Excerpts from Max Weber’s
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(3-5)
A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of 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 modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly
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 participation of
Protestants in the ownership of capital, in management, and the upper ranks of
labour in great modern industrial and commercial enterprises, may in part be
explained in terms of historical circumstances which extend far back into the past,
and in which religious affiliation is not a cause of the economic conditions, but to a
certain extent appears to be a result of them. Participation in the above economic
functions usually involves some previous ownership of capital, and generally an
expensive education; often both. These are to-day largely dependent on the
possession of inherited wealth, or at least on a certain degree of material wellbeing. A
number of those sections of the old Empire which were most highly developed
economically 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 time particularly favourable to
a revolution 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 strengthen the tendency to doubt the sanctity of the religious
tradition, as of all traditional authorities. But it is necessary to note, what has often
been forgotten, that the Reformation meant not the elimination of the Church’s
control over everyday life, but rather the substitution of a new form of control for the
previous one. It meant the repudiation of a control which was very 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 burdensome and earnestly enforced. The rule of the
Catholic Church, “punishing the heretic, but indulgent to the sinner”, as it was in the
past even more than to-day, is now tolerated by the protestant ethic and the spirit of
capitalism peoples of thoroughly modern 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, would be for us the most absolutely
unbearable form of ecclesiastical control of the individual which could possibly exist.
That was exactly what large numbers 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 economic development was not too
much supervision of life on the part of the Church, but too little. Now 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
unexampled 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.
(19-23)
The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done
legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; 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 social
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 advent of
capitalism. Still less, naturally, do we maintain that a conscious acceptance of these
ethical maxims on the part of the individuals, entrepreneurs or labourers, in modern
capitalistic enterprises, is a condition of the further existence of present-day
capitalism. The 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 capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts
counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene
as the worker 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. In 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 individuals alone, but as a
way of life common to whole groups of men. This origin is what really needs
explanation. Concerning the doctrine of the more naïve historical 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 were founded by preachers and
seminary graduates with the help of small bourgeois, craftsmen and yeomen, for
religious reasons. In this case the causal relation is certainly the reverse of that
suggested by the materialistic standpoint.
But the origin and history of such ideas is much more complex than the theorists of
the superstructure 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 20
the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism 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 Ages12
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 precapitalistic spirits is not to be found at this
point. The greed of the Chinese Mandarin, the old Roman aristocrat, 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 intense, and especially more unscrupulous than
that of, say, an Englishman in similar circumstances.
The universal reign of absolute unscrupulousness in the pursuit of selfish interests by
the making of money has been a specific characteristic of precisely those countries
whose bourgeois-capitalistic development, measured according to Occidental
standards, has remained backward. As every employer knows, the lack of
coscienziosità of 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 obstacles 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. The auri sacra fames is as old as the
history of man. But 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 and those outside the group. The double ethic has permitted here what was
forbidden in dealings among brothers.
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 universal. Absolute and conscious
ruthlessness in acquisition 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 indifferent or as
reprehensible, but unfortunately unavoidable. This has not only been the normal
attitude of all ethical teachings, but, what is more important, also that expressed in
the practical action of the average man of pre-capitalistic times, precapitalistic in the
sense that the rational utilization of capital in a permanent enterprise and the
rational capitalistic organization the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism 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
encountered everywhere.
The 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 we may designate as traditionalism.
(48-50)
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 misunderstanding 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 introductory discussion.
In such a study, it may at once be definitely stated, no attempt is made to evaluate the
ideas of the Reformation 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 the protestant
ethic and the spirit of capitalism superficial. For we are merely attempting to clarify
the part which religious forces have played in forming the 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
Reformation. At the same time, we must free ourselves from the 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 maintaining such a
foolish and doctrinaire thesis as that the spirit of capitalism (in the provisional sense
of the term explained above) could only have arisen as the result of certain effects of
the Reformation, 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
organization 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 relationships, the religious movements
have influenced the development of material culture. Only when this has been
determined with reasonable accuracy can the attempt be made to estimate to what
extent the historical development of modern culture can be attributed to those
religious forces and to what extent to others.
