to which Providence has summoned the elect. Whether the idea conveyed by the word "calling" is so peculiar to Calvinism as Weber implies is a question for theologians; but the problem, it may be suggested, is considerably more complex than his treatment of it suggests. For three generations of economic develop- ment and political agitation lay between these writers and the author of the Institutes. The Calvinism which fought the English Civil War, still more the Calvinism which won an uneasy toleration at the Revolution, was not that of its founder.
Calvin's own ideal of social organization Is revealed by the system which he erected at Geneva. It had been
/heocracy administered by a dictatorship of ministers.
I "the most perfect school of Christ ever seen on
c 9
4
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
earth since the day of the Apostles", the rule of life had been an iron collectivism. A godly discipline had been the aim of Knox, of the Reformed Churches in France, and of the fathers of the English Presbyterian Movement; while a strict control of economic enter- prise had been the policy first pursued by the saints in New England. The Calvinism, both of England and Holland, in the seventeenth century, had found its way to a different position. It had discovered a com- promise in which a juster balance was struck between prosperity and salvation, and, while retaining the theology of the master, it repudiated his scheme of social ethics. Persuaded that "godliness hath the promise of this life, as well as of the life to come," it resisted, with sober intransigeance, the interference in matters of business both of the state and of divines. It is this second, individualistic phase of Calvinism, rather than the remorseless rigours of Calvin himself, which may plausibly be held to have affinities with the temper called by Weber "the spirit of Capitalism." The question which needs investigation is that of the causes which produced a change of attitude so con- venient to its votaries and so embarrassing to their pastors.
It is a question which raises issues that are not discussed at length in Weber's essay, though, doubtless, he was aware of them. Taking as his theme, not the conduct of Puritan capitalists, but the doctrines of Puritan divines, he pursues a single line of inquiry with masterly ingenuity. His conclusions are illuminat- ing; but they are susceptible, it may perhaps be heid, of more than one interpretation. There was action j^nd
10
)
Foreword
reaction, and, while Puritanism helped to mould the social order, it was, inits turn» jnoulded_by it. It is instructive to "'fFaCeT'with Weber, the influence of religious ideas on economic development. It is not less important to grasp the effect of the economic arrange- ments accepted by an age on the opinion which it holds of the province of religion.
R. H. TAWNEY
74.
^
///
II
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
A PRODUCT of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask him- self to ^hat ^combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which(äs we like to think) lie in a line~of development having^ universal significance and value.
Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we recognize to-day as valid. Knrpiriral knowledge, reflection on problems of the cosmos and of life, philosophical and theological wisdom of the most profound sort, are not confined to it. thougiTm the case of Ihe last the full development of a_§ystematic theology must be credited to Christianity under the influence of Hellenism, since there were only fragments m Islam and in a few Indian sects. In short, knowledge and observation of great refinement have existed elsewhere, above all in India, China, Babylonia, Egypt. But in Babylonia and elsewhere astronomy lacked — ^which makes its development all the more astounding — ^the mathematical foundation which it first received from the Greeks. The Indian geometry had no rational proof; that was another product of the Greek intellect, also the creator of mechanics and physics. The Indian natural sciences, though well developed in observation, lacked the method of experiment, which was, apart from begin- nings in antiquity, essentially a product of the Renaissance, as was the modern laboratory. Hence medicine, especially in India, though highly developed
13
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
in empirical technique, lacked a biological and par- ticularly a biochemical foundation. A rational chemistry has been absent from all areas of culture except the West.
The highly developed historical scholarship of China did not have the method of Thucydides. Machiavelli, it is true, had predecessors in India; but all Indian political thought was lacking in a systematic method comparable to that of Aristotle, and, indeed, in the possession of rational concepts. Not all the anticipa- tions in India (School of Mimamsa), nor the extensive codification especially in the Near East, nor all the Indian and other books of law, had the strictly syste- matic forms of thought, so essential to a rational juris- prudence, of the Roman law and of the Western law under its influence. A structure like the canon law is known only to the West.
A similar statement is true of art. The musical ear of other peoples has probably been even more sensi- tively developed than our own, certainly not less so. Polyphonic music of various kinds has been widely distributed over the earth. The co-operation of a number of instruments and also the singing of parts have existed elsewhere. All our rational tone intervals have been known and calculated. But rational har- monious music, both counterpoint and harmony, formation of the tone material on the basis of three triads with the harmonic third; our chromatics and enharmonics, not interpreted in terms of space, but, since the Renaissance, of harmony; our orchestra, with its string quartet as a nucleus, and the organization of ensembles of wind instruments; our bass accompani-
14
Author's Introduction
ment; our system of notation, which has made possible the composition and production of modem musical works, and thus their very survival; our sonatas, symphonies, operas; and finally, as means to all these, our fundamental instruments, the organ, piano, violin, etc.; all these things are known only in the Occident, although programme music, tone poetry, alteration of tones and chromatics, have existed in various musical traditions as means of expression.
In architecture, pointed arches have been used else- where as a means of decoration, in antiquity and in Asia ; presumably the combination of pointed arch and cross-arched vault was not unknown in the Orient. But the rational use of the Gothic vault as a means of distributing pressure and of roofing spaces of all forms, and above all as the constructive principle of great monumental buildings and the foundation of a style extending to sculpture and painting, such as that created by our Middle Ages, does not occur elsewhere. The technical basis of our architecture came from the Orient. But the Orient lacked that solution of the problem of the dome and that type of classic rational- ization of all art — in painting by the rational utilization of lines and spatial perspective — which the Renaissance created for us. There was printing in China. But a printed literature, designed only for print and only possible through it, and, above all, the Press and periodicals, have appeared only in the Occident. Institutions of higher education of all possible types,, even some superficially similar to our universities, or at least academies, have existed (China, Islam). But a rational, systematic, and specialized pursuit of science,
^ IS
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
with trained and specialized personnel, has^ only existed in the West in a sense at all approaching its present dominant place in our culture. Above all is this true of the trained official, the pillar of both the modern State and of the economic life- of the West. He forms a type of which there have heretofore only been suggestions, which have never remotely ap- proached its present importance for the social order. Of course the official, even the specialized official, is a very old constituent of the most various societies. But no country and no age has ever experienced, in the same sense as the modern Occident, the absolute and complete dependence of its whole existence, of the political, technical, and economic conditions of its life, on a specially trained organization of officials. The most important functions of the everyday life of society have come to be in the hands of technically, commercially, and above all legally trained govern- ment officials.
Organization of political and social groups in feudal classes has been common. But even the feudal^ state of rex et regnum in the Western sense has only been known to our culture. Even more are parliaments of periodically elected representatives, with government by demagogues and party leaders as ministers respon- sible to the parliaments, peculiar to us, although there have, of course, been parties, in the sense of organiza- tions for exerting influence and gaining control of political power, all over the world. In fact, the State itself, in the sense of a political association with a ra tional, written constitution, rationally ordained law, anvd an administration bound to rational rules or laws, i6'
Introduction
administered by trained officials, is known, in this combination of characteristics, only in the Occident, despite all other approaches to it.
^And the same is true of the most fateful force in our nioaern life, capitalism. The impulse to arqnisitinn, , pursuit_of gain, of money, of the, grpatpst pngsjhlp amount "f money^ has in itself nothing to do with capitalismj^his impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dis- honest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, ^ and beggars. One may say that it has been common to ■^' all sorts and conditions of men at all times f^pH \n nÜ '^^ cniintries nf the f^arth, whprf^vpr thf^ nKj^Ptlye possi- bility ^f it jp or has b^^n givfn It^should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naive id^a oTcäpitalism must be given up once and for all. Un- limited jgreed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalismj ?inH i« still less its spirit- Papitplism mny even be identical with thp r^Qt-ramtj nr at |pQgt ^ rM\^^?\
tempering^ of this irrational impulse. \But capitalism i^ /^ identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed\ profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic eaterprisei-For it must be so: in a wholly capitalistic order of society, an individual capitalistic enterprise which did not take advantage of its opportunities for profit-making would be doomed to extinction. ( Let us now define our terms sornewhat_more care.- fully than is generally done. We will define a capitalistic economic flrtinn~äR~nnp"whirh rests on the expectation of profit by the utilization of opportunities for exchange, that is on (formally) peaceful chances of profit. Acqui- sition by force (formally and actually) follows its own
17
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
particular laws, and it is not expedient, however little one can forbid this, to place it in the same category with action which is, in the last analysis, oriented to profits from exchange. ^ Where capitalistic acquisition is rationally pursued, the corresponding action is adjusted to calculations in terms of capital. This means that the action is adapted to a systematic utilization of goods or personal services as means of acquisition in such a way that, at the close of a business period, the balance of the enterprise in money assets (or, in the case of a continuous enterprise, the periodically estimated money value of assets) exceeds the capital, i.e. the estimated value of the material "^eans of production used for acquisition in exchange. It makes no difference whether it involves a quantity of goods entrusted in natura to a travelling merchant, the proceeds of which may consist in other goods in natura acquired by trade, or whether it involves a manufacturing enterprise, the assets of which consist of buildings, machinery, cash, raw materials, partly and wholly manufactured goods, which are balanced against liabilities. The important fact is always that a calculation of capital in terms of money is made, whether by modern book-keeping methods or in any other way, however primitive and crude. Everything is done in terms of balances : at the beginning of the enterprise an initial balance, before every individual decision a calculation to ascertain its probable profit- ableness, and at the end a final balance to ascertain how much profit has been made. For instance, the initial balances of a commenda ^ transaction would determine an agreed money value of the assets put into i8
Introduction
it (so far as they were not in money form already), and a final balance would form the estimate on which to base the distribution of profit and loss at the end. So far as the transactions are rational, calculation under- lies every smgle action oi the partners. 1 hat a really accurate calculation or estimate may not exist, that the procedure is pure guess-work, or simply traditional and conventional, happens even to-day in every form of capitalistic enterprise where the circumstances do not demand strict accuracy. But these are points affecting only the degree of rationality of capitalistic acquisition.
For the purpose of this conception all that matters is that an actual adaptation of economic action to a com- parison of money income with money expenses takes place, no matter how primitive the form. Now in this sense capitalism^ and capitalistic enterprises, even with a considerable rationalization of capitalistic calcu- lation, have existed in all civilized countries of the earth, so far as economic documents permit us to judge. In China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Mediterranean antiquity, and the Middle Ages, as well as in modem times. These were not merely isolated ventures, but economic enterprises which were entirely dependent on the continual renewal of capitalistic undertakings, and even continuous operations. However, trade espe- cially was for a long time not continuous like our own, but consisted essentially in a series of individual undertakings. Only gradually did the activities of even the large merchants acquire an inner cohesion (with branch organizations, etc.). In any case, the capitalistic enterprise and the capitalistic entrepreneur, not only
19
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
as occasional but as regular entrepreneurs, are very old and were very widespread.
Now, however, the Occident has developed capital- ism both to a quantitative extent, and (carrying this quantitative development) in types, forms, and direc- tions which have never existed elsewhere. All over the world there have been merchants, wholesale and retail, local and engaged in foreign trade. Loans of all kinds have been made, and there have been banks with the most various functions, at least comparable to ours of, say, the sixteenth century. Sea loans,* commenda^ and transactions and associations similar to the Kom- manditgesellschaft y^ have all been widespread, even as continuous businesses. Whenever money finances of public bodies have existed, money- lenders have ap- peared, as in Babylon, Hellas, India, China, Rome. They have financed wars and piracy, contracts and building operations of all sorts. In overseas policy they have functioned as colonial entrepreneurs, as planters with slaves, or directly or indirectly forced labour, and have farmed domains, offices, and, above all, taxes. They have financed party leaders in elections and condottieri in civil wars. And, finally, they have been speculators in chances for pecuniary gain of all kinds. This kind of entrepreneur, the capitalistic adventurer, has existed everywhere. Withjthejexception of trade and credit and banking transactions, their activities' were predominantly of an irrational and speculative character, or directed to acquisition by force, above all the acquisition of booty, whether directly in war or in the form of continuous fiscal booty by exploitation of subjects.
20
Introduction
The capitalism of promoters, large-scale speculators, concession hunters, and much modern financial capital- ism even in peace time, but, above all, the capitalism especially concerned with exploiting wars, bears this stamp even in modern Western countries, and some, / but only some, parts of large-scale international trade ^ ^ are closely related to it, to-day as alwa^» '■c^/ö/w j^
But in modem times the Occident^nas developed, in U> addition to this, a very different form of capitalism /-/e^'^ which has appeared nowhere else : the rational capital- istic organization of (formally) free labour. Only suggestions of it are found elsewhere. Even the organ- ization of unfree labour reached a considerable degree of rationality only on plantations and to a very limited extent in the Ergasteria of antiquity. In the manors, manorial workshops, and domestic industries on estates with serf labour it was probably somewhat less devel- oped. Even real domestic industries with free labour have definitely been proved to have existed in only a few isolated cases outside the Occident. The frequent use of day labourers led in a very few cases — especially State monopolies, which are, however, very different from modern industrial organization — to manufacturing organ- izations, but never to a rational organization of apprentice- ship in the handicrafts like that of our Middle Ages.
^Rational industrial organization, attuned to a regular market7^nd neither to political nor irrationally specu- lative opportunities for profit, is not, however, the only peculiarity of Western capitalism. The modern rational organization of the capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without two other important factors in its development: tJie separation of business from ^'^
21
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
the household, which completely dominates modem economic life, and closely connected with it, rational book-keeping. A spatial separation of places of work from those of residence exists elsewhere, as in the Oriental bazaar and in the ergasteria of other cultures. The development of capitalistic associations with their own accounts is also found in the Far East, the Near East, and in antiquity. But compared to the modern independence of business enterprises, those are only small beginnings. The reason for this was particularly that the indispensable requisites for this independence, our rational business book-keeping and our legal separation of corporate from personal property, were entirely lacking, or had only begun to develop.^ The tendency everywhere else was for acquisitive enterprises to arise as parts of a royal or manorial household (of the oikos), which is, as Rodbertus has perceived, with all its superficial similarity, a fundamentally different, even opposite, development.
However, all these peculiarities of Western capitalism have derived their significance in the last analysis only from their association with the capitalistic organization of labour. Even what is generally called commercializa- tion, the development of negotiable securities and the rationalization of speculation, the exchanges, etc., is connected with it. For without the rational capitalistic organization of labour,, all this, so far as it was possible at all, would have nothing like the same significance, above all for the social structure and all the specific problems of the modem Occident connected with it. Exact calculation — the basis of everything else — is only possible on a basis of free labour.'
22
Introduction
And just as, or rather because, the world has known no rational organization of labour outside the modern Occident, it has known no rational socialism. Of course, there has been civic economy, a civic food-supply policy, mercantilism and welfare policies of princes, rationing, regulation of economic life, protectionism, and laissez-faire theories (as in China). The world has also known socialistic and communistic experiments of various sorts : family, religious, or military communism, State socialism (in Egypt), monopolistic cartels, and consumers' organizations. But although there have everywhere been civic market privileges, companies, guilds, and all sorts of legal differences between town and country, the concept of the citizen has not existed outside the Occident, and that of the bourgeoisie outside the modern Occident. Similarly, the proletariat as a class could not exist, because there was no rational organization of free labour under regular discipline. Qlass_struggles between creditor and debtor classes; landowners and the landless, serfs, or tenants; trading interests and consumers or landlords, have existed everywhere in various combinations. But even the Western mediaeval struggles between putters-out and their workers exist elsewhere only in beginnings. The modern conflict of the large-scale industrial entre- preneur and free-wage labourers was entirely lacking. And thus there could be no such problems as those of socialism.
Hence in a universal history of culture the central problem for us is not, in the last analysis, even from a purely economic view-point, the development of capital- istic activity as such, differing in different cultures only
23
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
in form: the adventurer type, or capitalism in trade, war, politics, or administration as sources of gain. It is
(rather the origin of this sober bourgeois capitalism with its rational organization of free labour. Or in terms of /cultural history, the problem is that of the origin of
/ the Western bourgeois class and of its peculiarities, a
\ problem which is certainly closely connected with that of the origin of the capitalistic organization of labour, but is not quite the same thing. For the bourgeois as a class existed prior to the development of the peculiar modern form of capitalism, though, it is true, only in the Western hemisphere.
