The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  214) There remains, then, a difference in tone between the Calvinist and the Quaker rationalization of life. Baxter formulates this difference by saying that the “spirit” should act on the soul as on a corpse, while the principle which was characteristic of the Reformed movement was: “reason and spirit are conjunct principles” (Christian Directory, vol. 2, p. 76); this kind of contrast, however, was no longer typical of the period.

  215) See the very carefully written articles on “Menno” and “Mennonites” by Cramer in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, especially page 604. When we discuss class relationships in Protestant asceticism, we shall return to these. Whereas the above-mentioned articles are good, the article on “Baptists” in the same encyclopedia is very much lacking in depth, and in places really inaccurate. For instance, the author is not familiar with the “Publications of the Hanserd Knolly’s Society,” which is an essential source for the history of the Baptist movement.

  216) Thus Barclay (op. cit., p. 404) states that eating, drinking, and business are “natural, not spiritual, acts,” which can be carried out without a special call from God. This statement is the answer to the (characteristic) objection that if, as the Quakers teach, one was not permitted to pray without a special “motion of the spirit,” neither should one be permitted to plough without such a special motive.

  Even modern resolutions at Quaker synods contain the advice to withdraw from business life after having acquired sufficient wealth, in order to be able to live a quiet life entirely devoted to the kingdom of God, away from the activities of the world. This is, of course, significant, even if such ideas may occasionally be found in the denominations, even Calvinist denominations. It is also an indication that the acceptance of the middle-class ethic of the calling was a concession by ascetics who had originally withdrawn from the world.

  217) We refer here again with emphasis to the excellent writings of E. Bernstein, op. cit. At a later stage, we shall look at Kautsky’s depiction of the Anabaptist movement and his theory of “heretical communism” in general (in the first volume of the same work).

  218) In his stimulating book The Theory of Business Enterprise, Veblen (Chicago), expresses the opinion that this maxim is merely “early capitalist.” But there have always been economic “supermen,” who, like today’s “captains of industry,”6 stand beyond good and evil, and in the broad stratum of capitalist activity, the maxim still applies today.

  219) “In civil actions it is good to be as the many, in religious, to be as the best.” So said Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 138). Admittedly, this sounds rather more far-reaching than the author intended. It signifies that Puritan integrity is formalistic legality, just as the “uprightness”7 which former Puritan nations like to claim as a national virtue is something quite different from German “honesty” [Ehrlichkeit], having been formalistically and reflexively remodeled. There are helpful remarks on this subject by an educationalist in the Preuβische Jahrbücher, vol. 112, 1903, p. 226. Conversely, the formalism of the Puritan ethic is an absolutely natural [adäquate] consequence of being tied to the law.

  220) “Since God hath gathered us to be a people . . . ,” says (among others) Barclay, op. cit., p. 357. I myself have listened to a Quaker sermon which laid the entire emphasis on the interpretation of “saints” = sancti = separati.

  221) See the fine character study in Dowden, op. cit. There is a moderately good account of Baxter’s theology after he had gradually departed from strict belief in the “double decree” in Jenkyn’s introduction to his various works printed in Works of the Puritan Divines. Baxter’s attempt to combine “universal redemption” and “personal election” satisfied no one. For our purposes it is merely important to note the fact that even then he continued to hold fast to personal election, which is the ethically crucial feature of the doctrine of predestination. On the other hand, it is important to note his dilution of the forensic conception of justification, which represents a certain degree of movement toward the Baptists.

  222) Tracts and sermons by Thomas Adams, John Howe, Matthew Henry, J. Janeway, S. Charnock, Baxter, and Bunyan have been collected in the ten volumes of the Works of the Puritan Divines (London, 1845–48) in a frequently rather arbitrary manner. Editions of the works of Bailey, Sedgwick, and Hoornbeek have already been mentioned when first referred to earlier. Gisbert Voët’s α’σκητηκα, which should also have been consulted, was unfortunately not available to me during the writing of this essay.

  223) The selection is based on the desire to give prominence to (not exclusively, but as far as possible), the ascetic movement of the second half of the seventeenth century, immediately before the advent of utilitarianism. Desirable though it would have been, considerations of space have obliged me to omit any depiction of the style of life of ascetic Protestantism based on biographical literature—Quaker sources would have been particularly useful, as they are relatively unknown to us.

  224) The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chaps. 10 and 12. Compare 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: Psalm 127.2.” (On the same page is found the remark—to be quoted later—regarding the sinfulness of time-wasting of all kinds, particularly through recreations.) Similarly in the whole of the religious literature of Anglo-Dutch Puritanism. (See, for example, Hoornbeek’s philippics against avaritia, op. cit., vol. 10, chaps. 18 and 19. Incidentally, this writer is subject to sentimental, Pietist influences: see his praise of “tranquillitas animi,” which is pleasing to God, as against the “sollicitudo” of this world.) “A rich man will not easily be saved,” says Bailey too (op. cit., p. 182), referring to a well-known Bible text. The Methodist catechisms also warn against “laying up treasure on earth.” In the case of Pietism, this goes without saying. And it was no different with the Quakers. Compare Barclay, op. cit., p. 517: “. . . and therefore beware of such temptation as to use their calling as an engine to be richer.”