(55-56)
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. We are interested rather in something entirely different: the
influence of those psychological sanctions which, originating in religious belief and
the practice of religion, gave a direction to practical conduct and held the individual
to it. Now these sanctions were to a large extent derived from the peculiarities of the
religious 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 nontheological reader as dull as they will hasty and superficial to the
theologian, are indispensable. We can of course only proceed by presenting these
religious ideas in the artificial simplicity of ideal types, as they could at best but
seldom be found in history. For just because of the impossibility of drawing sharp
boundaries in historical reality we can only hope to understand their specific
importance from an investigation of them in their most consistent and logical forms.
Now Calvinism was the faith over which the great political and cultural struggles of
the sixteenth 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 importance 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 influence on other 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 consequences, it must certainly be rated very highly.
(60-62)
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 is 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. We 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 understanding, 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 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 to whom He has granted it to lose as it is
unattainable 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
sacraments 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 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 the individual contains, on the one
hand, the reason for the entirely negative attitude of Puritanism to 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 identified in the national characters
and the institutions of the peoples with a Puritan past, in such a striking contrast to
the quite different spectacles through which the Enlightenment 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.
(65-67)
For the moment, we must return to the special consideration of the doctrine of
predestination.
For us the decisive problem is: How was this doctrine borne in an age to which the
after-life was not only 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 elects? must sooner
or later have arisen for every believer and have forced all other interests into the
background. And how can I be sure of this state of grace? For Calvin himself this was
not a problem. He felt himself to be a chosen agent of the Lord, and was certain of his
own salvation. Accordingly, to the question of how the individual can be certain of his
own election, he has at bottom only the answer that we should be content with the
knowledge that God 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. The elect differ externally in this life in no
way from the damned; and even all the subjective experiences of the chosen are, as
ludibria spiritus sancti, possible for the damned with the single exception of that
finaliter expectant, trusting faith. The elect thus 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 importance. 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 continually had
a central importance in the development 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 consider 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 all
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 principal, mutually connected, types of pastoral
advice appear. On the one hand it is held to be an absolute duty to consider oneself
chosen, and to combat all doubts as temptations of the devil, since lack of selfconfidence
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 justification in the daily struggle of life. In the
place of the 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 Puritan merchants of the heroic age of capitalism and in isolated instances
down to the present. On the other hand, in order to attain that self-confidence intense
worldly activity is recommended as the most suitable means. It and it alone disperses
religious 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 in 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.
(69-75)
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 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 naturæ). 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
efficax, only he is able by virtue of his rebirth (regeneratio) and the resulting
sanctification (sanctificatio) 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
obœdientiæ), 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 highest good
towards which this religion strove, the certainty of salvation. That it was attainable
was proved by 2 Cor. xiii. 5. Thus, however useless good 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 election. They are the technical means, not of purchasing salvation, but of
getting rid of the fear of damnation. In this sense they are occasionally referred to as
directly necessary for salvation61 or the possessio salutis is made conditional on
them.
In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves. Thus the Calvinist,
as it is sometimes put, himself creates his own salvation, or, as would 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 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 conduct and distinguished it from the everyday life of an average Christian of
the Middle Ages. The difference may well be formulated as follows: the normal
mediæval Catholic layman lived ethically, so to speak, from hand to mouth. In the
first place he conscientiously fulfilled his traditional duties. But beyond that
minimum his good works did not necessarily form a connected, or at least not a
rationalized, system of life, but rather remained a succession of individual acts. He
could use them as occasion demanded, to atone for 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 temporal 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.
