181. On this point the Baptist denominations, ' especially the Quakers (Barclay, Apology for the True Christian Divinity, fourth edition, London, 1701, kindly placed at my disposal by Eduard Bernstein), referred to Calvin's statements in the Instit. Christ, III, p. 2, where in fact quite unmistakable suggestions of Baptist doctrine are to be found. Also the older distinction between the Word of God as that which God had revealed to the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles, and the Holy Scriptures as that part of it which they had written down, was, even though there was no historical con- nection, intimately related to the Baptist conception of revelation. The mechanical idea of inspiration, and with it the strict bibliocracy of the Calvinists, was just as much the product of their development in one direction in the course of the sixteenth century as the doctrine of the inner light of the Quakers, derived from Baptist sources, was the result of a directly opposite development. The sharp differen- tiation was also in this case partly a result of continual disputes.
182. That was emphasized strongly against certain tendencies of the Socinians. The natural.reason knows nothing whatever of God (Barclay, op. cit., p. 102). That meant that the part played by the lex natures elsewhere in Protestantism was altered. In principle there could be no general rules, no moral code, for the calling which everyone had, and which is different for every individual, is revealed to him by God through his conscience. We should do, not the good in the general sense of natural reason, but God's will as it is written in our hearts and known through the conscience (Barclay, pp. 73, 76). This irrationality of morality, derived from the exaggerated 256 Notes 256 Notes contrast between the divine and the flesh, is expressed in these fundamental tenets of Quaker ethics: "What a man does contrary to his faith, though his faith may be wrong, is in no way acceptable to God — though the thing might have been lawful to another" (Barclay, p. 487). Of course that could not be upheld in practice. The "moral and perpetual statutes acknowledged by all Christians" are, for instance, for Barclay the limit of toleration. In practice the contemporaries felt their ethic, with certain peculiarities of its own, to be similar to that of the Reformed Pietists. "Everything good in the Church is suspected of being Quakerism", as Spener repeatedly points out. It thus seems that Spener envied the Quakers this reputa- tion. Cons. Theol., Ill, 6, i, Dist. 2, No. 64. The repudiation of oaths on the basis of a passage in the Bible shows that the real emancipation from the Scriptures had not gone far. The significance for social ethics of the principle, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you", which many Quakers regarded as the essence of the whole Christian ethics, need not concern us here.
183. The necessity of assuming this possibility Barclay justifies because without it "there should never be a place known by the Saints wherein they might be free of doubting and despair, which — is most absurd". It is evident that the certitudo salutis depends upon it. Thus Barclay, op. cit., p. 20.
184. There thus remains a difference in type between the Cal- vinistic and the Quaker rationalization of life. But when Baxter formulates it by saying that the spirit is supposed by the Quakers to act upon the soul as on a corpse, while the characteristically formulated Calvinistic principle is "reason and spirit are conjunct principles" {Christian Directory, II, p. 76), the distinction was no longer valid for his time in this form.
185. Thus in the very careful articles "Menno" and "Men- noniten" by Cramer in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, especially p. 604. However excellent these articles are, the article "Baptisten" in the same encyclopedia is not very penetrating and in part simply incorrect. Its author does not know, for instance, the Publications of the Hanserd Knolly's Society, which are indispensable for the history of Baptism.
186. Thus Barclay, op. cit., p. 404, explains that eatmg, drinking, and acquisition are natural, not spiritual acts, which may be per- formed without the special sanction of God. The explanation is in reply to the characteristic objection that if, as the Quakers teach, one cannot pray without a special motion of the Spirit, the same should apply to ploughing. It is, of course, significant that even in the modem resolutions of Quaker Synods the advice is sometimes given to retire from business after acquiring a sufficient fortune, in order, withdrawn from the bustle of the world, to be able to live in devotion to the Kingdom of God alone. But the same idea certainly occurs The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism occasionally in other denominations, including Calvinism. That betrays the fact that the acceptance of the bourgeois practical ethics by these movements w^as the worldly application of an asceticism which had originally fled from the world.
187. Veblen in his suggestive book The Theory of Business Enterprise is of the opinion that this motto belongs only to early capitalism. But economic supermen, who, like the present captains of industry, have stood beyond good and evil, have always existed, and the statement is still true of the broad underlying strata of business men.
188. We may here again expressly call attention to the excellent remarks of Eduard Bernstein, op. cit. To Kautsky's highly schematic treatment of the Baptist movement and his theory of heretical com- munism in general (in the first volume of the same work) we shall return on another occasion.