Now the peculiar modern Western form of capitalism has been, at first sight, strongly influenced by the development of technical possibilities. Its rationality is to-day essentially dependent on the calculability of the most important technical factors. But this means fundamentally that it is dependent on the peculiarities of modern science, especially the natural sciences based on mathematics and exact and rational experiment. On the other hand, the development of these sciences and of the technique resting upon them now receives important stimulation from these capitalistic interests in its practical economic application. It is true that the origin of Western science cannot be attributed to such interests. Calculation, even with decimals, and algebra have been carried on in India, where the decimal
/ system was invented. But it was only made use of by developing capitalism in the West, while in India it
, led to no modern arithmetic or book-keeping. Neither was the origin of mathematics and mechanics deter- mined by capitalistic interests. But the technical utilizsL' )f 24 —
Introduction
tion of scientific knowledge, so important for the living conditions of the mass of people, was certainly encour- I aged by economic considerations, which were extremely ' favourable to it in the Occident. Bui this encourage- ment was derived from the peculiarities of the social structure of the Occident. We must hence ask, from what parts of that structure was it derived, since not all of them have been of equal importance ?
Among those of undoubted importance are the rational structures of law and of administration. Fori- modern rational capitalism has need, not only of the technical means of production, but of a calculable legal system and of administration in terms of formal rules. Without it adventurous and speculative trading capital- ism and all sorts of politically determined capitalisms are possible, but no rational enterprise under individual initiative, with fixed capital and certainty of calculations. Such a legal system and such administration have been available for economic activity in a comparative state of legal and formalistic perfection only in the Occident. We must hence inquire where that law came from. Among other circumstances, capitalistic interests häve| in turn undoubtedly also helped, but by no means alone | nor even principally, to prepare the way for the pre- dominance in law and administration of a class of jurists specially trained in rational law. But these interests did not themselves create that law. Quite different forces were at work in this development. And why did not the capitalistic interests do the same in China or India? Why- did not the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development there enter upon that path , of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident? y
25'
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
For in all the above cases it is a question of the specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture. Now by this term very different things may be under- stood, as the following discussion will repeatedly show. There is, for example, rationalization' of mystical contemplation, that is of an attitude which, viewed from other departments of life, is specifically irrational, just as much as there are rationalizations of economic life, of technique, of scientific research, of military training, of law and administration. Furthermore, each one of these fields may be rationalized in terms of very different ultimate values and ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well be irrational from another. Hence rationalizations of the most varied character have existed in various departments of life and in all areas of culture. To characterize their differences from the view-point of cultural history it is necessary to know what departments are rationalized, and in what direction. It is hence our first concern to work out and to explain genetically the special peculiarity of Occidental rationalism, and within this field that of the modern Occidental form. Every such attempt at explanation must, recognizing the funda- mental importance of the economic factor, above all take account of the economic conditions. But at the same time the opposite correlation must not be left out of consideration. For though the development of economic rationalism is partly dependent on rational technique and law, it is at the same time determined by the ability and disposition of men to adopt certain types of practical rational condudt. When these types have been obstructed by spiritual obstacles, the 26
Introduction
development of rational economic conduct has also met serious inner resistance. The magical and religious forces, and the ethical ideas of duty based upon them, have in the past always been among the most important formative influences on conduct. In the studies collected here we shall be concerned with these forces.^
Two older essays have been placed at the beginning whicE attempt, at one important point, to approach the side of the problem which is generally most difficult to grasp: the influence of certain religious ideas on the development of aneconomic spirit ,_or the eitte of an economic_system. In this case we are dealing with the connection of the spirit of modern economic life with the rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism. Thus we treat here only one side of the causal chain. The later studies on the Economic Ethics of the World Religions attempt, in the form of a survey of the relations of the most important religions to economic life and to the social stratification of their environment, to follow out both causal relationships, so far as it is necessary in order to find points of comparison with the Occidental development. For only in this way is it possible to attempt a causal evaluation of those elements of the economic ethics of the Western religions which differ- entiate them from others, with a hope of attaining even a tolerable degree of approximation. Hence these ' studies do not claim to be complete analyses of cultures, however brief. On the contrary, in every culture they quite deliberately emphasize the elements in which it differs from Western civilization. They are, hence, definitely oriented to the problems which seem im- portant for the understanding of Western culture from
27
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
this view-point. With our object in view, any other procedure did not seem possible. But to avoid mis- understanding we must here lay special emphasis on the limitation of our purpose.
In another respect the uninitiated at least must be warned against exaggerating the importance of these investigations. The Sinologist, the Indologist, the Semitist, or the Egyptologist, will of course find no. facts unknown to him. We only hope that he will find nothing definitely wrong in points that are essential. How far it has been possible to come as near this ideal as a non-specialist is able to do, the author cannot know. It is quite evident that anyone who is forced to rely on translations, and furthermore on the use and evaluation of monumental, documentary, or literary sources, has to rely himself on a specialist literature which is often highly controversial, and the merits of which he is unable to judge accurately. Such a writer must make modest claims for the value of his work. All the more so since the number of available translations of relal sources (that is, inscriptions and documents) is, especially for China, still very small in comparison with what exists and is important. From all this follows the definitely provisional character of these studies, and especially of the parts dealing with Asia.^ Only the specialist is entitled to a final judgment. And, naturally, it is only because expert studies with this special purpose and from this particular view-point have not hitherto been made, that the present ones have been written at all. They are destined to be superseded in a much more important sense than this can be said, as it can be, of all scientific work. But however objection- 28
Introduction
able it may be, such trespassing on other special fields cannot be avoided in comparative work. But one must take the consequences by resigning oneself to con- siderable doubts regarding the degree of one's success.
Fashion and the zeal of the literati would have us think that the specialist can to-day be spared, or degraded to a position subordinate to that of the seer. Almost all sciences owe something to dilettantes, often very valuable view-points. But dilettantism as a leading principle would be the end of science. He who yearns for seeing should go to the cinema, though it will be offered to him copiously to-day in literary form in the present field of investigation also.^® Nothing is farther from the intent of these thoroughly serious studies than such an attitude. And, I might add, whoever wants a sermon should go to a conventicle. The question of the ,^ elative value of the cultures which are compared herg/
not receive a single word. It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appall him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentaries to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains, unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other cases the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the ob'ect, which merits the same judgment as a similar lack of perspective toward men.
Some justification is needed for the fact that ethno- graphical material has not been utilized to anything like the extent which the value of its contributions naturally demands in any really thorough investigation,
29
•xelati ywillj
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
especially of Asiatic religions. This limitation has not only been imposed because human powers of work are restricted. This omission has also seemed to be per- missible because we are here necessarily dealing with the religious ethics of the classes which were the culture- bearers of their respective countries. We are concerned with the influence which their conduct has had. Now it is quite true that this can only be completely known in all its details when the facts from ethnography and folk-lore have been compared with it. Hence we must expressly admit and emphasize that this is a gap to which the ethnographer will legitimately object. I hope to contribute something to the closing of this gap in a systematic study of the Sociology of Religion .^^ But such an undertaking would have transcended the limits of this investigation with its closely circumscribed purpose. It has been necessary to be content with bringing out the points of comparison with our Occi- dental religions as well as possible.
Finally, we may make a reference to the anthropo- logical side of the problem. When we find again and again that, even in departments of life apparently mutually independent, certain types of rationalization have developed in the Occident, and only there, it would be natural to suspect that the most important reason lay in differences of heredity. The author admits that he is inclined to think the importance of biological heredity very great. But in spite of the notable achieve- ments of anthropological research, I see up to the present no way of exactly or even approximately measuring either the extent or, above all, the form of its influence on the development investigated here. 30
Introduction
It must be one of the tasks of sociological and historical investigation first to analyse all the influences and causal relationships which can satisfactorily be ex- plained in terms of reactions to environmental condi- tions. Only then, and when comparative racial neurology and psychology shall have progressed beyond their present and in many ways very promising beginnings, can we hope for even the probability of a satisfactory answer to that problem .^^ In the mean- time that condition seems to me not to exist, and an appeal to heredity would therefore involve a premature renunciation of the possibility of knowledge attainable now, and would shift the problem to factors (at present) still unknown.
31
PART I THE PROBLEM
^>J CHAPTERI
^ RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION!
A GLANCE at the occupational statistics of any country bf mixed religious composition brings to light with remarkable frequency^ a situation which has several times provoked discussion in the Catholic press and literature,^ and in Catholic congresses in Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modem enterprises, are over- whelmingly Protestant."* This is true not only in cases where the difference in religion coincides with one of nationality, and thus of cultural development, as in Eastern Germany between Germans and Poles. The same thing is shown in the figures of religious affiliation almost wherever capitalism, at the time of its great expansion, has had a free hand to alter the social distribution of the population in accordance with its needs, and to determine its occupational structure. The more freedom it has had, the more clearly is the effect shown. It is true that the greater relative par- ticipation of Protestants in the ownership of capital,^ in management, and the upper ranks of labour in great modem industrial and commercial enterprises,® may in part he explained in terms of historical circumstances' which extend far back into the past, and in which religious affiliation is not a cause of the economicV conditions, but to a certain extent appears to be a result/
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capita^ m
^ of them. Participation in the above economic funr in ^\ usually involves some previous ownership of c.'- m and generally an expensive education ; often both. T. nesv. are to-day largely dependent on the possession of in- herited wealth, or at least on a certain degree of material well-being. A number of those sections of the old Empire which were most highly developed economic- ally and most favoured by natural resources and situation, in particular a majority of the wealthy towns, went over to Protestantism in the sixteenth century. The results of that circumstance favour the Protestants even to-day in their struggle for economic existence. There arises thus the historical question : why were the districts of highest economic development at the same tnpe particulprly favniirablp tn a rpvf>]i^finn in the
Church ? The answer is by no means so simple as one might think.
The emancipation from economic traditionalism
appears, no doubt, to be a factor which would greatly
gfrfpg^^^" ^hp tpnHpncy to doubt the sanctity ofthe
religious traditinn, as of all traditional authoritiesQBut
it is necessary to note, what has often been forgotten,
Ahat the Reformation meant not the elimination of
j the Churches control over everyday life, but ratherthe
-J substitution of a new form of control for the previous
' one. It meant the repudiation of a control which was
Wery lax, at that time scarcely perceptible in practice,
/ and hardly more than formal, in favour of a regulation
^\ of the whole of conduct which, penetrating to all
>^ departments of private and public life, was infinitely
y/\ burdensome and earnestly enforced]) The rule of the
I Catholic Church, "punishing the heretic, but indulgent
^36
Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification
^ the sinner", as it was in the past even more than 0-day, is now tolerated by peoples of thoroughly modem economic character, and was borne by the richest and economically most advanced peoples on earth at about the turn of the fifteenth century., The^rule of Calvinism, on the other hand, as it was enforced in the sixteenth century in Geneva and in Scotland, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in large parts of the Netherlands, in the seventeenth in New England, and for a time in England itself, wouldbe^or u&_the most absolutely unbearable form of eccfcsiastical con- trol of the individual which could possibly exist. That was^xactly what largeliumberi~oF the old commercial aristocracy of those times, in Geneva as well as in Holland and England, felt about it. And what the reformers complained of in those areas of high eco- nomic development was not too much supervision of life on the part of the Church, but too little fNow how does it happen that at that time those countries which were most advanced economically, and within them the rising bourgeois middle classes, not only failed to resist this imexampled tyranny of Puritanism, but even developed a heroism in its defence.'' For bourgeois classes as such have seldom before and never since displayed heroism. It was "the last of our heroisms", as Carlyle, not without reason, has said.
But further, and especially important: it may be, as has been claimed, that the greater partiripatinn _q£ Protestants injhe^positions of ownership andLmanag&r ment in modern economic^jife^may to-day be under- stood, in part at least, simply as a^e^lt of thegreater matemTwealth^J^yllE^fc inherited,. But there are
37/
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
certain other phenomena which cannot be explained in the same way. Thus, to mention only a few facts: there is a great difference discoverable in Baden, in Bavaria, in Hungary,, in the type of higher education which Catholic parents, as opposed to Protestant, give their children. That the percentage of Catholics among the students and graduates of higher educational institutions in general lags behind their proportion of the total population,^ .may, to be sure, be largely explicable in terms o^ inherited differences of wealth. But among the Catholic graduates themselves the per- centage of those graduating from the institutions pre- paring, in particular, for technical studies and industrial and commercial occupations, but in general from those preparing for middle-class business life, lags still farther behind the percentage of Protestants.^ On the other hand. Catholics prefer the sort of training which the humanistic Gymnasium affords. That is a circum- stance to which the above explanation does not apply, but which, on the contrary, is one reason why so few Catholics are engaged in capitalistic enterprise.
Even more striking is a fact which partly explains the smaller proportion of Catholics among the skilled labourers of modern industry. It is well known that- the factory has taken its skilled labour to a large extent from young men in the handicrafts ; but this is much more true of Protestant than of Catholic journeymen. Among journeymen, in other words, the Catholics show a stronger propensity to remain in their crafts, that is they more often become master craftsmen, whereas the Protestants are attracted to a larger extent into the factories in order to fill the upper ranjcs of
38
Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification
skilled labour and administrative positions.^® The explanation of these cases is undoubtedly that the mental and spiritual peculiarities acquired from the environment, here the type of education favoured by the religious atmosphefe^Tlhe^ome community and the_girehtal home, have determined the choice of occupation, and through i^he protessional career.
The smaller participation of Catholics in the modern business life of Germany is all the more striking because it runs counter to a tendency which has been observed at all times ^^ including the present. National or religious minorities which are in a position of sub- ordination to a group of rulers are likely, through their voluntary or involuntary exclusion from positions of political influence, to be driven with peculiar force into economic activity. Their ablest members seek to satisfy the desire for recognition of their abilities in this field, since there is no opportunity in the service of the 'State. This has undoubtedly been true of the Poles in Russia and Eastern Prussia, who have without question been undergoing a more rapid economic advance than in Galicia, where they have been in the ascendant. It has in earlier times been true of the Huguenots in France under Louis XIV, the Nonconformists and Quakers in England, and, last but not least, the Jew for two thousand years. But the Catholics in Germany have shown no striking evidence of such a result of their position. In the past they have, unlike the Protestants, undergone no particularly prominent economic devel- opment in the times when they were persecuted or only tolerated, either in Holland or in England. On the other hand, it is a fact that the Protestants (especi-
39
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
ally certain branches of the movement to be fully discussed later) both as ruling classes and sis ruled, both as majority and as minority, have shown a spc^idi
<.^^tendency to develop economic rationalism v^hich cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics either in the one situation or in the other .^^ Thus the principal explanation of this difference must be sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their religious beliefs, and not only in their temporary external
xl j historico-political situations.^*
It will be our task to investigate these religions with a view to finding out what peculiarities they have or have had which might have resulted in the behaviour we have described. On superficial analysis, and on the basis of certain current impressions, one might be tempted to express the diflference by saying that the greater other- worldliness of Catholicism, the ascetic character of its highest ideals, must have brought up its adherents to a greater indifference toward the good things of this world. Such an explanation fits the popular tendency in the judgment of both religions. On the Protestant side it is used as a basis of criticism of those (real or imagined) ascetic ideals of the Catholic way of life, while the Catholics answer with the accusation that materialism results from the seculariza- tion of all ideals through Protestantism. One recent writer has attempted to formulate the difference of their attitudes toward economic life in the following manner: "The Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the 40
Religions Affiliation and Social Stratification
chance of gaining honour and riches. The proverb says jokingly, ^either eat well or sleep wellLJn the present case the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep undisturbed.**^^ — ►
In fact, this desire to eat,^^! may_J]>e-^ correct though incomplete characterization of the motives of many nominal Protestants in Germany at the present time.. But things were very different in the past: the English, Dutch, and American Puritans were charac- terized by the exact opposite of the joy of living, a fact which is indeed, as we shall see, most im- portant for our present study. Moreover, the French Protestants, among others, long retained, and retain to a certain extent up to the present, the characteristics which were impressed upon the Calvinistic Churches everywhere, especially under the cros« in the time of the religious struggles. Nevertheless (or was it, perhaps, as we shall ask later, precisely on that account?) it is well known th^t these characteristics were one of the most important factors in the industrial and capital- istic development of France, and on the small scale permitted them by their persecution remained so. If we may call this seriousness and the strong predomi- nance of religious interests in the whole conduct of life otherworldliness, then the French Calvinists were and still are at least as otherworldly as, for instance, the North German Catholics, to whom their Catholicism is undoubtedly as vital a matter as religion is to any other people in the world. Both differ from the predominant religious trends in their respective countries in much the same way. The Catholics of France are, in their lower ranks, greatly interested in the enjoyment of life,
41
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
in the upper directly hostile to religion. Similarly, the | Protestants of Germany are to-day absorbed in worldly economic lif^, and their upper ranks are most indifferent to religion. ^^j)Hardly anything shows so clearly as this parallel that, with such vague ideas as that of the alleged other\vorldliness of Catholicism, and the alleged materialistic joy of living of Protestantism, and others like them, nothing can be accomplished for our pur- pose. In such general terms the distinction does not even adequately fit the facts of to-day, and certainly not of the past. If, however, one wishes to make use of it at all, several other observations present themselves at once which, combined with the above remarks, suggest that the supposed conflict between other- worldliness, asceticism, and ecclesiastical piety on the one side, and participation in capitalistic acquisition on the other, might actually turn out to be an intimate relationship.