The rationalization of the world, the elimination of magic 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
imperfection. 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, hope 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 works combined into a unified system. There was
no place for the very human Catholic cycle of sin, repentance, 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. 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 naturæ to the status gratiæ 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 rationalization which gave the Reformed faith its peculiar
ascetic tendency, and is the basis both of its relationship 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 naturæ, to free 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 self-control, which
formed the end of the exercitia of St. Ignatius and of the rational monastic virtues
everywhere, was also the most important practical ideal of Puritanism. In the deep
contempt with which the cool reserve of its adherents is contrasted, 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-control 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 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: the most urgent task the destruction of 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 enormous expansive power of both,
especially the ability of Calvinism as against Lutheranism to defend the cause of
Protestantism as the Church militant.
On the other hand, the difference of the Calvinistic from the mediæval asceticism is
evident. It consisted in the disappearance of the consilia evangelica and the
accompanying transformation of asceticism to activity within the world. It is not as
though Catholicism had restricted 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 religious sense was, and remained, alone the monk. Thus
asceticism, the more strongly it gripped an individual, simply served to drive him
farther away from everyday life, because the holiest task was definitely 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 Franck struck the central characteristic of this type of religion when he saw
the significance of the Reformation in the fact that now every Christian had to be a
monk all his life. 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 ideals within mundane
occupations.
But in the course of its development Calvinism added something positive to this, the
idea of the necessity of proving one’s faith in worldly activity. 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 outside 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, was divided from the eternally damned remainder of humanity
by a more impassable and in its invisibility more terrifying gulf, than separated the
monk of the 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 understanding 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 conviction 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.
(100-101)
It is our next task to follow out the results of the Puritan idea of the calling in the
business world, now that the above sketch has attempted to show its religious
foundations. With all the differences of detail and emphasis which these different
ascetic movements show in the aspects with which we have been concerned, much
the same characteristics are present and important in all of them. But for our
purposes the decisive point was, to recapitulate, the conception of the state of
religious grace, common to all the denominations, as a status which marks off its
possessor from the degradation of the flesh, from the world.
On the other hand, though the means by which it was attained differed for different
doctrines, it could not be guaranteed by any magical sacraments, by relief in the
confession, nor by individual good works. That was only possible by proof in a
specific type of conduct unmistakably different from the way of life of the natural
man. From that followed for the individual an incentive methodically to supervise his
own state of grace in his own conduct, and thus to penetrate it with asceticism. But,
as we have seen, this ascetic conduct meant a rational planning of the whole of one’s
life in accordance with God’s will. And this asceticism was no longer an opus
supererogationis, but something which could be required of everyone who would be
certain of salvation. The religious life of the saints, as distinguished from the natural
life, was—the most important point—no longer lived outside the world in monastic
communities, but within the world and its institutions. This rationalization of
conduct within this world, but for the sake of the world beyond, was the consequence
of the concept of calling of ascetic Protestantism.
Christian asceticism, at first fleeing from the world into solitude, had already ruled
the world which it had renounced from the monastery and through the Church. But it
had, on the whole, left the naturally spontaneous character of daily life in the world
untouched. Now it strode into the market-place of life, slammed the door of the
monastery behind it, and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine of life with its
methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world, but neither of nor for this world.
With what result, we shall try to make clear in the following discussion.
(107-109)
The characteristic Puritan element appears when Baxter sets at the head of his
discussion the statement that “outside of a well-marked calling the accomplishments
of a man are only casual and irregular, and he spends more time in idleness than at
work”, and when he concludes it as follows: “and he [the specialized worker] will
carry out his work in order while another remains in constant confusion, and his
business knows neither time nor place . . . therefore is a certain calling the best for
everyone”. Irregular work, which the ordinary labourer is often forced to accept, is
often unavoidable, but always an unwelcome state of transition. A man without a
calling thus lacks the systematic, methodical character which is, as we have seen,
demanded by worldly asceticism.