189. "In civil actions it is good to be as the many, in religious to be as the best", says, for example, Thomas Adams {Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 138).. That sounds somewhat more drastic than it is meant to be. It means that the Puritan honesty is formalistic legality, just as the uprightness which the sometime Puritan people like to claim as a national virtue is something specifically different from the German Ehrlichkeit. Some good remarks on the subject from the educational standpoint may be found in the Preuss. Jahrb., CXI I (1903), p. 226. The formalism of the Puritan ethic is in turn the natural consequence of its relation to the law.
190. Something is said on this in the following essay.
191. This is the reason for the economic importance of the ascetic Protestant, but not Catholic, minorities.
192. That the difference of dogmatic basis was not inconsistent with the adoption of the most important interest in proof is to be explained in the last analysis by the historical peculiarities of Christi- anity in general which cannot be discussed here.
193. "Since God hath gathered us to be a people", says Barclay, op. cit., p. 357. 1 myself heard a Quaker sermon at Haverford College which laid great emphasis on the interpretation of saints as meaning separate.
CHAPTER V I. See the excellent sketch of his character in Dowden, op. cit. A passable introduction to Baxter's theology, after he had abandoned a strict belief in the double decree, is given in the introduction to the various extracts from his works printed in the Works of the Puritan Divines (by Jenkyn). His attempt to combine universal redemption and personal election satisfied no one. For us it is important only that he even then held to personal election, i.e. to 258 Notes the most important point for ethics in the doctrine of predestination. On the other hand, his weakening of the forensic view of redemption is important as being suggestive of baptism.
2. Tracts and sermons by Thomas Adams, John Howe, Matthew Henry, J. Janeway, Stuart Charnock, Baxter, Bunyan, have been collected in the ten volumes of the Works of the Puritan Divines (London, 1845-8), though the choice is often somewhat arbitrary. Editions of the works of Bailey, Sedgwick, and Hoombeek have already been referred to.
3. We could just as well have included Voet and other continental representatives of worldly asceticism. Brentano's view that the whole development was purely Anglo-Saxon is quite wrong. My choice is motivated mainly (though not exclusively) by the wish to present the ascetic naovement as much as possible in the second half of the seventeenth century, immediately before the change to utilitarianism. It has unfortunately been impossible, within the limits of this sketch, to enter upon the fascinating task of presenting the characteristics of ascetic Protestantism through the medium of the biographical literature; the Quakers would in this connection be particularly important, since they are relatively little known in Germany.
4. For one might just as well take the writings of Gisbert Voet, the proceedings of the Huguenot Synods, or the Dutch Baptist literature. Sombart and Brentano have unfortunately taken just the ebionitic parts of Baxter, which I myself have strongly emphasized, to confront me with the undoubted capitalistic backwardness of his doctrines. But (i) one must know this whole literature thoroughly in order to use it correctly, and (2) not overlook the fact that I have attempted to show how, in spite of its anti-mammonistic doctrines, the spirit of this ascetic religion nevertheless, just as in the monastic communities, gave birth to economic rationalism because it placed a premium on what was most important for it: the fundamentally ascetic rational motives. That fact alone is under discussion and is the point of this whole essay.
5. Similarly in Calvin, -who was certainly no champion of bour- geois wealth (see the sharp attacks on Venice and Antwerp in Jes. Opp., ni, 140a, 308a).
6. Saints' Everlasting Rest, chaps, x, xii. Compare Bailey {Prax- is Pietatis, p. 182) or Matthew Henry {The Worth of the Soul, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 319). "Those that are eager in pursuit of worldly wealth despise their Soul, not only because the Soul is neglected and the body preferred before it, but because it is employed in these pursuits" (Psa. cxxvii. 2). On the same page, however, is the remark to be cited below about the sinfulness of all waste of time, especially in recreations. Similarly in almost the whole religious literature of English-Dutch Puritanism. See, for instance, Hoombeek's (op. cit., L, X,ch, 18, i8) Phillipics against avaritia. This writer is also The Protestant Ethic ayid the Spirit of Capitalism affected by sentimental pietistic influences. See the praise of tran- quillitas animi which is much more pleasing to God than the sollicitudo of this world. Also Bailey, referring to the well-known passage in Scripture, is of the opinion that "A rich man is not easily saved" {op. cit., p. 182). The Methodist catechisms also warn against "gathering treasure on this earth". For Pietism this is quite obvious, as also for the Quakers. Compare Barclay {op. cit., p. 517), "...and therefore beware of such temptations as to use their callings as an engine to be richer".
7. For not wealth alone, but also the impulsive pursuit of it (or what passed as such) was condemned with similar severity. In the Netherlands the South Holland Synod of 1574 declared, in reply to a question, that nioney-lenders should not be admitted to communion even though the business was permitted by law; and the Deventer Provincial Synod of 1598 (Art. 24) extended this to the employees of nioney-lenders. The Synod of Gorichem in 1606 prescribed severe and humiliating conditions under which the wives of usurers might be admitted, and the question was discussed as late as 1644 and 1657 whether Lombards should be admitted to communion (this against Brentano, who cites his own Catholic ancestors, although foreign traders and bankers have existed in the whole European and Asiatic world for thousands of years). Gisbert Voet (Disp. Theol., IV, 1667, cie usiiris, p. 665) still wanted to exclude the Trapezites (Lombards, Piedmontese). The same was true of the Huguenot Synods. This type of capitalistic classes were not the typical representatives of the philosophy or the type of conduct with which we are concerned. They were also not new as compared with antiquity or the Middle Ages.
8. Developed in detail in the tenth chapter of the Saints' Ever- lasting Rest. He who should seek to rest in the shelter of possessions which God gives, God strikes even in this life. A self-satisfied enjoy- ment of wealth already gained is almost always a symptom of moral degradation. If we had everything which we could have in this world, would that be all we hoped for? Complete satisfaction of desires is not attainable on earth because God's will has decreed it should not be so.
9. Christian Directory, I, pp. 375-6. "It is for action that God maintaineth us and our activities; work is the moral as well as the natural end of power...It is action that God is most served and honoured by...The public welfare or the good of the many is to be valued above our own." Here is the connecting-point for the transition from the will of God to the purely utilitarian view-point of the later liberal theory. On the religious sources of Utilitarianism, see below in the text and above, chap, iv, note 145.
10. The commandment of silence has been, starting from the Biblical threat of punishment for every useless word, especially since 260 Notes the Cluny monks, a favourite ascetic means of education in self- control, Baxter also speaks in detail of the sinfulness of unnecessary words. Its place in his character has been pointed out by Sanford, op. cit., pp. 90 ff.
What contemporaries felt as the deep melancholy and moroseness of the Puritans was the result of breaking down the spontaneity of the status naturalis, and the condemnation of thoughtless speech was in the service of this end. When Washington Irving {Bracebridge Hall, chap, xxx) seeks the reason for it partly in the calculating spirit of capitalism and partly in the effect of political freedom, which promotes a sense of responsibility, it may be remarked that it does not apply to the Latin peoples. For England the situation was probably that: (i) Puritanism enabled its adherents to create free institutions and still become a world power; and (2) it trans- formed that calculating spirit (what Sombart calls Rechenhaftigkeit), which is in truth essential to capitalism, from a mere means to economy into a principle of general conduct.
11. Op. cit., I, p. III.
13. Similarly on the preciousness of time, see Barclay, op. cit., p. 14.
14. Baxter, op. cit., I, p. 79. "Keep up a high esteem of time and be every day more careful that you lose none of your time, than you are that you lose none of your gold and silver. And if vain recreation, dressings, feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or sleep be any of them temptations to rob you of any of your time, accordingly heighten your watchfulness." "Those that are prodigal of their time despise their own souls", says Matthew Henry {Worth of the Soul, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 315). Here also Protestant asceticism follows a well-beaten track. We are accustomed to think it characteristic of the modern man that he has no time, and for instance, like Goethe in the Wanderjahren, to measure the degree of capitalistic development by the fact that the clocks strike every quarter-hour. So also Sombart in his Kapitalismus. We ought not, however, to forget that the first people to live (in the Middle Ages) with careful measurement of time were the monks, and that the church bells were meant above all to meet their needs.
15. Compare Baxter's discussion of the calling, op. cit., I, pp. 108 ti. Especially the following passage: "Question: But may I not cast off the world that I may only think of my salvation? Answer: You may cast off all such excess of worldly cares or business as unnecessarily hinder you in spiritual things. But you may not cast off all bodily employment and mental labour in which you may serve the common good. Everyone as a member of Church or Commonwealth must employ their parts to the utmost for the good of the Church and the Commonwealth. To neglect this and say: I will pray and meditate, is as if your servant should refuse his greatest work and tie himself 261 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to some lesser, easier part. And God hath commanded you some way or other to labour for your daily bread and not to live as drones of the sweat of others only." God's commandment to Adam, "In the sweat of thy brow", and Paul's declaration, "He who will not work shall not eat", are also quoted. It has always been known of the Quakers that even the most well-to-do of them have had their sons learn a calling, for ethical and not, as Alberti recommends, for utilitarian reasons.
i6. Here are points where Pietism, on account of its emotional character, takes a different view. Spener, although he emphasizes in characteristic Lutheran fashion that labour in a calling is worship of God {Theologische Bedenken, III, p. 445), nevertheless holds that the restlessness of business affairs distracts one from God, a most characteristic difference from Puritanism.
17. I, op. cit., p. 242."It's they that are lazy in their callings that can find no time for holy duties." Hence the idea that the cities, the seat of the middle class with its rational business activities, are the seats of ascetic virtue. Thus Baxter says of his hand-loom weavers in Kidderminster: "And their constant converse and traffic with London doth much to promote civility and piety among trades- men..." in his autobiography {Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 38). That the proximity of the capital should promote virtue would astonish modem clergymen, at least in Germany. But Pietism also inclined to similar views. Thus Spener, speaking of a young colleague, writes: "At least it appears that among the great multitudes in the cities, though the majority is quite depraved, there are never- theless a number of good people who can accomplish much, while in villages often hardly anything good can be found in a whole community" {Theologische Bedenken, I, 66, p. 303). In other words, the peasant is little suited to rational ascetic conduct. Its ethical glorification is very modem. We cannot here enter into the significance of this and similar statements for the question of the relation of asceticism to social classes.
18. Take, for instance, the following passages {op. cit., p. 336 f.): "Be wholly taken up in diligent business of your lawful callings when you are not exercised in the more immediate service of God." "Labour hard in your callings." "See that you have a calling which will find, you employment for all the time which God's immediate service spareth."
19. That the peculiar ethical valuation of labour and its dignity was not originally a Christian idea nor even peculiar to Christianity has recently again been strongly emphasized by Harnack {Mitt, des Ev.-Soz. Kongr., 14. Folge, 1905, Nos. 3,4, p. 48).
20. Similarly in Pietism (Spener, op. cit.. Ill, pp. 429-30). The characteristic Pietist version is that loyalty to a calling which is imposed upon us by the fall serves to annihilate one's own selfish 262 Notes will. Labour in the calling is, as a service of love to one's neighbour, a duty of gratitude for God's grace (a Lutheran idea), and hence it is not pleasing to God that it should be performed reluctantly {pp. cit.,\\\, p. 272). The Christian should thus "prove himself as industrious in his labour as a worldly man" (III, p. 278). That is obviously less drastic than the Puritan version.
21. The significance of this important difference, which has been evident ever since the Benedictine rules, can only be shown by a much wider investigation.
22. "A sober procreation of children" is its purpose according to Baxter. Similarly Spener, at the same time with concessions to the coarse Lutheran attitude, which makes the avoidance of im- morality, which is otherwise unavoidable, an accessory aim. Con- cupiscence as an accompaniment of sexual intercourse is sinful even in marriage. For instance, in Spener 's view it is a result of the fall which transformed such a natural, divinely ordained process into something inevitably accompanied by sinful sensations, which is hence shameful. Also in the opinion of various Pietistic groups the highest form of Christian marriage is that with the preservation of virginity, the next highest that in which sexual intercourse is only indulged in for the procreation of children, and so on down to those which are contracted for purely erotic or external reasons and which are, from an ethical standpoint, concubinage. On these lower levels a marriage entered into for purely economic reasons is preferred (because after all it is inspired by rational motives) to one with erotic foundations. We may here neglect the Herrnhut theory and practice of marriage. Rationalistic philosophy (Christian Wolff) adopted the ascetic theory in the form that what was designed as a means to an end, concupiscence and its satisfaction, should not be made an end in itself.
The transition to a pure, hygienically oriented utilitarianism had already taken place in Franklin, who took approximately the ethical standpoint of modern physicians, who understand by chastity the restriction of sexual intercourse to the amount desirable for health, and who have, as is well known, even given theoretical advice as to how that should be accomplished. As soon as these matters have become the object of purely rational consideration the same develop- ment has everywhere taken place. The Puritan and the hygienic sex-rationalist generally tread very different paths, but here they understand each other perfectly. In a lecture, a zealous adherent of hygienic prostitution — it was a question of the regulation of brothels and prostitutes — defended the moral legitimacy of extra-marital intercourse (which was looked upon as hygienically useful) by referring to its poetic justification in the case of Faust and Margaret. To treat Margaret as a prostitute and to fail to distinguish the powerful sway of human passions from sexual intercourse for hygienic reasons, 263 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism both are thoroughly congenial to the Puritan standpoint. Similar, for instance, is the typical specialist's view, occasionally put forward by very distinguished physicians, that a question which extends so far into the subtlest problems of personality and of culture as that of sexual abstinence should be dealt with exclusively in the forum of the physician (as an expert). For the Puritan the expert was the moral theorist, now he is the medical man; but the claim of com- petence to dispose of the questions which seem to us somewhat narrow-minded is, with opposite signs of course, the same in both cases.
But with all its prudery, the powerful idealism of the Puritan attitude can show positive accomplishments, even from the point of view of race conservation in a purely hygienic sense, while modern sex hygiene, on account of the appeal to unprejudicedness which it is forced to make, is in danger of destroying the basis of all its success. How, with the rationalistic interpretation of sexual relations among peoples influenced by Puritanism, a certain refinement and spiritual and ethical penetration of marital relationships, with a blossoming of matrimonial chivalry, has grown up, in contrast to the patriarchal sentimentality (Brodeni), which is typical of Germany even in the circles of the intellectual aristocracy, must necessarily remain outside this discussion. Baptist influences have played a part in the emancipa- tion of woman; the protection of her freedom of conscience, and the extension of the idea of the universal priesthood to her were here also the first breaches in patriarchal ideas.
23. This recurs again and again in Baxter. The Biblical basis is regularly either the passages in Proverbs, which we already know from Franklin (xxii. 29), or those in praise of labour (xxxi. 16). Cf. op. cit., I, pp. 377, 382, etc.
24. Even Zinzendorf says at one point: "One does not only work in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one's work, and if there is no more work to do one suffers or goes to sleep" (Plitt, op. cit., I, p. 428).
25. Also a symbol of the Mormons closes (after quotations) with the words: "But a lazy or indolent man cannot be a Christian and be saved. He is destined to be struck down and cast from the hive." But in this case it was primarily the grandiose discipline, half-way between monastery and factory, which placed the individual before the dilemma of labour or annihilation and, of course in connection with religious enthusiasm and only possible through it, brought forth the astonishing economic achievements of this sect.
26. Hence (op. cit., I, p. 380) its symptoms are carefully analysed. Sloth and idleness are such deadly sins because they have a cumu- lative character. They are even regarded by Baxter as "destroyers of grace" (op. cit., I, pp. 279-80), That is, they are the antitheses of the methodical life.
264 Notes 27. See above, chap, iii, note 5.
28. Baxter, op. cit., I, pp. 108 ff. Especially striking are the follow- ing passages: "Question: But will not wealth excuse us? Answer: It may excuse you from some sordid sort of work by making you more serviceable to another, but you are no more excused from service of work...than the poorest man." Also, p. 376: ''Though they [the rich] have no outward want to urge them, they have as ' great a necessity to obey God,.. God hath strictly commanded it [labour] to all." Chap, iv, note 47.
29. Similarly Spener (op. cit., Ill, pp. 338, 425), who for this reason opposes the tendency to early retirement as morally objec- tionable, and, in refuting an objection to the taking of interest, that the enjoyment of interest leads to laziness, emphasizes that anyone who was in a position to live upon interest would still be obligated to work by God's commandment.
30. Including Pietism. Whenever a question of change of calling arises, Spener takes the attitude that after a certain calling has once been entered upon, it is a duty of obedience to Providence to remain and acquiesce in it.
31. The tremendous force, dominating the whole of conduct, with which the Indian religious teaching sanctions economic tradi- tionalism in terms of chances of favourable rebirth, I have shown in the essays on the Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. It is an excellent example by which to show the difference between mere ethical theories and the creation of psychological sanctions with a religious background for certain types of conduct. The pious Hindu could advance in the scale of transmigration only by the strictly traditional fulfilment of the duties of the caste of his birth. It was the strongest conceivable religious basis for traditionalism. In fact, the Indian ethic is in this respect the most completely consistent antithesis of the Puritan, as in another respect (traditionalism of the caste structure) it is opposed to the Hebrew, 33. But this does not mean that the Puritan view-point was his- torically derived from the latter. On the contrary, it is an expression of the genuinely Calvinistic idea that the cosmos of the world serves the glory of God. The utilitarian turn, that the economic cosmos should serve the good of the many, the common good, etc., was a consequence of the idea that any other interpretation of it would lead to aristocratic idolatry of the flesh, or at least did not serve the glory of God, but only fleshly cultural ends. But God's will, as it is expressed (chap iv, note 34) in the purposeful arrangements of the economic cosmos, can, so far as secular ends are in question at all, only be embodied in the good of the community, in imF>ersonal usefulness. Utilitarianism is thus, as has already been pointed out, the result of the impersonal character of brotherly love and the 26;; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism repudiation of all glorification of this world by the exclusiveness of the Puritan in majorem Dei gloriam.