The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  275) Published in (for example) Gardiner’s “Constitutional Documents.” This struggle against asceticism can be roughly compared with Louis XIV’s persecution of Port Royal and the Jansenists.

  276) Calvin’s standpoint was considerably more lenient, at least as far as the more refined aristocratic forms of enjoyment were concerned. The Bible alone is the criterion; anyone who sticks to it and whose conscience is clear has no need to view every stirring of desire for enjoyment of life with nervous suspicion. The passages on this subject in Chapter 10 of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (for example, “nec fugere ea quoque possumus quae videntur oblectationi magis quam necessitati inservire”) might, in themselves, have opened the floodgates to a very lax practice. However, two factors militated against this development. Firstly, the rising level of anxiety concerning the certitudo salutis among the later generations of the faithful. And, secondly, the fact, which we shall consider later, that in the area of the “ecclesia militans,” it was the petite bourgeoisie [Kleinbürger] that became the bearers of the ethical development of Calvinism.

  277) Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 3), for example, begins a sermon on “the three divine sisters” (“the greatest of these is love”) by pointing out that Paris, too, handed the apple to Aphrodite!

  278) Novels and suchlike are described as “wastetimes” and should not be read (Baxter, Christian Directory, vol. 1, p. 51, col. 2).

  It is well known that lyric poetry and the folk song, as well as the theater, went into decline after the Elizabethan age. As regards the plastic arts, there was probably not a great deal for Puritanism to suppress. What is striking is the dramatic fall from what appears to have been a quite good musical life to absolute zero—a situation that continued among the Anglo-Saxon peoples and indeed still holds today. In America, apart from the Negro churches—and those professional singers engaged by the churches as “attractions” (Trinity Church in Boston hires them for $8,000 a year)—one usually only hears the screeching that passes for “congregational singing” and is so unbearable for the German listener. (In part, the same situation exists in Holland.)

  279) Evidently, the “Renaissance of the Old Testament” in art must have contributed to making the ugly more “possible” as an artistic subject. The Puritan rejection of idolatry also played its part. However, no one cause can be singled out. In the Church of Rome, quite different (demagogic) motives led to superficially similar phenomena, although with quite different artistic results. Anyone contemplating Rembrandt’s marvelous Saul and David (in The Hague) can directly experience the powerful effect of that Puritan idea.

  The perceptive analysis of Dutch cultural influences in Carl Neumann’s Rembrandt probably tells us as much as one can know today on the question of how far positive effects that can be fruitful for art are attributable to ascetic Protestantism.

  280) The weakening of the ascetic spirit and the relatively low degree to which the Calvinist ethic penetrated practical life in Holland under the governorship of Friedrich Heinrich, and the more limited expansion of Dutch Puritanism in general, were due to a great variety of causes. These lay partly in the political constitution (particularist federation of cities and provinces) and in the far lower level of military preparedness (the War of Liberation was soon to be waged principally with money from Amsterdam, using mercenary armies: English preachers used the Dutch army as an illustration of the Babel of tongues). In this way, any serious participation in the religious wars was passed on to others, which meant, however, that the chance of a share in political power was lost. By contrast, Cromwell’s army—even though it was in part conscripted—saw itself as a citizens’ army. (It is noteworthy, however, that precisely this army included in its program the abolition of conscription—simply because it was held that one should only fight for the glory of God and for a cause which did not conflict with the dictates of one’s conscience, and not merely on the whim of the prince. The constitution of the English army, which to German eyes was “immoral,” actually derives historically from very “moral” motives, and was the result of demands by soldiers who had never been defeated).

  Only half a generation after the Synod Dordrecht of the Dutch “schutterijen,” the bearers of Calvinism in the period of the great war, can be seen in Frans Hals’s pictures behaving in ways that are anything but “ascetic.” The Dutch concept of “earthiness” is a mixture of rational bourgeois [bürgerlich-rational] worthiness and patrician consciousness of rank. Even today, the aristocratic character of Dutch church life is evidenced by the way seating in the churches is arranged according to class—more about this later. Regarding Holland, see, for example, Busken-Huët, Het land van Rembrandt (also published in German by von der Ropp).

  281) Here also it is decisive that for the Puritan it could only be a matter of one thing or the other: either the divine will or the vanity of the creature. There could therefore be no “adiaphora” for him. As already mentioned, it was different for Calvin. What one eats, what one wears and so on is a matter of indifference—provided it does not lead to the enslavement of the soul under the power of the appetites. Freedom from the “world” should—as with the Jesuits—express itself in the use of the gifts of the earth with indifference and without desire (pp. 409 ff. of the original edition of the Institutio Christianae Religionis)—a point of view that is effectively closer to Lutheranism than to the precisionism of the epigones.

  282) The attitude of the Quakers in this regard is well known. As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the congregation of exiles in Amsterdam was shaken for a whole decade by violent controversy about the fashionable hats and clothes worn by a minister’s wife (delightfully described in Dexter’s Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years).