The Quaker ethic also holds that a man’s life in his calling is an exercise in ascetic
virtue, a proof of his state of grace through his conscientiousness, which is expressed
in the care and method with which he pursues his calling. What God demands is not
labour in itself, but rational labour in a calling. In Puritan concept of the calling the
emphasis is always placed on this methodical character of worldly asceticism, not, as
with Luther, on the acceptance of the lot which God has irretrievably assigned to
man.
Hence the question whether anyone may combine several callings is answered in the
affirmative, if it is useful for the common good or one’s own, and not injurious to
anyone, and if it does not lead to unfaithfulness in one of the callings. Even a change
of calling is by no means regarded as objectionable, if it is not thoughtless and is
made for the purpose of pursuing a calling more pleasing to God, which means, on
general principles, one more useful.
It is true that the usefulness of a calling, and thus its favour in the sight of God, is
measured primarily in moral terms, and thus in terms of the importance of the goods
produced in it for the community. But a further, and, above all, in practice the most
important, criterion is found in private profitableness. For if that God, whose hand
the Puritan sees in all the occurrences of life, shows one of His elect a chance of
profit, he must do it with a purpose. Hence the faithful Christian must follow the call
by taking advantage of the opportunity. “If God show you a way in which you may
lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul or to any other), if
you refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your
calling, and you refuse to be God’s steward, and to accept His gifts and use them for
Him when He requireth it: you may labour to be rich for God, though not for the flesh
and sin.”
Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful
enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later
living merrily and without care. But as a performance of duty in a calling it is not only
morally permissible, but actually enjoined. The parable of the servant who was
rejected because he did not increase the talent which was entrusted to him seemed to
say so directly. To wish to be poor was, it was often argued, the same as wishing to be
unhealthy; it is objectionable as a glorification of works and derogatory to the glory of
God. Especially begging, on the part of one able to work, is not only the sin of
slothfulness, but a violation of the duty of brotherly love according to the Apostle’s
own word.
The emphasis on the ascetic importance of a fixed calling provided an ethical
justification of the modern specialized division of labour. In a similar way the
providential interpretation of profit-making justified the activities of the business
man. The superior indulgence of the seigneur and the parvenu ostentation of the
nouveau riche are equally detestable to asceticism. But, on the other hand, it has the
highest ethical appreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man. “God blesseth
His trade” is a stock remark about those good men who had successfully followed the
divine hints. The whole power of the God of the Old Testament, who rewards His
people for their obedience in this life, necessarily exercised a similar influence on the
Puritan who, following Baxter’s advice, compared his own state of grace with that of
the heroes of the Bible, and in the process interpreted the statements of the
Scriptures as the articles of a book of statutes.
(113-125)
The Puritan’s ferocious hatred of everything which smacked of superstition, of all
survivals of magical or sacramental salvation, applied to the Christmas festivities and
the May Pole and all spontaneous religious art. That there was room in Holland for a
great, often uncouthly realistic art proves only how far from completely the
authoritarian moral discipline of that country was able to counteract the influence of
the court and the regents (a class of rentiers), and also the joy in life of the parvenu
bourgeoisie, after the short supremacy of the Calvinistic theocracy had been
transformed into a moderate national Church, and with it Calvinism had perceptibly
lost in its power of ascetic influence.
The theatre was obnoxious to the Puritans, and with the strict exclusion of the erotic
and of nudity from the realm of toleration, a radical view of either literature or art
could not exist. The conceptions of idle talk, of superfluities, and of vain ostentation,
all designations of an irrational attitude without objective purpose, thus not ascetic,
and especially not serving the glory of God, but of man, were always at hand to serve
in deciding in favour of sober utility as against any artistic tendencies. This was
especially true in the case of decoration of the person, for instance clothing. That
powerful tendency toward uniformity of life, which to-day so immensely aids the
capitalistic interest in the standardization of production, had its ideal foundations in
the repudiation of all idolatry of the flesh.