  225) This is developed in detail in chapter 10 of The Saints’ Everlasting Rest: “Anyone desiring to rest permanently at the ‘temporary lodging,’ which is all that God intends possessions to be, God will strike down in this life too. Almost always, complacent resting on accumulated riches is a harbinger of calamity. If we had everything we could have in the world, would this be all that we hoped to have? Absence of desire cannot be achieved on earth—because it is not God’s will that it should be.”

  226) Christian Directory, vol. 1, pp. 375–76: “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 honored by. . . . The public welfare or the good of many is to be valued above our own.” Here we see the starting point for the move away from the will of God to the purely utilitarian attitudes of later liberal theory. On the religious sources of utilitarianism, see below [note 248 in this edition] and above [note 84 in this edition].

  227) The command to be silent, after all—based on the biblical threat of sanctions for “every idle word”—has been a well-tried ascetic means of education to self-control, especially since the Cluniacs. Baxter, too, expatiates on the sin of idle talk. The significance of this for character has been assessed by Sanford, op. cit., pp. 90f. The “melancholy” and “moroseness” of the Puritans, which was felt so keenly by contemporaries, is simply a consequence of the break with the spontaneity of the “status naturalis,” and the condemnation of thoughtless talk was part of the same process.

  When, in Bracebridge Hall (chap. 30), Washington Irving finds the reason partly in the “calculating spirit” of capitalism, and partly in the effect of the political liberty that leads to autonomy, it must be said that no such effect was evident in the Romance nations, and that for England the situation was that (1) Puritanism
equipped its adherents to create free institutions and still become a world power, and (2) it transformed that “calculating spirit” (Sombart calls it Rechen-haftigkeit), which is indeed fundamental to capitalism, from an economic means to a principle of the whole manner of conducting one’s life.

  228) Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 111.

  229) Op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 383f.

  230) Similarly, on the value of time, Barclay, op. cit., p. 14.

  231) Baxter, op. cit., 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 (The Worth of the Soul, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 315). Here, too, Protestant asceticism is operating in familiar paths. We are accustomed to regard it as a typical feature of the modern man of the calling that he “has no time,” and even take the fact that the clocks strike the quarter hours as a mark of capitalist development, as Goethe puts it in his “Wanderjahren,” and Sombart repeats in his Capitalism. We should not forget, however, that the first people (in the Middle Ages) to live according to divisions of time were the monks, and that the original purpose of church bells was to mark these divisions.

  232) Compare Baxter’s discussion of the calling (op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 108f.), 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 wordly cares or business as unnecessarily hinder you in spiritual things. But you may not cast off all bodily employment and mental labor in which you may serve the common good. Every one 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 your greatest work and tie himself to some lesser easier part. And God hath commanded you some way or other to labor for your daily bread and not to live as drones of the sweat of others only.” God’s command to Adam: “In the sweat of thy face . . .” and Paul’s principle: “He who will not work, shall not eat” are also quoted.

  233) Pietism differs here in certain ways on account of its emotional character. For Spener (see Theologische Bedenken, vol. 3, p. 445), even though he stresses (in true Lutheran style) that labor in a calling is service to God, there can be no doubt (and this too is Lu-theran) that to be agitated about one’s business [Berufsgeschäfte] distracts one from God—and this is very clearly contrary to the Puritan view.

  234) Op. cit., p. 242: “It’s they that are lazy in their callings that can find no time for holy duties.” Hence the view that it is primarily in the towns—where the middle classes [Bürgertum] pursue rational economic activity [Erwerb]—that the ascetic virtues are practiced. Thus, speaking of his hand-loom workers in Kidderminster, Baxter says in his autobiography: “And their constant converse and traffic with London doth much to promote civility and piety among tradesmen (excerpt in the Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 38). Today’s churchmen—at least in Germany—would be astonished at the idea that proximity to the capital should have the effect of strengthening virtue. But Pietists, too, hold similar opinions. Thus we find Spener writing to a young clergyman: “At least amongst the great numbers in the towns, though most are disreputable, some good souls will always be found in whom good things may be achieved; sad to say, in the villages there is sometimes scarcely anything good to be found in the whole parish” (Theologische Bedenken, vol. 1, 66, p. 303).

  The peasant is simply not adapted to the ascetic rational manner of life. The ethical glorification of the peasant is very recent. At this point we are unable to go into the significance of these and similar ideas for the question of the class basis of asceticism.

  235) Take, for example, the following passages (op. cit., pp. 336f.): “Be wholly taken up in diligent business of your lawful callings when you are not exercised in the more immediate service of God,”—“Labor hard in your callings,” and “See that you have a calling which will find you employment for all the time which God’s immediate service spareth.”