  Sanford (op. cit.) has pointed out that the “hairstyle” favored by men today is actually that of the much ridiculed “Roundheads,” and that the equally ridiculed male costume worn by the Puritans is, in all essentials, the same in principle as that which is worn today.

  283) Regarding this, see once again Veblen’s book (already referred to) The Theory of Business Enterprise.

  284) We shall return to this aspect frequently. It explains statements like the following: “Every penny which is paid upon yourselves and children and friends must be done as by God’s own appointment and to serve and please him. Watch narrowly, or else that thievish carnal self will leave God nothing” (Baxter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 108, bottom right). The crucial point is: that which one spends on personal needs is taken away from the service of God’s glory.

  285) We are often rightly reminded (for example, by Dowden, op. cit.) that Cromwell rescued Raphael’s cartoons and Mantegna’s The Triumph of Caesar from destruction, whereas Charles II tried to sell them. It is well known, too, that Restoration society was extremely cool, and even hostile, toward English national literature. The influence of Versailles at court was simply all-pervasive and all-powerful.

  It would be a task beyond the scope of this account to analyze how the mentality which could turn away from unthinking indulgence in the pleasures of everyday life influenced the spirit of the most outstanding representatives of Puritanism and those who had been subjected to its schooling. Washington Irving (Bracebridge Hall, op. cit.), employing the customary English terminology, expressed its effect thus: “it (he means political liberty; we say Puritanism) evinces less play of the fancy, but more power of imagination.” One only needs to think of the position occupied by the Scots in science, literature, technological invention, and even in the business life of England, to sense that this rather too narrowly formulated comment is close to the mark.

  In due course we shall return to the significance of this mentality for the development of technology and the empirical sciences. The connection is also very much in evidence in everyday life. For the Quakers, for example, the permitted “recreations” are (according to Barclay): visiting friends, reading historical works, experiments in mathematics and phy
sics, gardening, discussion of commercial affairs and world events, and so on. The reason is the one we have previously discussed.

  286) There is a superb analysis of this in Carl Neumann’s Rembrandt, the whole of which should be considered in relation to the above remarks.

  287) Baxter says something similar in the above-quoted passage, vol. 1, p. 108, bottom.

  288) Compare, for example, the well-known description of Colonel Hutchinson (often quoted, for example, in Sanford, op. cit., p. 57) in the biography written by his widow. After setting out all his chivalrous virtues as well as his cheerfulness and vitality, she writes: “He was wonderfully neat, cleanly and genteel in his habit, and had a very good fancy in it; but he left off very early the wearing of anything that was costly.”

  In Baxter’s funeral oration to Mary Hammer (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 533), there is a quite similar depiction of the ideal of the open-minded and highly educated Puritan woman, who, however, is sparing of two things: (1) time and (2) expenditure on “pomp” and pleasures.

  289) I recall in particular—among many other examples—a manufacturer who had been unusually successful in his business life and had become very wealthy in old age. When, on account of persistent indigestion, his doctor advised him to eat a few oysters each day, it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could be persuaded to follow this advice. The very substantial foundations that he had set up during his lifetime for charitable purposes, and his “open-handedness,” showed, on the other hand, that this had nothing whatever to do with “meanness,” but was merely due to a residual “ascetic” feeling of the kind which regarded one’s own enjoyment of possessions as morally reprehensible.

  290) The separation of workshop, office, in fact “business” in general, from private residence, the separation of company and name, of business assets and private wealth, the tendency to make the “business” (or at least the company’s assets) into a “corpus mysticum” are all part of this trend. On this question, see my Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter.

  291) In his Kapitalismus, Sombart has correctly referred to this characteristic phenomenon. It should simply be noted that the phenomenon derives from two very different psychological sources. One of these extends back to distant antiquity and is expressed in foundations, inherited property, entailed estates, etc. Similarly, and indeed much more distinctly and clearly, it is expressed in the striving to die some day laden with great material substance. There is also a desire to ensure the continued existence of the “business,” even at the cost of prejudicing the personal interest of the majority of children who are joint beneficiaries. Alongside the desire to lead a incorporeal [ideell] life beyond the grave in one’s own creation, we are concerned in these cases with the wish to preserve the “splendor familiae,” that is, with the vanity which seeks to extol the personality of the founder, in other words, with basically self-centered aims. It is not so with that “bourgeois” [bügerlich] motive with which we are here concerned. Here the ascetic demand “Entsagen sollst du, sollst entsagen”8 gets a positive, capitalist twist: “Erwerben sollst du, sollst erwerben,”9 and appears before us with its pure and simple irrationality as a kind of categorical imperative. Only God’s glory and one’s own duty, not the vanity of man, is the Puritans’ driving force, and today, it is only duty to one’s “calling.” Anyone who enjoys pursuing an idea to its logical conclusion should recall the theory held by certain American billionaires that one should not leave one’s billions to one’s children, in order not to deprive them of the moral benefit of having to work and make money themselves [erwerben]. Today, of course, this would be a purely “theoretical” bubble.