Of course we must not forget that Puritanism included a world of contradictions, and
that the instinctive sense of eternal greatness in art was certainly stronger among its
leaders than in the atmosphere of the Cavaliers. Moreover, a unique genius like
Rembrandt, however little his conduct may have been acceptable to God in the eyes of
the Puritans, was very strongly influenced in the character of his work by his religious
environment. But that does not alter the picture as a whole. In so far as the
development of the Puritan tradition could, and in part did, lead to a powerful
spiritualization of personality, it was a decided benefit to literature. But for the most
part that benefit only accrued to later generations.
Although we cannot here enter upon a discussion of the influence of Puritanism in all
these directions, we should call attention to the fact that the toleration of pleasure in
cultural goods, which contributed to purely æsthetic or athletic enjoyment, certainly
always ran up against one characteristic limitation: they must not cost anything. Man
is only a trustee of the goods which have come to him through God’s grace. He must,
like the servant in the parable, give an account of every penny entrusted to him, and it
is at least hazardous to spend any of it for a purpose which does not serve the glory of
God but only one’s own enjoyment. What person, who keeps his eyes open, has not
met representatives of this view-point even in the present? The idea of a man’s duty
to his possessions, to which he subordinates himself as an obedient steward, or even
as an acquisitive machine, bears with chilling weight on his life. The greater the
possessions the heavier, if the ascetic attitude toward life stands the test, the feeling
of responsibility for them, for holding them undiminished for the glory of God and
increasing them by restless effort. The origin of this type of life also extends in certain
roots, like so many aspects of the spirit of capitalism, back into the Middle Ages. But
it was in the ethic of ascetic Protestantism that it first found a consistent ethical
foundation. Its significance for the development of capitalism is obvious.
This worldly Protestant asceticism, as we may recapitulate up to this point, acted
powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it restricted
consumption, especially of luxuries. On the other hand, it had the psychological effect
of freeing the acquisition of goods from the inhibitions of traditionalistic ethics. It
broke the bonds of the impulse of acquisition in that it not only legalized it, but (in
the sense discussed) looked upon it as directly willed by God. The campaign against
the temptations of the flesh, and the dependence on external things, was, as besides
the Puritans the great Quaker apologist Barclay expressly says, not a struggle against
the rational acquisition, but against the irrational use of wealth.
But this irrational use was exemplified in the outward forms of luxury which their
code condemned as idolatry of the flesh, however natural they had appeared to the
feudal mind. On the other hand, they approved the rational and utilitarian uses of
wealth which were willed by God for the needs of the individual and the community.
They did not wish to impose mortification on the man of wealth, but the use of his
means for necessary and practical things. The idea of comfort characteristically limits
the extent of ethically permissible expenditures. It is naturally no accident that the
development of a manner of living consistent with that idea may be observed earliest
and most clearly among the most consistent representatives of this whole attitude
toward life. Over against the glitter and ostentation of feudal magnificence which,
resting on an unsound economic basis, prefers a sordid elegance to a sober simplicity,
they set the clean and solid comfort of the middle-class home as an ideal.
On the side of the production of private wealth, asceticism condemned both
dishonesty and impulsive avarice. What was condemned as covetousness,
Mammonism, etc., was the pursuit of riches for their own sake. For wealth in itself
was a temptation. But here asceticism was the power “which ever seeks the good but
ever creates evil”; what was evil in its sense was possession and its temptations. For,
in conformity with the Old Testament and in analogy to the ethical valuation of good
works, asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly
reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of
God’s blessing. And even more important: the religious valuation of restless,
continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism,
and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith,
must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude
toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism.
When the limitation of consumption is combined with this release of acquisitive
activity, the inevitable practical result is obvious: accumulation of capital through
ascetic compulsion to save. The restraints which were imposed upon the
consumption of wealth naturally served to increase it by making possible the
productive investment of capital. How strong this influence was is not, unfortunately,
susceptible of exact statistical demonstration. In New England the connection is so
evident that it did not escape the eye of so discerning a historian as Doyle. But also in
Holland, which was really only dominated by strict Calvinism for seven years, the
greater simplicity of life in the more seriously religious circles, in combination with
great wealth, led to an excessive propensity to accumulation.