As a matter of fact it is surely remarkable, to begin with quite a superficial observation, how large is the number of representatives ojfjhejnost^jpiritual forms pf Christian _pifiJty-whQ Jiaye s^rung^rom comme^jal jcircles^. In particular, very many of the most zealous adherents of Pietism are of this origin. It might be explained as a sort of reaction against mammonism on the part of sensitive natures not adapted to commercial life, and, as in the case of Francis of Assisi. many Pietists have themselves interpreted the process of their conversion in these terms. Similarly, the remark- able circumstance that so many of the greatest capital- istic entrepreneurs — down to Cecil Rhodes — have come from clergymen's families might be explained as a reaction against their ascetic upbringing. But this 42
Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification
form of explanation fails where an extraordinary capitalistic business sense is combined in the same persons and groups with the most intensive forms of a piety which penetrates and dominates their whole lives. Such cases are not isolated, but these traits are charac- teristic of many of the most important Churches and sects in the history of Protestantism. Especially Calvinism, wherever it has appeared,^® has shown ;:his combination. However little, in the time of the expansion of the Reformation, it (or any other Protest- ant belief) was bound up with any particular social class, it is characteristic and in a certain sense typical that in French Huguenot Churches monks and business men (merchants, craftsmen) were particularly numer- ous among the proselytes, especially at the time of the persecution.^'^ Even the Spaniards knew that heresy (i.e. the Calvinism of the Dutch) promoted trade, and this coincides with the opinions which Sir William Petty expressed in his discussion of the reasons for the capitalistic development of the Netherlands. Gothein ^^ rightly calls the Calvinistic diaspora the seed-bed of capitalistic economy .^^ Even in this case one might'' consider the decisive factor to be the superiority of the French and Dutch economic cultures from which these communities sprang, or perhaps the immense influence of exile in the breakdown of traditional relationships .^^^ But in France the situation was, as we know from Colbert's struggles, the same even in the seventeenth century. Even Austria, not to speak of other countries, directly imported Protestant craftsmen. I But not all the Protestant denominations seem to have had an equally strong influence in this direction. /
43
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
That of Calvinism, even in Germany, was among the strongest, it seems, and the reformed faith ^^ more than the others seems to have promoted the develop- ment of the spirit of capitalism, in the Wupperthal as well as elsewhere. Much more so than Lutheranism, as comparison both in general and in particular instances, especially in the Wupperthal, seems to prove .22 por Scotland, Buckle, and among English poets, Keats, have emphasized these same relation- ships.^^ Even more striking, as it is only necessary to mention, is the connection of a religious way of life with the most intensive development of business acumen among those sects whose otherworldliness is as proverbial as their wealth, especially the Quakers and the Mennonites. The part which the former have played in England and North America fell to the latter in Germany and the Netherlands. That in East Prussia Frederick William I tolerated the Mennonites as in- dispensable to industry, in spite of their absolute refusal to perform military service, is only one of the numerous well-known cases which illustrates the fact, though, considering the character of that monarch, it is one of the most striking. Finally, that this com- bination of intense piety with just as strong a develop- ment of business acumen, was also characteristic of the Pietists, is common knowledge .^^
It is only necessary to think of the Rhine country and of Calw. In this purely introductory discussion it is unnecessary to pile up more examples. For these few already all show one thing:, 'that the spirit of hard work, of progress, or whatever else it may be called, the awakening of which one is inclined to ascribe to
44
Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification
Protestantism, must not be understood, as there is a tendency to do, as joy of living nor in any other sense < as connected with the EnHghtenment. The_old_Protest-! antismof^Luther, Calvin, Knox, Voet, had _Brecious ligipjn^ with what fo-day is called progress. To whole agpprfgnf nnndern life which the most extreme re- ligionist^ would not wish to suppress to-day^ it was directly hostile. If any innerrelationship between certain expressions of the old Protestant spirit and modern capitalistic culture is to be found, we must attempt to find it, for better or worse, not in its alleged more or less materialistic or at least anti-ascetic joy of living. but in its purely religious characteristics. Montesquieu says {Esprit des Lois, Book XX, chap. 7) of the English that they "had progressed the farthest of all peoples of the world in three important things: in piety, in commerce, and in freedom". Is it not possible »that their commercial superiority and their adaptation to free political institutions are connected in someway with that record of piety which Montesquieu ascribes to them ?
A large number of possible relationships, vaguely perceived, occur to us when we put the question in this way. It will now be our task to formulate what •occurs to us confusedly as clearly as is possible, con- •sidering the inexhaustible diversity to be found in all historical material. But in order to do this it is necessary' to leave behind the vague and general concepts with which we have dealt up to this point, and attempt to penetrate into the peculiar characteristics of and the differences between those great worlds of religious thought which have existed historically in the various branches of Christianity.
45
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Before we can proceed to that, however, a few remarks are necessary, first on the pecuHarities of the phenomenon of which we are seeking an historical explanation, then concerning the sense in which such an explanation is possible at all within 'the limits of these investigations.
46
CHAPTER II
THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
/ In the title of this study is used the somewhat pre- tentious phrase, the spirit of capitaHsm. ^vVhat is to be understood by it? The attempt to give, anything Hke a definition of it brings out certain difficulties which are in the very nature of this type of investigation.
If any object can be found to which this term can be applied with any understandable meaning, it can only be an historical individual, i.e. a complex of elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their cultural significance.
Such an historical concept, however, since it refers in its content to a phenomenon significant for its unique individuality, cannot be defined according to the formula genus proximum, differentia specifica, but it must be gradually put together out of the individual parts which are taken from historical reality to make it up. Thus the final and defimitive concept cannot stand at the beginning of the investigation, but must come at the end. We must, in other words, work out in the course of the discussion, as its most important result, the best conceptual formulation of what we here under- stand by the spirit of capitalism, that is the best from the point of view which interests us here. This point of view (the one of which we shall speak later) is, further, by no means the only possible one from which the historical phenomena we are investigating can be analysed. Other standpoints would, for this as for every
47
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
historical phenomenon, yield other characteristics as the essential ones. The result is that it is by no means , necessary to understand by the spirit of capitalism only what it will come to mean to us for the purposes of our analysis. This is a necessary result of the nature of historical com'::epts which attempt for their methodo- logical purposves not to grasp historical reality in abstract general formulae, but in concrete genetic sets of relations whicli are inevitably of a specifically unique and individual character.^
Thus, if we try to determine the object, the analysis and historical explanation of which we are attempting, it cannot be in the form of a conceptual definition, but at least in the beginning only^ provisional description of what is here meant by the spirit of capitalism. Such a description is, however, indispensable in order clearly to understand the object of the investigation. For this purpose we turn to a d'ocument of that s^irit^which contains__what we are looking for in almost classical purity, and at the^ämeTir/n^^Käs" theliH^^tag of being free from all direct relationship to religion, being thus, for our purposesyfree of pf^cönceptions7~^
I "Remember, that time is money. He that can earn
' ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or
/ sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but
I sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to
\ reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or
\ rather thrown away, five shillings besides.
"Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me the interest, or so much as I can n:\ake of it during that
48
The Spirit of Capitalism
time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it. "Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating
nature. Money can beget rrioney, and its offspring can
beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding-sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might/ have produced, even scores of pounds."
"Remember this saying. The good paymaster is lord^JL\ ^lanother mail's purse. He that is known to pay punctu- ally and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctu- ality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a_disappointment shut up youtiriend!s^ | purse for ever.
"The most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard-table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump.
"It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you |
49 ~
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
owe ; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.
"Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience."
"For six pounds a year you may have the use of one
hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known
prudence and honesty.
"He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above
S six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one
J hundred pounds.
4 "He that wastes idly a groat's worth of his time
?r per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of
^ using one hundred pounds each day.
"^ "He that idly loses five shillings' worth of time,
^ loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five
J shillings into the sea. "He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money." ^
It is Benjamin Ferdinand who preaches to us in these sentences, the same which Ferdinand Kiirnberger
SO
The Spirit of Capitalism
satirizes in his clever and malicious Picture of American Culture^ as the supposed confession of faith of the Yankee. That it is the spirit of capitaHsm which here speaks in characteristic fashion, no one will doubt, however little we may wish to claim that everything which could be understood as pertaining to that spirit is contained in it. Let us pause a moment to consider this passage, the philosophy of which Kürn- berger sums up in the words, "They make tallow out of cattle and money out of men". The peculiarity of this philosophy of.^l^variCe appears to be the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of _his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself. Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one*s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of its rules is treated not äs foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty. That is the essence of the matter. It is not mere business astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos. This is the quality which interests us.
When Jacob Fugger, in speaking to a business associate who had retired and who wanted to persuade him to do the same, since he had made enough money and should let others have a chance, rejected that as pusillanimity and answered that "he (Fugger) thought otherwise, he wanted to make money as long as he could ",^ the spirit of his statement is evidently quite different from that of Franklin. What in the former case was an expression of commercial daring and a personal inclination morally neutral,^ in the latter takes on the character of anr ethically coloured maxim
51
The 'Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
for the conduct of life. The concept spirit of capitaHsm is here used in this specific sense,^ it is the spirit of modern capitaHsm. For that we are here deahng only with Western European and American capitalism is obvious from the way in which the problem was stated. Capitalism existed in China, India, Babylon, in the classic world, and in the Middle Ages. But in all these cases, as we shall see, this particular ethos was lacking. Now, all Franklin's moral attitudes are coloured with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues. A logical deduction from this would be that where, for instance, the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose, that would suffice, and an unnecessary surplus of this virtue would evidently appear to Franklin's eyes as unproductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the story in his autobiography of his conversion to those virtues,' or the discussion of the value of a strict maintenance of the appearance of modesty, the assidu- ous belittlement of one's own deserts in order to gain general recognition later ,^ confirms this impression. According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are only in so far virtues as they are actuallv useful to the individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance is always gnfpjfiVnf when it accomplishes ^e end in
view. It ij, a rnnrlnrinn tt liii 1i ij. iiiHl'ilnhlH far «Irirt
Utilitarianism. The impression of many Oemaans that the virtues professed by Americanism are pureJ^ypo- crisy seems to have been confirmed by this striking case. But in fact the matter is not by any means so simple. Benjamin Franklin's own character, as it appears in 52
The Spirit of Capitalism
the really unusual candidness of his autobiography, belies that suspicion. The circumstance that he ascribes his recognition of the utility of virtue to a divine revelation which was intended to lead him in the path of righteousness, shows that something more than mere garnishing for purely egocentric motives is involved.
vjn fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudasmonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely ^^>t^ as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irra- tional.^Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. "T)conomic acquisition is no longer subordinated to^:^,;^ man as the means for the satisfaction of his material f;i needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus ask, why should ''money be made out of men", Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colourless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth : '*Seest thou a man diligent in his busjiiess.'* He shall stand before kings" (Prov. xxii. 29). |The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long
53
r.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
; ,as it is done legally, the result and the expression of ( virtu^andproficiencYJn a calling J and this virtue and proficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin's ethic, as expressed in the passages we have quoted, as well as in all his works without exception .^^
And in truth this peculiar idea, so familiar to us to-day, but in reality so little a matter of course, of one's duty in a calling, is what is most characteristic of the[ßocial ethic of capitalistic culture/ and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his professional^^ activity, no matter in what it consists, in particular no matter whether it appears on the surface as a utilization of his personal powers, or only of his material possessions (as capital).
Of course, this conception has not appeared only under capitalistic conditions. On the contrary, we shall later trace its origins back to a time previous to the ad- vent of capitalism. Still less, naturally, do we maintain that a conscious acceptance of these ethical maxims on the part of the individuals, entrepreneurs oj labourers, in modern capitalistic enterprises, is a condition of the further existence of present-day capitalisnaJwThe ^ I capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense \ cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capital- istic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long
54
The Spirit of Capitalism
run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevit be eliminated from the economic scene as the woi who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job. — ^
Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest. But here one can easily^ see the limits of the concept of selection as a means of historical explanation^Aln order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated indi- viduals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men.lThisorigin is what really needs explana- tion. Concerning the doctrine of the more naive his- torical materialism, that such ideas originate as a \ reflection or superstructure of economic situations, we \ shall speak more in detail below. At this point it will suffice for our purpose to call attention to the fact that without doubt, in the country of Benjamin Franklin's birth (Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism (in the sense we have attached to it) was present before the capitalistic order. There were complaints of a peculiarly calculating sort of profit-seeking in New England, as distinguished from other parts of America, as early as 1632. It is further undoubted that capitalism remained far less developed in some of the neighbouring colonies, the later Southern States of the United States of
America, in spite of the fact that_,these latter were ' ^^
founded by large capitalists for business motives, while '^ ^ the New England colonies^ereTounded by preachers/ _
SS
^(
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
and seminary graduates with the help of small bour- geois, craftsmen and yoemen, for religious reasons. In this case the causal relation is certainly the reverse of t^at suggested by the materialistic standpointj ^!5ut the origin and history of such ideas is. «lucli more complex than the theorists of the supeßflWfcture suppose. The spirit of capitalism, in the sense in which we are using the term, had to fight its way to supremacy against a whole world of hostile forces. A state of mind such as that expressed in the passages we have quoted from Franklin, and which called forth the applause of a whole people, would both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages ^^ have been proscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as an attitude entirely lacking in self- respect. It is, in fact, still regularly thus looked upon by all those social groups which are least involved in or adapted to modern capitalistic conditions. This is not wholly because the instinct of acquisition was in those times unknown or undeveloped, as has often been said. Nor because the auri sacra fames, the greed for gold, was then, or now, less powerful outside of bourgeois capitalism than within its peculiar sphere, as the illusions of modern romanticists are wont to believe. The difference between the capitalistic and pre- capitalistic spirits is not to be found at this point. The greed of the Chinese Mandarin, the old Roman aristo- crat, or the modern peasant, can stand up to any comparison. And the auri sacra fames of a Neapolitan cab-driver or barcaiuolo, and certainly of Asiatic representatives of similar trades, as well as of the craftsmen of southern European or Asiatic countries, is, as anyone can find out for himself, very much more
56
The Spirit of Capitalism
intense, and especially more unscrupulous than that of^ay, an Englishman in similar circumstances.^^ tChe universal reign of absolute unscrupulousness in ■ the pursuit of selfish interests by the making of money f , has been a specific characteristic of precisely those countries whose bourgeois-capitalistic development, measured according to Occidental standards, has re- mained backward^ As every employer knows, the lack of coscienziosita 6i the labourers ^^ of such countries, '; for instance Italy as compared with Germany, has been, and to a certain extent still is, one of the principal \. _Qbstai::les,to their capitalistic development. [Capitalism /\ cannot make use of the labour of those who practise the doctrine of undisciplined liberum arbitrium, any more than it can make use of the business man who seems absolutely unscrupulous in his dealings with others, as we can learn from Franklin. Hence the difference does not lie in the degree of development of any impulse to make money QPhe atiri sacra fames is as old as the history of man. Out we shall see that those who submitted to it without reserve as an uncontrolled impulse, such as the Dutch sea-captain who "would go through hell for gain, even though he scorched his sails", were by no means the representatives of that attitude of mind from which the specifically modern capitalistic spirit as a mass phenomenon is derived, and that is what matters. At all periods of history, wherever it was possible, there has been ruthless acquisition, bound to no ethical norms whatever] Like war and piracy, trade has often been unrestrained in its relations with foreigners J^and those outside the group . The double ethic has permit- ^ted here what was forbidden in dealings among brothers. I
57
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Capitalistic acquisition as an adventure has been at home in all types of economic society which have known trade with the use of money and which have offered it opportunities, through commenda^ farming of taxes, State loans, financing of wars, ducal courts and office- holders. Likewise the inner attitude of the adventurer, which laughs at all ethical limitations, has been'^uni- versal. Absolute and conscious ruthlessness in acqui- sition has often stood in the closest connection with the strictest conformity to tradition. Moreover, with the breakdown of tradition and the more or less complete extension of free economic enterprise, even to within the social group, the new thing has not generally been ethically justified and encouraged, but only tolerated as a fact. And this fact has been treated either as ethically indiflferent or as reprehensible, but unfortu- nately unavoidable. This has not only been the normal attitude of all ethical teachings, but, what is more important, also that expressed m the practical action of the average man of pre-capitalistic times, pre-capi tal- is tic in the sense that the rational utilization of capital in a permanent enterprise and the rational capitalistic organization of labour had not yet become dominant forces in the determination of economic activity. Now just this attitude was one of the strongest inner obstacles which the adaptation of men to the conditions of an ordered bourgeois- capitalistic economy has encoun- tered . everywhere .