  292) This—as we must repeatedly emphasize—is the ultimately decisive religious motive (apart from the purely ascetic aspects of the mortification of the flesh). This is particularly evident in the case of the Quakers.

  293) Baxter rejects this (The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, p. 12) on grounds similar to those of the Jesuits: the body should be given its due, otherwise one becomes a slave to it.

  294) This ideal is especially clearly present among the early Quakers, an idea that Weingarten has developed convincingly in his Englische Revolutionskirchen. Barclay’s detailed analyses (op. cit., pp. 519ff., 533) also illustrate this with great clarity. To be shunned are: (1) carnal vanity, that is, all ostentation and frippery, and the use of things which have no practical purpose, or which are only valued for their rarity (in other words, for reasons of vanity); and (2) thoughtless use of possessions, as expressed in a disproportionate expenditure on less necessary needs compared with the necessary requirement to sustain life and make provision for the future: the Quaker is a kind of walking “law of marginal utility.” “Moderate use of the creature”10 is certainly permissible, but one should focus especially on things like the quality and durability of the material, provided always that this does not lead to “vanity.”11

  295) We have already stated that we intend to deal separately with the question of the degree to which religious movements are determined by class. But in order to see that Baxter, for example, to whom we refer in particular, was not simply looking through the “bourgeois” spectacles of his age [durch die Brille der “Bourgeoisie”], it is sufficient to bear in mind that in his view too, in the ranking order of careers according to how much they are pleasing to God, the husbandman comes immediately after the learned professions [Berufe], and only then the random assortment of mariners, clothiers, booksellers, tailors, etc. Even the use of the word “mariner” may refer to fishermen as much as to seamen.

  A number of passages in the Talmud differ in this respect. Compare, for example, in Wünsche, Babylonian Talmud II. 1, pp. 20–21, the sayings of Rabbi Eleazar, all of which (though they have been questioned) suggest that commerce is better than agriculture. (Somewhere between the two is the recommendation in II. 2, p. 68, on capital investments: one-third in land, one-third in merchandise, one-third in cash).

  For those whose “causal conscience” can find no rest without an economic (or should I say “materialist”?—the word is unfortunately still used) “interpretation,” it should be mentioned here that I regard the influence of economic development on the destiny of religious thinking as highly significant, and I shall later attempt to demonstrate what form the mutual adaptation processes and relationships of both have taken. However, these ideas are simply not capable of being “economically” deduced. There can be no doubting it—they are themselves the most powerful elements of “national character,” and carry their own compelling force within them. It should be added that to the extent that nonreligious factors have a part to play, the most important differences—notably those between Lutheranism and Calvinism—are, in the main, politically determined.

  296) This is what Eduard Bernstein is thinking of when in his previously quoted essay (p. 681 and p. 625) he says: “Asceticism is a bourgeois [bürgerlich] virtue.” His essay (op. cit.) is the first to have even hinted at these important links. The connections are, however, much more far-reaching than he suspects. It is not merely capital accumulation, but the ascetic rationalization of working life as a whole [Berufsleben] that is crucial.

  297) Doyle, The English in America, vol. 2, chap. 1. The existence of metallurgical works (1643), weaving for the market (1659), and the full flowering of the craft professions in New England in the first generation after the founding of the colony are, from a purely economic point of view, anachronisms, and contrast most strikingly with conditions in the south, as well as with those in Rhode Island, which was not Calvinist, but enjoyed complete freedom of conscience. It was here that in spite of the existence of an excellent harbor, the report of the Governor and Council of 1686 said: “The great obstruction concerning trade is the want of merchants and men of considerable Estates amongst us” (Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island, vol. 1, p. 490). There can indeed be no doubt about the role played here by the compulsion (resulting from the Puritan restrictions on consumption) to consta
ntly reinvest capital that had been saved. We shall look later at the part played by Church discipline in this matter.

  298) The account by Busken-Huët shows, however, that these circles rapidly declined in the Netherlands (op. cit., vol. 2, chaps. 3 and 4).

  299) In the case of England, a petition by a royalist nobleman after the entry of Charles II into London called for a legal ban on the acquisition of country estates by bourgeois [bürgerlich] capital, which should thereby be forced to invest in trade (quoted by Ranke, in Englische Geschichte, vol. 4, p. 197).

  The Dutch “regents” distinguished themselves as an “estate” [Stand] from among the bourgeois [bürgerlich] patriciate of the towns by the purchase of old feudal estates. Admittedly, these circles were never seriously Calvinist by inward conviction. But the notorious craving for nobility and titles that was common among the Dutch bourgeoisie [Bürgertum] in the second half of the seventeenth century is sufficient to show that for this period, at least, we should be wary of accepting too readily the supposed contrast between conditions in England and Holland. Here, the power of money proved too strong for the ascetic spirit.