That, furthermore, the tendency which has existed everywhere and at all times, being
quite strong in Germany to-day, for middle-class fortunes to be absorbed into the
nobility, was necessarily checked by the Puritan antipathy to the feudal way of life, is
evident. English Mercantilist writers of the seventeenth century attributed the
superiority of Dutch capital to English to the circumstance that newly acquired
wealth there did not regularly seek investment in land. Also, since it is not simply a
question of the purchase of land, it did not there seek to transfer itself to feudal habits
of life, and thereby to remove itself from the possibility of capitalistic investment. The
high esteem for agriculture as a peculiarly important branch of activity, also
especially consistent with piety, which the Puritans shared, applied (for instance in
Baxter) not to the landlord, but to the yeoman and farmer, in the eighteenth century
not to the squire, but the rational cultivator. Through the whole of English society in
the time since the seventeenth century goes the conflict between the squirearchy, the
representatives of “merrie old England”, and the Puritan circles of widely varying
social influence. Both elements, that of an unspoiled naïve joy of life, and of a strictly
regulated, reserved self-control, and conventional ethical conduct are even to-day
combined to form the English national character. Similarly, the early history of the
North American Colonies is dominated by the sharp contrast of the adventurers, who
wanted to set up plantations with the labour of indentured servants, and live as
feudal lords, and the specifically middleclass outlook of the Puritans.
As far as the influence of the Puritan outlook extended, under all circumstances—and
this is, of course, much more important than the mere encouragement of capital
accumulation—it favoured the development of a rational bourgeois economic life; it
was the most important, and above all the only consistent influence in the
development of that life. It stood at the cradle of the modern economic man.
To be sure, these Puritanical ideals tended to give way under excessive pressure from
the temptations of wealth, as the Puritans themselves knew very well. With great
regularity we find the most genuine adherents of Puritanism among the classes which
were rising from a lowly status, the small bourgeois and farmers, while the beati
possidentes, even among Quakers, are often found tending to repudiate the old
ideals. It was the same fate which again and again befell the predecessor of this
worldly asceticism, the monastic asceticism of the Middle Ages. In the latter case,
when rational economic activity had worked out its full effects by strict regulation of
conduct and limitation of consumption, the wealth accumulated either succumbed
directly to the nobility, as in the time before the Reformation, or monastic discipline
threatened to break down, and one of the numerous reformations became necessary.
In fact the whole history of monasticism is in a certain sense the history of a continual
struggle with the problem of the secularizing influence of wealth. The same is true on
a grand scale of the worldly asceticism of Puritanism. The great revival of Methodism,
which preceded the expansion of English industry toward the end of the eighteenth
century, may well be compared with such a monastic reform. We may hence quote
here a passage from John Wesley himself which might well serve as a motto for
everything which has been said above. For it shows that the leaders of these ascetic
movements understood the seemingly paradoxical relationships which we have here
analysed perfectly well, and in the same sense that we have given them. He wrote:
I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has
decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is
possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to
continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and
frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so
will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. How then is it
possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it
flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the
Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they
increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger,
in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So,
although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing
away. Is there no way to prevent this—this continual decay of pure
religion? We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal;
we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and to save all they
can; that is, in effect, to grow rich.
There follows the advice that those who gain all they can and save all they can should
also give all they can, so that they will grow in grace and lay up a treasure in heaven.
It is clear that Wesley here expresses, even in detail, just what we have been trying to
point out.
As Wesley here says, the full economic effect of those great religious movements,
whose significance for economic development lay above all in their ascetic educative
influence, generally came only after the peak of the purely religious enthusiasm was
past. Then the intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually
to pass over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving
way to utilitarian worldliness. Then, as Dowden puts it, as in Robinson Crusoe, the
isolated economic man who carries on missionary activities on the side takes the
place of the lonely spiritual search for the Kingdom of Heaven of Bunyan’s pilgrim,
hurrying through the market-place of Vanity.