CThe most important opponent with which the spirit
of capitalism, in the sense of a definite standard of life
claiming ethical sanction, has had to struggle, was that
type of attitude and reaction to new situations which
S8
Vi The Spirit of Capitalism
we may designate as traditionalism.^ In this case also every attempt at a final definition must be held in abeyance. On the other hand, we must try to make the provisional meaning clear by citing a few cases. We will begin from below, with the labourers.
One of the technical means which the modern employer uses in order to secure the greatest possible amount of work from his men is the device of piece- rates Jin agriculture, for instance, the gathering of the harvest is a case where the greatest possible intensity of labour is called for, since, the weather being un- certain, the difference between high profit and heavy loss may depend on the speed with which the harvesting can be done. Hence a system of piece-rates is almost universal in this case. And since the interest of the employer in a speeding- up of harvesting increases with the increase of the results and the intensity of the work, the attempt has again and again been made, by in- creasing the piece-rates of the workmen, thereby giving them an opportunity to earn what is for them a very high wage, to interest them in increasing their own efficiency. But a peculiar difficulty has been met with surprising frequency: raising the piece-rates has often had the result that not more but less has been accom- plished in the same time, because the worker reacted to the increase not by increasing but by decreasing the amount of his work. A man, for instance, who at the rate of i mark per acre mowed 2\ acres per day and earned 2 J marks, when the rate was raised to 1*25 marks per acre mowed, not 3 acres, as he might easily have done, thus earning 3*75 marks, but only 2 acres, so that he could still earn the 2\ marks to
59
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalisn^f-
which he was accustomed . The opportunity of earninvä^ more was less attractive than that of working less. He did not ask: how much can I earn in a day if I do as much work as possible ? but : how much must I work in order to earn the wage, 2\ marks, which. I earned before and which takes care of my traditional needs? This is an example of what is here meant bytradition- jlisin. A man does not "by nature" wish to earn more and more rnoney^ut_simply to live as he is accustomed"* to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. Wherever modern capitalism has begun its
^ork of increasing the productivity of human labour by increasing its intensity, it has encountered the immensely stubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labour. And to-day it encounters it the more, the more backward (from a capitalistic point of view) the labouring forces are with which it has to deal.
Another obvious possibility, to return to our example, since the appeal to the acquisitive instinct through higher wage-rates failed, would have been to try the opposite policy, to force the worker by reduction of his wage-rates to work harder to earn the same amount than he did before. Low wages and high profits seem even to-day to a superficial observer tp stand in corre- lation ; everything which is paid out in wages seems to involve a corresponding reduction of profits. That road capitalism has taken again and again since its beginning. For centuries it was an article of faith, that low wages were productive, i.e. that they increased the material results of labour so that, as Pieter de la Cour, on this point, as we shall see, quite in the spirit of the old
60
The Spirit of Capitalism
Calvinism, said long ago, the people only work because and so long as they are poor.
But the effectiveness of this apparently so efficient method has its limits. ^^ Of course the presence of a surplus population which it can hire cheaply in the labour _market is a necessity for the development of capitalism. But though too large a reserve army may in certain cases favour its quantitative expansion, it checks its qualitative developrhent, especially the transition, to types of enterprise which make more intensive use of labour. Low wages are by no means identical with cheap labour. ^^ From a purely quantita-; tive point of view the efficiency of labour decreases! with a wage which is physiologically insufficient, whichj may in the long run even mean a survival of the unfit. The present-day average Silesian mows, when he exerts himself to the full, little more than two-thirds as much land as the better paid and nourished Pomeranian or Mecklenburger, and the Pole, the further East he comes from, accomplishes progressively less than the German. Low wages fail even from a purely business point of view wherever it is a question of producing goods which require any sort o'f skilled labouf, or the use of expensive machinery which is easily damaged, or in general wherever any great amount of sharp attention or of initiative is required. Here low wages do not pay, and their effect is the opposite of what was intended .(For not only is a developed sense of responsi- bility absolutely indispensable, but in general also an attitude which, at least during working hours, is freed from continual calculations of how the customary wage may be earned with a maximum of comfort and a
"^The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
minimum of exertion. Labour must, on the contrary^ be performed as if it were an absolute end in itselL_A calling. But such an attitude is by no means a product of nature. It cannot be evoked by low wages or high ones alone, but can only be the product of a long and arduous process of education. To-day, capitalism, once in the .saddle, can recruit its labouring force in all A I industrial countries with comparative ease. In the past this was in every case an extremely difficult^roblem.^' d even to-day it could probably not get along~with- out the support of a powerful ally along the way, which, as we shall see below, was at hand at the time of its development.
What is meant can again best be explained by means of an example. The type of backward traditional form of labour is to-day very often exemplified by women workers, especially unmarried ones. An almost universal complaint of employers of girls, for instance German girls, is that they are almost entirely unable and un- willing to give up methods of work inherited or once learned in favour of more efficient ones, to adapt themselves to new methods, to learn and to concentrate their intelligence, or even to use it at all. Explanations of the possibility of making work easier, above all more profitable to themselves, generally encounter a com- plete lack of understanding. Increases of piece-rates are without avail against the stone wall of habit. In general it is otherwise, and that is a point of no little importance from our view-point, only with girls having a specifically religious, especially a Pietistic, background. One often hears, and statistical investigation confirms it,^® that by far the best chances of economic education are found 62
The Spirit of Capitalism
among this group. The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essentiajjFeeling of obligation tojone's job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance. This provides the most favourable foundation for the conception of lalwmrasjLnjendjn itself , as a calling which is necessary to capitalism : the chances of overcoming traditionalism are greatest oiT account of the religious upbringing. This observation of present-day capitalism ^^ in itself suggests that it is worth while to ask how this connec- tion of adaptability to capitalism with religious factors may have come about in the days of the early develop- ment of capitalism. For that they were even then present in much the same form can be inferred from numerous facts. For instance, the dislike and the per- secution which Methodist workmen in the eighteenth century met at the hands of their comrades were not solely nor even principally the result of their religious eccentricities, England had seen many of those and more striking ones. It rested rather, as the destruction of their tools, repeatedly mentioned in the reports, suggests, upon their specific willingness to work as we should say to-day.
However, let us again return to the present, and this time to the entrepreneur, in order to clarify the meaning of traditionalism in his case.
Sombart, in his discussions of the genesis of capital- ism ,20 has distinguished between the satisfaction of needs and acquisition as the two great leading prin- ciples in economic history. In the former case the
63
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
attainment of the goods necessary to meet personal needs, in the latter a struggle for profit free from the limits set by needs, have been the ends controlling the form and direction of economic activity. What he calls the economy of needs seems at first glance to be identical with what is here described as economic traditionalism. That may be the case if the concept of needs is limited to traditional needs. But if that is not done, a number of economic types which must be considered capitalistic according to the definition of capital which Sombart gives in another part of his work, 2^ would be excluded from the category of acquisitive economy and put into that of needs economy. Enterprises, namely, which are carried on by private entrepreneurs by utilizing capital (money or goods with a money value) to make a profit, purchasing the means of production and selling the product, i.e. undoubted capitalistic enterprises, may at the same time have a traditionalistic character. This has, in the course even of modem economic history, not been merely an occasional case, but rather the rule, with continual interruptions from repeated and increasingly powerful conquests of the capitalistic spirit. To be sure the capitalistic form of an enterprise and the spirit in which it is run generally stand in some sort of adequate relationship to each other, but not in one of necessary interdependence. Nevertheless, we provisionally use the expression spirit of (modern) capitalism ^^ to describe that attitude which seeks profit rationally and systematically in the manner which we have illustrated by the example of Benjamin Franklin. This, however, is justified by the historical fact that that attitude of
64
The Spirit of Capitalism
mind has on the one hand found its most suitable expression in capitahstic enterprise, while on the other the enterprise has derived its most suitable motive force from the spirit of capitalism.
But the two may very well occur separately. Benjamin Franklin was filled with the spirit of capitalism at a time when his printing business did not' differ in form from any handicraft enterprise. And we shall see that at the beginning of modern times it was by no means the capitalistic entrepreneurs of the commercial aristocracy, who were either the sole or the predominant bearers of the attitude we have here called the spirit of capital- ism.2^ It was much more the rising strata of the lower industrial middle classes. Even in the nineteenth century its classical representatives were not the elegant gentlemen of Liverpool and Hamburg, with their commercial fortunes handed down for genera- tions, but the self-made parvenus of Manchester and Westphalia, who often rose from very modest circum- stances. As early as the sixteenth century the situation was similar; the industries which arose at that time were mostly created by parvenus .^^
The management, for instance, of a bank, a wholesale export business, a large retail establishment, or of a large putting-out enterprise dealing with goods pro- duced in homes, is certainly only possible in the form of a capitalistic enterprise. Nevertheless, they may all be carried on in a traditionalistic spirit. In fact, the business of a large bank of issue cannot be carried on in any other way. The foreign trade of whole epochs has rested on the basis of monopolies and legal privileges of strictly traditional character. In retail trade — and we
6s
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
are not here talking of the small men without capital who are continually crying out for Government aid — the revolution which is making an end of the old traditionalism is still in full swing. It is the same development which broke up the old putting-out system, to which modern domestic labour is related only in form. How this revolution takes place and what is its significance may, in spite of the fact these things are so familiar, be again brought out by a concrete example.
Until about the middle of the past century the life of a putter-out was, at least in many of the branches of the Continental textile industry ,2^ what we should to-day consider very comfortable. We may imagine its routine somewhat as follows : The peasants came with their cloth, often (in the case of linen) principally or entirely made from raw material which the peasant himself had produced, to the town in which the putter-out lived, and after a careful, often official, appraisal of the quality, received the customary price for it. The putter-out's customers, for markets any appreciable distance away, were middlemen, who also came to him, generally not yet following samples, but seeking traditional qualities, and bought from his warehouse, or, long before delivery, placed orders which were probably in turn passed on to the peasants. Personal canvassing of customers took place, if at all, only at long intervals. Otherwise correspondence sufficed, though the sending of samples slowly gained ground. The number of business hours was very moderate, perhaps five to six a day, sometimes con- siderably less; in the rush season, where there was one, 66
The Spirit of Capitalism
more. Earnings were moderate; enough to lead a respectable life and in good times to put away a little. On the whole, relations among competitors were rela- tively good, with a large degree of agreement on the fundamentals of business. A long daily visit to the tavern, with often plenty to drink, and a congenial circle of friends, made life comfortable and leisurely.
The form of organization was in every respect capitalistic ; the entrepreneur's activity was of a purely business character; the use of capital, turned over in the business, was indispensable ; and finally, the objec- tive aspect of the economic process, the book-keeping, was rational. But.it was traditionalistic business, if one_' considers the spirit which animated the entrepreneur: the traditional manner of life, the traditional rate of profit, the traditional amount of work, the traditional manner of regulating the relationships with labour, and the^ssentially traditional circle of customers and the manner of attracting new ones. All these dominated the conduct of the business, were at the basis, one may say, of the ethosoi this group of business men.
Now at some time this leisureliness was suddenly destroyed, and often entirely without any essential change in the form of organization, such as the transi- tion to a unified factory, to mechanical weaving, etc. What happened was, on the contrary, often no more than this: some young man from one of the putting-out families went out into the country, carefully chose weavers for his employ, greatly increased the rigour of his supervision of their work, and thus turned them from peasants into labourers. On the other hand, he would begin to change his marketing methods by so
67
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
far as possible going directly to the final consumer, would take the details into his own hands, would personally solicit customers, visiting them every year, and above all would adapt the quality of the product directly to their needs and wishes. At the same time he began to introduce the principle of low prices and large turnover. There was repeated what everywhere and always is the result of such a process of rationali- zation: those who would not follow suit had to go out of business .\The idyllic state collapsed under the pressure of a bitter competitive struggle, respectable fortunes were made,- and not lent out at interest, but always reinvested in the business. The old leisurely and comfortable attitude toward life gave way to a hard frugality in which some participated and came to the top, because they did not wish to consume but to earn, while others who wished to keep on with the old ways were forced to curtail their consumption .^^
And, what is most important in this connection, it was not generally in such cases a stream of new money invested in the industry which brought about this revolution — in several cases known to me the whole revolutionary process was set in motion with a few thousands of capital borrowed from relations — but the ,new spirit, the spirit of modem capitalism, had set to work. The question of the motive forces in the expan- sion of modem capitalism is not in the first instance a question of the origin of the capital sums which were available for capitalistic uses, but, above all, of the development of the spirit of capitalism. Where it appears and is able to work itself out, it produces its own capital and monetary supplies as the means to its 68
The Spirit of Capitalism
ends, but the reverse is not true.^'^ Its entry on the scene was not generally peaceful. A flood of mistrust, sometimes of hatred, above all of moral indignation, regularly opposed itself to the first innovator. Often — I know of several cases of the sort — regular legends of mysterious shady spots in his previous life have been produced. jit is very easy not to recognize that only an unusually strong character could save an entrepreneur of this new type from the loss of his temperate self- control and from both moral and economic shipwreckj^ Furthermore, along with clarity of vision and ability to act, it is only by virtue of very definite and highly developed ethical qualities that it has been possible for him to command the absolutely indispensable confi- dence of his customers and workmen. Nothing else could have given him the strength to overcome the innumerable obstacles, above all the infinitely more intensive work which is demanded of the modern entrepreneur. But these are ethical qualities of quite a diff^erent sort from those adapted to the traditionalism of the past.
And, as a rule, it has been neither dare-devil and unscrupulous speculators, economic adventurers such as we meet at all periods of economic history, nor simply great financiers who have carried through this change, outwardly so inconspicuous, but nevertheless so de- cisive for the penetration of economic life with the new spirit. ^n the contrary, they were men who had grown up in the hard school of life, calculating and daring at the same time, above all temperate and reliable, shrewd and completely devoted to their business, with strictly bourgeois opinions and principlesJ
69
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
One is tempted to think that these personal moral qualities have not the slightest relation to any ethical maxims, to say nothing of religious ideas, but that the essential relation between them is negative. The ability to free oneself from the common tradition, a sort of liberal enlightenment, seems likely to be the most suitable basis for such a business man's success. And to-day that is generally precisely the case. Any relation- ship between religious beliefs and conduct is generally absent, and where any exists, at least in Germany, it tends to be of the negative sort. The people filled with the spirit of capitali&m to-day tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church. The thought of the pious boredom of paradise has little attraction for their active natures; religion appears to them as a means of drawing people away from labour in this world. If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at ail: "to provide for my children and grand- children". But more often and, since that motive is not peculiar to them, but was just as effective for the traditionalist, more correctly, simply: that business with its continuous work has become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motivä^ tion, but it at the same time expresses what is, seen from the view-point of personal happiness, so irrational about this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse."^ ""
Of course, the desire for the power and recognition which the mere fact of wealth brings plays its part. 70
The Spirit of Capitalistn
When the imagination of a whole people has once been turned toward purely quantitative bigness, as in the United States, this romanticism of numbers exercises an irresistible appeal to the poets among business men. Otherwise it is in general not the real leaders, ^nd especially not the permanently successful entrepreneurs, who are taken in by it. In particular, the resort to en- tailed estates and the nobility, with sons whose conduct at the university and in the officers' corps tries to cover up their social origin, as has been the typical history of German capitalistic parvenu families, is a product of later decadence. The ideal type ^® of the capitalistic entrepreneur, as. it has been represented even in Germany by occasional outstanding examples, has no relation to such more or less refined climbers. He avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure^ as weir~ äs conscious enjoyment of hTs power, and is emEarrassed^y the outward signs of the^cial recogni- HoiTwHich he receives. His manner oFlife is, in other words, often, and we shall have to investigate the historical significance of just this important fact, distinguished by a certain ascetic tendency, as appears clearly enough in the sermon of Franklin which we have quoted. It is, namely, by no means exceptional, but rather the rule, for him to have a_s^t_üfjQaodesty which is essentially more honest than the reserve which Franklin so shrewdly recommends. He gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational sense^ ofjiaving done his job well.
But it is just that which seems to the pre-capitalistic man so incomprehensible and mysterious, so unworthy and contemptible. That anyone should be able to make
71
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
it the sole purpose of his Hfe-work, to sink into the grave weigiied down with a great material load of money a.*id goods, seems to him explicable only as the prod'-^ct of a pf fvprsf^ instinrt, the auri sacra fames.
.^.c present under our individualistic political, legal, and economic institutions, with the forms of organiza- tion and general structure which are peculiar to our economic order, this spirit of capitalism might be understandable, as has been said, purely as a result of adaptation. The capitalistic system so needs this devotion to the calling of making money, it is an attitude toward material goods which is so well suited to that system, so intimately bound up with the condi- tions of survival in the economic struggle for existence, that there can to-day no longer be any question of a necessary connection of that acquisitive manner of life with any single Weltanschauung. In fact, it no longer needs the support of any religious forces, and feels the
si attempts of religion to influence economic life, in so far as they can still be felt at all, to be as much an unjustified interference as its regulation by the State. In such circumstances men's commercial and social interests do tend to determine their opinions and attitudes. Whoever does not adapt his manner of life to the conditions of capitalistic success must go under,
■iz^ br at least cannot rise. But these are phenomena of a time in which modern capitalism has become dominant and has become emancipated from its old supports. But as it could at one time destroy the old forms of mediaeval regulation of economic life only in alliance with the growing power of the modern State, the same, we may say provisionally, may have been the case in 72
II
The Spirit of Capitalism
its relations with religious forces. Whether and in what sense that was the case, it is our task to investisrate. ror that the conception or money-making as an end in itself to which people were bound, as a calling, was contrary to the ethical feelings of whole epochs, it is hardly necessary to prove. The dogma Deo placer e vix potest which was incorporated into the canon law and applied to the activities of the merchant, and which at that time (like the passage in the gospel about interest) ^^ was considered genuine, as well as St. Thomas's characterization of the desire for gain as turpitudo (which term even included unavoidable and hence ethically justified profit-making), already con- tained a high degree of concession on the part of the ^ Catholic doctrine to the financial powers with which ^ the Church had such intimate political relations in 1^9 the Italian cities, ^^ as compared with the much more radically anti-chrematistic views of comparatively wide circles. But even where the doctrine was still better accommodated to the facts, as for instance with Anthony of Florence, jhe feeling was never quite overcome, that activity directed to acquisition for its own sake was at bottom a pudendum which was to be tolerated only because of the unalterable necessities of life in this worldj
Some moralists of that time, especially of the nominalistic school, accepted developed capitalistic business forms as inevitable, and attempted to justify them, especially commerce, as necessary. The iudustria developed in it they were able to regard, though not without contradictions, as a legitimate source of profit, and hence ethically unobjectionable. But the dominant
^ 73
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
doctrine rejected the spirit of capitalistic acquisition as turpitudo, or at least could not give it a positive ethical sanction. An ethical attitude like that of Ben- jamin Franklin would have been simply unthinkable. This was, above all, the attitude of capitalistic circles themselves. Their life-work was, so long as they clung to the tradition of the Church, at best something morally indifferent. It was tolerated, but was still, even if only on account of the continual danger of collision with the Church's doctrine on usury, somewhat dangerous to salvation. Quite considerable sums, as the sources show, went at the death of rich people to religious institutions as conscience money, at times even back to former debtors as usiira which had been unjustly taken from them. It was otherwise, along with heretical and other tendencies looked upon with dis- approval, only in those parts of the commercial aris- tocracy which were already emancipated from the tradition. But even sceptics and people indifferent to the Church often reconciled themselves with it by gifts, because it was a sort of insurance against the uncertainties of what might come after death, or because (at least according to the very widely held latter view) an external obedience to the commands of the Church was sufficient to insure salvation. ^^ Here the either non-moral or immoral character of their action in the opinion of the participants themselves comes clearly to light.
Now, how could activity, which was at best ethically tolerated, turn into a calling in the sense of Benjamin Franklin.'' The fact to be explained historically is that in the most highly capitalistic centre of that time, in
74
The Spirit of Capitalism
Florence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the money ;md capital market of all the great political Powers,, this attitude was considered ethically un- justifiable, or at best to be tolerated. But in the back- woods small bourgeois circumstances of Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, where business threatened for simple lack of money to fall back into barter, where there was hardly a sign of large enterprise, where only the earliest beginnings of banking were to be found, the same thing was considered the essence of moral conduct, even commanded in the name of duty. To speak here of aj;eflection of material conditions in the ideal^ superstructure would be patent nonsense. WhaP was the background of ideas which couFd account for the sort of activity apparently directed toward profit alone as a calling toward which the individual feels himself to have an ethical obligation? For it was this idea which gave the way of life of the new entrepreneur its ethical foundation and justification. ^
The attempt has been made, particularly by Sombart, in what are often judicious and eflfective observations, to depict economic rationalism as the salient feature of modern economic life as a whole. Undoubtedly with justification, if by that is meant the extensipn of the productivity of labour which has, through the " sub- ordination of the process of production to scientific points of view, relieved it from its dependence upon the natural organic limitations of the hun>an individual. Now this process of rationalization i^ the field of technique and economic organization undoubtedly determines an important part of the ideals of life of modern bourgeois society. Labour in the service of a
75
S^
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capialism
rational organization for the provision of humanity with material goods has without doubt always appeared to representatives of the capitalistic spirit as one of the most important purposes of their life-work. It is only necessary, for instance, to read Franklin's account of his efforts in the service of civic improvements in Philadelphia clearly to apprehend this obvious trutl . And the joy and pride of having given employment to numerous people, of having had a part in the economic progress of his home town in the sense referring to figures of population and volume of trade which capitalism associated with the word, all these things obviously are part .of the specific and undoubtedly idealistic satisfactions in life to modern men of busi- ness. Similarly it is one of the fundamental character- istics of an individualistic capitalistic economy that it is rationalized on the basis of rigorous calculation, directed with foresight and caution toward the economic success which is sought in sharp contrast to the hand- to-mouth existence of the peasant, and to the privileged traditionalism of the guild craftsman and of the adventurers' capitalism, oriented to the exploitation of political opportunities and irrational speculation.
It might thus seem that the development of the spirit of capitalism is best understood as part of the development of rationalism as a whole, and could be deduced from the fundamental position of rationalism on the basic problems of life. In the process Protestant- ism would only have to be considered in so far as it had formed a stage prior to the development of a purely rationalistic philosophy. But any serious attempt to carry this thesis through makes it evident that such a
76
/ The Spirit of Capitalism
simple way of putting the question will not work, simply becaus'e of the fact that the history of rationalism shows 3 development which by no means follows parallel lines in the various departments of life. The rationalization of private law, for instance, if it is thought of as a logical simplification and rearrange- ment of the content of the law, was achieved in the highest hitherto known degree in the Roman law of late antiquity. But it remained most backward in some of the countries with the highest degree of economic rationalization, notably in England, where the Renais- sance of Roman Law was overcome by the power of' the great legal corporations, while it has always retained its supremacy in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe. The worldly rational philosophy of the eighteenth century did not find favour alone or even principally in the countries of highest capitalistic development. The doctrines of Voltaire are even to-day the common property of broad upper, and what is practically more important, middle-class groups in the Romance Catholic countries. Finally, if under practical rationalism is understood the type of attitude which sees and judges the world consciously in terms of the worldly interests of the individual ego, then this view of life was and is the special peculiarity of the peoples of the libenim arbitrium, such as the Italians and the French are in very flesh and blood. But we have already convinced ourselves that this is by no means the soil in which that relationship of a man to his calling as a task, which is necessary' to capitalism, has pre-eminently grown. In fact, one may — this simple proposition, which is often forgotten, should be placed
77
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capuutism
at the beginning of every study which essays to deal with rationalism — rationalize life from fundamentally different basic points of view and in very different directions. Rationalism is an historical concept which covers a j^JKile-WQrici of different Üiings. It will be our task to find out whose intellectual child The particular concrete form of rational thought ~was, from which theidea of a calling and the devotion to labour in_the calling lias grown, which is, as we haye seen^ so irra- tional from the standpoint of purely eudaemoni^tic_ self-interest, but which has been and still is one of the most characteristic elements of our capitalistic culture.. We are here particularly interested in the origin of precisely the irrational element which lies in this, as in every conception of a calling.
78
CHAPTER III
LUTHER'S CONCEPTION OF THE CALLING Task of the Investigation
Now it is unmistakable that even in the German word Bert^, and perhaps still more clearly in the English calling, a religious conception, that of a task set by God7^~at~least suggested. The more emphasis is pur upon the word in a concrete case, the more evident is the connotation. And if we trace the history of the word through the civilized languages, it appears that neither the predominantly Catholic peoples nor those of classical antiquity^ have possessed any expression of similar connotation for what we know as a calling (in the sense of a life-task, a definite field in which to work), while pne has existed for all predominantly Protestantpeo^les^ It may be further shown that this IS not due to any ethnical peculiarity of the languages concerned. It is not, for instance, the product of a Germanic spirit, but in its modern meaning the word comes from the Bible translations, through the spirit of the translator, not that of the original.- In Luther's translation of the Bible it appears to have first been used at a point in Jesus Sirach(xi. 20 and 21) precisely in our modern sense. ^ After that it speedily took on its present meaning in the everyday speech of all Pro- testant peoples, while earlier not even a suggestion of such a meaning could be found in the secular literature of any of them, and even, in religious writings, so far as I can ascertain, it is only found in one of the German
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
mystics whose influence on Luther is well known.
Like the meaning of the word, the idea is new, a
product of the Reformation. This may be assumed as
generally known. It is true that certain suggestions of
the positive valuation of routine activity in the world,
which is contained in this conception of the calling, had
already existed in the Middle Ages, and even in late
Hellenistic antiquity. We shall speak of that later.
But at least one thing was unquestionably new: the
valuation of the fulfilment of duty in worldly affairs as
the highest form which the moral activity of the
individual could assiime. This it was which inevitably
gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance,
and which first created the conception of a calling in
this sense. The conception of the calling thus brings
out that central dogma of all Protestant denominations
which the Catholic division of ethical precepts into
prcecepta and consilia discards. The only way of living
acceptably to God was not to surpass worldly morality
in monastic asceticism, but solely through the fulfilment
of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his
!^ position in the worjd. That was his calling.
Luther* developed the concept ion~m'The course of the first decade of his activity as a reformer. At first, quite in harmony with the prevailing tradition of the Middle Ages, as represented, for example, by Thomas Aquinas,^ he thought of activity in the world as a thing of the flesh, even though willed by God. I,t is the indispensable natural condition of a life of faith, but in itself, like eating and drinkjng, morally ijieutral.^ But with the development of the conception of sola fide in all its consequences, and its logical result, the increas- 80
Luther's Conception of the Calling
ingly sharp emphasis against the Catholic cons.;^^ evangelica of the monks as dictates of the devil, tL, ' calling grew in importance. [The monastic life is not .only quite devoid of value as a means of justification before God, but he also looks upon its renunciation of y the. duties of this world as the product of selfishness, yN- withdrawing from temporal obligations. In contrast, labour in a calling appears to him as the outward expression of brotherly love]] This he proves by the observation that the division of labour forces every individual to work for others, but his view-point is highly naive, forming an almost grotesque contrast to J Adam Smith's well-known statements on the same subject.' However, this justification, which is evidently essentially scholastic, soon disappears again, and there remains, more and more strongly emphasized, the state- ment that the fulfilment of worldly duties is under all circumstances the only way to live acceptably to God. It and it alone is the will of God , and hence every legitimate /C calling has exactly the same worth in the sight of God.®
[That this moral justification of worldly activity was "^ — one of the most important results of the Reformation, especially of Luther's part in it, is beyond doubt, and may even be considered a platitude.^ This attitude is worlds removed from the deep hatred of Pascal, in his contemplative moods, for all worldly activity, which he was deeply convinced could only be understood in terms of vanity or low cunning.^^ And it differs even more from the Hberal utilitarian compromise with the world at which the Jesuits arrived] But just what the prac- tical significance of this achievement of Protestantism was in detail is dimly felt rather than clearly perceived.
8i
jy^g r'rotestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
j^^.n the first place it is hardly necessary to point out lat Luther cannot be claimed for the spirit of capital- ism in the sense in which we have used that term above, or for that matter in any sense whatever. The religious circles which to-day most enthusiastically celebrate that great achievement of the Reformation are by no means friendly to capitalism in any sense. And Luther himself would, without doubt, have sharply repudiated any connection with a point of view like that of Franklin. Of course, one cannot con- sider his complaints against the great merchants of his time, such as the Fuggers,^^ as evidence in this case. For the struggle against the privileged position, legal or actual, of single great trading companies in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries may best be compared with the modern campaign against the trusts, and can no more justly be considered in itself an expression of a traditionalistic point of view. Against these people, against the Lombards, the monopolists, speculators, and bankers patronized by the Anglican Church and the kings and parliaments of England and France, both the Puritans and the Huguenots carried on a bitter struggle. ^2 Cromwell, after the battle of Dunbar (September 1650), wrote to the Long Parliament: "Be pleased to reform the abuses of all professions: and if there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a Commonwealth." But, nevertheless, we will find Cromwell following a quite specifically capitalistic line of thought. ^^ On the other hand, Luther's numerous statements against usury or interest in any form reveal a conception of the nature of capitalistic acquisition which, compared with that of 82
Luther's Conception of the Calling
late Scholasticism, is, from a capitalistic view-point, definitely backward .^^ Especially, of course, the doctrine of the sterility of money which Anthony of Florence had already refuted.
But it is unnecessary to go into detail. For, above all, the consequences of the conception of the calling in the religious sense for worldly conduct were susceptible to quite different interpretations. The effect of the Reformation as such was only that, as compared with tKe~~Cäthölic attitude, the moral emphasis on and the ' religious sanction of, organized worldly labour in a calling was mightily increased. The way in which the concept of the calling, which expressed this change, should develop further depended upon the religious evolution which now took place in the different Pro- testant Churches. The authority of the Bible, from which Luther thought he had derived his idea of the calling, on the whole favoured a traditionalistic inter- pretation. The old Testament, in particular, though in the genuine prophets it showed no sign of a tendency to excel worldly morality, and elsewhere only in quite isolated rudiments and suggestions, contained a similar religious idea entirely in this traditionalistic sense. Everyone should abide by his living and let the godless mn after gain. That is the sense of all the statements which bear directly on worldly activities. Not until the Talmud is a partially, but not even then fundamentally, different attitude to be found. The personal attitude of Jesus is characterized in classical purity by the typical antique-Oriental plea: "Give us this day our daily bread." The element of radical repudiation of the world, as expressed in the fiafiajvas rrjs dBiKlas,
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
excluded the possibility that the modern idea of a calling should be based on his personal authority .^^ In the apostolic era as expressed in the New Testament, especially in St. Paul, the Christian looked upon worldly activity either with indifference, or at least essentially traditionalistically ; for those first generations were filled with eschato logical hopes. Since everyone was simply waiting for the coming of the Lord, there was nothing to do but remain in the station and in the worldly occupation in which the call of the Lord had found him, and labour as before. Thus he would not burden his brothers as an object of charity, and it would only be for a little while. Luther read the Bible through the spectacles of his whole attitude; at the time and in the course of his development from- about 1518 to 1530 this not only remained traditionalistic but became ever more so.^^
In the first years of his activity as a reformer he was, since he thought of the calling as primarily of the flesh, dominated by an attitude closely related, in so far as the form of world ^^ activity was concerned, to the Pauline eschatological indifference as expressed in i Cor. vii.^' One may attain salvation in any walk of life; on the short pilgrimage of life there is no use in laying weight on the form of occupation. The pursuit of material gain beyond personal needs must thus appear as a symptom of lack of grace, and since it can apparently only be attained at the expense of others, directly reprehen- sible.^® As he became increasingly involved in the affairs / of the world, he came to value work in the world more
(highly. But in the concrete calling an individual pursued he saw more and more a special command of God to 84
Luther's Conception of the Calling
fulfil these particular duties which the Divine Will had imposed upon him. And after the conflict with the Fanatics and the peasant disturbances, the objective historical order of things in which the individual has (v been placed by God becomes for Luther more and \\\ more a direct manifestation of divine will.^^ The stronger and stronger emphasis on the providential element, even in particular events of life, led more and more to a traditionalistic interpretation based on the idea of Providence. The individual should remain once -) and for all in the station and calling in which God had placed him, and should restrain his worldly activity within the limits imposed by his established station in life. While his economic traditionalism was originally the result of Pauline indifference, it later became that of a more and more intense belief in divine provi- dence,^^ which identified absolute obedience to God's will, 2^ with absolute acceptance of things as they were. Starting from this background, it was impossible for Luther to establish a new or in any way fundamental connection between worldly activity and religious principles .22 His acceptance of purity of doctrine as the one infallible criterion of the Church, which became more and more irrevocable after the struggles of the 'twenties, was in itself sufficient to check the develop- ment of new points of view in ethical matters.
Thus jo^J^^utheiLihe concept of the calling remained traditionalisticu-^^ His callmg is something which man'j has to accept as a divine ordinance, to which he must I adapt himself. This aspect outweighed the other idea V; which was also present, that work in the calling was a, or gather the, task set by God.^^ And in its further j
8s 1
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
development, orthodox Lutheranism emphasized this aspect still more. Thus, for the time being, the only ethical result was negative; worldly duties were no longer subordinated to ascetic ones; obedience to authority and the acceptance of things as they were, were preached .^^ In this Lutheran form the idea of a calling had, as will be shown in our discussion of mediaeval religious ethics, to a considerable extent been anticipated by the German mystics. Especially in Tauler's equalization of the values of religious and worldly occupations, and the decline in valuation of the traditional forms of ascetic practices ^® on account of the decisive significance of the ecstatic-contemplative absorption of the divine spirit by the soul. To a certain extent Lutheranism means a step backward from the mystics, in so far as Luther, and still more his Church, had, as compared with the mystics, partly undermined the psychological foundations for a rational ethics. (The mystic attitude on this point is reminiscent partly of the Pietest and partly of the Quaker psychology of faith .2') That was precisely because he could not but suspect the tendency to ascetic self-discipline of leading to salvation by works, and hence he and his Church were forced to keep it more and more in the background.
Thus the mere idea of the calling in the Lutheran sense is at best of questionable importance for the problems in which we are interested. This was all that was nieant to be determined here.^^ But this is not in the least to say that even the Lutheran form of the renewal of the religious life may not have had some practical significance for the objects of our investiga- tion ; quite the contrary. Only that significance evidently 86
Luther's Conception of the Calling
cannot be derived directly from the attitude of Luther and his Church to worldly activity, and is perhaps not altogether so easily grasped as the connection with other branches of Protestantism. It is thus well for us
I; next to look into those forms in which a relation between practical life and a religious motivation can
1 be more easily perceived than in Lutheranism. We have already called attention to the conspicuous part played by Calvinism and the Protestant sects in the history of capitalistic development. As Luther found a different spirit at work in Zwingli than in himself, so did his spiritual successors in Calvinism. And Catholicism has to the present day looked upon Calvinism as its real opponent.
I Now that may be partly explained on purely political grounds. Although the Reformation is unthinkable without Luther's own personal religious development, and was spiritually long influenced by his personality, I without Calvinism his work could not have had per- manent concrete success. Nevertheless, the reason for this common repugnance of Catholics and Lutherans lies, at least partly, in the ethical peculiarities of Calvinism. A purely superficial glance shows that there is here quite a different relationship between the religious life and earthly activity than in either Catholi- cism or Lutheranism. Even in literature motivated purely by religious factors that is evident. Take for instance the end of the Divine Comedy y where the poet in Paradise stands speechless in his passive contempla- tion of the secrets of God, and compare it with the poem which has come to be called the Divine Comedy of Puritanism. Milton closes the last song of Paradise
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Lost after describing the expulsion from paradise as follows: —
"They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand ; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon: The world was all before them, there to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."
And only a little before Michael had said to Adam:
. . . "Only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable ; add faith ; Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, By name to come called Charity, the soul Of all the rest : then wilt thou not be loth To leave this Paradise, but shall possess A Paradise within thee, happier far."
One feels at once that this powerful expression of the Puritan's serious attention to this world, his acceptance of his life in the world as a task, could not possibly have come from the pen of a mediaeval writer. But it is just as uncongenial to Lutheranism, as expressed for instance in Luther's and Paul Gerhard's chorales. It is now our task to replace this vague feeling by a somewhat more precise logical formulation, and to investigate the fundamental basis of these differences. The appeal to national character is generally a mere confession of ignorance, and in this case it is entirely untenable. To ascribe a unified national character to the Englishmen of the seventeenth century would be simply to falsify history. Cavaliers and Roundheads did 88
Luther^s Conception of the Calling
ncct appeal to each other simply as two parties, but as radically distinct species of men, and whoever looks into the matter carefully must agree with them.^^ On the other hand, a difference of character between the English merchant adventurers and the old Hanseatic merchants is not to be found; nor can any other fundamental difference between the English and German characters at the end of the Middle Ages, which cannot easily be explained by the differences of their political history. ^° It was the power of religious influence, not alone, but more than anything else, which created the differences of which we are conscious to-day. 3^
We thus take as our starting-point in the investiga- tion of the jrelatkmship between the old PrptestanL. ethic and the spirit of capitalism the works of Calvin,
nfTalvin jt^rn , and the nther Puritan SectS. But it is not
to be understood that we expect to find any of the founders or representatives of these religious move- ments considering the promotion of what we have called the spirit of capitalism as in any sense the end of his life-work. We cannot well maintain that the pursuit of worldly goods, conceived as an end in itself, was to any of them of positive ethical value. Once and for all it must be remembered that programmes of ethical reform never were at the centre of interest for any of the religious reformers (among whom, for our purposes, we must include men like Menno, George Fox, and Wesley). They were not the founders of societies for ethical culture nor the proponents of humanitarian projects for social reform or cultural ideals. The salva- tion of the soul and that alone was the centre of their
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capii '^a
j life and work «^ Their ethical ideals and the pracoft'al ( results of their doctrines were all based on that alone, ^ and were the consequences of purely religious motives. We shall thus have to admit that the cultural conse- quences of the Reformation were to a great extent, perhaps in the particular aspects with which we are- dealing predominantly, unforeseen and even unwished- for results of the labours of the reformers. They were often far removed from or even in contradiction to all t^t they themselves thought to attain. ^1 The following study may thus perhaps in a modest /way form a contribution to the understanding of the manner in which ideas become effective forces in history. In order, however, to avoid any misunder- standing of the sense in which any such effectiveness of purely ideal motives is claimed at all, I may perhaps be permitted a few remarks in conclusion to this intro- ductory discussion.
In such a study, it may at once be definitely stated, no attempt is made to evaluate the ideas of the Reforma- tion in any sense, whether it concern their social or their religious worth. We have continually to deal with aspects of the Reformation which must appear to the , truly religious consciousness as incidental and even )/^ /■ superficial. For we are merely attempting to clarify the / part which religi^ous forces have played in forming the I developing web of our specifically worldly modern \ culture, in the complex interaction of innumerable \ different historical factors. We are thus inquiring only to what extent certain characteristic features of this culture can be imputed to the influence of the Reforma- tion. At the same time we must free ourselves from the 90
Luther* s Conception of the Calling
idea that it is possible to deduce the Reformation, as a historically necessary result, from certain economic changes. Countless historical circumstances, which cannot be reduced to any economic law, and are not susceptible of economic explanation of any sort, especially purely political processes, had to concur in order that the newly created Churches should survive at all.
On the other hand, however, we have no intention whatever of mauitaining such a foolish and doctrinaire thesis^^ as that'^the spirit of capitalism (in the pro- visional sense of the term explained above) could only have arisen as ^e result of certain effects of the Refor- mation, or even that capitalism as an economic system is a creation of the Reformation. In itself, the fact that certain important forms of capitalistic business organi- zation are known to be considerably older than the Reformation is a sufficient refutation of such a claim. On the contrary, we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world. Furthermore, what concrete aspects of our capitalistic culture can be traced to them. In view of the tremendous confusion of interdependent influences between the material basis, the forms of social and political organization, and the ideas current in the time of the Reformation, we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what points certain correlations between forms of religious belief and practical ethics can be worked out. At the same time we shall as far as possible clarify the manner and the general direction in which, by virtue of those relation-
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ships, the religious movements have influenced the development of material culture. Only when thisKas been determined with reasonable accuracy can the attempt be made to estimate to what extent the his- torical development of modern culture can be attributed to those religious forces and to what extent to others.
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II
PART II
THE PRACTICAL ETHICS OF THE ASCETIC BRANCHES OF PROTESTANTISM
CHAPTER IV
THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF WORLDLY ASCETICISM
In history there have been four principal fornas_of ascetic Protestantism (in the sense of word here used) : (i) Calvinism in the form which it assumed in the • main area of its influence in Western Europe, especially in the seventeenth century ; (2) Pietism ; (3) Methodism ; (4) the sects growing out of the Baptist movement.^ None of these movements was completely separated from the others, and even the distinction from the non-ascetic Churches of the Reformation is never perfectly clear. Methodism. which_first arnsp in the middle of the eightfifirillLceiituiY within the Established
Church of England, was not^in the minds of its founders, intended to form a new^^Hnlr^^^JÜLÖnly a new^waRening of the ascetic .spirit v^itWn_jhe^jold^_ OnTy in tEe"coiirse oHts .develQpm£iit,..£Sfi£dallyJn its extension to Americav.didiLJbecome separate from the
Anglican Church.
Pietism first split off from the Calvinistic movement in England, and especially in Holland. It remained loosely connected with orthodoxy, shading off from it by imperceptible gradations, until at the end of the seventeenth century it was absorbed into Lutheranism under Spener's leadership. Though the dogmatic adjustment was not entirely satisfactory, it remained a movement within the Lutheran Church. Only the faction dominated by Zinzendorf, and affected by lingering Hussite and Calvinistic influences within the
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Moravian brotherhood, was forced, like Methodism against its will, to form a peculiar sort of sect. Calvinism and Baptism were at the beginning of thek develop- ment~^Karply opposed to each other. .But in the Baptism "tJf'fhe litter part of the seventeenth century they were in close contact. And even in the Independent sects of England and Holland at the beginning of the seven- teenth century the transition w^s not abrupt. As Pietism shows, the transition to Lutheranism is also gradual, and the same is true of Calvinism and the Anglican Church, though both in external character and in the spirit of its most logical adherents the latter is more closely related to Catholicism. It is true that both the mass of the adherents and especially the staunchest champions ofthat ascetic movement which, in the broadest sense of a highly ambiguous word, has been called Puritanism,^ did attack the foundations of Anglicanism; but even here the differences were only gradually worked out in the course of the struggle. Even if for the present we quite ignore the questions of government and organization which do not interest us here, the facts are just the same. The dogmatic differences, even the most important, such as those over the doctrines of predestination and justification, were combined in the most complex ways, and even at the beginning of the seventeenth century regularly, though not without exception, prevented the maintenance of unity in the Church. Above all, the types of moral conduct in which we are interested may be found in a similar manner among the adherents of the most various denominations, derived from any one of the four sources mentioned above, or a combination of several
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of them. We shall see that similar ethical maxims may be correlated with very different dogmatic foundations . Also the important literary tools for the saving of souls, above all the casuistic compendia of the various denominations, influenced each other in the course of time ; one finds great similarities in them, in spite of very great differences in actual conduct.
It would almost seem as though we had best com- pletely ignore both the dogmatic foundations and the ethical theory and confine our attention to the moral practice so far as it can be determined. That, however, is not true. The various different dogmatic roots of ascetic morality did no doubt die out after terrible struggles. But the original connection with those dogmas has left behind important traces in the later undogmatic ethics ; moreover, only the knowledge of the original body of ideas can help us to understand the connection of that morality with the idea of the after- life which absolutely dominated the most spiritual men of that time. Without its power, overshadowing everything else, no moral awakening which seriously influenced practical life came into being in that period.
We are naturally not concerned with the question of what was theoretically and officially taught in the ethical compendia of the time, however much practical significance this may have had through the influence of Church discipline, pastoral work, and preaching.^
^e are interested rather in something entirely different^ jhe influence of those psychological sanctions which, originating in religious belief and the practice of re- ligion, gave a direction to practical conduct and held 3ie individual to it. Now these sanctions were to a larg^
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extent derived from the peculiarities of the rehgious ideas behind them. The men of that day were occupied with abstract dogmas to an extent which itself can only be understood when we perceive the connection of these dogmas with practical religious interests. A few observations on dogma, ^ which will seem to the non- theological reader as dull as they will hasty and super- ficial to the theologian, are indispensable. We can of Icourse only proceed by presenting these religious [ideas in the artificial simplicity of ideal types, as they [I could at best but seldom be found in history. For just because of the impossibility of drawing sharp boun- daries in historical reality we can only hope to under- stand their specific importance from an investigation of them in their most consistent and logical forms.
A. Calvinism
Now Calvinism^ was the faith ^ over which the i great political and cultural struggles of the sixteenth I and seventeenth centuries were fought in the most - highly developed countries, the Netherlands, England, and France. To it we shall hence turn first. At that time, and in general even to-day, the doctrine of predestination was considered its most characteristic dogma. It is true that there has been controversy as to whether it is the most essential dogma of the Reformed Church or only an appendage. Judgments of the im- portance of a historical phenomenon may be judgments of value or faith, namely, when they refer to what is alone interesting, or alone in the long run valuable in it. Or, on the other hand, they may refer to its
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The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
influence on ether historical processes as a causal factor. Then we are concerned with judgments of historical imputation. If now we start, as we must do here, from the latter standpoint and inquire into the significance which is to be attributed to that dogma by virtue of its cultural and historical con- sequences, it must certainly be rated very highly.' The movement which Oldenbarneveld led was shattered by it. The schism in the English Church became irrevocable under James I after the Crown and the Puritans came to differ dogmatically over just this doctrine. Again and again it was looked upon as the real element of political danger in Calvinism and attacked as such by those in authority.^ The great synods of the seventeenth century, above all those of Dordrecht and Westminster, besides numerous smaller ones, made its elevation to canonical authority the central purpose of their work. It served as a rallying- point to countless heroes of the Church militant, and in both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries it caused schisms in the Church and formed the battle- cry of great new awakenings. We cannot pass it by, and since to-day it can no longer be assumed as known to all educated men, we can best learn its content from the authoritative words of the Westminster Confession of 1647, which in this regard is simply repeated by both Independent and Baptist creeds.
"Chapter IX (of Free Will), No. 3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So that a natural man, being altogether averse from that Good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own
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strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself
thereunto.
' "Chapter III (of God's Eternal Decree), No. 3.
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His
I glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto ever-
VJasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.
**No. 5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto
life, God before the foundation of the world was laid,
according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and
the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath
chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere
free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or
good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any
other thing in the creature as conditions, or causes
moving Him thereunto, and all to the praise of His
glorious grace.
''No. 7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth, or with-holdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.
' "Chapter X (of Effectual Calling), No. i. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only. He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time effec- tually to call, by His word and spirit (out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature) . . . taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good. . . i 100
The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
' ' Chapter V (of Providence) , No . 6 . As for those wicked and ungodly men, whom God as a righteous judge, for former sins doth blind and harden, from them He not only with-holdeth His grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had and exposeth them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin : and withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the tempta- tions of the world, and the power of Satan: whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves, even under those means, which God useth for the softening of others."»
"Though_l_niay^ be sent to Hell for it, such 4 God all never command my respect", was Milton's well-
lown opinion of the doctrine. ^^ But we are here concerned not with the evaluation, but the historical significance of the dogma. We can only JbrieflV-sketch the question of how the do^rine originated and how it ^fitted into the framework of Calvinist ic theology.
Two paths leading to it were possible. The pheno- menonof the religious sense jof grace is combined^^Jn. the mostactiye and passionate of those great worship- ^ers_which Christianity has produced again and jgain since Augustine, with the feeling of certainty that that grace is the sole product of an objective power, and not in the least to be^ttributed to personal worthTThe powerful feeling of light-hearted assurance, in which the tremendous pressure of their sense of sin is released, apparently breaks over them with elemental force and destroys every possibility of the belief that this over- powering gift of grace could owe anything to their own
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
/co-operation or could be connected with achievements /or quahties of their own faith and will. At the time of I Luther's greatest religious creativeness, when he was / capable of writing his Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, I God's secret decree was also to him most definitely I the sole and ultimate source of his state of religious V-grace.^^ Even later he did not formally abandon it. But not only did the idea not assume a central position for him, but it receded more and more into the back- ground, the more his position as responsible head of his Church forced him into practical politics. Melancthon quite deliberately avoided adopting the dark and dangerous teaching in the Augsburg Confession, and for the Church fathers of Lutheranism it was an article of faith that grace was revocable (amissibilis) , and could be won again by penitent humility and faithful trust in the word of God and in the sacraments. f With Calvin the process was just the opposite; the ' significance of the doctrine for him increased,^- per- ceptibly in the course of his polemical controversies with theological opponents. It is not fully developed until the third edition of his Institutes, and only gained ""its position of central prominence after his death in the great struggles which the Synods of Dordrecht and Westminster sought to put an end to. With Calvin the decretum horribile is derived not, as with Luther, from religious experience, but from the logical necessity of his thought; therefore its importance increases with every increase in the logical consistency of that religious Ir thought. The interest of it is solely in God, not in man ; God does not exist for men, but men for the sake of
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The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
\God.^^i/All creation, including of course the fact, as irUhdoubtedly was for Calvin, that only a small pro-i portion of men are chosen for eternal grace, can have i/ any meaning only as means to the glory and majesty; 3f God. To apply earthly standards of justice to His, sovereign decrees is meaningless and an insult to His Majesty,^* since He and He alone is free, i.e. is subject to no law. His decrees can only be understood by or even known to us in so far as it has been His pleasure to reveal them. We can only hold to these fragments of eternal truth. Everything else, including the meaning of our individual destiny, is hidden in dark mystery which it would be both impossible to pierce and pre- sumptuous to question.
For the damned to complain of their lot would be., much the same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as men. For everything of the flesh i^ separated from God by an unbridgeable gulf and deserves of Him only eternal death, in so far as He has not decreed otherwise for the glorification of His Majesty jjWe know only that a part of humanity is saved, the rest damned. To assume that human merit or guilt play a part in determining this destiny would be to think of God's absolutely free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to change by human influence, an impossible contradiction. The Father in heaven of the New Testament, so human and under- standing, who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach of human understanding, who with His quite incomprehensible decrees has decided
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'1 the fate of every individual and regulated the tiniest .^^<
details of the cosmos from eternity .^^ God's grace is, "^ -since His decrees cannot change, as impossible for those ^1 to whom He has granted it to lose as it is unattainable , ri for those to whom He has denied it. ^
In its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency. That was a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual. ^^ In what was for the man of the age of the Reformation the most important thing in life, his eternal salvation, he was forced to follow his path alone to meet a destiny which had been decreed for him from eternity. No one could help him. No priest, for the chosen one can understand the word of God only in his own heart. No sacraments, for though the sacra- ments had been ordained by God for the increase of His glory, and must hence be scrupulously observed, they are not a means to the attainment of grace, but only the subjective externa subsidia of faith. No Church, for though it was held that extra ecclesiam nulla salus in the sense that whoever kept away from the true Church could never belong to God's chosen band,^'^ nevertheless the membership of the external Church included the doomed. They should belong to it and be subjected to its discipline, not in order thus to attain salvation, that is impossible, but because, for the glory of God, they too must be forced to obey His commandments. Finally, even no God. For even Christ had died only for the elect ,^^ for whose benefit God had decreed His martyrdom from eternity. This, the complete elimination of salvation through the 104
The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
Church and the sacraments (which was in Lutheranism by~ no" means developed to its final conclusions), was what formed the absolutely decisive difference from \\ Catholicism.
That great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world^^ which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion. The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in.^^
There was not only no magical means of attaining the grace of God for those to whom God had decided to deny it, but no means whatever. Combined with the harsh doctrines of the absolute transcendentality of God and the corruption of everything pertaining to the flesh, this inner isolation of th^Jndividual contains, on the one hand, the reason for [the entirely negative attitude^ of Puritanism,. tQ_, all the sensuous and emotional» elements in culture and in religion, because they are of no use toward salvation and promote sentimental illusions and idolatrous superstitions. (Thus it provides a basis for a fundamental antagonism to sensuous culture of all kinds. ^^ On the other hand, it forms one of the roots of that disillusioned and pessimistically inclined individualism^^ which can even to-day be identiHed^ih'the national characters and the institutions of the peoples with a Puritan past, in such a striking
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
contrast to the quite different spectacles through which the EnHghtenment later looked upon men.^^ We can clearly identify the traces of the influence of the doctrine of predestination in the elementary forms of conduct and attitude toward life in the era with which we are concerned, even where its authority as a dogma was on the decline. It was in fact only the most extreme form of that exclusive trust in God in which we are here interested. It comes out for instance in the strikingly frequent repetition, especially in the English Puritan literature, of warnings against any trust in the aid of friendship of men .2'* Even the amiable Baxter counsels deep distrust of even one's closest friend, and Bailey directly exhorts to trust no one and to say nothing compromising to anyone. Only God should be your confidant .^^ In striking con- trast to Lutheranism, this attitude toward life was also connected with the quiet disappearance of the private confession, of which Calvin was suspicious only on account of its possible sacramental misinterpreta- tion, from all the regions of fully developed Calvinism. That was an occurrence of the greatest importance. In the first place it is a symptom of the type of influence this religion exercised. Further, however, it was a psychological stimulus to the development of their ethical attitude. The means to a periodical discharge of the emotional sense of sin ^^ was done away with.
Of the consequences for the ethical conduct of everyday life we speak later. But for the general religious situation of a man the consequences are evident. In spite of the necessity of membership in the true Church ^'^ for salvation, the Calvinist's intercourse 1 06
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The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
with his God was carried on in deep spiritual isolation. To see the specific results ^^ of this peculiar atmosphere, it is only necessary to read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,^^ by far the most widely read book of the whole Puritan literature. In the description of Christian's attitude after he had realized that he was living in thft City of Destruc- tion and he had received the call to take .up his pilgrim- age to the celestial city, wife and childreh cling to him, but stopping his ears with his fingers and crying, "life, eternal life", he staggers forth across the fields. No refinement could surpass the naive feeling of the tinker who, writing in his prison cell, earned the applause of a believing world, in expressing the emotions of the faithful Puritan, thinking only of his own salvation. It is expressed in the unctuous conversations which he holds with fellow-seekers on the way, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Gottfried Keller's Gerechte Kammacher. Only when he himself is safe does it occur to him that it would be nice to have his family with him. It is the same anxious fear of death and the beyond which we feel so vividly in Alfonso of Liguori, as Döllinger has described him to us. It is worlds removed from that spirit of proud worldliness which Machiavelli expresses in relating the fame of those Florentine citizens who, in their struggle against the Pope and his excommunication, had held "Love of their native city higher than the fear for the salvation of their souls". And it is of course even farther from the feelings which Richard Wagner puts into the mouth of Siegmund before his fatal combat, "Grüsse mir Wotan, grüsse mir Wallhall — Doch von Wallhall's spröden Wonnen sprich du wahrlich mir nicht". But
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the effects of this fear on Bunyan and Liguori are characteristically different. The same fear which drives the latter to every conceivable self-humiliation spurs the former on to a restless and systematic struggle with life. Whence comes this difference? / It seems at ßrst a mystery how the undoubted / superiority of Calvinism in social organization can be / connected witn this tendency to tear the individual I away from the closed ties with which he is bound to \this world. ^^. But, however strange it may seem, it Ifollows fron\ the peculiar form which the Christian brotherly love was forced to take under the pressure of the inner isolation of the individual through the Calvinistic faith. In the first place it follows dogmatic- ally.^^ The world exists to serve the glorification of God and for chat purpose alone. The elected Christian is in the world o^Jy to increase this glory of God by fulfilling His commandments to the best of his ability. But God requires social achievement of the Christian because j He wills that social life shall be organized according to I His commandments, in accordance with that purpose. The social ^2 activity of the Christian in the world is solely activity in majorem gloriam Dei. This character is hence shared by labour in a calling which serves the mundane life of the community. Even in Luther we found specialized labour in callings justified in terms of brotherly love. But what for him remained an un- certain, purely intellectual suggestion became for the Calvinists a characteristic element in their ethical system. Brotherly love, since it may only be practised for the glory of God^^ and not in the service of the flesh, ^^ is expressed in the first place in the fulfilment io8
The Religious Fowtdatiom of Worldly Asceticism
of the daily tasks given by the lex naturce\ and in the process this fulfilment assumes a peculiarly objective and impersonal character, that_of service in thejnterest _
^ of the rational organization of our social environmej:^' For the wonderfully purposeful organizatior.-^ and arrangement of this cosmos is, according botj-'i to the revelation of the Bible and to natural intuitior^» evidently designed by God to serve the utility of the V"^^'^ race.
- This makes labour in the service of imperso/?al social
I usefulness appear to promote the glory of <^»^od and hence to be willed by Him. The complete elimifiation of the theodicy problem and of all those questions about the meaning of the world and of life, which have tof*^ tured others, was as self-evident to the Puritan as, for quite diflferent reasons, to the Jew, and even in a certain sense to all the non-mystical types of Christian religion. ^To this-£CQnomy of forces Calvinism added another tendency which worked in the same direction. The conflict betw€€ft-^he Jftdi^ddual and the ethic (in Sören Kierkegaard's sense) didJiot^exist fqr^jyinisjn, although it placed the individual entirely on his own responsibility in religious matters. This is not the place to analyse the reasons for this fact, or its signifi- cance for the political and economic rationalism of Calvinism. The source of the utilitarian character of fcalvinistic ethics lies here, and important peculiarities [of the Calvinistic idea of the calling were derived from ; the same source as well.^^ But for the moment we must 1 return to the special consideration of the doctrine of Wedestination.
f For us the decisive problem is : How was this doctrine borne^^ in an age to which the after-life was not only
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more important, but in many ways also more certain, [than all the interests of life in this world ?^^ The question, Am I one of the elect? must sooner or later ha«.ve arisen for every believer and have forced all other interc^^ßts into the background. And how j:an I be sure of this :?^tate of grace P^^ For Calvin himself this was not a proLS>|em. He felt himself to be a chosen agent of the Lord, " -id was certain of his own salvation. Accord- ingly, t^)', the question of how the individual can be certain :of his own election, he has at bottom only the answe'r that we should be content with the knowledge that '^Jod has chosen and depend further only on that 'implicit trust in Christ which is the result of true faith. He rejects in principle the assumption that one can learn from the conduct of others whether they are chosen or damned. It is an unjustifiable attempt to ;force God's secrets. Tlie._elect differ externally in this^iife in no way from the damned^® ; and even all the subjective experiences of the chosen are, as liidihria Spiritus sancti, possible for the damned Y^ith. the_single_exception of^hat finaliter expectant, trusting faith. The elecTlKus are and remain God's invisible Church.
Quite naturally this attitude was impossible for his followers as early as Beza, and, above all, for the broad mass of ordinary men. For them the certitudo salutis in the sense of the recognizability of the state of grace necessarily became of absolutely dominant impor- tance.*^ So, wherever the doctrine of predestination was held, the question could not be suppressed whether there were any infallible criteria by which membership in the electi could be known. Not only has this question no
The Religious Foundations of' Worldly Asceticism
continually had a central importance in the develop- ment of the Pietism which first arose on the basis of the Reformed Church ; it has in fact in a certain sense at times been fundamental to it. But when we con- sider the great political and social importance of the Reformed doctrine and practice of the Communion, we shall see how great a part was played during the whole seventeenth century outside of Pietism by the possibility of ascertaining the state of grace of~ the individual. On it depended, for instance, his admission to Communion, i.e. to the central religious ceremony which determined the social standing of the participants.
It was impossible, at least so far as the question of a man's own state of grace arose, to be satisfied ^^ with Calvin's trust in the testimony of the expectant faith resulting from grace, even though the orthodox doctrine had never formally abandoned that criterion. '^^ Above all, practical pastoral work, which had immediately to deal with afl the suffering caused by the doctrine, could not be satisfied. It met these difficulties in various ways.*^ So far as predestination was not reinterpreted, toned down, or fundamentally abandoned,** two prin- cipal, mutually connected, types of pastoral advice appear. On the one hand it is held to be an absolute j/ duty to consider oneself chosen, and to combat all doubts as temptations of the devil, *^ since lack of self- confidence is the result of insufficient faith, hence of imperfect grace. The exhortation of the apostle to make fast one's own call is here interpreted as a duty to attain certainty of one's own election and justifica- tion in the daily struggle of life. In the place of the
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
humble sinners to whom Luther promises grace if they trust themselves to God in penitent faith are bred those self-confident saints ^^ whom we can rediscover in the hard Puritan merchants of the heroic age of capitalism and in isolated instances down to the present. On the other hand, in j^ldei^o attain that self-con- fidence intense worldly^activity is recommended as tue most suitable means. ^^ It and it alone dispersesTeligious I doubts and gives the certainty of grace.
That worldly activity should be considered capable of this achievement, that it could, so to speak, be considered the most suitable means of counteracting feelings of religious anxiety, finds its explanation m the fundamental peculiarities of religious feeling in the Reformed Church, which come most clearly to light in its differences from Lutheranism in the doctrine of justification by faith. These differences are analysed so subtly and with such objectivity and avoidance of value- judgments in Schneckenburger's excellent lectures, ^^ that the following brief observations can for the most part simply rest upon his discussion. ^ The highest religious experience which the Lutheran faith strives to attain, especially as it developed in the course of the seventeenth century, is the unio mystica \with the deity. ^^ As the name itself, which is unknown to the Reformed faith in this form, suggests, it is a feeling of actual absorption in the deity, that of a real entrance of the divine into the soul of the believer. It is qualitatively similar to the aim of the contemplation of the German mystics and is characterized by its passive search for the fulfilment of the yearning' for rest in God.
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Now the history of philosophy shows that rehgious behef which is primarily mystical may very well be compatible with a pronounced sense of reality in the field of empirical fact ; it may even support it directly i on account of the repudiation of dialectic doctrines. Furthermore, mysticism may indirectly even further the interests of rational conduct. Nevertheless, the positive valuation of external activity is lacking in its relation to the world. In addition to this, Lutheranism combines the unio mystica with that deep feeling of sin-stained unworthiness which is essential to preserve the poenitentia qiiotidiana of the faithful Lutheran, thereby maintaining the humility and simplicity in- dispensable for the forgiveness of sins. The typical religion of the Reformed Church, on the other hand, has from the beginning repudiated both this purely inward emotional piety of Lutheranism and the Quietist escape from everything of Pascal. A real'pene- tration of the human soul by the divine was made impossible by the absolute transcendentality of God compared to the flesh : finitum non est capax infiniti. The community of the elect with their God could only take place and be perceptible to them in that God ^ worked (operatur) through them and that they were u/ conscious of it. That is, their action originated from the faith caused by God's grace, and this faith in turn justified itself by the quality of that action. Deep-lying differences of the most important conditions of salva- tion^o which apply to the classification of all practical religious activity appear here. The religious believer,' can make himself sur^ of his state of grace either in that he feels himself to be the vessel of the Holy Spirit
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or the tool of the divine will. In the former case his religious life tends to mysticism and emotionalism, in the latter to ascetic action; Luther stood close to the former type, Calvinism belonged definitely to the latter. The Calvinist also wanted to be saved sola fide, ^nt since Calvin viewed all pure feelings and emotions, no matter how exalted they might seem to be, with suspicion ,^1 faith had to be proved by its objective results in order to provide a firm foundation for the certitudo salutis. It must be a fides efficax,^^ the call to salvation an effectual calling (expression used in Savoy Declaration).
If we now ask further, by what fruits the Calvinist /thought himself able to identify true faith? the answer [is: by a type of Christian conduct which served to j increase the glory of God . Just what does so serve is to be seen in his own will as revealed either directly through the Bible or indirectly through the purposeful order of the world which he has created {lex natura). ^^ Especially by comparing the condition of one's own soul with that of the elect, for instance the patriarchs, according to the Bible, could the state of one's own grace be known .^* Only one of the elect really has the fides efficaXy^^ only he is able by virtue of his rebirth (regeneratio) and the resulting sanctification {sanctifi- catio) of his whole life, to augment the glory of God by real, and not merely apparent, good works. It was through the consciousness that his conduct, at least in its fundamental character and constant ideal (propositum oboedientice) y rested on a power ^^ within himself working for the glory of God ; that it is not only willed of God but rather done by God'^^ that he attained the 114
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highest good towards which this reHgion strove, the certainty of salvation.^® That it was attainable was proved by 2 Cor. xiii. 5.^® Thus, however useless goo^ works might be as a means of attaining salvation, for even the elect remain beings of the flesh, and everything they do falls infinitely short of divine standards, nevertheless, they are indispensable as a sign of elec- tion.^^ They are the technical means, not of purchasing , salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnationj In this sense they are occasionally referred to as directly necessary for salvation^^ or the possessio salutis is made conditional on them.^^
Injpra^ice this means that God helps those who help themselves .^^ Thus the Calvinist, as it is some- times put, himself creates®* his own salvation, or, as Nvould be more correct, the conviction of it. But this creation cannot, as in Catholicism, consist in a gradual accumulation of individual good works to one's credit, but rather in a systematic self-control which at every moment stands before the inexorable alternative, chosen or damned. This brings us to a very important point in our investigation.
It is common knowledge that Lutherans have again and again accused this line of thought, which was worked out in the Reformed Churches and sects with increasing clarity,®^ of reversion to the doctrine of salvation by works.®® And however justified the. protest of the accused against identification of their dogmatic position with the Catholic doctrine, this accusation has surely been made with reason if by it is meant the practical consequences for the everyday life of the average Christian of the Reformed Church.®^ For a
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more intensive form of the religious valuation of moral action than that to which Calvinism led its adherents has perhaps never existed. But what is important for the practical significance of this sort of salvation by works must be sought in a knowledge of the particular qualities which characterized their type of ethical con- duct and distinguished it from the everyday life of an average Christian of the Middle Ages. The difference , .Pf may well be formulated as follows : the normal mediaeval v/ Catholic layman^® lived ethically, so to speak, from ^ pJjiand to mouth. In the first place he conscientiously ^ ^ ^fulfilled his traditional duties. But beyond that mini- '/U^mum his good works did not necessarily form a con- ^'m^nected, or at least not a rationalized, system of life, 0;] T)ut rather remained a succession of individual acts. •^'^' He could use them as occasion demanded, to atone for ^ {3 particular sins, to better his chances for salvation, or, >^ toward the end of his life, as a sort of insurance premium. Of course the Catholic ethic was an ethic of intentions. But the concrete intentio of the single act / determined its value. And the single good or bad / action was credited to the doer determining his tem- L^ poral and eternal fate. Quite realistically the Church recognized that man was not an absolutely clearly defined unity to be judged one way or the other, but that his moral life was normally subject to conflicting motives and his action contradictory. Of course, it required as an ideal a change of life in principle. But it weakened just this requirement (for the average) by one of its most important means of power and education, the sacrament of absolution, the function of which was connected with the deepest roots of the peculiarly Catholic religion. 116
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~^j The rationalization of the world, the eHmination of Änagic as a means to salvation ,^^ the Catholics had not carried nearly so far as the Puritans (and before them the Jews) had done. To the -Catholic^^ the absolution of his Church was a compensation for his own imperfec- tion. The priest was a magician who performed the miracle of transubstantiation, and who held the key to eternal life in his hand. One could turn to him in grief and penitence. He dispensed atonement, hppe of grace, certainty of forgiveness, and thereby granted release from that tremendous tension to which the Calvinist was doomed by an inexorable fate, admitting of no mitigation. For him such friendly and human comforts did not exist. He could not hope to atone for hours of weakness or of thoughtlessness by increased good will at other times, as the Catholic or even the\ Lutheran could. The God of Calvinism demanded of his believers not single good works, but a life of good Ij works combined into a unified system.'^ There was no / place for the very human Catholic cycle of sin, repent-/ ance, atonement, release, followed by renewed _sin .' Nor was there any balance of merit for a life as a whole which could be adjusted by temporal punishments or the Churches' means of grace.
' The moral conduct of the average man was thus deprived of its planless and unsystematic character and subjected to a consistent method for conduct as a whole. It is no accident that the name of Methodists stuck to the participants in the last great revival of Puritan ideas in the eighteenth century just as the term Precisians, which has the same meaning, was applied to their spiritual ancestors in the seventeenth century. "^
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For only by a fundamental change in the whole meaning of life at every moment and in every action '^^ could the effects of grace transforming a man from the status naturce to the status gratice be proved.
The life of the saint was directed solely toward a transcendental end, salvation. But precisely for that reason it was thoroughly rationalized in this world and dominated entirely by the aim to add to the glory of God on earth. Never has the precept omnia in majorem dei gloriam been taken with more bitter seriousness.'^ Only a life guided by constant thought could achieve conquest over the state of nature. Descartes 's cogito ergo sum was taken over by the contemporary Puritans with this ethical reinterpretation.'^ It was this rational- ization which gave the Reformed faith its peculiar ascetic tendency, and is the basis both of its relation- ship'^^ to and its conflict with Catholicism. For naturally similar things were not unknown to Catholicism.
Without doubt Christian asceticism, both outwardly and in its inner meaning, contains many different things. But it has had a definitely rational character in its highest Occidental forms as early as the Middle Ages, and in several forms even in antiquity. The great historical significance of Western monasticism, as contrasted with that of the Orient, is based on this fact, not in all cases, but in its general type. In the rules of St. Benedict, still more with the monks of Cluny, again with the Cistercians, and most strongly the Jesuits, it has become emancipated from planless otherworldliness and irrational self-torture. It had developed a systematic method of rational conduct with the purpose of overcoming the status natura, to free ii8
The Religions Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
man from the power of irrational impulses and his dependence on the world and on nature. It attempted to subject man to the supremacy of a purposeful will/' to bring his actions under constant self-control with a careful consideration of their ethical consequences. Thus it trained the monk, objectively, as a worker in the service of the kingdom of God, and thereby further, subjectively, assured the salvation of his soul. This active__sei£=control, which formed the end of the exercitia of St. Ignatius and of the rational monastic virtues everywhere,''^ was also the most important practical ideaLüf Puritanism. "^^ In the deep contempt with which the cool reserve of its adherents is con- trasted, in the reports of the trials of its martyrs, with the undisciplined blustering of the noble prelates and officials ^^ can be seen that respect for quiet self-con- trol which still distinguishes the best type of English or American gentleman to-day .^^ To put it in our terms ^^ : , The Puritan, like every rational type of j asceticism, tried to enable a man to maintain and act '' upon his constant motives, especially those which it taught him itself, against the emotions. In this formal psychological sense of the term it tried to make him into a personality. Contrary to many popular ideas, the end of this asceticism was to be able to lead an alert, / intelligent life: Jthe most urgent task the destruction 6TN spontaneous, impulsive enjoyment, the most important / means was to bring order into the conduct of its ' adherents. All these important points are emphasized ' , in the rules of Catholic monasticism as strongly ^^ as in the principles of conduct of the Calvinists.^* On this methodical control over the whole man rests the
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enormous expansive power of both, especially the ability of Calvinism as against Lutheranism to defend the cause of Protestantism as the Church militant. ^^n the other hand, the difference of the Calvinistic /from the mediaeval asceticism is evident. It consisted in I the disappearance of the consilia evaiigelica and the accompanying transformation of asceticism to activity within the world. Ims not as though Catholicism had TCsTficted the methodical life to monastic cells. This was by no means the case either in theory or in practice. On the contrary, it has already been pointed out that, in spite of the greater ethical moderation of Catholicism, an ethically unsystematic life did not satisfy the highest ideals which it had set up even for the life of the layman .^^ The tertiary order of St. Francis was, for instance, a powerful attempt in the direction of an ascetic penetration of everyday life, and, as we know, by no means the only one. But, in fact, works like the Nachfolge Christi show, through the manner in which their strong influence was exerted, that the way of life preached in them was felt to be something higher than the everyday morality which sufficed as a minimum, and that this latter was not measured by such standards as Puritanism demanded. Moreover, the practical use made of certain institutions of the Church, above all of indulgences inevitably counteracted the tendencies, toward systematic worldly asceticism. For that reason it was not felt at the time of the Reformation to be merely an unessential abuse, but one of the most fundamental evils of the Church.
But the most important thing was the fact that the man who, par excellence , lived a rational life in the 1 20
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The Keligioiis Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
religious sense was, and remained, alone the monk, 'hus asceticism, the more strongly it gripped an individual, simply served to drive him farther away ifrom everyday life, because the holiest task was defin- itely to surpass all worldly morality.®^ Luther, who was not in any sense fulfilling any law of development, but acting upon his quite personal experience, which was, though at first somewhat uncertain in its practical consequences, later pushed farther by the political situation, had repudiated that tendency, and Calvinism simply took this over from him.^' Sebastian FranckA struck the central characteristic of this type of religion when he saw the signifix^ncfi-DfLhe^ Reformation in the fact that now every_Chnstian had to be a monk all his-- lifg^ The drain of asceticism from everyday worldly life had been stopped by a dam, and those passionately spiritual natures which had formerly supplied the highest type of monk were now forced to pursue their
ascetic iHealg wjthin mnnHanp n^-nipptinn«^
But in the course of its development Calvinisi added something positive-to thisT— the- idea of- the \ necessity__o£4inmng— one's faitk-in worldly activity.^ l Therein it gave the broader ' groups of religiously / inclined people a positive incentive to asceticism. By^ founding its ethic in the doctrine of predestination, it substituted for the spiritual aristocracy of monks out-L_ side of and above the world the spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints of God within the world .^^ It was an aristocracy which, with its character indelebilis, V^ was divided from the eternally damned remainder of humanity by a more impassable and in its invisibility niore terrifying gulf,^^ than separated the monk of the
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Middle Ages from the rest of the world about him, a gulf which penetrated all social relations with its sharp brutality. This consciousness of divine grace of the elect and holy was accompanied by an attitude toward the sin of one's neighbour, not of sympathetic under- standing based on consciousness of one's own weakness, but of hatred and contempt for him as an enemy of God bearing the .signs of eternal damnation. ^^ This sort of feeling was capable of such intensity that it sometimes resulted in the formation of sects. This was the case when, as in the Independent movement of the seventeenth century, the genuine Calvinist doctrine that the glory of God required the Church to bring the damned under the law, was outweighed by the con- viction that it was an insult to God if an unregenerate soul should be admitted to His house and partake in the sacraments, or even, as a minister, administer them.®^ Thus, as a consequence of the doctrine of proof, the Donatist idea of the Church appeared, as in the case of the Calvinistic Baptists. The full logical consequence of the demand for a pure Church, a community of those proved to be in a state of grace, was not often drawn by forming sects. Modifications in the constitution of the Church resulted from the attempt to separate regenerate from unregenerate Christians, those who were from those who were not prepared for the sacrament, to keep the government of the Church or some other privilege in the hands of the former, and only to ordain ministers of whom there was no question. ^^
The norm by which it could always measure itself, of which it was evidently in need, this asceticism 122
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naturally found in the Bible. It is important to note that the well-known bibliocracy of the Calvinists held the moral precepts of the Old Testament, since it was fully as authentically revealed, on the same level of esteem as those of the New. It was only neces- sary that they should not obviously be applicable only to the historical circumstances of the Hebrews, or have been specifically denied by Christ. For the believer, the law was an ideal though never quite attainable norm^* while Luther, on the other hand, originally had prized freedom from subjugation to the law as a divine privilege of the believer. ^^ The influence of the God-fearing but perfectly unemotional wisdom of the Hebrews, which is expressed in the books most read by the Puritans, the Proverbs and the Psalms, can be j felt in their whole attitude toward life. In particular, / its rational suppression of the mystical, in fact the whole emotional side of religion, has rightly been attributed by Sanford^® to the influence of the Old Testament. But this Old Testament rationalism was as such essentially of a small bourgeois, traditionalistic type, and was mixed not only with the powerful pathos of the prophets, but also with elements which encour- aged the development of a peculiarly emotional type of religion even in the Middle Ages.^' It was thus in the last analysis the peculiar, fundamentally ascetic, char- acter of Calvinism itself which made it select and assimilate those elements of Old Testament religion which suited it best.
Now that systematization of ethical conduct which the asceticism of Calvinistic Protestantism had in common with the rational forms of life in the Catholic
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orders is expressed quite superficially in the way in which the conscientious Puritan continually super- vised^^ his own state of grace. To be sure, the religious account-books in which sins, temptations, and progress made in grace were entered or tabulated were common to both the most enthusiastic Reformed circles^^ and some parts of modern Catholicism (especially in France), above aU under the influence of the Jesuits. But in Catholicism it served the purpose of complete- ness of the confession, or gave the directeur de Vame a basis for his authoritarian guidance of the Christian (mostly female). The Reformed Christian, however, felt his own pulse with its aid. It is mentioned by all the moralists and theologians, while Benjamin Frank- lin's tabulated statistical book-keeping on 'his progress in the different virtues is a classic example. ^^^ On the other hand, the old mediaeval (even ancient) idea of God's book-keeping is carried by Bunyan to the characteristically tasteless extreme of comparing the relation of a sinner to his God with that of customer and shopkeeper. One who has once got into debt may well, by the product of all his virtuous acts, succeed in paying off the accumulated interest but never the principal. ^^^
As he observed his own conduct, the later Puritan also observed that of God and saw His finger in all the details of life. And, contrary to the strict doctrine of Calvin, he always knew why God took this or that measure. The process of sanctifying life could thus almost take on the character of a business enterp rise. ^^^ A thoroughgoing Christianization of the whole of life was the consequence of this methodical quality of 124
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ethical conduct into which Calvinism as distinct from Lutheranism forced men. That this rationajitx__a[as-^ decisive in its influence on practical life must always be borne in mind in order rightly to understand the influence of Calvinism. On the one hand we can see that it took this element to exercise such an influence at all. But other faiths as well necessarily had a similar influence when their ethical motives were the same in this decisive point, the doctrine of proof. K-So-iar we haveconsidered only Calyinismj^ and have thus flSRumed therfnrtnne of nredestinatinn as the
dogmatic background of the Puritan morality in the sense of melTiodically rationaliyH pthjc^WvynHiirt This could be done because the influence of thaTHogma in fact extended far beyond the single religious group which held in all respects strictly to Calvinistic prin- ciples, the Presbyterians. Not only the Independent Savoy Declaration of 1658, but also the Baptist Con- fession of Hanserd Knollyof 1689 contained it, and it had a place within Methodism. Although John Wesley, the great organizing genius of the movement, was a believer in the universality of Grace, one of the great agitators of the first generation of Methodists and their most consistent thinker, Whitefield, was an adherent of the doctrine. The same was true of the circle around Lady Huntingdon, which for a time had considerable influence. It was this doctrine in its magnificent con- sistency which, in the fateful epoch of the seventeenth century, upheld the belief of the militant defenders of the holy life that they were weapons in the hand of God, and executors of His providential will.^^^ More- over, it prevented a premature collapse into a purely
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utilitarian doctrine of good works in this world which would never have been capable of motivating such tremendous sacrifices for non-rational ideal ends.
The combination of faith in absolutely valid norms with absolute determinism and the complete trans- cendentality of God was in its way a product of great genius. At the same time it was, in principle, very much more modern than the milder doctrine, making greater concessions to the feelings which subjected God to the moral law. Above all, we shall see again and again how fundamental is the idea of proof for our problem, Since its practical significance as a psycho- logical basis for rational morality could be studied in such purity in the doctrine of predestination, it was best to start there with the doctrine in its most con- sistent form. But it forms a recurring framework for the connection between faith and conduct in the denominations to be studied below. Within the Pro- testant movement the consequences which it inevitably had for the ascetic tendencies of the conduct of its first adherents form in principle the strongest antithesis to the relative moral helplessness of Lutheranism. The Lutheran gratia amissibilis, which could always be regained through penitent contrition evidently, in itself, contained no sanction for what is for us the most important result of ascetic Protestantism, a systematic rational ordering of the moral life as a whole .1^* The Lutheran faith thus left the spontaneous vitality of impulsive action and naive emotion more nearly un- changed. The motive to constant self-control and thus to a deliberate regulation of one's own life, which the <