  236) Harnack has recently stressed once again that the particular ethical value placed upon labor and upon the “dignity” of labor was not originally confined to or peculiar to Christianity. Mitteilungen des evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses, 14th series, 1905, nos. 3 and 4, p. 48).

  237) Thus also in Pietism (Spener, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 429–30). The typically Pietist attitude is that faithfulness in the calling, which is laid upon us as a punishment for original sin, serves the mortification of man’s own will. Labor in a calling is a service of love given to one’s neighbour and as such is a duty of gratitude owed to God for his grace (a Lutheran idea!). It is therefore not pleasing to God if it is done reluctantly and resentfully (op. cit., p. 272). The Christian will therefore show himself “as industrious in his labor as a man of the world” (p. 278). Clearly, this falls short of the Puritan attitude.

  238) According to Baxter, the purpose of marriage is “a sober procreation of children.” Similarly, Spener, although with concessions to the crude Lutheran view that a secondary purpose is the avoidance of fornication—which could not otherwise be suppressed. As an accompaniment to copulation, concupiscence is even sinful within marriage, and is, in the view of (for example) Spener, a result of the fall, which turned what was a natural and divinely ordained process into something which was inevitably linked with sinful sentiments and thus into a pudendum. A common view among Pietists is that the highest form of Christian marriage is that in which virginity is preserved, and the next highest that in which sexual intercourse is practiced solely for the procreation of children, and so on right down to those which are contracted for purely erotic or external reasons, which, from the ethical point of view, are no better than concubinage. Incidentally, the purely external reasons are rated more highly than the erotic, since they do at least arise from rational considerations. We are leaving aside the Herrnhut theory and practice here. Rationalist philosophy (Christian Wolff) took over ascetic theory to the extent that anything that was required as a means, including concupiscence and its gratification, should not be engaged in for its own sake.

  With Franklin, the move to purely “hygienically” oriented utilitarianism is complete. His “ethical” standpoint is more or less identical to that of the medical profession today. By “chastity” he understands the restriction of sexual intercourse to what is desirable from the point of view of health, and has, as we know, also expressed a theoretical opinion as to the “how.”

  This development has occurred wherever these things have been made the object of purely rational considerations. The paths of the Puritan and of the sexual hygiene rationalist are widely separated, but here they “coincide.” In the course of a lecture—the speaker was referring to the control and regulation of brothels—a zealous proponent of “hygienic prostitution” attempted to base the moral permissibility of “extramarital sexual relations” (regarded as hygienically useful) by reference to its poetic transfiguration in the figures of Faust and Gretchen. The idea of regarding Gretchen as a prostitute, and putting the powerful working of human passions on par with sexual intercourse practiced for “hygienic” reasons, both correspond clearly to the Puritan standpoint. Similarly, there is the typical specialist view (occasionally held by very distinguished medical doctors) that a matter like the significance of sexual abstinence, even though this is one that involves the subtlest questions of personality and culture, lies “exclusively” within the competence of doctors (that is, of “specialists”). Here the “specialist” is the hygiene theoretician, whereas the Puritan “specialist” is the moralist, but the underlying principle remains the same: specialist philistinism is connected with sexual philistinism. The only difference is that the powerfu
l idealism of the Puritan attitude—however narrow, ridiculous, and occasionally repugnant their prudery may appear to us—did have positive results to show for itself, even from the point of view of “hygiene” or racial preservation. By contrast, modern “sexual hygienists,” if only by the way they inevitably have to call for an “unprejudiced” approach, are constantly in danger of “throwing out the baby with the bath water” when delving into these matters.

  We have here, of course, left aside the question of how, among the nations influenced by Puritanism, the rational interpretation of sexual relations has given rise to the refinement of marital relationships and their permeation by spiritual and ethical values, and to the finer blossoming of courtesy within marriage. This is in contrast to that patriarchal peasant miasma which has been left behind in often quite tangible amounts right up to the level of the “spiritual aristocracy.” Baptist influences have a decisive role to play in this; protection of the freedom of conscience of women and the extension of the idea of the “universal priesthood” to women were the first inroads to be made into patriarchalism here too.

  239) This recurs constantly in Baxter. The biblical basis is normally either the one well known to us from Franklin (Proverbs 22.29) or the praise of work in Proverbs 31.10. Compare op. cit., vol. 1, p. 377, p. 382, etc.

  240) Even Zinzendorf says on one occasion: “We do not work merely to live, but we live for the sake of work, and if we have no more work to do, we suffer or pass away” (Plitt, vol. 1, p. 428).

  241) A Mormon statement of faith—which I do not have on hand—ends (according to the quotation) with the words: “But a slothful or lazy man cannot be a Christian and enjoy salvation. He is destined to be stung to death and cast out of the beehive.” However, in this case it was principally the grandiose discipline, steering a middle course between monastery and factory, that presented the individual with the choice of work or extinction and which—linked of course with religious enthusiasm and only possible by means of this—brought about the amazing economic achievements of this sect.