When later the principle “to make the most of both worlds” became dominant in the
end, as Dowden has remarked, a good conscience simply became one of the means of
enjoying a comfortable bourgeois life, as is well expressed in the German proverb
about the soft pillow. What the great religious epoch of the seventeenth century
bequeathed to its utilitarian successor was, however, above all an amazingly good, we
may even say a pharisaically good, conscience in the acquisition of money, so long as
it took place legally. Every trace of the deplacere vix potest has disappeared.
A specifically bourgeois economic ethic had grown up. With the consciousness of
standing in the fullness of God’s grace and being visibly blessed by Him, the
bourgeois business man, as long as he remained within the bounds of formal
correctness, as long as his moral conduct was spotless and the use to which he put his
wealth was not objectionable, could follow his pecuniary interests as he would and
feel that he was fulfilling a duty in doing so. The power of religious asceticism
provided him in addition with sober, conscientious, and unusually industrious
workmen, who clung to their work as to a life purpose willed by God.
Finally, it gave him the comforting assurance that the unequal distribution of the
goods of this world was a special dispensation of Divine Providence, which in these
differences, as in particular grace, pursued secret ends unknown to men. Calvin
himself had made the much-quoted statement that only when the people, i.e. the
mass of labourers and craftsmen, were poor did they remain obedient to God. In the
Netherlands (Pieter de la Court and others), that had been secularized to the effect
that the mass of men only labour when necessity forces them to do so. This
formulation of a leading idea of capitalistic economy later entered into the current
theories of the productivity of low wages. Here also, with the dying out of the
religious root, the utilitarian interpretation crept in unnoticed, in the line of
development which we have again and again observed.
Mediæval ethics not only tolerated begging but actually glorified it in the mendicant
orders. Even secular beggars, since they gave the person of means opportunity for
good works through giving alms, were sometimes considered an estate and treated as
such. Even the Anglican social ethic of the Stuarts was very close to this attitude. It
remained for Puritan Asceticism to take part in the severe English Poor Relief
Legislation which fundamentally changed the situation. And it could do that, because
the Protestant sects and the strict Puritan communities actually did not know any
begging in their own midst.
On the other hand, seen from the side of the workers, the Zinzendorf branch of
Pietism, for instance, glorified the loyal worker who did not seek acquisition, but lived
according to the apostolic model, and was thus endowed with the charisma of the
disciples. Similar ideas had originally been prevalent among the Baptists in an even
more radical form.
Now naturally the whole ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated
with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom life
offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. In this respect Protestant
Asceticism added in itself nothing new. But it not only deepened this idea most
powerfully, it also created the force which was alone decisive for its effectiveness: the
psychological sanction of it through the conception of this labour as a calling, as the
best, often in the last analysis the only means of attaining certainty of grace. And on
the other hand it legalized the exploitation of this specific willingness to work, in that
it also interpreted the employer’s business activity as a calling. It is obvious how
powerfully the exclusive search for the Kingdom of God only through the fulfilment of
duty in the calling, and the strict asceticism which Church discipline naturally
imposed, especially on the propertyless classes, was bound to affect the productivity
of labour in the capitalistic sense of the word. The treatment of labour as a calling
became as characteristic of the modern worker as the corresponding attitude toward
acquisition of the business man. It was a perception of this situation, new at his time,
which caused so able an observer as Sir William Petty to attribute the economic
power of Holland in the seventeenth century to the fact that the very numerous
dissenters in asceticism and the spirit of capitalism that country (Calvinists and
Baptists) “are for the most part thinking, sober men, and such as believe that Labour
and Industry is their duty towards God”.
Calvinism opposed organic social organization in the fiscal-monopolistic form which
it assumed in Anglicanism under the Stuarts, especially in the conceptions of Laud,
this alliance of Church and State with the monopolists on the basis of a Christiansocial
ethical foundation. Its leaders were universally among the most passionate
opponents of this type of politically privileged commercial, putting-out, and colonial
capitalism. Over against it they placed the individualistic motives of rational legal
acquisition by virtue of one’s own ability and initiative. And, while the politically
privileged monopoly industries in England all disappeared in short order, this
attitude played a large and decisive part in the development of the industries which
grew up in spite of and against the authority of the State. The Puritans (Prynne,
Parker) repudiated all connection with the large-scale capitalistic courtiers and
projectors as an ethically suspicious class. On the other hand, they took pride in their
own superior middle-class business morality, which formed the true reason for the
persecutions to which they were subjected on the part of those circles. Defoe
proposed to win the battle against dissent by boycotting bank credit and withdrawing
deposits. The difference of the two types of capitalistic attitude went to a very large
extent hand in hand with religious differences. The opponents of the Nonconformists,
even in the eighteenth century, again and again ridiculed them for personifying the
spirit of shopkeepers, and for having ruined the ideals of old England. Here also lay
the difference of the Puritan economic ethic from the Jewish; and contemporaries
(Prynne) knew well that the former and not the latter was the bourgeois capitalistic
ethic.
One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of
that but of all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling,
was born—that is what this discussion has sought to demonstrate— from the spirit of
Christian asceticism. One has only to re-read the passage from Franklin, quoted at
the beginning of this essay, in order to see that the essential elements of the attitude
which was there called the spirit of capitalism are the same as what we have just
shown to be the content of the Puritan worldly asceticism, only without the religious
basis, which by Franklin’s time had died away. The idea that modern labour has an
ascetic character is of course not new. Limitation to specialized work, with a
renunciation of the Faustian universality of man which it involves, is a condition of
any valuable work in the modern world; hence deeds and renunciation inevitably
condition each other to-day. This fundamentally ascetic trait of middle-class life, if it
attempts to be a way of life at all, and not simply the absence of any, was what Goethe
wanted to teach, at the height of his wisdom, in the Wanderjahren, and in the end
which he gave to the life of his Faust. For him the realization meant a renunciation, a
departure from an age of full and beautiful humanity, which can no more be repeated
in the course of our cultural development than can the flower of the Athenian culture
of antiquity.
The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism
was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly
morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic
order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine
production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into
this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with
irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal
is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders
of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment”. But fate
decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.
Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the
world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over
the lives of men as at no previous period in history. To-day the spirit of religious
asceticism—whether finally, who knows?—has escaped from the cage. But victorious
capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The
rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably
fading, and the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of
dead religious beliefs. Where the fulfilment of the calling cannot directly be related to
the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be
felt simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to
justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the
pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become
associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of
sport.
No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this
tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great
rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished
with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural
development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists
without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never
before achieved.”
But this brings us to the world of judgments of value and of faith, with which this
purely historical discussion need not be burdened. The next task would be rather to
show the significance of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched in the
foregoing sketch, for the content of practical social ethics, thus for the types of
organization and the functions of social groups from the conventicle to the State.
Then its relations to humanistic rationalism, its ideals of life and cultural influence;
further to the development of philosophical and scientific empiricism, to technical
development and to spiritual ideals would have to be analysed. Then its historical
development from the mediæval beginnings of worldly asceticism to its dissolution
into pure utilitarianism would have to be traced out through all the areas of ascetic
religion. Only then could the quantitative cultural significance of ascetic
Protestantism in its relation to the other plastic elements of modern culture be
estimated.
Here we have only attempted to trace the fact and the direction of its influence to
their motives in one, though a very important point. But it would also further be
necessary to investigate how Protestant Asceticism was in turn influenced in its
development and its character by the totality of social conditions, especially
economic. The modern man is in general, even with the best will, unable to give
religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve.
But it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally
one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. Each is equally
possible, but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an
investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth.