Sociology

Definition of Industrial Sociology

2009-07-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

1. 'Industrial sociology is the application of sociological approach to the reality and problems of industry'. -P. Gisbert.

2. "Industrial sociology centres its attention on social organization of factory, the store, and the office. This focus includes not only the interactions of people playing roles in these organizations but also the ways in which their work roles are interrelated with other aspects of their life" -Charles B. Spaulding.

3. Industrial sociology is the sociology of industrial relations and industrial activities of man.

Introduction of Industrial Sociology

2009-07-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

The Industrial Revolution that took place in England in the 18th century changed the course of human society. The revolution, through essentially took place in economic field, its effects were never confined to the economic field alone. It brought down the cost of production, improved quality and maximised output. More than that, it changed the pattern of human relations. It eased human life, and proved more comforts and luxuries to man. At the same time, it altered human outlook and attitudes. It brought about radical changes in the very structure of the society.

Industrial revolution, in course of time resulted in the continuous process of industrialisation. Industrialisation is a phenomenon of world significance today. Development in the field of science and technology further added to the volume and speed of the process. Agricultural economy turned into industrial economy. Industrial area developed into towns and cities. The process of urbanisation began. People from rural areas started to flocking towards cities. Capitalist economy was born. Social classes with class-hatreds emerged. Social institutions and values underwent changes. New problems and new fears and new anxieties were invariably the result of it. The very face of the society changed. These developments necessitated the birth of a new branch of sociology called "Industrial Sociology" which essentially deals with the industrial society with all its complexities.

Importance of Rural Sociology

2009-07-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

The practical value of the study of rural sociology is widely recognised today. As long as the villages and the rural society assume importance, the rural sociology shall continue to acquire importance. The value of rural sociology can be understood by the following points:

1. Rural Population is in Majority: The world's is more rural than urban. More than two-third of people of the world live in villages. It is the village that forms the basis of society. Rural sociology is inevitable for the study of the majority of the population.

2.Intimate Relationship between the Land and Man: Man is born out of land and his entire culture depends on it. Land has been the part of and parcel of human life. Progress starts from the village. The type of land partially conditions the type of society and the opportunities for human development. This close relationship between man and land has also been recognised by economists and political scientists.

3. Villages and Rural Life from the Source of Population: Cities normally grow out of towns and villages. No city can come into existence all of a sudden without having a rural background. A village, when improved and thickly populated, becomes a town or city. Thus it is the village population that forms the source of urban life.

4. Psychological Approach to the Rural Life: Rural progress, rural reconstruction or improvement of rural societies is possible only when the people have correct idea about the rural way of life and problems. Rural sociology touches upon the rural psychology and provides a good understanding of the rural people and their society.

Scope or Subject-Matter of Rural Sociology

2009-07-01T04:21:00.000-07:00

The scope or subject-matter of rural sociology is basically the study of rural society with all its complexities. According to Lawry and Nelson, 'The subject-matter of rural sociology is the description and analysis of the progress of various groups as they exist in the rural environment.'

The main tasks of rural sociology can be mentioned here. They are as follows,

1. Rural Community and Rural Problems.

This includes the characteristics and nature of rural community and its problems.

2. Rural Social Life.
This includes various aspects of the rural people.

3. Rural Social Organization.

This includes the study of various rural social organizations and institutions including family and marriage.

4. Rural Social Institutions and Structure.

This includes the study of dogmas, customs, traditions, morals, conventions, practices and various political, economic, religious and cultural institutions

5. Rural Planning and Reconstruction.

Rural sociology has great practical applications. Hence rural planning and reconstruction are also the main tasks of rural sociology to be be dealt with.

6. Social Change and Social Control in Rural Social Setup: It is here we study the impact of city on rural life. The mechanisms of social control of the rural society are also examined here.

7. Religion and Culture in Rural Society.

Religion plays an important role in the rural set up. Culture of rural society exhibits striking peculiarities. These come within the domain of rural sociology.

8. Rural Social Processes.

Different social processes such as cooperation, competition, integration, differentiation, isolation etc., that take place in rural society are also studied in rural sociology.

9. Differences between Urban and Rural Society.

The study of rural society includes the differences between urban and rural society also.

Origin of Rural Sociology

2009-06-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

Rural Sociology is comparatively a new branch of sociology. It was first originated in the United States of America. It has taken more than half a century to become established as a distinct academic field or professional study. The main contributors to the development of rural sociology are-Charles Sanderson, Burtherfield, Ernast Burnholme, John Morris Gillin, Franklin H. Giddings and Thomas Nixon Carver. It was President Roosevelt who, through the appointment of 'Country Life Commission' gave a good encouragement to the development to the rural sociology in 1908. The report of this Commission encouraged the studies of rural society.

In 1917 the Department of Rural Sociology was set up by the American Sociological Society. In 1919, a 'Rural Sociology Department' was established under the chairmanship of Dr. C. J. Galpin. The Great Depression of 1930 provided another stimulus to the growth of rural sociology. In 1937, 'Rural Sociological Society' was formed. It started publishing a professional journal 'Rural Sociology' containing results of rural sociological research. C. J. Galpin of University of Wisconsin developed techniques for defining and delimiting the rural community. His approach is still popular today.

The Great Second World War gave yet another fillip to the growth of rural sociology. The destruction caused by the war demanded reconstruction. The reconstruction work brought further encouragement to the science. By 1958 there were about 1000 professional rural sociologists in America. Rural sociology crossed the boundaries of America and became popular in Europe. A European Society for Rural Sociology was formed in 1957, and a similar organisation was started in Japan also. In developing countries, the role of the rural sociologists is primarily in the applied field of more effective planning and operation of rural community development programmes.

Definition of Rural Sociology

2009-06-29T02:41:00.000-07:00

Different sociologists have defined rural sociology in different ways. A few definitions may be examined here.

1. Sanderson says that "Rural sociology is the sociology of rural life in the rural environment".

2. Bertand says that in its broadest sense, "Rural sociology is that study of human relationships in rural environment".

3. F. Stuard Chapin defines rural sociology as follows: "The sociology of rural life is a study of the rural population, rural social organisation and the social processes comparative, in rural society".

4. A. R. Desai says that "Rural sociology is the science of rural society...It is the science of laws of the development of rural society".

It is clear from the above mentioned definitions that rural sociology studies the social interactions, institutions and activities and social changes that take place in the rural society. It studies the rural social organisations, structure and set up. It provides us that knowledge about the rural social phenomena.

Introduction of Rural Sociology

2009-06-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

Rural Sociology is a specialised field of sociology. As the name indicates, it deals with the society of village or rural society. It is a systematic and scientific study of rural society. The majority of the people on the earth live in villages and rural areas. They follow patterns of occupation and life, and beliefs are conditioned and deeply influenced by their rural environment. A specialised branch of sociology called, Rural Sociology, has therefore, emerged to study the rural society

Sociology of Religion

2009-06-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

The phenomenon of religion attracted the attention of the sociologists because of its great human importance. No society is free from the influence of religion. In established societies, religion is one of the most important institutional structures making up the total social system. A special branch of sociology has now emerged in order to analyze the religious behavior of men from a sociological point of view. "The sociology of religion is but one aspect of the study of the relationship between ideas and ideals embodied in movements and institutions, and the social situations of their origin, development, flourishing and decline" Thomas F. O' Dea.

The early sociological studies of religion had three distinctive methodological characterisristics-Evolutionist, Positivist and Psychological. Ex: The works of Comte, Tylor and Spencer. But Emile Durkheim is his "Elementary Forms of the Religious Life", 1912, made a different approach to the study of religion. He argued that in all societies, a distinction is made between the "sacred" and "profane". He emphasized the collective aspects of religion. He was of the opinion that the function of religious rituals is to affirm the moral superiority of the society over its individual members and thus to maintain the solidarity of the society. Durkheim's emphasis on ritual as against belief, later influences many anthropologists to undertake functionalist investigations of religion. B. Malinowski and A. R. Rascliffe-Brown and other anthropologists were also influenced by the views of Durkheim.

In the study of religion in civilized societies, Durkheim's theory has proved less useful. Here, religion not only unites people but also divides. In modern societies, beliefs and doctrines have more importance than ritual. Here, the sociological study of religion differs from that anthropology. It is more influenced by the ethical doctrines of the world religions. This approach can be witnessed in the works of L.T. Hobhouse and Max Weber. Hobhouse, in discussing religion in his major work "Morals in Evolution",-1907, gave more importance to moral codes of the major religions and particularly of Christianity.

Max Weber's treatment of religious beliefs differs in important respects. Firstly, it is not based on an evolutionary scheme. Secondly, it is mainly concerned with one major aspect religious ethics. That is, he wanted to examine the influence of particular religious doctrines upon economic behavior; and the relations between the position of groups in the economic order and types of religious beliefs. He is less concerned with ethical doctrines as such. His famous work, "The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism" is an example of such an approach.

Comparatively, nothing more has been added to the theoretical development of a Sociology of Religion since the works of Weber and Durkheim. Weber's influence has contributed to two main lines of study; (i) The characteristics, doctrines and social significance of religious sects, and (ii) the interlink between social classes and religious sects. Ernst Troeltsch's "The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches", 1912, H. R. Niebuhr's "The Social Sources of Denominationalism", 1929; and Brian Wilson's "Sects and Society", 1961, can be mentioned here as examples carrying weber's influence.

The Sociology of Religion seeks to offer a scientific explanation to religion. As Kingsley Davis says this "Task is not easy. No societal phenomenon is more resistant than religion to scientific explanation". Two factors seem to be responsible for this-first an emotional and second a 'rational bias'. "The emotional bias springs from the fact that religion by its very nature involves ultimate values, making it almost impossible to view with a disintersted attitude". The 'rational bias' would also create problems. Religion which involves transcendental ends, strong sentiments, deep-rooted beliefs, and symbolic instruments may appear to be fallacious to "rationalist". He may attribute religion simply to ignorance and error and assume that when these are removed there will emerged the completely 'rational' man. Some hold that religion is an expression of instinctive emotions. These views are equally false, "The very non-rationality of religious behaviour is the thing that gives religion its vitality in human life".

Sociology of Occupations

2009-06-28T10:02:00.001-07:00

'Sociology of Occupations is one of the new branches of sociology. It deals with the problem of examining how the occupational structure and particular occupations associate with other segments of society like the family, the economy, the educational system, the political system and the system of social stratification. Its investigations concentrate upon the following themes: (i) the division of labor, its causes and consequences, (ii) The study of specific occupations of the people like the prostitute, the dockworkers, the clerk, the architect, the physician, etc. (iii) The function and meaning of work and related phenomena such as leisure, unemployment and retirement. (vi) Researches are also undertaken on such topics as the amount and method of remuneration, recruitment and training, career patterns, conflicts inherent in role, the relation between personality and occupation, interpersonal relations at work, the public image of occupation, and distribution of power and prestige within the occupation, etc.

Political Sociology

2009-06-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

Ever science the Aristotle, thinkers have been making systematic study of concrete political phenomena. They have been observing how political phenomena influence and get influences by the rest of the social structure and culture. In this regard, Aristotle's 'Politics" may be taken as a work of political sociology. Ferguson, Montesquieu and Tocqueville were all engaged in what today would be called political sociology. The classical sociologists like Weber (in his essay "Politics as Vocation) and Pareto (his work "The Mind and Society') were pioneers in including a political sociology in their work. Further, Karl Marx in Germany, Mosca in Italy and Graham Wallas in England advanced so essentially sociology theories of political elites and of the processes of consensus and dissent. Also Andre Siegfried of pre-1914 France made a details study of this social group and interests in voting behavior. The phrase 'Political Sociology' to describe this tradition only came into general use after 1945.

Ever since the birth of sociology, the analysis of political processes and institutions has been one of its most important concerns. Sociologists argue and many political scientists agree that it is difficult to study political processes expect as special cases of more general psychological and sociological relationships. The term "Political Sociology" has come to be accepted both within sociology and political science as encompassing the overlap between two sciences. However, the political scientist is primarily concerned with the dimension of power and factors affecting its distribution. The sociologist, on other hand, is more concerned with social control, with the way in which the values and norms of a society regulate relations. His emphasis is on social ties, rather than on formal structures and legal definitions.

As Smelser N. J. says, "Political Sociology can be defined as the study of the interrelationship between society and polity, between social structures and political institutions". Political sociology is not solely the study of the social factors condition the political order.

Political sociology employs the methods of sociological research, including those of attitude research to investigate the content of political behavior. It treats political institutions, both formal or constitutional and informal, as parts of the social system. It has concentrated attention on 'elites and their membership, on the expression and regulation of conflict, on formal pressure groups, on the formation of political opinion. Political sociologists have been concerned with political parties as social institutions and with the phenomena of despotic and totalitarian regimes. It is an integral part of sociology which has progressively transformed political science in the direction of a wider attention to empirical reality.

Sociology of Education

2009-06-26T02:47:00.000-07:00

Sociology of education is one of the specialised fields of social inquiry. It analyses the institutions and organisations of education. It studies the functional relationship between education and the other great institutional orders of society such as the economy, the polity, religion and kinship. It concentrates on educational system or subsystem or individual school or college.

'Sociology of education' studies 'education' as an agent of transmission of culture. It studies the functional importance of education also. It makes studies of school organisation and the relation between schools and social structure, especially social class, family and neighbourhood. The interaction of these social forces with the internal organisation of school is explored in order to find out the social determines of educability. Studies have shown that social class and its correlates have a systematic effect on educability and educational selection. For example, in Britain, the chances of achieving a university degree are six times better for a middle class than for a working-class child. The social deteminates of academic success remain powerful even in modern educational systems in spite of provision of equal opportunities for all. The theoretical notion of "meritocracy", i.e., rule by the educated and talented persons, has to be understood within this context. Sociological studies of higher education have increased since 1950.

Sociology of education stresses upon the social importance of education. The social importance of education is widely recognised today, especially in modern industrialised societies. In such societies education has become one of the means of acquiring social and technical skills. Education has become to be not only a way of training people to work in different fields but also a qualification for jobs in certain fields. It fits people for increasingly specialised roles.

More than that, education has become an essential need today to register progress in scientific and technological fields. As such, it is a means of promoting economic prosperity. Education, as a means of bringing about social change, is no less significant. It promotes social mobility, that is, movement of people from one social status to another. It influences social stratification. Education is often made of in totalitarian and communist countries as an instrument to propagate some chauvinist and communist ideologies.

The famous writer Newman said that the main practical purpose of university is to produce socially responsible people. President Truman of America, stressing the importance of education, once remarked that with wide experience, practical vision of things, intellectual depth and capacity to take decisions at right time should be given the reins of administration to rule the country. Dr S. Radhakrishnan said that the main objective of education is to give training to students to undertake occupations effectively and to become proper leaders in various social fields in which they happen to work.

Social or Human Ecology

2009-06-25T04:49:00.000-07:00

Ecology is a branch of biology and has been largely concerned with the environment of the lower animals and plants. It refers to the influence of the environment upon animal ecology. The sociologists who adopted the approach of these natural scientists in their field as "human ecology" or "social ecology". The botanists also supplied the sociologists with fundamental principles, concepts and terminology.

The study of human ecology is nothing but the logical extension of the ecological point of view. Human ecology is that part of sociology which studies human beings' adjustments to their environments which include not only the physical conditions of their geographic environment but also other organisms such as other fellow human beings, plants and animals. Man, the subject of human ecology is less restricted by his physical environment. With the help of culture that man possesses, he can live almost anywhere on the planet. He can grow and produce different kinds of food, wear clothing's of various types, construct houses, bridges and dams, create tools and implements which have different uses, kill beasts that are dangerous, destroy harmful insects with pesticides and so on.

social ecologists have focused their attention on the community. The ecological factors can more easy and more productively be studied when the community is the unit of observation. Ecology studies community in relation to environment. Culture modifies the influence of natural environment, and as culture changes, communities change.

The Ecological Approach: The ecological approach to the study of communities had been used, so far, mainly by American sociologists. Park and Burgess were the pioneers in the study of human ecology. They and their student Mackenzie formulated its basic principles. They made it a field of study within sociology. Later this approach was very usefully employed by sociologists other than those of the "Chicago School".

Sociologists who study communities from the ecological point of view consider a village town or city sociological rather than a legal or an administrative unit. It needs not confine itself to the boundaries set by law. "A community, from the ecological point of view, includes a focal area plus the surrounding territory. Its size is determined by the extent of its economic and social influence". This ecological conception is used by the sociologists in their study of the community. Even economists, social workers, businessmen, and social planning agencies make use of this approach.

Sociology of Law

2009-06-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

'Sociology of Law' looks at law and legal systems as a part of society and also as social institutions related to other institutions and changing with them. It regards law as one means of social control. Hence law is often made to be related to a moral order, to a body off customs and ideas about society. From this point of view, sociology of law is itself related to jurisprudence. Still it is not like jurisprudence. Sociology of law requires an understanding of the system of law no doubt. But it is still wider in scope. It seeks "perceive the relationship of systems of law to other social sub systems like economy, the nature and distribution of authority, and the structure of family and kinship relationships". In Britain, some social anthropologists have examined the systems of law and courts in relatively simple societies and tried to determine their relationships to other aspects of social system.

The study of "Sociology of Law" is well known in Europe but not in America and Britain. In fact, sociologists have hardly turned their attention towards sociology of law in modern societies. Previously, Durkheim (through his classification of law into retributive and restitutive) and Max Weber (through his "Law in Economy and Society" - Translated work) had made some initial studies in the field. Austrian scholar E. Ehrlich published one of the most outstanding works on sociology of law in 1913 which was translated into English under the title "Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law" in 1936. Another famous work is that of Georges Gurvitch's 'Sociology of Law' 1942. Due to the work of some jurists in America considerable interest is now being shown to sociology of law. Due to this growing interest only a number of sociologists and lawyers have made a joint venture to produce an interesting work entitled "Sociology and the Law; New meanings for an old Profession" 1962.

Sociology of Knowledge

2009-06-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

'Sociology of Knowledge' is one of the recently emerged branches of sociology. This branch pre-supposes the idea "that our knowledge is in some measure a social product." Thinkers had recognized long back the importance of economic, religious, political and other interests in shaping human beliefs and ideas. Of late, the view that even human society and its vert structure can influence knowledge, gained sufficient recognition. The history of Greece and Rome in particular has strongly supported this view. In his book "New Science" (1725) Vico tried to show how heroic literature constituted the thought mode of a specific kind of society.

The promlem of the relationship between society and knowledge has been raised by Marxnism, and it has offered a solution to it also. "According to Marx and Engels, all knowledge has been distorted, directed and conditioned by interests conscious and unconscious, of conflicting exploited and exploiting classes". In the light of contemporary sociological information, this view is found to be untenable as a total sociology of knowledge.

Durkheim tried to approach this problem in his own way. In "Elementary Forms of the Religious Life" 1912 and "Sociology and Philosophy" 1952 (essays translated) he argued that our perception and experience are derived from and constitute a part of social structure. This view may be alright for simpler societies and not for complex ones. Even Comte's three stages of social evolution had been regarded as stages of forms of thought of which the last stage, that is, the positivist stage is alone objective.

The foundations of the sociology of knowledge will have to be found in Karl Manheim's "Ideology and Utopia" 1936 and "Essays on Sociology of Knowledge", 1952. Manheim tried to face "The problem of sociology of knowledge with great philosophical learning and methodological ingenuity". A number of sociologists are attracted by the subject of knowledge but the problems it raises are unsolved.

The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris

2009-06-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Human Zoo is a book written by the British zoologist Desmond Morris, published in 1969. It is a follow-up to his earlier book The Naked Ape; both books examine how the biological nature of the human species has shaped the character of the cultures of the contemporary world.

The Human Zoo examines the nature of civilized society, especially in the cities. Morris compares the human inhabitants of a city to the animal inhabitants of a zoo, which have their survival needs provided for, but at the cost of living in an unnatural environment. Humans in their cities, and animals in their zoos, both have food and shelter provided for them, and have considerable free time on their hands. But they have to live in an unnatural environment, are both likely to have problems in developing healthy social relationships, both are liable to suffer from isolation and boredom, and both live in a limited amount of physical space. The book explains how the inhabitants of cities and zoos have invented ways to deal with these problems, and the consequences that follow when they fail at dealing with them.

From this point of view, Morris examines why civilized society is the way it is. He offers explanations of the best and the worst features of civilized society. He examines the magnificent achievements of civilized society, the sublime explorations that make up science and the humanities. And he also examines the horrible behaviors of this same society like war, slavery, and rape. This book, and Morris's earlier book The Naked Ape, are two of the early works in the field of sociobiology.

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

2009-06-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

Every human on the planet should at one time take a look at the human species from a detached point of view: consider them from the mind of some alien species and then question if you think we’re a bit odd, predictable, or whatever descriptive word you want to use. Desmond Morris’ 1967 classic The Naked Ape does just that. No, he is not pretending to be some alien species, but he is analyzing the human as an animal, from the view of a zoologist, rather than the more common means of a psychologist or sociologist.

The Naked Ape is in fact referring to the human body — one that is “naked” in the sense of less body hair than other apes and also a stripped down (literally) examination of our animal nature. Some of the topics Morris discuses are human sex, child rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding, and comfort. He compares our habits to those of the apes, noting some of the similarities beside some of the differences.

After reading a book by Jane Goodall, in which she talks about chimpanzees' need to groom one another as a means for casual social interaction, Morris compares this behavior to our version of “grooming”, social chitchat. Humans do it when a group gathers, and as they grow more comfortable with one another, the conversational topics might delve into deeper issues, but then the chitchat, or “grooming” emerges once again when the group is parting ways.

Also, when Morris is discussing the patterns of human sexual interaction, he gives readers an entire chapter of the mechanical sexual process without a shred of eroticism. He discusses the idea of the “pair-bond” between two naked apes; how do they achieve such? Why do they engage in such a large amount of pre-copulation activity? If your first response is to answer this in reasons you’ve heard before, Morris takes it deeper as he discusses the biology behind it. Again, pretend you are some alien species and you’ll notice and recognize patterns that you might not have found otherwise.

It is important to also note that because of the year in which the book was written, some of the statistical information will not be accurate to that of today, and also some dated words are used, such as “Negro” to describe the black male. Yet this can’t be really criticism considering this was penned in 1967, and although there might be some minor differences as these, the overall text is timeless. Morris shows how since our origins, not much has changed in our behaviors.

Morris also makes an interesting observation involving young children and what their favorite animals are. When they are very young, Morris points out that children will list large animals as those they admire most (such as lions, tigers, bears, etcetera), yet as children age, their selections change to smaller animals (cats, dogs, rabbits), or in other words, animals they can physically nurture themselves, and claim the role of the “parent”. He also notes the patterns in what humans define as their least favorite animals (such as spiders and snakes) and discusses why this is the case. What is it that causes the Naked Ape, on average, to detest spiders and snakes so much? Read and find out.

I was attracted to this book after reading the interview with Desmond Morris on Cosmoetica. Morris not only addresses the many similarities we share with other apes, but also the not so obvious differences we have. For example, female naked apes are the only animal species we know that can experience an orgasm, as well as having a hymen. He also notes that our primary sexual position is face to face, and that the female breasts serve more to sexually arouse males than for mere infant suckling alone since the breast is not as conducive to infant suckling the way the breasts on other apes are. (Noting that when a human mother breastfeeds, she must be aware that the breast could literally suffocate the child if she’s not paying attention. Just as a contrast, other female ape species’ breasts consist mainly of large nipples pointed outward, making it easy for the infants to feed).

I have only touched on the very little that is contained in this book, which is a delight to read. I encourage everyone to visit and revisit The Naked Ape and remove yourself from your own species for a while. And the next time you are drying off after a shower, all this talk just might lead you to look a little longer at that Naked Ape in that mirror. (It’s ok; just don’t get caught).

Historical Sociology

2009-06-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Historical sociology has emerged as one of the branches of sociology. In a sense, all sociological research is historical for the sociologists normally go into the records pertaining to the events that have happened or have been observed. "The term historical sociology is, however, usually applied to the study of social facts which are more than fifty or so years old".

In actual practice, historical sociology has become a particular kind of comparative study of social groups, their composition, their inter relationships and the social conditions that support or undermine them. If the social anthropologist looks at these things in contemporary simple societies, the historical sociologist examines them in comparison with the records of earlier societies and their cultures.

Some historians such as Rostovzer, G.G. Coulton and Jacob Burkhardt, have written social history. "Social history is history which deals with human relations, social patterns, mores and customs and impotent institutions other than monarchy and army." Social history has become "The history of people with the politics left out". "It has now become the history of men and women in their social relationships and groupings".

Social history has yet to establish itself as a separate discipline only a handful of people are busy with teaching it in British Universities. On the other hand, social history has gained much acceptance by sociologists. They have become aware of the significance of the past in the interpretation of the present. Social history has been acknowledged as 'historical sociology' by sociologists. It is today one of the standard special fields of sociology. Sigmund Diamond, Robert Bellah and Norman Brinbaum may be pointed out as impotent contemporary practitioners of historical sociology.

2009-06-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

Sociology is a fast growing discipline. Sociologist are at work to bring into its range of study almost all aspects of man's social life. Sociology has a tendency to break down into an endless list of specialists. Thus it has several specialized areas of inquiry each of which may employ its own approach and techniques. Here is a small attempt to introduce some of the main branches or specialized areas of study.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

2009-06-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is what we EHMs, (Economic Hitmen), do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure, electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston or San Francisco."

"Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations who are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principle plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia, we demand our own pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money and another country is added to our global empire

September 11 dramatically altered many people's perspectives on life and the world around us. The horrific events which occurred on that beautiful mid-September morning in 2001 changed John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Mr. Perkins, a highly respected economist, had once worked as chief economist at Chas. T. Main, an international consulting firm in Boston. Even though he worked for a private corporation, he was sent abroad under government contracts to convince leaders of developing countries, places of strategic importance to the US, such as Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Ecuador, etc., to accept enormous "loans" from the United States. The money would then be used to pay American companies to build local infrastructure and other projects. So while American corporations were profiting from these "loans," the countries were sinking into overwhelming debt. The poorest people, who benefited least from these projects, were the ones stuck with the responsibility for payment. These countries usually became US puppet regimes, open to American corporate manipulation. If a leader refused to play the game, the consequences could be lethal. This is blatant economic blackmail - where your best buddy turns out to be the vindictive loan shark.

Perkins resigned from the job about 20 years ago, because morally and ethically, he felt it was "wrong to play such a key role in creating an international empire at the expense of the poor and less advantaged around the world."

The author was paid extremely well to be an "economic hit man," as he describes the position. He worked alongside the heads of the IMF, World Bank, and other notable global financial institutions. Perkins began writing a book shortly after he resigned, with the working title, "Conscience of an Economic Hit Men." He wanted to dedicate the book to Jaime Roldós Aguilera, former president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos Herrera, former president of Panama. He had enormous respect for both men, held them in high esteem, and thought of the two as "kindred spirits." Unfortunately, Roldos and Torrijos had both been his clients. They both died in fiery plane crashes. According to Perkins, their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated, targets of the CIA, because they opposed the goals of corporate, government, and banking leaders, which were, and are, to build and maintain a global empire. The CIA has long assisted American corporations to remain dominant in foreign markets, by overthrowing governments hostile to unregulated capitalism.

In the early 1970s, the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department used the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to develop Saudi Arabian infrastructure, and the House of Saud agreed to maintain the price of oil at reasonable limits. In return, the US would use its resources to keep the House of Saud in power.

After attempting to implement something similar to the Saudi policy in Iraq, and failing, US industry, in concert with government, wanted to depose Saddam Hussein. Saddam did not play ball. When the "economic hit men" were not able to convince the infamous dictator to cooperate, CIA "jackals" went in to foment revolution or a coup. It was not so easy, however, to overthrow or kill Saddam. His bodyguards were too good and he used doubles. Perkins draws the conclusion, based on his experience, knowledge and hard facts, that the present Iraqi war was our next step. He cites the billions of dollars in US government contracts awarded to US corporations, like the Bechtel Group Inc., and Halliburton Company's subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root.

The author was persuaded and even bribed to refrain from writing this book about his professional experiences. And, although he began to write on various occasions over the intervening years, he did stop. World events, such as the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden, convinced him to put his manuscript aside, again and again. Perkins stated in a recent interview with Pacifica Network's Democracy Now program, "When 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart." He concluded the interview by saying, "I believe the World Bank and these other institutions can be turned around....We can change that."

Perkins' tale is a gripping one and the international and political intrigue involved gives the non-fiction book the feel of a suspense thriller. The narrative is very well written and fast-paced. I do highly recommend Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man. Whether you like Mr. Perkins or not, he has some very valuable information and insights to share. One cannot help but benefit.

ASCETICISM AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

2009-05-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

In order to understand the connection between the fundamental religious ideas of ascetic Protestantism and its maxims for everyday economic conduct, it is necessary to examine with especial care such writings as have evidently been derived from ministerial practice. For in a time in which the beyond meant everything, when the social position of the Christian depended upon his admission to the communion, the clergyman, through his ministry, Church discipline, and preaching, exercised an influence (as a glance at collections of consilia, casus conscientia, etc., shows) which we modern men are entirely unable to picture. In such a time the religious forces which express themselves through such channels are the decisive influences in the formation of national character.

For the purposes of this chapter, though by no means for all purposes, we can treat ascetic Protestantism as a single whole. But since that side of English Puritanism which was derived from Calvinism gives the most consistent religious basis for the idea of the calling, we shall, following our previous method, place one of its representatives at the centre of the discussion. Richard Baxter stands out above many other writers on Puritan ethics, both because of his eminently practical and realistic attitude, and, at the same time, because of the universal recognition accorded to his works, which have gone through many new editions and translations. He was a Presbyterian and an apologist of the Westminster Synod, but at the same time, like so many of the best spirits of his time, gradually grew away from the dogmas of pure Calvinism. At heart he opposed Cromwell's usurpation as he would any revolution. He was unfavourable to the sects and the fanatical enthusiasm of the saints, but was very broadminded about external peculiarities and objective towards his opponents. He sought his field of labour most especially in the practical promo-tion of the moral life through the Church. In the pursuit of this end, as one of the most successful ministers known to history, he placed his services at the disposal of the Parliamentary Government, of Cromwell, and of the Restoration,' until he retired, from office under the last, before St. Bartholomew’s day. His Christian Directory is the most compendium of Puritan ethics, and is c adjusted to the practical experiences of his of his own ministerial activity. In comparison we shall m
Spener's Theologische Bedenken, as representative o German Pietism, Barclay's Apology for the Quakers and some other representatives of ascetic ethics, which, however, in the interest of space, will be limited as far as possible.

Now, in glancing at Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest, or his Christian Directory, or similar works of others,' one is struck at first glance by the emphasis placed, in the discussion of wealth and its acquisition, on the ebionitic elements of the New testament. Wealth as such is a great danger; its temptations never end and its pursuit is not only senseless as compared with the dominating importance of the Kingdom of God, but it-is morally suspect. Here asceticism seems to have turned much more sharply against the acquisition of earthly goods than it did in Calvin, who saw no hindrance to the effectiveness of the clergy in their wealth, but rather a thoroughly desirable enhancement of their prestige. Hence he permitted them to employ their means profitably. Examples of the condemnation of the pursuit of money and goods may be gathered without end from Puritan writings, and may be contrasted with the late mediaeval ethical literature , which was much more open-minded on this point. Moreover, these doubts were meant with perfect seriousness; only it is necessary to examine them somewhat more closely in order to understand their true ethical significance and implications. The real. moral objection is to relaxation in the security of possession, the enjoyment of wealth with the consequence of idleness and the temptations of the flesh, above all of distraction from the pursuit of a righteous life. In fact, it is only because possession involves this danger of relaxation that it is objectionable at all. For the saints' everlasting rest is in the next world; on earth man must, to be certain of his state of grace, "do the works of him who sent him, as long as it is yet day". Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the glory of God, according to the definite manifestations of His will.

Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the deadliest of sins. The span of human life is infinitely short and precious to make sure of one's own election. Loss of time through sociability, idle talk, luxury," even more sleep than is necessary for health, six to at most eight hours, is worthy of absolute moral condemnation. It does not yet hold, with Franklin, that time is money, but the proposition is true in a certain spiritual sense. It is infinitely valuable because every hour lost is lost to labour for the glory of God. Thus inactive contemplation is also valueless, or even directly reprehensible if it is at the expense of one's daily work. For it is less pleasing to God than the active performance of His will in a calling. Besides, Sunday is provided for that, and, according to Baxter, it is always those who are not diligent in their callings who have no time for God when the occasion demands it.

Accordingly, Baxter's principal work is dominated by the continually repeated, often almost passionate preaching of hard, continuous bodily or mental labour.It is due to a combination of two different motives. Labour is, on the one hand, an approved ascetic technique, as it always has been in the Western Church, in sharp contrast not only to the Orient but to almost all monastic rules the world over. It is in particular the specific defence against all those temptations which Puritanism united under the name of the unclean life, whose role for it was by no means small. The sexual asceticism of Puritanism differs only in degree, not in fundamental principle, from that of monasticism; and on account of the Puritan conception of marriage, its practical influence is more farreaching than that of the latter. For sexual intercourse is permitted, even within marriage, only as the means willed by God for the increase of His glory according to the commandment, "Be fruitful and Multiply." Along with a moderate vegetable diet and cold baths, the same prescription is given for all sexual temptations as is used against religious doubts and a sense of moral unworthiness: "Work hard in your calling." But the most important thing was that even beyond that labour came to he considered in itself the end of life, ordained as such by God. St. Paul's "He who will not work shall not eat" holds unconditionally for every-one. Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace.

Here the difference from the medieval view-point becomes quite evident. Thomas Aquinas also gave an interpretation of that statement of St. Paul. But for him labour is only necessary naturali ratione for the maintenance of individual and community. Where this end is achieved, the precept ceases to have any meaning. Moreover, it holds only for the race, not for every individual. It does not apply to anyone who can live without 'labour on his possessions, and of course contemplation, as a spiritual form of action in the Kingdom of God, takes precedence over the commandment in its literal sense. Moreover, for the popular theology of the time, the highest form of monastic productivity lay in the increase of the Thesaurus ecclesie through prayer and chant.

Now only do these exceptions to the duty to labour naturally no longer hold for Baxter, but he holds most emphatically that wealth does not exempt anyone from the unconditional command. Even the wealthy shall not cat without working, for even though they do not need to labour to support their own needs, there is God's commandment which they, like the poor, must obey. For everyone without exception God's Providence has prepared a calling, which he should profess and in which he should labour. And this calling is not, as it was for the Lutheran, a fate to which he must submit and which he must make the best of, but God's commandment to the individual to work for the divine glory. This seemingly subtle difference had far-reaching psychological consequences, and became connected with a further development of the providential interpretation of the economic order which had begun in scholasticism.

The phenomenon of the division of labour and occupations in society had, among others, been interpreted by Thomas Aquinas, to whom we may most conveniently refer, as a direct consequence of the divine scheme of things. But the places assigned to each man in this cosmos follow ex causis naturalibus and are fortuitous (contingent in the Scholastic terminology). The differentiation of men into the classes and occupations established through historical development became for Luther, as we have seen, a direct result of the divine will. The perseverance of the individual in the place and within the limits which God had assigned to him was a religious duty. This was the more certainly the consequence since the relations of Lutheranism to the world were in general uncertain from the beginning and remained so. Ethical principles for the reform of the world could not be found in Luther's realm of ideas; in fact it never quite freed itself from Pauline indifference. Hence the world had to be accepted as it was, and this alone could be made a religious duty - But in the Puritan view, the providential character of the play of private economic interests takes on a somewhat different emphasis. True to the Puritan tendency to pragmatic interpretations, the providential purpose of the division of labour is to be known by its fruits. On this point Baxter expresses himself in terms which more than once directly recall Adam Smith's well-known apotheosis of the division of labour. The specialization of occupations leads, since it makes the development of skill possible, to a quantitative and qualitative improvement in production, and thus serves the common good, which is identical with the good of the greatest possible number. So far, the motivation is purely utilitarian, and is closely related to the customary view-point of much of the secular literature of the time.

But 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 the 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 profitmaking 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.

Of course, the words of the Old Testament were not entirely without ambiguity. We have seen that Luther first used the concept of the calling in the secular sense in translating a passage from Jesus Sirach. But the book of Jesus Sirach belongs, with the whole atmosphere expressed in it, to those parts of the broadened Old Testament with distinctly traditionalistic tendency, in spite of Hellenistic influences. It is characteristic that down to the present day this book seems to enjoy a special favour among Lutheran German peasants just as the Lutheran influence in large sections of German Pietism has been expressed by a preference for Jesus Sirach.

The Puritans repudiated the Apocrypha as not inspired, consistently with their sharp distinction between things divine and things of the flesh. But among the canonical books that of Job had all the more influence. On the one hand it contained a grand conception of the absolute sovereign majesty, of God, beyond all human comprehension, which was closely related to that of Calvinism. With that, on the other hand, it combined the certainty which, though incidental for Calvin, came to be of great importance for Puritanism, that God would bless His own in this life -in the book of Job only-and also in the material sense .The Oriental quietism, which appears in several of the finest verses of the Psalms and in the Proverbs, was interpreted away, just as Baxter did with the traditionalistic tinge of the passage in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, so important for the idea of the calling.

But all the more emphasis was placed on those parts of the Old Testament which praise formal legality as a sign of conduct pleasing to God. They held the theory that the Mosaic Law had only lost its validity through Christ in so far as it contained ceremonial or purely historical precepts applying only to the Jewish people, but that otherwise it had always been valid as an expression of the natural law, and must hence be retained . This made it possible, on the one hand, to eliminate elements which could not be reconciled with modern life. But still, through its numerous related features, Old Testament morality was able to give a powerful impetus to that spirit of self-righteous and sober legality which was so characteristic of the worldly asceticism of this form of Protestantism."

Thus when authors, as was the case with several contemporaries as well as later writers, characterize the basic ethical tendency of Puritanism, especially in England, as English Hebrews they are, correctly understood, not wrong. It is necessary, however, not to think of Palestinian Judaism at the time of the writing of the Scriptures, but of Judaism as it became under the influence of many centuries of formalistic, legalistic, and Talmudic education. Even then one must be very careful in drawing parallels. The general tendency of the older Judaism toward a naive acceptance of life as such was far removed from the special characteristics of Puritanism. It was, however, just as far-and this ought not to be overlooked-from the economic ethics of mediaeval and modern Judaism, in the traits which determined the positions of both in the development of the capitalistic ethos. The Jews stood on the side of the politically and speculatively oriented adventurous capitalism; their ethos was, in a word, that of pariah-capitalism. But Puritanism carried the ethos of the rational organization of capital and labour. It took over from the Jewish ethic only what was adapted to this purpose.

To analyse the effects on the character of peoples of the penetration of life with Old Testament norms-a tempting task which, however, has not yet satisfactorily been done even for Judaism-would be impossible within the limits of this sketch. In addition to the relationships already pointed out, it is important for the general inner attitude of the Puritans, above all, that the belief that they were God's chosen people saw in them a great renaissance. Even the kindly Baxter thanked God that he was born in England, and thus in the true Church, and nowhere else. This thankfulness for one's own perfection by the grace of God penetrated the attitude toward life of the Puritan middle class, and played its part in developing that formalistic, hard, correct character which was peculiar to the men of that heroic age of capitalism.

Let us now try to clarify the points in which the Puritan idea of the calling and the premium it placed upon ascetic conduct was bound directly to influence the development of a capitalistic way of life. As we have seen, this asceticism turned with all its force against one thing: the spontaneous enjoyment of life and all it had to offer. This is perhaps most characteristically brought out in the struggle over the Book of Sports " which James I and Charles I made into law expressly as a means of counteracting Puritanism, and which the latter ordered to be read from all the pulpits. The fanatical opposition of the Puritans to the ordinances of the King, permitting certain popular amusements on Sunday outside of Church hours by law, was not only explained by the disturbance of the Sabbath rest, but also by resentment against the intentional diversion from the ordered life of the saint, which it caused. And, on his side, the King's threats of severe punishment for every attack on the legality of those sports were motivated by his purpose of breaking the anti-authoritarian ascetic tendency of Puritanism, which was so dangerous to the State. The feudal and monarchical forces protected the pleasure seekers against the rising middle-class morality and the anti-authoritarian ascetic conventicles, just as today capitalistic society tends to protect those willing to work against the class morality of the proletariat and the anti-authoritarian trade union.

As against this the Puritans upheld their decisive characteristic, the principle of ascetic conduct. For otherwise the Puritan aversion to sport, even for the Quakers, was by no means simply one of principle. Sport was accepted if it served a rational purpose, that of recreation necessary for physical efficiency. But as a means for the spontaneous expression of undisciplined impulses, it was under suspicion; and in so far as it became purely a means of enjoyment, or awakened pride, raw instincts or the irrational gambling instinct, it was of course strictly condemned. Impulsive enjoyment of life, which leads away both from work in a calling and from religion, was as such the enemy of rational asceticism, whether in the form of seigneurial sports, or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public--house of the common man.

Its attitude was thus suspicious and often hostile to the aspects of culture without any immediate religious value. It is not, however, true that the ideals of Puritanism implied a solemn, narrow-minded contempt of culture. Quite the contrary is the case at least for science, with the exception of the hatred of Scholasticism. Moreover, the great men of the Puritan movement were thoroughly steeped in the culture of the Renaissance. The sermons of the Presbyterian divines abound with classical allusions and even the Radicals, although they objected to it, were not ashamed to display that kind of learning in theological polemics. Perhaps no country, was ever so full of graduates as New England in the first generation of its existence. The satire of their opponents, such as, for instance, Butler's Hudibras, also attacks primarily the pedantry and highly trained dialectics of the Puritans. This is partially due to the religious valuation of knowledge which followed from their attitude to the Catholic fides implicita.

But the situation is quite different when one looks at non-scientific literature and especially the fine arts. Here asceticism descended like a frost on the life of "Merrie old England." And not only worldly merriment felt its effect. 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 today 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 aesthetic 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 J. 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 r 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, a 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 o 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 today, 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 naive joy of life, and of a strictly regulated, reserved self-control, and conventional ethical conduct are even today 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 middle-class outlook of thePuritans.

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. Mediaeval ethics not only
tolerated begging but actually glorified it in the mendicant orders. Even secular beggars, since they gave theperson 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

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 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 Christian , social 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 reread 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 bad 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 today. 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 Wander-jahren, 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 evervday 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 today 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 tile 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. Today 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 fast 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 o 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 mediaeval 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, accomplish equally little in the interest of historical truth.

THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF

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In history there have been four principal forms of ascetic Protestantism (in the sense of word here used): (1) Calvinism in the form which it assumed in the main area of its influence in Western Europe, especially in the seventeenth century; (2) Pietism; (3) Methodism; (4) the sects growing out of the Baptist movement. None of these movements was completely separated from the others, and even the distinction from the non-ascetic Churches of the Reformation is never perfectly clear. Methodism, which first arose in the middle of the eighteenth century within the Established Church of England, was not, in the , minds of its founders, intended to form a new Church, but only a new awakening of the ascetic spirit within the old. Only in the course of its development, especially in its extension to America, did it become separate from the Anglican Church.

Pietism first split off from the Calvinistic movement in England, and especially in Holland. It remained loosely connected with orthodoxy, shading off from it by imperceptible gradations, until at the end of the seventeenth century it was absorbed into Lutheranism under Spener's leadership. Though the dogmatic adjustment was not entirely satisfactory, it remained a movement within the Lutheran Church. Only the faction dominated by Zinzendorf, and affected by lingering Hussite and Calvinistic influences within the Moravian brotherhood, was forced, like Methodism against its will, to form a peculiar sort of sect. Calvinism and Baptism were at the beginning of their develop-ment sharply opposed to each other. But in the Baptism of the latter part of the seventeenth century they were in close contact. And, even in the Independent sects of England and Holland at the beginning of the seven-teenth century the transition was not abrupt. As Pietism shows, the transition to Lutheranism is also gradual, and the same is true of Calvinism and the Anglican Church, though both in external character and in the spirit of its most logical adherents the latter is more closely related to Catholicism. It is true that both the mass of the adherents and especially the staunchest champions of that ascetic movement which, in the broadest sense of a highly ambiguous word, has been called Puritanism, did attack the foundations of Anglicanism; but even here the differences were only gradually worked out in the course of the struggle. Even if for the present we quite ignore the questions, of government and organization which do not interest us here, the facts are just the same. The dogmatic differences, even the most important, such as those over the doctrines of predestination and justification, were combined in the most complex ways, and even at the beginning of the seventeenth century regularly, though not without exception, prevented the maintenance o unity in the Church. Above all, the types of moral conduct in which we are interested may be found in similar manner among the adherents of the most various denominations, derived from any one of the four sources mentioned above, or a combination of several of them. We shall see that similar ethical maxims may be correlated with very different dogmatic foundations. Also the important literary tools for the saving of souls, above all the casuistic compendia of the various denominations, influenced each other in the course of time; one finds great similarities in them, in spite of very great differences in actual conduct.

It would almost seem as though we had best com-pletely ignore both the dogmatic foundations and the ethical theory and confine our attention to the moral practice so far as it can be determined. That, however, is not true. The various different dogmatic roots of ascetic morality did no doubt die out after terrible struggles. But the original connection with those dogmas has left behind important traces in the later undogmatic ethics; moreover, only the knowledge of the original body of ideas can help us to understand the connection of that morality with the idea of the after-life which absolutely dominated the most spiritual men of that time. Without its power, overshadowing everything else, no moral awakening which seriously influenced practical life came into being in that period.

We are naturally not concerned with the question of what was theoretically and officially taught in the ethical compendia of the time, however much practical significance this may have had through the influence of Church discipline, pastoral work, and preaching. 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 non-theological 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.

A. CALVINISM

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 today, 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 o historical imputation. If now we start, as we must do here, from the latter standpoint and inquire into the significance which is to be attributed to that dogma by virtue Of its cultural and historical con sequences, it must certainly be rated very highly. The movement which Oldenbameveld led was shattered by it. The schism in the English Church became irrevocable under James I after the Crown and the Puritans came to differ dogmatically over just this doctrine. Again and again it was looked upon as the real element of political danger in Calvinism and attacked as such by those in authority. The great synods of the seventeenth century, above all those of Dordrecht and Westminster, besides numerous smaller ones, made its elevation to canonical authority the central purpose of their work. It served as a rallying point to countless heroes of the Church militant, and in both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries it caused schisms in the Church and formed the battle cry of great new awakenings. We cannot pass it by, and since to-day it can no longer be assumed as known to all educated men, we can best learn its content from the authoritative words of the Westminster Confession of 1647, which in this regard is simply repeated by both Independent and Baptist creeds.

"Chapter IX (of Free Will), No. 3- Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So that a natural man, being altogether averse from that Good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.

"Chapter III (of God's Eternal Decree), No. 3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto ever-lasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

"No. 5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto, and all to the praise of His glorious grace.

"No. 7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth, or with-holdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.

"Chapter X (of Effectual Calling), No. 1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time effectually to call, by His word and spirit (out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature) . . . taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good...

"Chapter V (of Providence), No. 6. As for those wicked and ungodly men, whom God as a righteous judge, for former sins doth blind and harden, from them He not only with-holdeth His grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had and exposeth them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin: and withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the tempta-tions of the world, and the power of Satan: whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves, even under those means, which God useth for the softening of others."

"Though I may be sent to Hell for it, such a God will never command my respect", was Milton's well known opinion of the doctrine. But we are here concerned not with the evaluation, but the historical significance of the dogma. We can only briefly sketch the question of how the doctrine originated and how it fitted into the framework of Calvinistic theology.

Two paths leading to it were possible. The pheno-menon of the religious sense of grace is combined, in the most active and passionate of those great worshippers which Christianity has produced again and again since Augustine, with the feeling of certainty that that grace is the sole product of an objective power, and not in the least to be attributed to personal worth. The powerful feeling of light-hearted assurance, in which the tremendous pressure of their sense of sin is released, apparently breaks over them with elemental force and destroys every possibility of the belief that this overpowering gift of grace could owe anything to their own cooperation or could be connected with achievements or qualities of their own faith and will. At the time of Luther's greatest religious creativeness, when he was capable of writing his Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, God's secret decree was also to him most definitely the sole and ultimate source of his state of religious grace. Even later he did not formally abandon it. But not only did the idea not assume a central position for him, but it receded more and more into the back-ground, the more his position as responsible head of his Church forced him into practical politics. Melancthon quite deliberately avoided adopting the dark and dangerous teaching in the Augsburg Confession, and for the Church fathers of Lutheranism it was an article of faith that grace was revocable (amissibilis), and could be won again by penitent humility and faithful trust in the word of God and in the sacraments.

With Calvin the process was just the opposite; the significance of the doctrine for him increased, perceptibly in the course of his polemical controversies with theological opponents. It is not fully developed until the third edition of his Institutes, and only gained its position of central prominence after his death in the great struggles which the Synods of Dordrecht and Westminster sought to put an end to. With Calvin the decretum horribile is derived not, as with Luther, from religious experience, but from the logical necessity of his thought; -therefore its importance increases with every increase in the logical consistency of that religious thought. The interest of it is solely in God, not in man; God does not exist for men, but men for the sake of God. All creation, including of course the fact, as it undoubtedly was for Calvin, that only a small pro-portion of men are chosen for eternal grace, can have any meaning only as means to the glory and majesty of God. To apply earthly standards of justice to His sovereign decrees is meaningless and an insult to His Majesty, since He and He alone is free, i.e. is subject to no law. His decrees can only be understood by or even known to us in so far as it has been His pleasure to reveal them. We can only hold to these fragments of eternal truth. Everything else, including the meaning of our individual destiny, is hidden in dark mystery which it would be both impossible to pierce and pre-sumptuous to question.

For the damned to complain of their lot would be much the same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as men. For everything of the flesh 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 under-standing, who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach of human understanding, who With His quite incomprehensible decrees has decided 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 transcendentiality 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. It comes out for instance in the strikingly frequent repetition, especially in the English Puritan literature, of warnings against any trust in the aid of friendship of men. Even the amiable Baxter counsels deep distrust of even one's closest friend, and Bailey directly exhorts to trust no one and to say nothing compromising to anyone. Only God should be your confidant. In striking contrast to Lutheranism, this attitude toward life was also connected with the quiet disappearance of the private confession, of which Calvin was suspicious only on account of its possible sacramental misinterpreta-tion, from all the regions of fully developed Calvinism. That was an occurrence of the greatest importance. In the first place it is a symptom of the type of influence this religion exercised. Further, however, it was a psychological stimulus to the development Of their ethical attitude. The means to a periodical discharge of the emotional sense of sin was done away with.

Of the consequences for the ethical conduct of everyday life we speak later. But for the general religious situation of a man the consequences are evident. In spite of the necessity of membership in the true Church for salvation, the Calvinist's intercourse with his God was carried on in deep spiritual isolation. To see the specific results of this peculiar atmosphere, it is only necessary to read Bunyan's, Pilgrim's Progress, by far the most widely read book of the whole Puritan literature. In the description of Christian's attitude after he had realized that he was living in the City of Destruction and he had received the call to take tip his pilgrim-age to the celestial city, wife and children cling to him, but stopping his ears with his fingers and crying, "life, eternal life", he staggers forth across the fields. No refinement could surpass the naive feeling of the tinker who, writing in his prison cell, earned the applause of a believing world, in expressing the emotions of the faithful Puritan, thinking only of his own salvation. It is expressed in the unctuous conversations which he holds with fellow-seekers on the way, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Gottfried Keller's Gerechte Kammacher. Only when he himself is safe does it occur to him that it would be nice to have his family with him. It is the same anxious fear of death and the beyond which we feel so vividly in Alfonso of Liguori, as Dollinger has described him to us. It is worlds removed from that spirit of proud worldliness which Machiavelli expresses in relating the fame of those Florentine citizens who, in their struggle against the Pope and his excommunication, had held "Love of their native city higher than the fear for the salvation of their souls". And it is of course even farther from the feelings which Richard Wagner puts into the mouth of Siegmund before his fatal combat, "Grusse mir Wotan, grusse mir Wallhall-Doch von Wallhall's sproden Wonnen sprich du wahrlich mir nicht". But the effects of this fear on Bunyan and Liguori are characteristically different. The same fear which drives the latter to every conceivable self humiliation spurs the former on to a restless and systematic struggle with life. Whence comes this difference?

It seems at first a mystery how the undoubted superiority of Calvinism in social organization can be connected with this tendency to tear the individual away from the closed ties with which he is bound to this world. But, however strange it may seem, it follows from the peculiar form which the Christian brotherly love was forced to take under the pressure of the inner isolation of the individual through the Calvinistic faith. In the first place it follows dogmatically. The world exists to serve the glorification of God and for that purpose alone. The elected Christian is in the world only to increase this glory of God by fulfilling His commandments to the best of his ability. But God requires social achievement of the Christian because He wills that social life shall be organized according to His commandments, in accordance with that purpose. The social activity of the Christian in the world is' solely activity in majorem gloriam Dei. This character is hence shared by labor in a calling which serves the mundane life of the community. Even in Luther we found specialized labor in callings justified in terms of brotherly love. But what for him remained an un-certain, purely intellectual suggestion became for the Calvinists a characteristic element in their ethical system. Brotherly love, since it may only be practiced for the glory of God and not in the service of the flesh, is expressed in the first place in the fulfillment of the daily tasks given by the lex naturae; and in the Process this fulfillment assumes a peculiarly objective and impersonal character, that of service in the interest of the rational organization of our social environment. For the wonderfully purposeful organization and arrangement of this cosmos is, according both to the revelation of the Bible and to natural intuition, evidently designed by God to serve the utility of the human race. This makes labor in the service of impersonal social usefulness appear to promote the glory of God and hence to he willed by Him. The complete elimination of the theodicy problem and of all those questions about the meaning of the world and of life, which have tor-tured others, was as self-evident to the Puritan as, for quite different reasons, to the Jew, and even in a certain sense to all the non mystical types of Christian religion.

To this economy of forces Calvinism added another tendency which worked in the same direction. The conflict between the individual and the ethic (in Soren Kierkegaard's sense) did not exist for Calvinism, although it placed the individual entirely on his own responsibility in religious matters. This is not the place to analyze the reasons for this fact, or its signifi-cance for the political and economic rationalism of Calvinism. The source of the utilitarian character of Calvinistic ethics lies here, and important peculiarities of the Calvinistic idea of the calling were derived from the same source as well. But for the moment we must 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 elect? 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 develop-ment of the Pietism which first arose on the basis of the Reformed Church; it has in fact in a certain sense at times been fundamental to it. But when we 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 self-confidence is the result of insufficient faith, hence of imperfect grace. The exhortation of the apostle to make fast one's own call is here interpreted as a duty to attain certainty of one's own election and 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 hard 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. These differences are analyzed so subtly and with such objectivity and avoidance of value judgments in Schneckenburger's excellent lectures, that the following brief observations can for the most part simply rest upon his discussion.

The highest religious experience which the Lutheran faith strives to attain, especially as it developed in the course of the seventeenth century, is the unio mystica with the deity. As the name itself, which is unknown to the Reformed faith in this form, suggests, it is a feeling of actual absorption in the deity, that of a real entrance of the divine into the soul of the believer. It is qualitatively similar to the aim of the contemplation of the German mystics and is characterized by its passive search for the fulfillment of the yearning for rest in God.

Now the history of philosophy shows that religious belief which is primarily mystical may very well be compatible with a pronounced sense of reality in the field of empirical fact; it may even support it directly on account of the repudiation of dialectic doctrines. Furthermore, mysticism may indirectly even further the interests of rational conduct. Nevertheless, the positive valuation of external activity is lacking in its relation to the world. In addition to this, Lutheranism combines the unio mystica with that deep feeling of sin-stained unworthiness which is essential to preserve the poenitentia quotidiana of the faithful Lutheran, thereby maintaining the humility and simplicity in-dispensable for the forgiveness of sins. The typical religion of the Reformed Church, on the other hand, has from the beginning repudiated both this purely inward emotional piety of Lutheranism and the Quietist escape from everything of Pascal. A real pene-tration of the human soul by the divine was made impossible by the absolute transcendentiality of God compared to the flesh: finitum non est capax infiniti. The community of the elect with their God could only take place and be perceptible to them in that God worked (operatur) through them and that they were conscious of it. That is, their action originated from the faith caused by God's grace, and this faith in turn justified itself by the quality of that action. Deep lying differences of the most important conditions of salvation" which apply to the classification of all practical religious activity appear here. The religious believer can make himself sure of his state of grace either in that he feels himself to be the vessel of the Holy Spirit or the tool of the divine will. In the former case his religious life tends to mysticism and emotionalism, in the latter to ascetic action; Luther stood close to the former type, Calvinism belonged definitely to the latter. The Calvinist also wanted to be saved sola fide. But since Calvin viewed all pure feelings and emotions, no matter how exalted they might seem to be, with suspicion, faith had to be proved by its objective results in order to provide a firm foundation for the certitudo salutis. It must be a fides efficax, the call to salvation an effectual calling (expression used in Savoy Declaration).

If we now ask further, by what fruits the Calvinist thought himself able to identify true faith? the answer is: by a type of Christian conduct which served to 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 naturae). 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 (sanctifi-catio) of his whole life, to augment the glory of God by real, and not merely apparent, good works. It was through the consciousness that his conduct, at least in its fundamental character and constant ideal (propositum obcedientiae,), 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- 5.19 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 salvation 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 medieval 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 tem-poral and eternal fate. Quite realistically the Church recognized that man was not an absolutely clearly defined unity to be judged one way or the other, but that his moral life was normally subject to conflicting motives and his action contradictory. Of course, it required as an ideal a change of life in principle . But it weakened just this requirement (for the average) by one of its most important means of power and education, the sacrament of absolution, the function of which was connected with the deepest roots of the peculiarly Catholic religion.

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 Catholics 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 naturae, to the status gratiae 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 naturae, 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 today. 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 g in 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 medieval 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 defin-itely to surpass all worldly morality.' Luther, who was not in any sense fulfilling any law of development, but acting upon his quite personal experience, which was, though at first somewhat uncertain in its practical consequences, later pushed farther by the political situation, had repudiated that tendency, and Calvinism simply took this over from him. Sebastian 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.

The norm by which it could always measure itself, of which it was evidently in need, this asceticism naturally found in the Bible. It is important to note that the well-known bibliocracy of the Calvinists held the moral precepts of the Old Testament, since it was fully as authentically revealed, on the same level of esteem as those of the New. It was only necessary that they should not obviously be applicable only to the historical circumstances of the Hebrews, or have been specifically denied by Christ. For the believer, the law was an ideal though never quite attainable normal while Luther, on the other hand, originally had prized freedom from subjugation to the law as a divine privilege of the believer. The influence of the God-fearing but perfectly unemotional wisdom of the Hebrews, which is expressed in the books most read by the Puritans, the Proverbs and the Psalms, can be felt in their whole attitude toward life. In particular, its rational suppression of the mystical, in fact the whole emotional side of religion, has rightly been attributed by Sanford to the influence of the Old Testament. But this Old Testament rationalism was as such essentially of a small bourgeois, traditionalistic type, and was mixed not only with the powerful pathos of the prophets, but also with elements which encouraged the development of a peculiarly emotional type of religion even in the Middle Ages. It was thus in the last analysis the peculiar, fundamentally ascetic, character of Calvinism itself which made it select and assimilate those elements of Old Testament religion which suited it best.

Now that systematization of ethical conduct which the asceticism of Calvinistic Protestantism had in common with the rational forms of life in the Catholic orders is expressed quite superficially in the way in which the conscientious Puritan continually super-vised his own state of grace. To be sure, the religious account-books in which sins, temptations, and progress made in grace were entered or tabulated were common to both the most enthusiastic Reformed circle and some parts of modern Catholicism (especially in France), above all under the influence of the Jesuits. But in Catholicism it served the purpose of completeness of the confession, or gave the directeur de I'ame a basis for his authoritarian guidance of the Christian (mostly female). The Reformed Christian, however, felt his own pulse with its aid. It is mentioned by all the moralists and theologians, while Benjamin Franklin's tabulated statistical book-keeping on his progress in the different virtues is a classic example.

On the other hand, the old medieval (even ancient) idea of God's book-keeping is carried by Bunyan to the characteristically tasteless extreme of comparing the relation of a sinner to his God with that of customer and shopkeeper. One who has once got into debt may well, by the product of all his virtuous acts, succeed in paying off the accumulated interest but never the principal. As he observed his own conduct, the later Puritan also observed that of God and saw His finger in all the details of life. And, contrary to the strict doctrine of Calvin, he always knew why God took this or that measure. The process of sanctifying life could thus almost take on the character of a business enterprise. A thoroughgoing Christianization of the whole of life was the consequence of this methodical quality of ethical conduct into which Calvinism as distinct from Lutheranism forced men. That this rationality was decisive in its influence on practical life must always be borne in mind in order rightly to understand the influence of Calvinism. On the one hand we can see that it took this element to exercise such an influence at all. But other faiths as well necessarily bad a similar influence when their ethical motives were the same in this decisive point, the doctrine of proof.

So far we have considered only Calvinism, and have thus assumed the doctrine of predestination as the dogmatic background of the Puritan morality in the sense of methodically rationalized ethical conduct. This could be done because the influence of that dogma in fact extended far beyond the single religious group which held in all respects strictly to Calvinistic principles, the Presbyterians. Not only the Independent Savoy Declaration of 1658, but also the Baptist Confession of Hanserd Knolly of 1689 contained it, and it had a place within Methodism. Although John Wesley, the great organizing genius of the movement, was a believer in the universality of Grace, one of the great agitators of the first generation of Methodists and their most consistent thinker, Whitefield, was an adherent of the doctrine. The same was true of the circle around Lady Huntingdon, which for a time had considerable influence. It was this doctrine in its magnificent consistency which, in the fateful epoch of the seventeenth century, upheld the belief of the militant defenders of the holy life that they were weapons in the hand of God, and executors of His providential Will. Moreover, it prevented a premature collapse into a purely utilitarian doctrine of good works in this world which would never have been capable of motivating such tremendous sacrifices for non-rational ideal ends.

The combination of faith in absolutely valid norms with absolute determinism and the complete transcendentality of God was in its way a product of great genius. At the same time it was, in principle, very much more modern than the milder doctrine, Making greater concessions to the feelings which subjected God to the moral law. Above all, we shall see again and again how fundamental is the idea of proof for our problem. Since its practical significance as a psychological basis for rational morality could be studied in such purity in the doctrine of predestination, it was best to start there with the doctrine in its most consistent form. But it forms a recurring framework. for the connection between faith and conduct in the denominations to be studied below. Within the Protestant movement the consequences which it inevitably had for the ascetic tendencies of the conduct of its first adherents form in principle the strongest antithesis to the relative moral helplessness of Lutheranism. The Lutheran gratia amissibilis, which could always be regained through penitent contrition evidently, in itself, contained no sanction for what is for us the most important result of ascetic Protestantism, a systematic rational ordering of the moral life as a whole. The Lutheran faith thus left the spontaneous vitality of impulsive action and naive emotion more nearly unchanged. The motive to constant self-control and thus to a deliberate regulation of one's own life, which the gloomy doctrine of Calvinism gave, was lacking. A religious genius like Luther could live in this atmosphere of openness and freedom without difficulty and, so long as his enthusiasm was powerful enough, without danger of falling back into the status naturalis. That simple, sensitive, and peculiarly emotional form of piety, which is the ornament of many of the highest types of Lutherans, like their free and spontaneous morality, finds few parallels in genuine Puritanism, but many more in the mild Anglicanism of such men as Hooker, Chillingsworth, etc. But for the everyday Lutheran, even the able one, nothing was more certain than that he was only temporarily, as long as the single confession or sermon affected' him, raised above the status naturalis. There was a great difference which was very striking to contemporaries between the moral standards of the courts of Reformed and of Lutheran princes, the latter often being degraded by drunkenness and vulgarity.

Moreover, the helplessness of the Lutheran clergy, with their emphasis on faith alone, against the ascetic Baptist movement, is well known. The typical German quality often called good nature (Gemutlichkeit) or naturalness contrasts strongly, even in the facial expressions of people, with the effects of that thorough destruction of the spontaneity of the status naturalis in the Anglo-American atmosphere, which Germans are accustomed to judge unfavourably as narrowness, unfreeness, and inner constraint. But the differences of conduct, which are very striking, have clearly originated in the lesser degree of ascetic penetration of life in Lutheranism as distinguished from Calvinism. The antipathy of every spontaneous child of nature to everything ascetic is expressed in those feelings. The fact is that Lutheranism, on account of its doctrine of grace, lacked a psychological sanction of systematic conduct to compel the methodical rationalization of life.

This sanction, which conditions the ascetic character of religion, could doubtless in itself have been furnished by various different religious motives, as we shall soon see. The Calvinistic doctrine of predestination was only one of several possibilities. But nevertheless we have become convinced that in its way it had not only a quite unique consistency, but that its psychological effect was extraordinarily powerful. In comparison with it the non-Calvinistic ascetic movements, considered purely from the viewpoint of the religious motivation of asceticism, form an attenuation of the inner consistency and power of Calvinism.

But even in the actual historical development the situation was, for the most part, such that the Calvinistic form of asceticism was either imitated by the other ascetic movements or used as a source of inspiration or of comparison in the development of their divergent principles. Where, in spite of a different doctrinal basis, similar ascetic features have appeared, this has generally been the result of Church organization. Of this we shall come to speak in another connection.

B. PIETISM

Historically the doctrine of predestination is also the starting-point of the ascetic movement usually known as Pietism. In so far as the movement remained within the Reformed Church, it is almost impossible to draw the line between Pietistic and non-Pietistic Calvinists. Almost all the leading representatives of Puritanism are sometimes classed among the Pietists. It is even quite legitimate to look upon the whole connection between predestination and the doctrine of proof, with its fundamental interest in the attainment of the certitudo salutis as discussed above, as in itself a Pietistic development of Calvin's original doctrines. The occurrence of ascetic revivals within the Reformed Church was, especially in Holland, regularly accompanied by a regeneration of the doctrine of predestination which had been temporarily forgotten or not strictly held to. Hence for England it is not customary to use the term Pietism at all.

But even the Continental (Dutch and Lower Rhenish) Pietism in the Reformed Church was, at least fundamentally, just as much a simple intensification of the Reformed asceticism as, for instance, the doctrines of Bailey. The emphasis was placed so strongly on the praxis pietatis that doctrinal orthodoxy was pushed into the background; at times, in fact, it seemed quite a matter of indifference. Those predestined for grace could occasionally be subject to dogmatic error as well as to other sins and experience showed that often those Christians who were quite uninstructed in the theology of the schools exhibited the fruits of faith most clearly, while on the other hand it became evident that mere knowledge of theology by no means guaranteed the proof of faith through conduct.

Thus election could not be proved by theological learning at all. Hence Pietism, with a deep distrust of the Church of the theologians, to which this is characteristic of it -- it still belonged officially, began to gather the adherents of the praxis pietatis in conventicles removed from the world . It wished to make the invisible Church of the elect visible on this earth. Without going so far as to form a separate sect, its members attempted to live, in this community, a life freed from all the temptations of the world and in all its details dictated by God's will, and thus to be made certain of their own rebirth by external signs manifested in their daily conduct. Thus the ecclesiola of the true converts- this was common to all genuinely Pietistic groups- wished, by means of intensified asceticism, to enjoy the blissfulness of community with God in this life.

Now this latter tendency had something closely, related to the Lutheran unio mystica, and very often led to a greater emphasis on the emotional side of religion than was acceptable to orthodox Calvinism. In fact this may, from our view-point, be said to be the decisive characteristic of the Pietism which developed within the Reformed Church. For this element of emotion, which was originally quite foreign to Calvinism, but on the other hand related to certain mediaeval forms of religion, led religion in practice to strive for the enjoyment of salvation in this world rather than to engage in the ascetic struggle for certainty about the future world. Moreover, the emotion was capable of such intensity, that religion took on a positively hysterical character, resulting in the alternation which is familiar from examples without number and neuro-pathologically understandable, of half-conscious states of religious ecstasy with periods of nervous exhaustion, which were felt as abandonment by God. The effect was the direct opposite of the strict and temperate discipline under which men were placed by the systematic life of holiness of the Puritan. It meant a weakening of the inhibitions which protected the rational personality of the Calvinist from his passions. Similarly it was possible for the Calvinistic idea of the depravity of the flesh, taken emotionally, for instance in the form of the so-called worm-feeling, to lead to a deadening of enterprise in worldly activity. Even the doctrine of predestination could lead to fatalism if, contrary to the predominant tendencies of rational Calvinism, it were made the object of emotional con-templation. Finally, the desire to separate the elect from the world could, with a strong emotional intensity, lead to a sort of monastic community life of half-communistic character, as the history of Pietism, even within the Reformed Church, has shown again and again.

But so long as this extreme effect, conditioned by this emphasis on emotion, did not appear, as long as Reformed Pietism strove to make sure of salvation within the everyday routine of life in a worldly calling, the practical effect of Pietistic principles was an even stricter ascetic control of conduct in the calling, which provided a still more solid religious basis for the ethic of the calling, than the mere worldly respectability of the normal Reformed Christian, which was felt by the superior Pietist to be a second-rate Christianity. The religious aristocracy of the elect, which developed in every form of Calvinistic asceticism, the more seriously it was taken, the more surely, was then organized, in Holland, on a voluntary basis in the form of conventicles within the Church. In English Puritanism, on the other hand, it led partly to a virtual differentiation between active and passive Christians within the Church organization, and partly, as has been shown above, to the formation of sects.

On the other hand, the development of German Pietism from a Lutheran basis, with which the names of Spener, Francke, and Zinzendorf are connected, led away from the doctrine of predestination. But at the same time it was by no means outside the body of ideas of which that dogma formed the logical climax, as is especially attested by Spener's own account of the influence which English and Dutch Pietism had upon him, and is shown by the fact that Bailey was read in his first conventicles.

From our special point of view, at any rate, Pietism meant simply the penetration of methodically controlled and supervised, thus of ascetic, conduct into the non-Calvinistic denominations." But Lutheranism necessarily felt this rational asceticism to be a foreign element, and the lack of consistency in German Pietistic doctrines was the result of the difficulties growing out of that fact. As a dogmatic basis of systematic religious conduct Spener combines Lutheran ideas with the specifically Calvinistic doctrine of good works as such which are undertaken with the "intention of doing honour to God". He also has a faith, suggestive of Calvinism, in the possibility of the elect attaining a relative degree of Christian perfection. But the theory lacked consistency. Spener, who was strongly influenced by the mystics,attempted, in a rather uncertain but essentially Lutheran manner, rather to describe the systematic type of Christian conduct which was essential to even his form of Pietism than to justify it. He did not derive the certitudo salutis from sanctification; instead of the idea of proof, he adopted Luther's somewhat loose connection between faith and works, which has been discussed above. But again and again, in so far as the rational and ascetic element of Pietism outweighed the emotional, the ideas essential to our thesis maintained their place.

These were: (1) that the methodical development of one's own state of grace to a higher and higher degree of certainty and perfection in terms of the law was a sign of grace ; and (2) that "God's Providence works through those in such a state of perfection", i.e. in that He gives them His signs if they wait patiently and deliberate methodically.Labour in a calling was also the ascetic activity par excellence for A. H. Francke . that God Himself blessed His chosen ones through the success of their labours was as undeniable to him as we shall find it to have been to the Puritans. And as a substitute for the double decree Pietism worked out ideas which, in a way essentially similar to Calvinism, though milder, established an aristocracy of the elect resting on God's especial grace, with all the psychological results pointed out above. Among them belongs, for instance, the so-called doctrine of Terminism, which was generally (though unjustly) attributed to Pietism by its opponents. It assumes that grace is offered to all men, but for everyone either once at a definite moment in his life or at some moment for the last time. Anyone who let that moment pass was beyond the help of the universality of grace; he was in the same situation as those neglected by God in the Calvinistic doctrine. Quite close to this theory was the idea which Francke took from his personal experience, and which was very widespread in Pietism, one may even say predominant, that grace could only become effective under certain unique and peculiar circumstances, namely, after previous repentance. Since, according to Pietist doctrine, not everyone was capable of such experiences, those who, in spite of the use of the ascetic methods recommended by the Pietists to bring it about, did not attain it, remained in the eyes of the regenerate a sort of passive Christian. On the other hand, by the creation, of a method to induce repentance even the attainment of divine grace became in effect an object of rational human activity.

Moreover, the antagonism to the private confessional, which, though not shared by all-for instance, not by Francke-was characteristic of many Pietists, especially as the repeated questions in Spener show, of Pieti pastors, resulted from this aristocracy of grace. This antagonism helped to weaken its ties with Lutheranism The visible effects on conduct of grace gained through repentance formed a necessary criterion for admission to absolution; hence it was impossible to let contritio alone suffice. Zinzendorf's conception of his own religious position, even though it vacillated in the face of attack from orthodoxy, tended generally toward the instrumental idea. Beyond that, however, the doctrine standpoint of this remarkable religious dilettante, Ritschl calls him, is scarcely capable of clear formulation in the points of importance for us.He repeatedly designated himself a representative of Pauline-Lutheran Christianity; hence he opposed the Pietistic type associated with Jansen with its adherence to the law. But the Brotherhood itself in practice upheld, as early as its Protocol of August 22, 1729, a standpoint which in many respects closely resembled that of the Calvinistic aristocracy of the elect. And in spite of his repeated avowals of Lutheranism, he permitted and encouraged it. The famous stand of attributing the Old Testament to Christ, taken on November 2, 1741, was the outward expression of somewhat the same attitude. However, of the three branches of the Brotherhood, both the Calvinistic and the Moravian accepted the Reformed ethics in essentials from the beginning. And even Zinzendorf followed the Puritans in expressing to John Wesley the opinion that even though a man himself could not, others could know his state of grace by his conduct.

But on the other hand, in the peculiar piety of Herrnhut, the emotional element held a very prominent place. In particular Zinzendorf himself continually attempted to counteract the tendency to ascetic sanctification in the Puritan sense and to turn the interpretation of good works in a Lutheran direction. Also under the influence of the repudiation of conventicles and the retention of the confession, there developed an essentially Lutheran dependence on the sacraments. Moreover, Zinzendorf's peculiar principle that the childlikeness of religious feeling was a sign of its genuineness, as well as the use of the lot as a means of revealing God's will, strongly counteracted the influence of rationality in conduct. On the whole, within the sphere of influence of the Count, the anti-rational, emotional elements predominated much more in the religion of the Herrnhuters than elsewhere inpietism. The connection between morality and the forgiveness of sins in Spangenberg's Idea fides fratrum is as loosel. as in Lutheranism generally. Zinzendorf's repudiation of the Methodist pursuit of perfection is part, here as everywhere, of his fundamentally eudaemonistic ideal of having men experience eternal bliss (he calls it happiness) emotionally in the present, instead of encouraging them by rational labour to make sure of it in the next world.

Nevertheless, the idea that the most important value of the Brotherhood as contrasted with other Churches lay in an active Christian life, in missionary, and, which was brought into connection with it, in professional work in a calling, remained a vital force with them. In addition, the practical rationalization of life from the standpoint of utility was very essential to Zinzendorf's philosophy . It was derived for him, as for other Pietists, on the one hand from his decided dislike of philosophical speculation as dangerous to faith, and his corresponding preference for empirical knowledge ; on the other hand, from the shrewd common sense of the professional missionary. The Brotherhood was, as a great mission centre, at the same time a business enterprise. Thus it led its members into the paths of worldly asceticism, which everywhere first seeks for tasks and then carries them out carefully and systematically. However, the glorification of the apostolic poverty, of the disciples chosen by God through predestination, which was derived from the example of the apostles as missionaries, formed another obstacle. It meant in effect a partial revival of the consilia evangelica. The development of a rational economic ethic similar to the Calvinistic was certainly retarded by these factors, even though, as the development of the Baptist movement shows, it was not impossible, but on the contrary subjectively strongly encouraged by the idea of work solely for the sake of the calling.

All in all, when we consider German Pietism from the point of view important for us, we must admit a vacillation and uncertainty in the religious basis of its asceticism which makes it definitely weaker than the iron consistency of Calvinism, and which is partly the result of Lutheran influences and partly of its emotional character. To be sure, it is very one-sided to make this emotional element the distinguishing characteristic of Pietism as opposed to Lutheranism. But compared to Calvinism, the rationalization of life was necessarily less intense because the pressure of occupation with a state of grace which had continually to be proved, and which was concerned for the future in eternity, was diverted to the present emotional state. The place of the self-confidence which the elect sought to attain, and continually to renew in restless and successful work at his calling, was taken by an attitude of humility and abnegation. This in turn was partly the result of emotional stimulus directed solely toward spiritual experience; partly of the Lutheran institution of the confession, which, though it was often looked upon with serious doubts by Pietism, was still generally tolerated. All this shows the influence of the peculiarly Lutheran conception of salvation by the forgiveness of sins and not by practical sanctification. In place of the systematic rational struggle to attain and retain certain knowledge of future (otherworldly) salvation comes here the need to feel reconciliation and community with God now. Thus the tendency of the pursuit of present enjoyment to hinder the rational organization of economic life, depending as it does on provision for the future, has in a certain sense a parallel in the field of religious life.

Evidently, then, the orientation of religious needs to present emotional satisfaction could not develop so powerful a motive to rationalize worldly activity, as the need of the Calvinistic elect for proof with their exclusive preoccupation with the beyond. On the other hand, it was considerably more favourable to the methodical penetration of conduct with religion than the traditionalistic faith of the orthodox Lutheran, bound as it was to the Word and the sacraments. On the whole Pietism from Francke and Spener to Zinzendorf tended toward increasing emphasis on the emotional side. But this was not in any sense the expression of an immanent law of development. The differences resulted from differences of the religious (and social) environments from which the leaders came. We cannot enter into that here, nor can we discuss how the peculiarities of German Pietism have affected its social and geographical extension. We must again remind ourselves that this emotional Pietism of course shades off into the way of life of the Puritan elect by quite gradual stages. If we can, at least provisionally, point out any practical consequence of the difference, we may say that the virtues favoured by Pietism were more those on the one hand of the faithful official, clerk, labourer, or domestic worker, and on the other of the predominantly patriarchal employer with a pious condescension (in Zinzendorf's manner). Calvinism, in comparison, appears to be more closely related to the hard legalism and the active enterprise of bourgeois-capitalistic entrepreneurs. Finally, the purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure classes. However far this characterization falls short of being exhaustive, it helps to explain certain differences in the character (including the economic character) of peoples which have been under the influence of one or the other of these two ascetic movements.

C. METHODISM

The combination of an emotional but still ascetic type of religion with increasing indifference to or repudiation of the dogmatic basis of Calvinistic asceticism is characteristic also of the Anglo-American movement corresponding to Continental Pietism, namely Methodism. The name in itself shows what impressed contemporaries as characteristic of its adherents: the methodical, systematic nature of conduct for the purpose of attaining the certitudo salutis. This was from the beginning the centre of religious aspiration for this movement also, and remained so. In spite of all the differences, the undoubted relationship to certain branches of German Pietism is shown above all by the fact that the method was used primarily to bring about the emotional act of conversion. And the emphasis on feeling, in John Wesley awakened by Moravian and Lutheran influences, led Methodism, which from the beginning saw its mission among the masses, to take on a strongly emotional character, especially in America. The attainment of repentance under certain circumstances involved an emotional struggle of such intensity as to lead to the most terrible ecstasies, which in America often took place in a public meeting. This formed the basis of a belief in the undeserved possession of divine grace and at the same time of an immediate consciousness of justification and forgiveness.

Now this emotional religion entered into a peculiar alliance, containing no small inherent difficulties, with the ascetic ethics which had for good and all been stamped with rationality by Puritanism. For one thing, unlike Calvinism, which held everything emotional to be illusory, the only sure basis for the certitudo salutis was in principle held to be a pure feeling of absolute certainty of forgiveness, derived immediately from the testimony of the spirit, the coming of which could be definitely placed to the hour. Added to this is Wesley's doctrine of sanctification which, though a decided departure from the orthodox doctrine, is a logical development of it. According to it, one reborn in this manner can, by virtue of the divine grace already working in him, even in this life attain sanctifi-cation, the consciousness of perfection in the sense of freedom from sin, by a second, generally separate and often sudden spiritual transformation. However difficult of attainment this end is, generally not till toward the end of one's life, it must inevitably be sought, because it finally guarantees the certitudo salutis and substitutes a serene confidence for the sullen worry of the Calvinist. And it distinguishes the true convert in his own eyes and those of others by the fact that sin at least no longer has power over him.

In spite of the great significance of self-evident feeling, righteous conduct according to the law was thus naturally also adhered to. Whenever Wesley attacked the emphasis on works of his time, it was only to revive the old Puritan doctrine that works are not the cause, but only the means of knowing one's state of grace, and even this only when they are performed solely for the glory of God. Righteous conduct alone did not suffice, as he had found out for himself. The feeling of grace was necessary in addition. He himself sometimes described works as a condition of grace, and in the Declaration of August 9, 1771 , he emphasized that he who performed no good works was not a true believer. In fact, the Methodists have always maintained that they did not differ from the Established Church in doctrine, but only in religious practice. This emphasis on the fruits of belief was mostly justified by I John iii, 9; conduct is taken as a clear sign of rebirth.

But in spite of all that there were difficulties. For those Methodists who were adherents of the doctrine of predestination, to think of the certitudo salutis as appearing in the immediate feeling of grace and perfection instead of the consciousness of grace which grew out of ascetic conduct in continual proof of faith since then the certainty of the perservantia depended only on the single act of repentance-meant one of two things. For weak natures there was a fatalistic interpretation of Christian freedom, and with it the breakdown of methodical conduct; or, where this path was rejected, the self-confidence of the righteous man reached untold heights, an emotional intensification of the Puritan type. In the face of the attacks of opponents, the attempt was made to meet these consequences. On the one hand by increased emphasis on the normative authority of the Bible and the indispensability of proof ; on the other by, in effect, strengthening Wesley's anti-Calvinistic faction within the movement with its doctrine that grace could be lost. The strong Lutheran influences to which Wesley was exposed through the Moravians strengthened this tendency and increased the uncertainty of the religious basis of the Methodist ethics. In the end only the concept of regeneration, an emotional certainty of salvation as the immediate result of faith, was definitely maintained as the indispensable foundation of grace; and with it sanctification, resulting in (at least virtual) freedom from the power of sin, as the consequent proof of grace. The significance of external means of grace, especially the sacraments, was correspondingly diminished. In any case, the general awakening which followed Methodism everywhere, for example in New England, meant a victory for the doctrine of grace and election .

Thus from our view-point the Methodist ethic appears to rest on a foundation of uncertainty similar to Pietism. But the aspiration to the higher life, the second blessedness, served it as a sort of makeshift for the doctrine of predestination. Moreover, being English in origin, its ethical practice was closely related to that of English Puritanism, the revival of which it aspired to be. The emotional act of conversion was methodically induced. And after it was attained there did not follow a pious enjoyment of community with God, after the manner of the emotional Pietism of Zinzendorf, but the emotion, once awakened, was directed into a rational struggle for perfection. Hence the emotional character of its faith did not lead to a spiritualized religion of feeling like German Pietism. It has already been shown by Schneckenburger that this fact was connected with the less intensive. development of the sense of sin (partly directly on account of the emotional experience of conversion), and this has remained an accepted point in the discussion of Methodism. The fundamentally Calvinistic character of its religious feeling here remained decisive. The emotional excitement took the form of enthusiasm which was only occasionally, but then powerfully stirred, but which by no means destroyed the otherwise rational character of conduct. The regeneration of Methodism thus created only a supplement to the pure doctrine of works, a religious basis for ascetic conduct after the doctrine of predestination had been given up. The signs given by conduct which formed an indispensable means of ascertaining true conversion, even its condition as Wesley occasionally says, were in fact just the same as those of Calvinism. As a late product we can, in the following discussion, generally neglect Methodism, as it added nothing new to the development of the idea of calling.

D. THE BAPTIST SECTS

The Pietism of the Continent of Europe and the Methodism of the Anglo-Saxon peoples are, considered both in their content of ideas and their historical significance, secondary movements. On the other hand, we find a second independent source of Protestant asceticism besides Calvinism in the Baptist movement and the sects which, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, came directly from it or adopted its forms of religious thought, the Baptists, Mennonites, and, above all, the Quakers. With them we approach religious groups whose ethics rest upon a basis differing in principle from the Calvinistic doctrine. The following sketch, which only emphasizes what is important for us, can give no true impression of the diversity of this movement. Again we lay the principal emphasis on the development in the older capitalistic countries.

The feature of all these communities, which is both historically and in principle most important, but whose influence on the development of culture can only be made quite clear in a somewhat different connection, is something with which we are already familiar, the believer's Church .This means that the religious community, the visible Church in the language of the Reformation Churches, was no longer looked upon as a sort of trust foundation for supernatural ends, an institution, necessarily including both the just and the unjust, whether for increasing the glory of God (Calvinistic) or as a medium for bringing the means of salvation to men (Catholic and Lutheran), but solely as a community of personal believers of the reborn, and only these. In other words, not as a Church but as a Sect. This is all that the principle, in itself purely external, that only adults who have personally gained their own faith should be baptized, is meant to symbolize . The justification through this faith was for the Baptists, as they have insistently repeated in all religious discussions, radically different from the idea of work in the world in the service of Christ, such as dominated the orthodox dogma of the older Protestantism . It consisted rather in taking spiritual possession of His gift of salvation. But this occurred through individual revelation, by the working of the Divine Spirit in the individual, and only in that way. It was offered to everyone, and it sufficed to wait for the Spirit, and not to resist its coming by a sinful attachment to the world. The significance of faith in the sense of knowledge of the doctrines of the Church, but also in that of a repentant search for divine grace, was consequently quite minimized, and there took place, naturally with great modifications, a renaissance of Early Christian pneumatic doctrines. For instance, the sect to which Menno Simons in his Fondamentboek gave the first reasonably consistent doctrine, wished, like the other Baptist sects, to be the true blameless Church of Christ; like the apostolic community, consisting entirely of those personally awakened and called by God. Those who have been born again, and they alone, are brethren of Christ, because they, like Him, have been created in spirit directly by God. A strict avoidance of the world, in the sense of all not strictly necessary intercourse with worldly people, together with the strictest bibliocracy in the sense of taking the life of the first generations of Christians as a model, were the results for the first Baptist communities, and this principle of avoidance of the world never quite disappeared so long as the old spirit remained alive."'

As a permanent possession, the Baptist sects retained from these dominating motives of their early period a principle with which, on a somewhat different foundation, we have already become acquainted in Calvinism, and the fundamental importance of which will again and again come out. They absolutely repudiated all idolatry of the flesh, as a detraction from the reverence due to God alone The Biblical way of life was conceived by the first Swiss and South German Baptists with a radicalism similar to that of the young St. Francis, as a sharp break with all the enjoyment of life, a life modelled directly on that of the Apostles. And, in truth, the life of many of the earlier Baptists is reminiscent of that of St. Giles. But this strict observation of Biblical precepts was not on very secure foundations in its connection with the pneumatic character of the faith. What God had revealed to the prophets and apostles was not all that He could and would reveal. On the contrary, the continued life of the Word, not as a written document, but as the force of the Holy Spirit working in daily life, which speaks directly to any individual who is willing to hear, was the sole characteristic of the true Church. That, as Schwenkfeld taught as against Luther and later Fox against the Presbyterians, was the testimony of the early Christian communities. From this idea of the continuance of revelation developed the well-known doctrine, later consistently worked out by the Quakers, of the (in the last analysis decisive) significance of the inner testimony of the Spirit in reason and conscience. This did away, not with the authority, but with the sole authority, of the Bible, and started a development which in the end radically eliminated all that remained of the doctrine of salvation through the Church; for the Quakers even with Baptism and the Communion. The Baptist denominations along with the predestinationists, especially the strict Calvinists, carried out the most radical devaluation of all sacraments as means to salvation, and thus accomplished the religious rationalization of the world in its most extreme form.

Only the inner light of continual revelation could enable one truly to understand even the Biblical revelations of God. On the other hand, at least according to the Quaker doctrine which here drew the logical conclusion, its effects could be extended to people who had never known revelation in its Biblical form. The proposition extra ecclesiam nulla salus held only for this invisible Church of those illuminated by the Spirit. Without the inner light, the natural man, even the man guided by natural reason, remained purely a creature of the flesh, whose godlessness was condemned by the Baptists, including the Quakers, almost even more harshly than by the Calvinists. On the other hand, the new birth caused by the Spirit, if we wait for it and open our hearts to it, may, since it is divinely caused, lead to a state of such complete conquest of the power of sin that relapses, to say nothing of the loss of the state of grace, become practically impossible. However, as in Methodism at a later time, the attainment of that state was not thought of as the rule, but rather the degree of perfection of the individual was subject to development.

But all Baptist communities desired to be pure Churches in the sense of the blameless conduct of their members. A sincere repudiation of the world and its interests, and unconditional submission to God as speaking through the conscience, were the only unchallengeable signs of true rebirth, and a corresponding type of conduct was thus indispensable to salvation. And hence the gift of God's grace could not be earned, but only one who followed the dictates of his conscience could be justified in considering himself reborn. Good works in this sense were a causa sine qua non. As we see, this last reasoning of Barclay, to whose exposition we have adhered, was again the equivalent in practice of the Calvinistic doctrine, and was certainly developed under the influence of the Calvinistic asceticism, which surrounded the Baptist sects in England and the Netherlands. George Fox devoted the whole of his early missionary activity to the preaching of its earnest and sincere adoption.

But, since predestination was rejected, the peculiarly rational character of Baptist morality rested psychologically above all on the idea of expectant waiting for the Spirit to descend, which even today is characteristic of the Quaker meeting, and is well analysed by Barclay. The purpose of this silent waiting is to overcome everything impulsive and irrational, the passions and subjective interests of the natural man. He must be stilled in order to create that deep repose of the soul in which alone the word of God can be heard. Of course, this waiting might result in hysterical conditions, prophecy, and, as long as eschatological hopes survived, under certain circumstances even in an outbreak of chiliastic enthusiasm, as is possible in all similar types of religion. That actually happened in the movement which went to pieces in Munster.

But in so far as Baptism affected the normal workaday world, the idea that God only speaks when the flesh is silent evidently meant an incentive to the deliberate weighing of courses of action and their careful justification in terms of the individual conscience. The later Baptist communities, most particularly the Quakers, adopted this quiet, moderate, eminently conscientious character of conduct. The radical elimination of magic from the world allowed no other psychological course than the practice of worldly asceticism. Since these communities would have nothing to do with the political powers and their doings, the external result also was the penetration of life in the calling with these ascetic virtues. The leaders of the earliest Baptist movement were ruthlessly radical in their rejection of worldliness. But naturally,even in the first generation, the strictly apostolic way of life was not maintained as absolutely essential to the proof of rebirth for everyone. Well-to-do bourgeois there were, even in this generation and even before Menno, who definitely defended the practical worldly virtues and the system of private property; the strict morality of the Baptists had turned in practice into the path prepared by the Calvinistic ethic.This was simply because the road to the otherworldly monastic form of asceticism had been closed as unbiblical and savouring of salvation by works since Luther, whom the Baptists also followed in this respect.
Nevertheless, apart from the half-communistic communities of the early period, one Baptist sect, the so-called Dunckards (Tunker, dompelaers), has to this day maintained its condemnation of education and of every form of possession beyond that indispensable to life. And even Barclay looks upon the obligation to one's calling not in Calvinistic or even Lutheran terms, but rather Thomistically, as naturali ratione, the necessary consequence of the believers, having to live in the world.

This attitude meant a weakening of the Calvinistic conception of the calling similar to those of Spener and the German Pietists. But, on the other hand, the intensity of interest in economic occupations was considerably increased by various factors at work in the Baptist sects. In the first place, by the refusal to accept office in the service of the State, which originated as a religious duty following from the repudiation of everything worldly. After its abandonment in principle it still remained, at least for the Mennonites and Quakers, effective in practice, because the strict refusal to bear arms or to take oaths formed a sufficient disqualification for office. Hand in hand with it in all Baptists' denominations went an invincible antagonism to any sort of aristocratic way of life. Partly, as with the Calvinists, it was a consequence of the prohibition of all idolatry of the flesh, partly a result of the aforementioned unpolitical or even anti-political principles, The whole shrewd and conscientious rationality of
Baptist conduct was thus forced into non-political callings.

At the same time, the immense importance which was attributed by the Baptist doctrine of salvation to the role of the conscience as the revelation of God to the individual gave their conduct in worldly callings a character which was of the greatest significance for the development of the spirit of capitalism. We shall have to postpone its consideration until later, and it can then be studied only in so far as this is possible without entering into the whole political and social ethics of Protestant asceticism. But, to anticipate this much, we have already called attention to that most important principle of the capitalistic ethic which is generally formulated "honesty is the best policy" Its classical document is the tract of Franklin quoted above. And even in the judgment of the seventeenth century the specific form of the worldly asceticism of the Baptists, especially the Quakers, lay in the practical adoption of this maxim.1m On the other hand, we shall expect to find that the influence of Calvinism was exerted more in the direction of the liberation of energy for private acquisition. For in spite of all the formal legalism of the elect, Goethe's remark in fact applied often enough to the Calvinist: "The man of action is always ruthless;
no one has a conscience but an observer."

A further important element which promoted the intensity of the worldly asceticism of the Baptist denominations can in its full significance also be considered only in another connection. Nevertheless, we may anticipate a few remarks on it to justify the order of presentation we have chosen. We have quite deliberately not taken as a starting point the objective social institutions of the older Protestant Churches, and their ethical influences, especially not the very important Church discipline. We have preferred rather to take the results which subjective adoption of an ascetic faith might have had in the conduct of the individual. This was not only because this side of the thing has previously received far less attention than the other, but also because the effect of Church discipline was by no means always a similar one. On the contrary, the ecclesiastical supervision of the life of the individual, which, as it was practised in the Calvinistic State Churches, almost amounted to an inquisition, might even retard that liberation of individual powers which was conditioned by the rational ascetic pursuit of salvation, and in some cases actually did so.

The mercantilistic regulations of the State might develop industries, but not, or certainly not alone, the spirit of capitalism; where they assumed a despotic, authoritarian character, they to a large extent directly hindered it. Thus a similar effect might well have resulted from ecclesiastical regimentation when it became excessively despotic. It enforced a particular type of external conformity, but in some cases weakened the subjective motives of rational conduct. Any discussion of this point must take account of the great difference between the results of the authoritarian moral discipline of the Established Churches and tile corresponding discipline in the sects which rested on voluntary submission. That the Baptist movement everywhere and in principle founded sects and not Churches was certainly as favourable to the intensity of their asceticism as was the case, to differing degrees, with those Calvinistic, Methodist, and Pietist communities which were driven by their situations into the formation of voluntary groups.

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 J 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 marketplace of life slammed the door of the monastery behind it, an 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.

LUTHER'S CONCEPTION OF THE CALLING

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Now it is unmistakable that even in the German word Beruf, and perhaps still more clearly in the English calling, a religious conception, that of a task set by God, is at least suggested. The more emphasis is put upon the word in a concrete case, the more evident is the connotation. And if we trace the history of the word through the civilized languages, it appears that neither the predominantly Catholic peoples nor those of classical antiquity have possessed any expression of similar connotation for what we know as a calling (in the sense of a life-task, a definite field in which to work), while one has existed for all predominantly Protestant peoples. It may be further shown that this is not due to any ethnical peculiarity of the languages concerned. It is not, for instance, the product of a Germanic spirit, but in its modern meaning the word comes from the Bible translations, through the spirit of the translator, not that of the original. In Luther's translation of the Bible it appears to have first been used at a point in Jesus Sirach (x i. 20 and 21) precisely in our modern sense. After that it speedily took on its present meaning in the everyday speech of all Pro-testant peoples, while earlier not even a suggestion of such a meaning could be found in the secular literature of any of them, and even, in religious writings, so far as I can ascertain, it is only found in one of the German mystics whose influence on Luther is well known.

Like the meaning of the word, the idea is new, a product of the Reformation. This may be assumed as generally known. It is true that certain suggestions of the positive valuation of routine activity in the world, which is contained in this conception of the calling, had already existed in the Middle Ages, and even in late Hellenistic antiquity. We shall speak of that later. But at least one thing was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which inevitably gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance, and which first created the conception of a calling in this sense. The conception of the calling thus brings out that central dogma of all Protestant denominations which the Catholic division. of ethical precepts into preecepta and consilia discards. The only way of living acceptably to God was not to surpass worldly morality in monastic asceticism, but solely through the fulfillment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world. That was his calling.

Luther developed the conception in the course of the first decade of his activity as a reformer. At first, quite in harmony with the prevailing tradition of the Middle Ages, as represented, for example, by Thomas Aquinas he thought of activity in the world as a thing of the flesh, even though willed by God. It is the indispensable natural condition of a life of faith, but in itself, like eating and drinking, morally neutral. But with the development of the conception of sola fide in all its consequences, and its logical result, the increasingly sharp emphasis against the Catholic consilia evangelica of the monks as dictates of the devil, the calling grew in importance. The monastic life is not only quite devoid of value as a means of justification before God, but he also looks upon its renunciation of the duties of this world as the product of selfishness, withdrawing from temporal obligations. In contrast, labor in a calling appears to him as the outward expression of brotherly love. This he proves by the observation that the division of labor forces every individual to work for others, but his viewpoint is highly naive, forming an almost grotesque contrast to Adam Smith's well known statements on the same subject. However, this justification, which is evidently essentially scholastic, soon disappears again, and there remains, more and more strongly emphasized, the statement that the fulfillment of worldly duties is under all circumstances the only way to live acceptably to God. It and it alone is the will of God, and hence every legitimate calling has exactly the same worth in the sight of God.

That this moral justification of worldly activity was one of the most important results of the Reformation, especially of Luther's part in it, is beyond doubt, and may even be considered a platitude. This attitude is worlds removed from the deep hatred of Pascal, in his contemplative moods, for all worldly activity, which he was deeply convinced could only be understood in terms of vanity or low cunning. And it differs even more from the liberal utilitarian compromise with the world at which the Jesuits arrived. But just what the practical significance of this achievement of Protestantism was in detail is dimly felt rather than clearly perceived.

In the first place it is hardly necessary to point out that Luther cannot be claimed for the spirit of capitalism in the sense in which we have used that term above, or for that matter in any sense whatever. The religious circles which today most enthusiastically celebrate that great achievement of the Reformation are by no means friendly to capitalism in any sense. And Luther himself would, without doubt, have sharply repudiated any connection with a point of view like that of Franklin. Of course, one cannot consider his complaints against the great merchants of his time, such as the Fuggers, as evidence in this case. For the struggle against the privileged position, legal or actual, of single great trading companies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may best be compared with the modem campaign against the trusts, and can no more justly be considered in itself an expression of a traditionalistic point of view. Against these people, against the Lombards, the monopolists, speculators, and bankers patronized by the Anglican Church and the kings and parliaments of England and France, both the Puritans and the Huguenots carried on a bitter struggle. Cromwell, after the battle of Dunbar (September 1650), wrote to the Long Parliament: "Be pleased to reform the abuses of all professions: and if there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a Commonwealth." But, nevertheless, we will find Cromwell following a quite specifically capitalistic line of thought . On the other hand, Luther's numerous statements against usury or interest in any form reveal a conception of the nature of capitalistic acquisition which, compared with that of late Scholasticism, is, from a capitalistic viewpoint, definitely backward. Especially, of course , the doctrine of the sterility of money which Anthony of Florence had already refuted.

But it is unnecessary to go into detail. For, above all the consequences of the conception of the calling in the religious sense for worldly conduct were susceptible to quite different interpretations. The effect of the Reformation as such was only that, as compared with the Catholic attitude, the moral emphasis on and the religious sanction of, organized worldly labor in a calling was mightily increased. The way in which the concept of the calling, which expressed this change, should develop further depended upon the religious evolution which now took place in the different Protestant Churches. The authority of the Bible, from which Luther thought he had derived his idea of the calling, on the whole favored a traditionalistic interpretation. The old Testament, in particular, though in the genuine prophets it showed no sign of a tendency to excel worldly morality, and elsewhere only in quite isolated rudiments and suggestions, contained a similar religious idea entirely in this traditionalistic sense. Everyone should abide by his living and let the godless run after gain. That is the sense of all the statements which bear directly on worldly activities. Not until the Talmud is a partially, but not even then fundamentally, different attitude to be found. The personal attitude of Jesus is characterized in classical purity by the typical antique Oriental plea: "Give us this day our daily bread." The element of radical repudiation of the world, as expressed in the (Greek term), excluded the possibility that the modern idea of calling should be based on his personal authority. In the apostolic era as expressed in the New Testament, especially in St. Paul, the Christian looked upon worldly activity either with indifference, or at least essentially traditionalistically; for those first generations were filled with eschatological hopes. Since everyone was simply waiting for the coming of the Lord, there was nothing to do but remain in the station and in the worldly occupation in which the call of the Lord had found him, and labor as before. Thus he would not burden his brothers as an object of charity, and it would only be for a little while. Luther read the Bible through the spectacles of his whole attitude; at the time and in the course of his development from about 1518 to 1530 this not only remained traditionalistic but became ever more so.

In the first years of his activity as a reformer he was, since he thought of the calling as primarily of the flesh, dominated by an attitude closely related, in so far as the form of world activity was concerned, to the Pauline eschatological indifference as expressed in I Cor. vii. One may attain salvation in any walk of life; on the short pilgrimage of life there is no use in laying weight on the form of occupation. The pursuit of material gain beyond personal needs must thus appear as a symptom of lack of grace, and since it can apparently only be attained at the expense of others, directly reprehensible. As he became increasingly involved in the affairs of the world, he came to value work in the world more highly. But in the concrete calling an individual pursued he saw more and more a special command of God to fulfill these particular duties which the Divine Will had imposed upon him. And after the conflict with the Fanatics and the peasant disturbances, the objective historical order of things in which the individual has been placed by God becomes for Luther more and more a direct manifestation of divine will. The stronger and stronger emphasis on the providential element, even in particular events of life, led more and more to a traditionalistic interpretation based on the idea of Providence. The individual should remain once and for all in the station and calling in which God had placed him, and should restrain hi' worldly activity within the limits imposed by his established station in life. While his economic traditionalism was originally the result of Pauline indifference, it later became that of a more and more intense belief in divine providence, which identified absolute obedience to God's will, with absolute acceptance of things as they were. Starting from this background, it was impossible for Luther to establish a new or in any way fundamental connection between worldly activity and religious principles. His acceptance of purity of doctrine as the one infallible criterion of the Church, which became more and more irrevocable after the struggles of the twenties, was in itself sufficient to check the development of new points of view in ethical matters.

Thus for Luther the concept of the calling remained traditionalistic. His calling is something which man has to accept as a divine ordinance, to which he must adapt himself. This aspect outweighed the other idea which was also present, that work in the calling was a, or rather the, task set by God. And in its further development, orthodox Lutheranism emphasized this aspect still more. Thus, for the time being, the only ethical result was negative; worldly duties were no longer subordinated to ascetic' ones; obedience to authority and the acceptance of things as they were, were preached. In this Lutheran form the idea of a calling had, as will be shown in our discussion of medieval religious ethics, to a considerable extent been anticipated by the German mystics. Especially in Tauler's equalization of the values of religious and worldly occupations, and the decline in valuation of the traditional forms of ascetic practices on account of the decisive significance of the ecstatic-contemplative absorption of the divine spirit by the soul. To a certain extent Lutheranism means a step backward from the mystics, in so far as Luther, and still more his Church, had, as compared with the mystics, partly undermined the psychological foundations for a rational ethics. (The mystic attitude on this point is reminiscent partly of the Pietest and partly of the Quaker psychology of faith.) That was precisely because he could not but suspect the tendency to ascetic self discipline of leading to salvation by works, and hence he and his Church were forced to keep it more and more in the background.

Thus the mere idea of the calling in the Lutheran sense is at best of questionable importance for the problems in which we are interested. This was all that was meant to be determined here. But this is not in the least to say that even the Lutheran form of the renewal of the religious life may not have had some practical significance for the objects of our investigation; quite the contrary. Only that significance evidently cannot be derived directly from the attitude of Luther and his Church to worldly activity, and is perhaps not altogether so easily grasped as the connection with other branches of Protestantism. It is thus well for us next to look into those forms in which a relation between practical life and a religious motivation can be more easily perceived than in Lutheranism. We have already called attention to the conspicuous part played by Calvinism and the Protestant sects in the history of capitalistic development. As Luther found a different spirit at work in Zwingli than in himself, so did his spiritual successors in Calvinism. And Catholicism has to the present day looked upon Calvinism as its real opponent.

Now that may be partly explained on purely political grounds. Although the Reformation is unthinkable without Luther's own personal religious development, and was spiritually long influenced by his personality, without Calvinism his work could not have had permanent concrete success. Nevertheless, the reason for this common repugnance of Catholics and Lutherans lies, at least partly, in the ethical peculiarities of Calvinism. A purely superficial glance shows that there is here quite a different relationship between the religious life and earthly activity than in either Catholicism or Lutheranism. Even in literature motivated purely by religious factors that is evident. Take for instance the end of the Divine Comedy, where the poet in Paradise stands speechless in his passive contemplation of the secrets of God, and compare it with the poem which has come to be called the Divine Comedy of Puritanism. Milton closes the last song of Paradise Lost after describing the expulsion from paradise as follows:-

"They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of paradise, so late their happy scat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon:
The world was all before them, there to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

And only a little before Michael had said to Adam:

. . . "Only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith;
Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,
By name to come called Charity, the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this Paradise, but shall possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far."

One feels at once that this powerful expression of the Puritan's serious attention to this world, his acceptance of his life in the world as a task, could not possibly have come from the pen of a medieval writer. But it is just as uncongenial to Lutheranism, as expressed for instance in Luther's and Paul Gerhard's chorales. It is now our task to replace this vague feeling by a somewhat more precise logical formulation, and to investigate the fundamental basis of these differences. The appeal to national character is generally a mere confession of ignorance, and in this case it is entirely untenable. To ascribe a unified national character to the Englishmen of the seventeenth century would be simply to falsify history. Cavaliers and Roundheads did not appeal to each other simply as two parties, but a radically distinct species of men, and whoever look into the matter carefully must agree with them. 0n the other hand, a difference of character between the English merchant adventurers and the old Hanseatic merchants is not to be found; nor can any other fundamental difference between the English and German characters at the end of the Middle Ages, which cannot easily be explained by the differences of their political history. It was the power of religious influence, not alone, but more than anything else, which created the differences of which we are conscious today.

We thus take as our starting point in the investigation of the relationship between the old Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism the works of Calvin, of Calvinism, and the other Puritan sects. But it is not to be understood that we expect to find any of the founders or representatives of these religious movements considering the promotion of what we have called the spirit of capitalism as in any sense the end of his life-work. We cannot well maintain that the pursuit of worldly goods, conceived as a n end in itself, was to any of them of positive ethical value. Once and for all it must be remembered that programs of ethical reform never were at the center of interest for any of the religious reformers (among whom, for our purposes, we must include men like Menno, George Fox, and Wesley). They were not the founders of societies for ethical culture nor the proponents of humanitarian projects for social reform or cultural ideals. The salvation of the soul and that alone was the center of their life and work. Their ethical ideals and the practical results of their doctrines were all based on that alone, and were the consequences of purely religious motives. We shall thus have to admit that the cultural consequences of the Reformation were to a great extent, perhaps in the particular aspects with which we are dealing predominantly, unforeseen and even unwished for results of the labors of the reformers. They were often far removed from or even in contradiction to all that they themselves thought to attain.

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 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 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.

THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

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In the title of this study is used the somewhat pretentious phrase, the spirit of capitalism. What is to be understood by it? The attempt to give anything like a definition of it brings out certain difficulties which are in the very nature of this type of investigation.

If any object can be found to which this term can be applied with any understandable meaning, it can only be an historical individual, i.e. a complex of elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their cultural significance.

Such an historical concept, however, since it refers in its content to a phenomenon significant for its unique individuality, cannot be defined according to the formula genus proximunt, differentia specifica, but it must be gradually put together out of the individual parts which are taken from historical reality to make it up. Thus the final and definitive concept cannot stand at the beginning of the investigation, but must come at the end. We must, in other words, work out in the course of the discussion, as its most important result, the best conceptual formulation of what we here understand by the spirit of capitalism, that is the best from the point of view which interests us here. This point of view (the one of which we shall speak later) is, further, by no means the only possible one from which the historical phenomena we are investigating can be analyzed. Other standpoints would, for this as for every historical phenomenon, yield other characteristics as the essential ones. The result is that it is by no means necessary to understand by the spirit of capitalism only what it will come to mean to us for the purposes of our analysis. This is a necessary result of the nature of historical concepts which attempt for their methodological purposes not to grasp historical reality in abstract general formulae, but in concrete genetic sets of relations which are inevitably of a specifically unique and individual character.

Thus, if we try to determine the object, the analysis and historical explanation of which we are attempting, it cannot be in the form of a conceptual definition, but at least in the beginning only a provisional description of what is here meant by the spirit of capitalism. Such a description is, however, indispensable in order clearly to understand the object of the investigation. For this purpose we turn to a document of that spirit which contains what we are looking for in almost classical purity, and at the game time has the advantage of being free from all direct relationship to religion, being thus for our purposes, free of preconceptions.

“Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, o sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but, sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not t reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shilling-, besides. "Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.

"Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds."

"Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man's purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he, promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend's purse for ever.

"The most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when You should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. 'It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.

"Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience."

" For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
"He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
"He that wastes idly a groat's worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
"He that idly loses five shillings' worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
"He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man become: old, will amount to a considerable sum of money."

It is Benjamin Franklin who preaches to us in these sentences, the same which Ferdinand Kurnberger satirizes in his clever and malicious Picture of American Cultureas the supposed confession of faith of the Yankee. That it is the spirit of capitalism which here speaks in characteristic fashion, no one will doubt, however little we may wish to claim that everything which could be understood as pertaining to that spirit is Contained in it. Let us pause a moment to consider this passage, the philosophy of which Kurnberger sums up in the words, "They make tallow out of cattle and money out of men". The peculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appears to be the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself. Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one's way in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty. That is the essence of the matter. It is not mere business astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos. This is the quality which interests us.

When Jacob Fugger, in speaking to a business associate who had retired and who wanted to persuade him to do the same, since he had made enough money and should let others have a chance, rejected that as Pusillanimity and answered that "he (Fugger) thought otherwise, he wanted to make money as long as he could", the spirit of his statement is evidently quite different from that of Franklin. What in the former case was an expression of commercial daring and a Personal inclination morally neutral, in the latter takes on the character of ethically colored maxim for the conduct of life. The concept spirit of capitalism is here used in this specific sense, it is the spirit of modern capitalism. For that we are here dealing only with Western European and American capitalism is obvious from the way in which the problem was stated. Capitalism existed in China, India, Babylon, in the classic world, and in the Middle Ages. But in all these cases, as we shall see, this particular ethos was lacking.

Now, all Franklin's moral attitudes are colored with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues. A logical deduction from this would be that where, for instance, the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose, that would suffice, and an unnecessary surplus of this virtue would evidently appear to Franklin's eyes a unproductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the story in his autobiography of his conversion to those virtues, or the discussion of the value of a strict maintenance of the appearance of modesty, the assiduous belittlement of one's own deserts in order to gal general recognition later, confirms this impression. According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are only in so far virtues as they are actually useful to t individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance always sufficient when it accomplishes the end view. It is a conclusion which is inevitable for strict utilitarianism. The impression of many Germans t the virtues professed by Americanism are pure hypocrisy seems to have been confirmed by this striking case. But in fact the matter is not by any means so simple.

Benjamin Franklin's own character, as it appears in the really unusual candidness of his autobiography, belies that suspicion. The circumstance that he ascribes his recognition of the utility of virtue to a divine revelation which was intended to lead him in the path of righteousness, shows that something more than mere garnishing for purely egocentric motives is involved.

In fact, the summumbonumof his ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus ask, whyshould "money be made out of men", Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colorless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings" (Prov. xxii. 29). 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 today, 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 laborers in modem capitalistic enterprises, is a condition o 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 today, which has come t 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 naive 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 neighboring 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 yoemen, 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 forces. A state of mind such as that expressed in the passages we have quoted from Franklin, and which called forth the applause of a whole people, would both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages have been proscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as an attitude entirely lacking in self respect. It is, in ' fact, still regularly thus looked upon by all those social groups which are least involved in or adapted to modern capitalistic conditions. This is not wholly because the instinct of acquisition was in those times unknown or undeveloped, as has often been said. Nor because the auri sacra fames-, the greed for gold, was then, or now, less powerful outside of bourgeois capitalism than within its peculiar sphere, as the illusions of modern romanticists are wont to believe. The difference between the capitalistic and pre-capitalistic spirits is not to be found at this point. The greed of the Chinese Mandarin, the old Roman 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 coscienziosita 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 labor of those who practice the doctrine of undisciplined liberumarbitrium, 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, pre-capitalistic in the sense that the rational utilization of capital in a permanent enterprise and the rational capitalistic organization of labor 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. In this case also every attempt at a final definition must be held in abeyance. On the other hand, lye must try to make the provisional meaning clear by citing a few cases. We will begin from below, with the laborers.

One of the technical means which the modern employer uses in order to secure the greatest possible amount of work from his men is the device of piece rates. In agriculture, for instance, the gathering of the harvest is a case where the greatest possible intensity of labor is called for, since, the weather being uncertain, the difference between high profit and heavy loss may depend on the speed with which the harvesting can be done. Hence a system of piece rates is almost universal in this case. And since the interest of the employer in a speeding. up of harvesting increases with the increase of the results and the intensity of the work, the attempt has again and again been made, by increasing the piece rates of the workmen, thereby giving them an opportunity to earn what is for them a very high wage, to interest them in increasing their own efficiency. But a Peculiar difficulty has been met with surprising frequency: raising the Piece rates has often had the result that not more but less has been accomplished in the same time, because the worker reacted to the increase not by increasing but by decreasing the amount of his work. A man, for instance, who at the rate of 1 mark per acre mowed 2 1/2 acres per day and earned 2 1/2 marks, when the rate was raised to 1.25 marks per acre mowed, not 3 acres, as be might easily have done, thus earning 3.75 marks, but only 2 acres, so that he could still earn the 2 1/2 marks to which he was accustomed. The opportunity of earning more was less attractive than that of working less. He did not ask: how much can I earn in a day if 1 do as much work as possible? but: how much must 1 work in order to cam the wage, 2 1/2 marks, which I earned before and which takes care of my traditional needs? This is an example of what is here meant by traditionalism. A man does not "by nature" wish to cam more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. Wherever modern capitalism has begun its work of increasing the productivity of human labor by increasing its intensity, it has encountered the immensely stubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labor. And today it encounters it the more, the more backward (from a capitalistic point of view) the laboring forces are with which it has to deal.

Another obvious possibility, to return to our example, since the appeal to the acquisitive instinct through higher wage rates failed, would have been to try the opposite policy, to force the worker by reduction of his wage rates to work harder to cam the same amount than he did before. Low wages and high profits seem even today to a superficial observer to stand in correlation; everything which is paid out in wages seems to involve a corresponding reduction of profits. That road capitalism has taken again and again since its beginning ' For centuries it was an article of faith, that low wages were productive, i.e. that they increased the material results of labor so that, as Pieter de la Cour, on this point, as we shall see, quite in the spirit of the old Calvinism, said long ago, the people only work because and so long as they are poor.

But the effectiveness of this apparently so efficient method has its limits. Of course the presence of a surplus population which it can hire cheaply in the labour market is a necessity for the development of Capitalism. But though too large a reserve army may in certain cases favor its quantitative expansion, it checks its qualitative development, especially the transition to types of enterprise which make more intensive use of labor. Low wages are by no means identical with cheap labor. From a purely quantitative point of view the efficiency of labor decreases with a wage which is physiologically insufficient, which may in the long run even mean a survival of the unfit. The present day average Silesian mows, when he exerts himself to the full, little more than two thirds as much land as the better paid and nourished Pomeranian or Mecklenburger, and the Pole, the further East he comes from, accomplishes progressively less than the German. Low wages fail even from a purely business point of view wherever it is a question of producing goods which require any sort of skilled labor, or the use of expensive machinery which is easily damaged, or in general wherever any great amount of sharp attention or of initiative is required. Here low wages do not pay, and their effect is the opposite of what was intended. For not only is a developed sense of responsibility absolutely indispensable, but in general also an attitude which, at least during working hours, is freed from continual calculations of how the customary wage May be earned with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of exertion. Labor must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling. But such an attitude is by no means a product of nature. It cannot be evoked by low wages or high ones alone, but can only be the product of a long and arduous process of education. Today, capitalism, once in the saddle, can recruit its laboring force in all industrial countries with comparative ease. In the past this was in every case an extremely difficult problem. And even today it could probably not get along without the support of a powerful ally along the way, which, as we shall see below, was at hand at the time of its development.

What is meant can again best be explained by means of an example. The type of backward traditional form of labor is today very often exemplified by women workers, especially unmarried ones. An almost universal complaint of employers of girls, for instance German girls, is that they are almost entirely unable and unwilling to give up methods of work inherited or once learned in favor of more efficient ones, to adapt themselves to new methods, to learn and to concentrate their intelligence, or even to use it at all. Explanations of the possibility of making work easier, above all more profitable to themselves, generally encounter a complete lack of understanding. Increases of piece rates are without avail against the stone wall of habit. In general it is otherwise, and that is a point of no little importance from our viewpoint, only with girls having a specifically religious, especially a Pietistic, background. One often bears, and statistical investigation confirms it, that by far the best chances of economic education are found among this group. The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one's job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance. This provides the most favorable foundation for the conception of labor as an end in itself, as a calling which is necessary to capitalism: the chances of overcoming traditionalism are greatest on account of the religious upbringing. This observation of present-day capitalism in itself suggests that it is worth while to ask how this connection of adaptability to capitalism with religious factors may have come about in the days of the early development of capitalism. For that they were even then present in much the same form can be inferred from numerous facts. For instance, the dislike and the persecution which Methodist workmen in the eighteenth century met at the hands of their comrades were not solely nor even principally the result of their religious eccentricities, England had seen many of those and more striking ones. It rested rather, as the destruction of their tools, repeatedly mentioned in the reports, suggests, upon their specific willingness to work as we should say today.

However, let us again return to the present, and this time to the entrepreneur, in order to clarify the meaning of traditionalism in his case. Sombart, in his discussions of the genesis of capitalism, has distinguished between the satisfaction of needs and acquisition as the two great leading principles in economic history. In the former case the attainment of the goods necessary to meet personal needs, in the latter a struggle for profit free from the limits set by needs, have been the ends controlling the form and direction of economic activity. What he called the economy of needs seems at first glance to be identical with what is here described as economic traditionalism. That may be the case if the concept of needs is limited to traditional needs. But if that is not done, a number of economic types which must be considered capitalistic according to the definition of capital which Sombart gives in another part of his work, would be excluded from the category of acquisitive economy and put into that of needs economy. Enterprises, namely, which are carried on by private entrepreneurs by utilizing capital (money or goods with a money value) to make a profit, purchasing the means of production and selling the product, i.e. undoubted capitalistic enterprises, may at the same time have a traditionalistic character. This has, in the course even of modem economic history, not been merely an occasional case, but rather the rule, with continual interruptions from repeated and increasingly powerful conquests of the capitalistic spirit. To be sure the capitalistic form of an enterprise and the spirit in which it is run generally stand in some sort of adequate relationship to each other, but not In one of necessary interdependence. Nevertheless, we provisionally use the expression spirit of (modern) capitalism to describe that attitude which seeks profit rationally and systematically in the manner which we have illustrated, by the example of Benjamin Franklin. This, however, is justified by the historical fact that that attitude of mind has on the one hand found its most suitable expression in capitalistic enterprise, while on the other the enterprise has derived its most suitable motive force from the spirit of capitalism.

But the two may very well occur separately. Benjamin Franklin was filled with the spirit of capitalism at a time when his printing business did not differ in form from any handicraft enterprise. And we shall see that at the beginning of modem times it was by no means the capitalistic entrepreneurs of the commercial aristocracy, who were either the sole or the predominant bearers of the attitude we have here called the spirit of capitalism. It was much more the rising strata of the lower industrial middle classes. Even in the nineteenth century its classical representatives were not the elegant gentlemen of Liverpool and Hamburg, with their commercial fortunes handed down for generations, but the self-made parvenus of Manchester and Westphalia, who often rose from very modest circumstances. As early as the sixteenth century the situation was similar; the industries which arose at that time were mostly created by parvenus .

The management, for instance, of a bank, a wholesale export business, a large retail establishment, or of a large putting-out enterprise dealing with goods produced in homes, is certainly only possible in the form of a capitalistic enterprise. Nevertheless, they may all be carried on in a traditionalistic spirit. In fact, the business of a large bank of issue cannot be carried on in any other way. The foreign trade of whole epochs has rested on the basis of monopolies and legal privileges Of strictly traditional character. In retail trade -- and we are not here talking of the small men without capital who are continually crying out for Government aid -- the revolution which is making an end of the old traditionalism is still in full swing. It is the same development which broke up the old putting-out system, to which modern domestic labor is related only in form. How this revolution takes place and what is its significance may, in spite of the fact these things are so familiar, be again brought out by a concrete example.

Until about the middle of the past century the life of a putter-out was, at least in many of the branches of the Continental textile industry, what we should today consider very comfortable. We may imagine its routine somewhat as follows: The peasants came with their cloth, often (in the case of linen) principally or entirely made from raw material which the peasant himself had produced, to the town in which the putter-out lived, and after a careful, often official, appraisal of the quality, received the customary price for it. The putter-out's customers, for markets any appreciable distance away, were middlemen, who also came to him, generally not yet following samples, but seeking traditional qualities, and bought from his warehouse, or, long before delivery, placed orders which were probably in turn passed on to the peasants. Personal canvassing of customers took place, if at all, only at long intervals. Otherwise correspondence sufficed, though the sending of samples slowly gained ground. The number of business hours was very moderate, perhaps five to six a day, sometimes considerably less; in the rush season, where there was one, more. Earnings were moderate; enough to lead a respectable life and in good times to put away a little. On the whole, relations among competitors were relatively good, with a large degree of agreement on the fundamentals of business. A long daily visit to the tavern, with often plenty to drink, and a congenial circle of friends, made life comfortable and leisurely.

The form of organization was in every respect capitalistic; the entrepreneur's activity was of a purely business character; the use of capital, turned over in the business, was indispensable; and finally, the objective aspect of the economic process, the bookkeeping, was rational. But it was traditionalistic business, if one considers the spirit which animated the entrepreneur: the traditional manner of life, the traditional rate of profit, the traditional amount of work, the traditional manner of regulating the relationships with labor, and the essentially traditional circle of customers and the manner of attracting new ones. All these dominated the conduct of the business, were at the basis, one may say, of the ethos of this group of business men.

Now at some time this leisureliness was suddenly destroyed, and often entirely without any essential change in the form of organization, such as the transition to a unified factory, to mechanical weaving, etc. What happened was, on the contrary, often no more than this: some young man from one of the putting-out families went out into the country, carefully chose weavers for his employ, greatly increased the rigor of his supervision of their work, and thus turned them from peasants into laborers. On the other hand, he would begin to change his marketing methods by so far as possible going directly to the final consumer, would take the details into his own hands, would personally solicit customers, visiting them every year, and above all would adapt the quality of the product directly to their needs and wishes. At the same time he began to introduce the principle of low prices and large turnover. There was repeated what everywhere and always is the result of such a process of rationalization: those who would not follow suit had to go out of business. The idyllic state collapsed under the pressure of a bitter competitive struggle, respectable fortunes were made, and not lent out at interest, but always reinvested in the business. The old leisurely and comfortable attitude toward life gave way to a hard frugality in which some participated and came to the top, because they did not wish to consume but to earn, while others who wished to keep on with the old ways were forced to curtail their consumption.

And, what is most important in this connection, it was not generally in such cases a stream of new money invested in the industry which brought about this revolution -- in several cases known to me the whole revolutionary process was set in motion with a few thousands of capital borrowed from relations -- but the new spirit, the spirit of modern capitalism, had set to work. The question of the motive forces in the expansion of modern capitalism is not in the first instance a question of the origin of the capital sums which were available for capitalistic uses, but, above all, of the development of the spirit of capitalism. Where it appears and is able to work itself out, it produces its own capital and monetary supplies as the means to its ends, but the reverse is not true. Its entry on the scene was not generally peaceful. A flood of mistrust, sometimes of hatred, above all of moral indignation, regularly opposed itself to the first innovator. Often -- I know of several cases of the sort -- regular legends of mysterious shady spots in his previous life have been produced. It is very easy not to recognize that only an unusually strong character could save an entrepreneur of this new type from the loss of his temperate self-control and from both moral and economic shipwreck. Furthermore, along with clarity of vision and ability to it is only by virtue of very definite and highly developed ethical qualities that it has been possible for him to command the absolutely indispensable confidence of his customers and workmen. Nothing else could have given him the strength to overcome the innumerable obstacles, above all the infinitely more intensive work which is demanded of the modern entrepreneur. But these are ethical qualities of quite a different sort from those adapted to the traditionalism of the past.

And, as a rule, it has been neither dare-devil and unscrupulous speculators, economic adventurers such as we meet at all periods of economic history, nor simply great financiers who have carried through this change, outwardly so inconspicuous, but nevertheless so decisive for the penetration of economic life with the new spirit. On the contrary, they were men who had grown up in the hard school of life, calculating and daring at he same time, above all temperate and reliable, shrewd d completely devoted to their business, with strictly bourgeois opinions and principles. One is tempted to think that these personal moral qualities have not the slightest relation to any ethical maxims, to say nothing of religious ideas, but that the essential relation between them is negative. The ability to free oneself from the common tradition, a sort of liberal enlightenment, seems likely to be the most suitable basis for such a business man's success. And today that is generally precisely the case. Any relationship between religious beliefs and conduct is generally absent, and where any exists, at least in Germany, it tends to be of the negative sort. The people filled with the spirit of capitalism today tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church. The thought of the pious boredom of paradise has little attraction for their active natures; religion appears to them as a means of drawing people away from labor in this world. If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at all: "to provide for my children and grandchildren". But more often and, since that motive is not peculiar to them, but was just as effective for the traditionalist, more correctly, simply: that business with its continuous work has become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motivation, but it at the same time expresses what is, seen from the viewpoint of personal happiness, so irrational about this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse.

Of course, the desire for the power and recognition which the mere fact of wealth brings plays its part. When the imagination of a whole people has once been turned toward purely quantitative bigness, as in the United States, this romanticism of numbers exercises an irresistible appeal to the poets among business men. Otherwise it is in general not the real leaders, and especially not the permanently successful entrepreneurs, who are taken in by it. In particular, the resort to entailed estates and the nobility, with sons whose conduct at the university and in the officers' corps tries to cover up their social origin, as has been the typical history of German capitalistic parvenu families, is a product of later decadence. The ideal type of the capitalistic entrepreneur, as it has been represented even in Germany by occasional outstanding examples, has no relation to such more or less refined climbers. He avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure, as well as conscious enjoyment of his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social recognition which he receives. His manner of life is, in other words, often, and we shall have to investigate the historical significance of just this important fact, distinguished by a certain ascetic tendency, as appears clearly enough in the sermon of Franklin which we have quoted. It is, namely, by no means exceptional, but rather the rule, for him to have a sort of modesty which is essentially more honest than the reserve which Franklin so shrewdly recommends. He gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational sense of having done his job well.

But it is just that which seems to the pre-capitalistic man so incomprehensible and mysterious, so unworthy and contemptible. That anyone should be able to make it the sole purpose of his life-work, to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods, seems to him explicable only as the product of a perverse instinct, the aurisacrafames.

At present under our individualistic political, legal, and economic institutions, with the forms of organization and general structure which are peculiar to our economic order, this spirit of capitalism might be understandable, as has been said, purely as a result of adaptation. The capitalistic system so needs this devotion to the calling of making money, it is an attitude toward material goods which is so well suited to that system, so intimately bound up with the conditions of survival in the economic struggle for existence, that there can today no longer be any question of a necessary connection of that acquisitive manner of life with any single Weltanschauung. In fact, it no longer needs the support of any religious forces, and feels the attempts of religion to influence economic life, in so far as they can still be felt at all, to be as much an unjustified interference as its regulation by the State. In such circumstances men's commercial and social interests do tend to determine their opinions and attitudes. Whoever does not adapt his manner of life to the conditions of capitalistic success must go under, or at least cannot rise. But these are phenomena of a time in which modem capitalism has become dominant and has become emancipated from its old supports. But as it could at one time destroy the old forms of medieval regulation of economic life only in alliance with the growing power of the modern State, the same, we may say provisionally, may have been the case in its relations with religious forces. Whether and in what sense that was the case, it is our task to investigate. For that the conception of money-making as an end in itself to which people were bound, as a calling, was contrary to the ethical feelings of whole epochs, it is hardly necessary to prove. The dogma Deo placere vix potest which was incorporated into the canon law and applied to the activities of the merchant, and which at that time (like the passage in the gospel about interest) was considered genuine, as well as St. Thomas's characterization of the desire for gain as turpitudo (which term even included unavoidable and hence ethically justified profit making), already contained a high degree of concession on the part of the Catholic doctrine to the financial powers with which the Church had such intimate political relations in the Italian cities, as compared with the much more radically anti-chrematistic views of comparatively wide circles. But even where the doctrine was still better accommodated to the facts, as for instance with Anthony of Florence, the feeling was never quite overcome, that activity directed to acquisition for its own sake was at bottom a pudendum which was to be tolerated only because of the unalterable necessities of life in this world.

Some moralists of that time, especially of the nominalistic school, accepted developed capitalistic business forms as inevitable, and attempted to justify them, especially commerce, as necessary. The industriadeveloped in it they were able to regard, though not without contradictions, as a legitimate source of profit, and hence ethically unobjectionable. But the dominant doctrine rejected the spirit of capitalistic acquisition as turpitudo, or at least could not give it a positive ethical sanction. An ethical attitude like that of Benjamin Franklin would have been simply unthinkable. This was, above all, the attitude of capitalistic circles themselves. Their life-work was, so long as they clung to the tradition of the Church, at best something morally indifferent. It was tolerated, but was still, even if only on account of the continual danger of collision with the Church's doctrine on usury, somewhat dangerous to salvation. Quite considerable sums, as the sources show, went at the death of rich people to religious institutions as conscience money, at times even back to former debtors as usura which had been unjustly taken from them. It was otherwise, along with heretical and other tendencies looked upon with disapproval, only in those parts of the commercial aristocracy which were already emancipated from the tradition. But even skeptics and people indifferent to the Church often reconciled themselves with it by gifts, because it was a sort of insurance against the uncertainties of what might come after death, or because (at least according to the very widely held latter view) an external obedience to the commands of the Church was sufficient to insure salvation. Here the either non moral or immoral character of their action in the opinion of the participants themselves comes clearly to light.

Now, how could activity, which was at best ethically tolerated, turn into a calling in the sense of Benjamin Franklin? The fact to be explained historically is that in the most highly capitalistic center of that time, in Florence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the money and capital market of all the great political Powers, this attitude was considered ethically unjustifiable, or at best to be tolerated. But in the backwoods small bourgeois circumstances of Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, where business threatened for simple lack of money to fall back into barter, where there was hardly a sign of large enterprise, where only the earliest beginnings of banking were to be found, the same thing was considered the essence of moral conduct, even commanded in the name of duty. To speak here of a reflection of material conditions in the ideal superstructure would be patent nonsense. What was the background of ideas which could account for the sort of activity apparently directed toward profit alone as a calling toward which the individual feels himself to have an ethical obligation? For it was this idea which gave the way of life of the new entrepreneur its ethical foundation and justification.

The attempt has been made, particularly by Sombart, in what are often judicious and effective observations, to depict economic rationalism as the salient feature of modern economic life as a whole. Undoubtedly with justification, if by that is meant the extension of the productivity of labor which has, through the subordination of the process of production to scientific points of view, relieved it from its dependence upon the natural organic limitations of the human individual. Now this process of rationalization in the field of technique and economic organization undoubtedly determines an important part of the ideals of life of modern bourgeois society. Labor in the service of a rational organization for the provision of humanity with material goods has without doubt always appeared to representatives of the capitalistic spirit as one of the most important purposes of their life-work. It is only necessary, for instance, to read Franklin's account of his efforts in the service of civic improvements in Philadelphia clearly to apprehend this obvious truth. And the joy and pride of having given employment to numerous people, of having had a part in the economic progress of his home town in the sense referring to figures of population and volume of trade which capitalism associated with the word, all these things obviously are part of the specific and undoubtedly idealistic satisfactions in life to modern men of business. Similarly it is one of the fundamental characteristics of an individualistic capitalistic economy that it is rationalized on the basis of rigorous calculation, directed with foresight and caution toward the economic success which is sought in sharp contrast to the hand-to-mouth existence of the peasant, and to the privileged traditionalism of the guild craftsman and of the adventurers' capitalism, oriented to the exploitation of political opportunities and irrational speculation.

It might thus seem that the development of the spirit of capitalism is best understood as part of the development of rationalism as a whole, and could be deduced from the fundamental position of rationalism on the basic problems of life. In the process Protestantism would only have to be considered in so far as it had formed a stage prior to the development of a purely rationalistic philosophy. But any serious attempt to carry this thesis through makes it evident that such a simple way of putting the question will not work, simply because of the fact that the history of rationalism shows a development which by no means follows parallel lines in the various departments of life. The rationalization of private law, for instance, if it is thought of as a logical simplification and rearrangement of the content of the law, was achieved in the highest hitherto known degree in the Roman law of late antiquity. But it remained most backward in some of the countries with the highest degree of economic rationalization, notably in England, where the Renaissance of Roman Law was overcome by the power of the great legal corporations, while it has always retained its supremacy in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe. The worldly rational philosophy of the eighteenth century did not find favor alone or even principally in the countries of highest capitalistic development. The doctrines of Voltaire are even today the common property of broad upper, and what is practically more important, middle class groups in the Romance Catholic countries. Finally, if under practical rationalism is understood the type of attitude which sees and judges the world consciously in terms of the worldly interests of the individual ego, then this view of life was and is the special peculiarity of the peoples of the liberum arbitrium, such as the Italians and the French are in very flesh and blood. But we have already convinced ourselves that this is by no means the soil in which that relationship of a man to his calling as a task, which is necessary to capitalism, has preeminently grown. In fact, one may -- this simple proposition, which is often forgotten, should be placed at the beginning of every study which essays to deal with rationalism -- rationalize life from fundamentally different basic points of view and in very different directions, Rationalism is an historical concept which covers a whole world of different things. It will be our task to find out whose intellectual child the particular concrete form of rational thought was, from which the idea of a calling and the devotion to labor in the calling has grown, which is, as we have seen, so irrational from the standpoint of purely eudaemonistic self interest, but which has been and still is one of the most characteristic elements of our capitalistic culture. We are here particularly interested in the origin of precisely the irrational element which lies in this, as in every conception of a calling.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber

2009-05-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

2009-05-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

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, nam ely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labor, 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 t he 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 labor 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 ca pital, and generally an expensive education; often both. These are today largely dependent on the possession of inherited wealth, or at least on a certain degree of material well being. A number of those sections of the old Empire which were most highly developed economically and most favored 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 favor the Protestants even today in their strug gle for economic existence. There arises thus the historical question: why were the districts of highest economic development at the same time particularly favorable 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 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 favor 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 today, is now tolerated by 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 larg e 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 develo ped a heroism in its defense? For bourgeois classes as such have seldom before and never since displayed heroism. It was "the last of our heroisms", as Carlyle, not without reason, has said.

But further, and especially important: it may be, as has been claimed, that the greater participation of Protestants in the positions of ownership and management in modern economic life may today be understood, in part at least, simply as a result of the greater mat erial wealth they have inherited. But there are certain other phenomena which cannot be explained in the same way. Thus, to mention only a few facts: there is a great difference discoverable in Baden, in Bavaria, in Hungary, in the type of higher educatio n which Catholic parents, as opposed to Protestant, give their children. That the percentage of Catholics among the students and graduates of higher educational institutions in general lags behind their proportion of the total population," may, to be sure, be largely explicable in terms of inherited differences of wealth. But among the Catholic graduates themselves the percentage of those graduating from the institutions preparing, in particular, for technical studies and industrial and commercial occupations, but in general from those preparing for middle-class business life, lags still farther behind the percentage of Protestants. On the other hand, Catholics prefer the sort of training which the humanistic Gymnasium affords. That is a circumstance to w hich the above explanation does not apply, but which, on the contrary, is one reason why so few Catholics are engaged in capitalistic enterprise.

Even more striking is a fact which partly explains the smaller proportion of Catholics among the skilled laborers of modern industry. It is well known that the factory has taken its skilled labor to a large extent from young men in the handicrafts; but this is much more true of Protestant than of Catholic journ eymen. Among journeymen, in other words, the Catholics show a stronger propensity to remain in their crafts, that is they more often become master craftsmen, whereas the Protestants are attracted to a larger extent into the factories in order to fill the upper ranks skilled labor and administrative positions. The explanation of these cases is undoubtedly that the mental and spiritual peculiarities acquired from the environment, here the type of education favored by the religious atmosphere of the home com munity and the parental home, have determined the choice of occupation, and through it the professional career.

The smaller participation of Catholics in the modern business life of Germany is all the mo re striking because it runs counter to a tendency which has been observed at all times including the present. National or religious minorities which are in a position of subordination to a group of rulers are likely, through their voluntary or invol untary exclusion from positions of political influence, to be driven with peculiar force into economic activity. Their ablest members seek to satisfy the desire for recognition of their abilities in this field, since there is no opportunity in the service of the State. This has undoubtedly been true of the Poles in Russia and Eastern Prussia, who have without question been undergoing a more rapid economic advance than in Galicia, where they have been in the ascendant. It has in earlier times been true of the Huguenots in France under Louis XIV, the Nonconformists and Quakers in England, and, last but not least, the Jew for two thousand years. But the Catholics in Germany have shown no striking evidence of such a result of their position. In the past they have, unlike the Protestants, undergone no particularly prominent economic development in the times when they, were persecuted or only tolerated, either in Holland or in England. On the other hand, it is a fact that the Protestants (especially certain br anches of the movement to be fully discussed later) both as ruling classes and as ruled, both as majority and as minority, have shown a special tendency to develop economic rationalism which cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics either in the one situation or in the other. Thus the principal explanation of this difference must be sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their religious beliefs, and not only in their temporary external historico-political situations. It will be our ta sk to investigate these religions with a view to finding out what peculiarities they have or have had which might have resulted in the behavior we have described. On superficial analysis, and on the basis of certain current impressions, one might be tempt ed to express the difference by saying that the greater other-worldliness of Catholicism, the ascetic character of its highest ideals, must have brought up its adherents to a greater indifference toward the good things of this world. Such an explanation f its the popular tendency in the judgment of both religions. On the Protestant side it is used as a basis of criticism of those (real or imagined) ascetic ideals of the 'Catholic way of life, while the Catholics answer with the accusation that materialism results from the secularization of all ideals through Protestantism. One recent writer has attempted to formulate the difference of their attitudes toward economic life in the following manner: "The Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impu lse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honor and riches. The proverb says jokingly, 'either eat well or sleep well'. In the pre sent case the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep undisturbed."

In fact, this desire to eat well may be a correct though incomplete characterization of the motives of many nominal Prote stants in Germany at the present time. But things were very different in the past: the English, Dutch, and American Puritans were characterized by the exact opposite of the joy of living, a fact which is indeed, as we shall see, most important for our pre sent study. Moreover, the French Protestants, among others, long retained, and retain to a certain extent up to the present, the characteristics which were impressed upon the Calvinistic Churches everywhere, especially under the cross in the time of the r eligious struggles. Nevertheless (or was it, perhaps, as we shall ask later, precisely on that account?) it is well known that these characteristics were one of the most important factors in the industrial and capitalistic development of France, and on th e small scale permitted them by their persecution remained so. If we may call this seriousness and the strong predominance of religious interests in the whole conduct of life otherworldliness, then the French Calvinists were and still are at least as othe rworldly as, for instance, the North German Catholics, to whom their Catholicism is undoubtedly as vital a matter as religion is to any other people in the world. Both differ from the predominant religious trends in their respective countries in much the same way. The Catholics of France are, in their lower ranks, greatly interested in the enjoyment of life, in the upper directly hostile to religion. Similarly, the Protestants of Germany are today absorbed in worldly economic life, and their upper ranks are most indifferent to religion. Hardly anything shows so clearly as this parallel that, with such vague ideas as that of the alleged otherworldliness of Catholicism, and the alleged materialistic joy of living of Protestantism, and others like them, not hing can be accomplished for our purpose. In such general terms the distinction does not even adequately fit the facts of today, and certainly not of the past. If, however, one wishes to make use of it at all, several other observations present themselve s at once which, combined with the above remarks, suggest that the supposed conflict between other-worldliness, asceticism, and ecclesiastical piety on the one side, and participation in capitalistic acquisition on the other, might actually turn out to be an intimate relationship. As a matter of fact it is surely remarkable, to begin with quite a superficial observation, how large is the number of representatives of the most spiritual forms of Christian piety who have sprung from commercial circles. In pa rticular, very many of the most zealous adherents of Pietism are of this origin. It might e explained as a sort of reaction against mammonism on the part of sensitive natures not adapted to commercial life, and, as in the case of Francis of Assisi, man Pietists have themselves interpreted the process of their conversion in these terms. Similarly, the remarkable circumstance that so many of the greatest capitalistic entrepreneurs-down to Cecil Rhodes-have come from clergymen's families might be explained r eaction against their ascetic upbringing. But this form of explanation fails where an extraordinary capitalistic business sense is combined in the same persons and groups with the most intensive forms of a piety which penetrates and dominates their whole lives. Such cases are not isolated, but these traits are characteristic of many of the most important Churches and sects in the history of Protestantism. Especially Calvinism, wherever it has appeared, has shown this combination. However little, in the ti me of the expansion of the Reformation, it (or any other Protestant belief) was bound up with any particular social class, it is characteristic and in a certain sense typical that in French Huguenot Churches monks and businessmen (merchants, craftsmen) we re particularly numerous among the proselytes, especially at the time of the persecution. Even the Spaniards knew that heresy (i.e. the Calvinism of the Dutch) promoted trade, and this coincides with the opinions which Sir William Petty expressed in his d iscussion of the reasons for the capitalistic development of the Netherlands. Gothein rightly calls the Calvinistic diaspora the seedbed of capitalistic economy. Even in this case one might consider the decisive factor to be the superiority of the French and Dutch economic cultures from which these communities sprang, or perhaps the immense influence of exile in the breakdown of traditional relationships. But in France the situation was, as we know from Colbert's struggles, the same even in t he seventeenth century. Even Austria, not to speak of other countries, directly imported Protestant craftsmen.

But not all the Protestant denominations seem to have had an equally strong influence in thi s direction. That of Calvinism, even in Germany, was among the strongest, it seems, and the reformed faith more than the others seems to have promoted the development of the spirit of capitalism, in the Wupperthal as well as elsewhere. Much more so than Lutheranism, as comparison both in general and in particular instances, especially in the Wupperthal, seems to prove. For Scotland, Buckle, and among English poets, Keats have emphasized these same relationships. Even more striking, as it is only nec essary to mention, is the connection of a religious way of life with the most intensive development of business acumen among those sects whose otherworldliness is proverbial as their wealth, especially the Quakers and the Mennonites. The part which the fo rmer have played in England and North America fell to the latter in Germany and the Netherlands. That in East Prussia Frederick William I tolerated the Mennonites as indispensable to industry, in spite of their absolute refusal to refusal perform military service, is only one of the numerous well-known cases which illustrates the fact, though, considering the character of that monarch, it is one it is one of the most striking. Finally, that this combination of intense piety with just as strong a developme nt of business acumen, was also characteristic of the Pietists, common knowledge.

It is only necessary to think of the Rhine country and of Calw. In this purely introductory discussion it is unnecessary to pile up more examples. For these few already all show one thing: that the spirit of hard work, of progress, or whatever else it might may be called, the awakening of which one is inclined to ascribe to Protestantism, must not be understood, as there is a tendency to do, as joy of living nor in any other sense as connected with the Enlightenment. The old Protestantism of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Voet, had precious little to do with what today is called progress. To whole aspects of modern life which the m ost extreme religionist would not wish to suppress today, it was directly hostile. If any inner relationship between certain expressions of the old Protestant spirit and modern capitalistic culture is to be found, we must attempt to find it, for better o r worse, not in its alleged more or less materialistic or at least anti-ascetic joy of living, but in its purely religious characteristics. Montesquieu says (Esprit des Lois, Book XX, chap. 7) of the English that they "had progressed the farthest of all p eoples of the world in three important things: in piety, in commerce, and in freedom". Is it not possible that their commercial superiority and their adaptation to free political institutions are connected in someway with that record of piety which Montes quieu ascribes to them? A large number of possible relationships, vaguely perceived, occur to us when we put the question in this way. It will now be our task to formulate what occurs to us confusedly as clearly as is possible, considering the inexhaustib le diversity to be found in all historical material. But in order to do this it is necessary to leave behind the vague and general concepts with which we have dealt up to this point, and attempt to Penetrate into the peculiar characteristics of and the differences between those great worlds of religious thought which have existed historically in the various branches of Christianity.

Before we can proceed to that, however, a few remarks are necessary, first on the peculiarities of the phenomenon of which we are seeking an historical explanation, then concerning the sense in which such an explanation is possible at all within the limits of these investigations.

SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY

2009-05-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Every science has its own areas of inquiry. It becomes difficult for any one to study a science systematically unless its boundaries are demarcated and scope determined precisely. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on the part of sociologist with regard to the scope of sociology. V. F. Calberton comments. "since sociology is so elastic a science, it is difficult to determine just where its boundaries began and end, where sociology becomes social psychology and where social psychology becomes sociology, or where economic theory becomes sociological doctrine or biological theory becomes sociological theory something, which is impossible to decide.

However there are two main schools of thought regarding the scope of sociology:

The specialistic or formalistic school
The synthetic school.

Major Concerns of Sociology (Subject-Matter of Sociology)

2009-05-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ever science the beginning of sociology, sociologists have shown a great concern in man and the dynamic of society. The emphasis has been oscillating between man and society. "Sometimes the emphasis was on man in society, at other times, it was on man in society. But at no stage of its development, man as an individual was its focus of attention. On the contrary, sociology concentrated heavily on society and its major units and their dynamics. It has been striving to analyse the dynamics of the society in terms of organised patterns of social relations. It may be said that sociology seeks to find explanations for three basic questions: How and and why societies emerge? How and why societies persist? How and why societies change?

An all-embracive and expanding science like sociology is growing at a fast rate no doubt. It is quite natural that sociologists have developed different approaches from the time to time in their attempts to enrich its study. Still it is possible to identify some which constitute the subject matter of sociology on which there is little disagreement among the sociologists. Such topics and areas broadly constitute the field of sociology. A general outline of the fields of sociology on which there is considerable agreement among sociologists could be given here.

Firstly, the major concern of sociology is sociological analysis. It means the sociologist seeks to provide an analysis of human society and culture with a sociological perspective. He evinces his interest in the evolution of society and tries to reconstruct the major stages in the evolutionary process. An attempt is also made "to analyse the factors and forces underlying historical transformations of society". Due importance is given to the scientific method that is adopted in the sociological analysis.

Secondly, sociology has given sufficient attention to the study of primary units of social life. In this area, it is concerned with social acts and social relationships, individual personalty, groups of all varieties, communities (urban, rural, and tribal), associations, organisations and populations.

Thirdly, sociology has been concerned with the development, structure and function of a wide variety of basic social institutions such as the family and kinship, property and religion, economic, political, legal, educational and scientific, recreational and welfare, aesthetic and expressive institutions.

Fourthly, no sociologist can afford to ignore the fundamental social processes that play a vital role. The social process such as co-operation and competition, accommodation and assimilation, social conflict including war and revolution; communication including opinion formation expression and change; social differentiation and stratification, socialisation and indoctrination, social control and deviance including crime, suicide, social integration and social change assume prominence in sociological studies.

Fifthly, sociology has placed high premium on the method of research also. Contemporary sociology has tended to become more and more rational and empirical rather than philosophical and idealistic. Sociologists have sought the application of scientific method in social researches. Like a natural scientist, a sociologist senses a problem for investigation. He then tries to formulate it into a researchable proposition. After collecting the data he tries to establish connections between them. He finally arrives at meaningful concepts, propositions and generalisations

Sixthly, sociologists are concerned with a task of "formulating concepts, propositions and theories". "Concepts are abstract from concrete experience to represent a class of phenomena". For example, terms such as social stratification, differentiation, conformity, deviance etc., represent concepts. A proposition "seeks to to reflect a relationship between different categories of data or concepts". For example "lower-class youths are more likely to commit crimes than middle-class youths". This preposition is debatable. It may be proved to be false. To take another example, it could be said that "taking advantage of opportunities of higher education and occupational mobility leads to the weakening of the ties of kinship and territorial loyalties". Though this preposition sounds debatable, it has been established after careful observations, inquiry and collection of relevant data. Theories go beyond concepts and propositions. "Theories represent systematically related propositions that explain social phenomena". Sociological theories are mostly rooted in factual than philosophical. The sociological perspective becomes more meaningful and fruitful when one tries to derive insight from concepts, propositions and theories.

Finally, in the present era of explosion of knowledge sociologists have ventured to make specialisations also.Thus, today good number of specialised fields of inquiry are emerging out. Sociology of knowledge, sociology of history, sociology of literature, sociology of culture, sociology of religion, sociology of family etc., represent such specialised fields., The field of sociological inquiry is so vast that any student of sociology equipped with genius and rich sociological imagination can add new dimensions to the discipline of sociology as a whole.

IBN KHALDUN (1332-1406)

2009-05-25T02:56:00.001-07:00

IBN KHALDUN, Wali al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Abi Bakr Muhammad b. al-Hasan (732-84/1332-82), one of the strongest personalities of Arabo-Muslim culture in the period of its decline. He is generally regarded as a historian, sociologist and philosopher. Thus his life and work have already formed the subject of innumerable studies and given rise to the most varied and even the most contradictory interpretations.

I. Life.

Ibn khaldun's life may be divided into three parts, the first of which (20 years) was occupied by his childhood and education, the second (23 years) by the continuation of his studies and by political adventures, and the third (31 years) by his life as a scholar, teacher and magistrate. The first two periods were spent in the Muslim West and the third was divided between the Maghrib and Egypt.

At Tunis.

Ibn khaldun was born in Tunis, on 1 Ramadan 732/27 May 1332, in an Arab family which came originally from the Hadramawt and had been settled at Seville since the beginning of the Muslim conquest (Ibn Hazm, Dhamhara, ed. Levi-Provencal, 430), playing there an important political role. The family then left Seville for Ceuta immediately before the Reconquista. From there they went to Ifriqiya and settled in Tunis during the reign of the Hafsid Abu Zakariyya' (625-47/1228-49). Ibn khaldun's great-grandfather, Abu Bakr Muhammad b. al-Hasan, who wrote a treatise on Adab al-katib (see E. Levi-Provencal, in Arabica, ii (1955), 280-8), was put in charge of the finances during the reign of Abu Ishaq (678-81/1279-83). The usurper Ibn Abi 'Umara (681-2/1283-4) put an end to his career and to his life, having him strangled after confiscating his possessions and subjecting him to torture. His son, Muhammad, also occupied various official positions, both at Bougie and Tunis, and died in 737/1337, after renouncing political life upon the fall of Ibn al-Lihyani (711-7/1311-7). The latter's son, the father of our Ibn khaldun, wisely avoided politics, leading the life of a faqih and man of letters (Ta'rif, 10-15).

He was thus able to ensure that his son 'Abd al-Rahman received a very thorough education. The latter also attended courses given by the most famous teachers of Tunis, to whom he devotes lengthy sections in his autobiography (Ta'rif). He thus received a classical education, based essentially on the study of the qur'an, of hadith, of the Arabic language and of fiqh. The Marinid invasion (748-50/1347-9) resulted in the arrival in Tunis, with the sultan Abu 'l-Hasan, of a large number of theological and literary scholars. This widened the horizons of the young Ibn khaldun, who was thus enabled, particularly under the supervision of al-Abili, to learn about the philosophy and the main problems of Arabo-Muslim thought. He was however to undergo much suffering. The Marinid occupation ended in disorder and bloodshed, and in addition the terrible Black Death which ravaged the world in the middle of the century, coming from the East, claimed many victims in the country, among them Ibn khaldun's parents. He was at this time 17 years of age and was to retain all his life a memory of the horror of this event, which is reflected in many passages in his Ta'rif and his Muqaddima. This was the first traumatic experience of his life, which was later to have an undoubted influence on the direction of his thought. In addition, the departure of the Marinid scholars left a great intellectual vacuum at Tunis, and it seems that at this time the sole aim of the young Ibn khaldun was to leave Tunis for Fez, then the most brilliant capital of the Muslim West. He states (Ta'rif, 55) that he had a great thirst for learning. His elder brother, Muhammad, dissuaded him from his project, but not for long.

At the court of Fez.

He was not yet t0 when, towards the end of 751/1350, the powerful chamberlain Ibn Tafragin appointed him to the office of writer of the 'alama (the ruler's official signature) on behalf of the sultan Abu Ishaq. He accepted, without, it seems (Ta'rif, 561), the intention of remaining long in the post. The invasion of Ifriqiya by the amir of Constantine, Abu Yazid (753/135t), provided him with the desired opportunity. Under cover of the defeat, he parted company with his master, took refuge for a time at Ebba, then reached Tebessa, then Gafsa, before arriving at Biskra, where he spent the winter with his friends the Banu Muzni. Thus the second period of his life, which was both scholarly and adventurous, began with one of those changes of direction which were to recur on later occasions and which have been severely criticized by the majority of those who have made a study of his life and work. But it was in fact probably not a bad thing: intuitively, Ibn khaldun was refusing to be engulfed in an Ifriqiya which was then in the process of disintegration and whose court furthermore was far from providing an example of loyalty and good behaviour.

Meanwhile, the Marinid Abu 'l-Hasan, after an unfortunate adventure, had been killed (75t/1351), leaving the western territories of the Maghrib to his son Abu 'Inan, who in any case had not waited for his death before supplanting him in Fez. Once again the Marinid hegemony seemed to be consolidating itself. Abu 'Inan seized Tlemcen (753/135t) and reduced Bougie again to submission. From Biskra, Ibn khaldun offered him his services. On his journey he met the Marinid chamberlain Ibn Abi 'Amr, appointed governor of Bougie, who invited him to his new residence, where he lived for some time (until the end of the winter of 754/1353-4), before being summoned to the court at Fez. He was officially part of the sultan's literary circle (madhlisuh al-'ilmi) and soon afterwards also formed part of his secretariat (kitabatuh), though without much enthusiasm it seems, for such a post 'was not in the family tradition'--that is to say it was beneath their dignity. This remark reveals a far-reaching ambition in a young man of barely 23 years. Somewhat disappointed, he therefore continued to occupy himself mainly with his studies. 'I devoted myself', he writes (Ta'rif, 59), 'to reflection and to study, and to sitting at the feet of the great teachers, those of the Maghrib as well as those of Spain who were residing temporarily in Fez, and I benefited greatly from their teaching'. In brief, his desire for learning still took precedence over his political interests. Nevertheless, it may be that, taking advantage of the sultan's illness, he took part in a plot aiming to liberate the former amir of Bougie, Abu 'Abd Allah, and to re-install him in his former kingdom. He himself denies this and refers to intrigues, jealousy and malice (Ta'rif, 67); he was certainly thrown into prison however, remaining there for two years (758-9/1357-8) until the death of Abu 'Inan. This was followed by disturbances, by clashes between the claimants to the throne, and by treachery and bloodshed. Ibn khaldun, now set free, took part in all this according to the custom of the time. Changes of loyalty were common and he was no exception and found himself appointed, in Sha'ban 760/July 1359, to the office of Secretary of the Chancellery (kitabat al-sirr wa 'l-tarsil) for the new sultan, Abu Salim. In order the better to perform his role and consolidate his position, he even made the effort of becoming court-poet ('akhadhtu nafsi bi 'l-shi'r', Ta'rif, 70), and he quotes long extracts from his work as a panegyrist. But this was all wasted effort, since his fortune declined. Two years later he left the chancellery for a judicial post, the mazalim. Then further disturbances resulted in the accession of a new sultan. Ibn khaldun changed his allegiance in time, and considered that he was unjustly deprived of any fruits of the victory. He did not hide his ill-humour, made enemies and, after many difficulties, he obtained permission to withdraw to Granada (autumn 764/1362).

At the court of Granada.

In Ramadan 760/August 1359, a palace revolt had driven Muhammad b. al-Ahmar from the throne, so that, in Muharram 761/December 1359, he had taken refuge in Fez with his famous vizier Ibn al-khatib. There was formed at this time, between the latter and the young Ibn khaldun, a real friendship which, apart from inevitable spells of unpleasantness, was to withstand the test of time. In Jumada II 763/April 1362, Muhammad b. al-Ahmar regained his throne and Ibn al-khatib his former rank. The friendship established at Fez ensured that Ibn khaldun, forced in his turn to flee to the other side of the Mediterranean, was received in Granada with the highest honours. At the end of 765/1364, he was even sent to Seville, charged with a delicate peace mission to Pedro the Cruel. This contact with the Christian world, then in the midst of a period of change, had an important influence on him. On his return, the Nasrid amir showered favours on him (Ta'rif, 85). Ibn khaldun then sent for his wife and children to come to Constantine. But Ibn al-khatib felt some resentment at the success of his young friend and Ibn khaldun preferred not to take full advantage of his favoured position (spring 766/1365).

At the court of Bougie.

It is true that at this time there arose a unique opportunity for him to satisfy his ambition. His friend, Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad, with whom he had already been in a conspiracy at Fez, had in fact regained his kingdom of Bougie, and offered him the office of hadhib (chamberlain), which was at that time the most important office in the state, and appointed to the vizierate his younger brother Yahya [see next article]. Ibn khaldun held at the same time posts as teacher of fiqh and as preacher. But this success was short-lived. In the following year, the amir of Constantine, Abu 'l-'Abbas, took the offensive and inflicted a crushing defeat on his cousin Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad, who was killed in the battle. Ibn khaldun, refusing suggestions that he should continue the struggle in support of one of the younger sons of the dead ruler, handed over the town to the conqueror (Sha'ban 767/May 1366) and himself entered his service. This was not to be for long, however. Ibn khaldun saw which way the wind was blowing: he resigned in time, and took refuge at first with the Dawawida Arabs, then with his friends the Banu Muzni at Biskra, whereas his brother Yahya was arrested. To the offer by the sultan Abu Hammu, in a letter of 17 Radhab 769/8 March 1368 (Ta'rif, 102-3) of the office of hadhib at Tlemcen, he replied with a courteous refusal, sending him instead his brother Yahya, who had in the meantime been set free. He explains his motives thus: 'I was in fact cured of the temptation of office (ghiwayat al-rutab). Furthermore I had for too long neglected scholarly matters. I therefore ceased to involve myself in the affairs of kings and devoted all my energies to study (al-qira'a) and teaching' (Ta'rif, 103).

Thus at Biskra he attempted to lead the life of a man of letters. He carried on a long correspondence, much ornamented by rhetorical flourishes, with his friend Ibn al-khatib (Ta'rif, 103-30). However he could not resist intrigue. He gave his support, against Abu 'l-'Abbas, to the alliance between the Hafsid of Tunis and the 'Abd al-Wadid Abu Hammu of Tlemcen. He next took it upon himself to raise support for the Marinid Abu Faris. He was constantly on the move, attempting to form from the small tribal units a force capable of supporting a really great power. But on each occasion events upset his calculations. The claimants were simply too numerous, and this resulted in a new series of changes of front which were basically perhaps only his unsuccessful attempts to back the winner. But in the Muslim West of the 8th/14th century no winner existed. Furthermore his friends the Banu Muzni were beginning to object to the suspicious activities of their guest. Ibn khaldun tried once again to escape the lure of politics. He took refuge in the ribat of Abu Madyan, 'preferring', he writes, 'to live in retirement and devote myself exclusively to learning, if only I might be left inpeace' (Ta'rif, 134). He was not left in peace, nor was he of a temperament to remain so for long. Thus, after some new setbacks in the central Maghrib, he met with failure in Fez (774/137t). Welcomed at first, he was later arrested, then released, and finally permitted to withdraw to Muslim Spain (spring 776/1375), where he wished 'to settle permanently, withdraw from the world, and devote my life to learning (qasd al-qarar wa 'l-inqibad wa 'l-'ukuf 'ala qira'at al-'ilm)' (Ta'rif, 226). Yet again he was disappointed. He had become a political personality with a reputation which could not fail to arouse mistrust. He was henceforward condemned to offer his services for hire, and to be regarded with mixed feelings never entirely free from suspicion, whereas apparently his only ambition now was to be left in peace to work out the conclusions to be drawn from his tumultuous experience and to put his ideas in order.

At the castle of Ibn Salama.

Practically ordered to leave the kingdom of Granada, Ibn khaldun returned to the Maghrib and, after some difficulties, settled with his family at Tlemcen (1 Shawwal 776/5 March 1375). In the meantime his friend, the vizier Ibn al-khatib, whom he had tried in vain to save (Ta'rif, 227)--and this is what had earned him the enmity of the amir of Granada--had been strangled in prison at Fez. Ibn khaldun may have seen this as a warning; he certainly seems after this to have made a firm decision to restrict himself to study and teaching. But the sultan of Tlemcen was willing to forget the past--Ibn khaldun had after all been in turn for him and against him--with the ulterior motive of making use of him once again. He entrusted him with a mission to the Dawawida. Ibn khaldun pretended to accept, but as soon as he had left Tlemcen, he took refuge with the Awlad 'Arif; they gave him a warm welcome and interceded on his behalf with the sultan of Tlemcen, who gave permission for his family to join him. For the next four years (776-80/1375-9) Ibn khaldun lived in the castle of Ibn Salama, 6 km. south-west of the present-day Frenda, in the department of Oran (Ta'rif, 228). This was a decisive turning-point in his life; really enclosed for the first time in his ivory tower, he informs us that he worked out the Muqaddima 'according to that original plan (al-nahw al-gharib) for which he received inspiration during his retirement' (Ta'rif, 229).

Again in Tunis.

After this, to enable him to continue his work, a vast amount of documentation became more and more necessary. Ibn khaldun was at this time 47 years of age. He dreamed of returning to Tunis, which he had left at the age of 20--Tunis, where 'my ancestors lived and where there still exist their houses, their remains and their tombs' (Ta'rif, 230). He wrote for, and obtained, the permission of Abu 'l-'Abbas (771-96/1370-94), the architect of the Hafsid restoration, with whom he had had connexions more than ten years earlier at Bougie. And thus, in Sha'ban 780/November-December 1378, 'he abandoned his traveller's staff' (Ta'rif, 231) in his native town. There he followed his new career as a teacher and a scholar and completed a first redaction of his 'Ibar, the first copy of which, accompanied by a long panegyric (Ta'rif, 233-4), he presented to the sultan. But the success of his teaching--which some considered subversive--and the favours which he received from the ruler, earned him many enemies. The formation of a cabal against him, the moving spirit in which was the famous Ibn 'Arafa, made him fear the worst. He decided to leave the Muslim West, where his awkward past followed him wherever he went. He made the pretext for this the Pilgrimage. The sultan granted him permission for this; there was a boat on the point of leaving for Alexandria; and Ibn khaldun embarked on 15 Sha'ban 784/24 October 1382 (Ta'rif, 245).

In Cairo.

On his arrival in the Mamluk capital, Ibn khaldun was truly dazzled. Students flocked to his courses at al-Azhar, and soon he was appointed teacher of Maliki fiqh at the al-qamhiyya madrasa. Some time afterwards he was also appointed Maliki chief qadi (Jumada II 786/July-August 1384). There then began for him a period of suffering: his family, finally given permission to join him through the intervention of the sultan al-Zahir Barquq, was shipwrecked off Alexandria. At the same time his intransigeance and the intrigues of his enemies, who were furious at seeing one of the most important offices of the state entrusted to a 'foreigner', caused him to be dismissed from his office as qadi (Jumada I 787/June-July 1385). In 789/1387, he was appointed to the newly built al-Zahiriyya madrasa, and then, on his return from the Pilgrimage, he was appointed teacher of hadith at the madrasa of ‘arghatmish. Ibn khaldun preserved in its entirety his inaugural course of lectures (Muharram 791/January 1389), devoted to the Muwatta' of Malik (Ta'rif, 294-310). At the same time, he was placed at the head of the khanqah of Baybars, the most important ‘ufi convent in Egypt. Then, after fourteen years devoted exclusively to teaching, he was once again appointed to the office of qadi (15 Ramadan 801/t1 May 1399). He was again dismissed (Muharram 803/August-September 1400), and some months later (Rabi' II 803/November-December 1400) he was obliged to accompany al-Nasir on his expedition to relieve Damascus, which was being threatened by Timurlane, already master of Aleppo. Left in the besieged town--and abandoned without warning by al-Nasir, who suspected that a plot was being hatched in Cairo during his absence--he played a certain part in the surrender of the town under a false promise of aman, and has provided a detailed account of his interviews with the Mongol leader (Ta'rif, 366-83). He may in fact have thought that he saw in Timurlane the man of the century who possessed enough 'asabiyya to re-unite the Muslim world and to give a new direction to history (Ta'rif, 372, 382). Finally, after writing for Timurlane a description of the Maghrib and having witnessed the horrors of the burning and sacking of Damascus, he returned to Cairo, having been stripped and robbed by brigands on the way. In spite of his compromising attitude towards Timurlane (Ta'rif, 378), he was well received at the court. Four times more he was appointed qadi and then dismissed. His last, and sixth, appointment to this office was in Sha'ban 808/January-February 1406, a few weeks before his death on 26 Ramadan 808/16 March 1406.

During his stay in Cairo, Ibn khaldun did not sever relations with the Muslim West. He retained his Maghribi dress, a dark burnous. He also attempted to encourage the exchange of gifts between the sultans of Egypt and those of the Maghrib and to produce a climate of co-operation (Ta'rif, 335-46). He sent a copy of his 'Ibar to the Marinid Abu Faris (796-9/1394-6), continued to correspond with his friends, and preserved in particular long passages, in prose and in verse, from the letters sent to him by the famous poet of Granada, Ibn Zamrak (Ta'rif, 262-74).

Ibn khaldun's life has been judged variously, and in general rather severely. There is certainly no doubt that he behaved in a detached, self-interested, haughty, ambitious and equivocal manner. He himself does not attempt to hide this, and openly describes in his Ta'rif his successive changes of allegiance. He has been accused of fickleness and a lack of patriotism. But for such judgements to be strictly applicable presupposes the existence of the idea of 'allegiance' to a country, which was not the case. The very concept scarcely existed and was not to appear in Muslim thinking until it was affected by contact with Europe. The only treason was apostasy, nor was loyalty understood except in the context of relations between one man and another, and examples of felony were provided daily by those of the highest rank. Ibn khaldun was, moreover, readily pardoned by those who wished to use his services--he was in turn the enemy and the servant, now of one and now of another, in the same way that men were treacherously killed, with or without good reason, simply as a precaution. The struggles which rent the Muslim West in Ibn khaldun's time were merely a series of minor and abortive coups. He should therefore be judged according to the standards of his own time and not according to ours.

Furthermore, Ibn khaldun, as he proves in his Muqaddima, was an astonishingly clear thinker. It is true that his behaviour was dictated by ambition, the desire of power, a taste for adventure and even a complete ruthlessness in political matters; but it is unlikely that this was all. It would be strange if the theoretician of 'asabiyya did not envisage a plan, perhaps rather vague, for the restoration of Arabo-Muslim civilization which he saw--and he states this clearly--to be in its death-throes. His adventures could thus be seen as only the unfruitful and calculated search for an 'asabiyya powerful enough to save Islam from ruin. Certain facts support this hypothesis, but Ibn khaldun states nothing explicity and his Ta'rif (on which moreover opinions vary) provides no assistance. As has already been mentioned, it gives us no insight into the inner thought of the author himself and presents only his external character. There is thus no way of knowing what his real intentions were.

II. Works.

Ibn khaldun is known primarily forqhis Muqaddima and his 'Ibar, but he wrote other works which have not all survived.

In about his twentieth year, he attempted, under the influence of al-Abili, to make a resume of the theologico-philosophical 'summa' of al-Razi entitled Kitab Muhassal afqar al-mutaqaddimin wa 'l-muta'-akhkhirin min al-'ulama' wa 'l-hukama' wa 'l-muta-kallimin (Cairo 1905), an outline which is a condensation of all the Arabo-Muslim cultural tradition concerning the problems of dogma and its philosophical repercussions. This resume, entitled Lubab al-Muhassal fi usul al-din (Tetuan 1952: autograph manuscript dated 29 ‘afar 752/28 May 1351, Escorial no. 1614), shows a direction of thought which Ibn khaldun was never to lose completely.

It should also be remembered that Ibn khaldun had stressed in his Ta'rif the studious nature of his period at Fez and at Granada. During this period, that is between 752-65/1351-64, the date at which Ibn al-khatib's Ihata was finished (to which we owe the following information), he wrote five works: (1) a commentary on the Burda [q.v.] of al-Busiri; (2) an outline of logic; (3) a treatise on arithmetic; (4) several resumes of works by Ibn Rushd, though unfortunately it is not known which ones; and (5) a commentary on a poem by Ibn al-khatib on the usul al-fiqh. All these works are now lost, and indeed seem to have been quickly forgotten even during the author's lifetime. Ibn khaldun does not even mention them in his Ta'rif, and his Egyptian biographers do not appear to have heard of them.

They seem moreover to have been of a traditional theologico-philosophical type, including the arithmetic which a faqih had to know. Nothing up to this time indicated that Ibn khaldun would go down to posterity as the brilliant founder of the science of history and of other disciplines. The flowering of his genius took place at the castle of Ibn Salama, as the result of the fusion of the traditional disciplines in which he had been educated with the rich harvest of political experience which, through a bitter series of failures and impasses, had made him aware of the meaning and deep significance ('ibar) of history. There then began, in the calm of the castle of Ibn Salama, the work of analysing the passionate and disturbing human adventure, which certainly has its grandeurs but of which he had experienced mainly the miseries. Ibn khaldun really changed as a thinker: the pedestrian faqih which he might after all have been had become a historian of genius, and even the founder of a number of disciplines which were to become some of the most productive of the modern humanities. The first draft of his Introduction (Muqaddima)--which contains the essence of his thought--to his universal history (Kitab al-'Ibar), as well as large sections of this history itself, were written between 776/1375 and 780/1379 during his retirement. He later continued without ceasing, until the end of his life, to re-write this basic work, and especially the Muqaddima. The Ta'rif, an autobiography which stops in Dhu 'l-qa'da 807/May 1405 (ed. al-tandhi, Cairo 1951), and the Shifa' al-sa'il, a treatise on mysticism written towards the end of his life (ed. al-tandhi, Istanbul 1958; and ed. I. A. Khalife, Beirut 1959), are minor works compared with his masterpiece, and their main interest is in the light they throw on it. It should be mentioned that the problem of the authenticity of the Shifa' al-sa'il, so important for the history of Ibn khaldun's thought, has not yet been definitively solved.

The Ottoman historian Na'ima [q.v.] (d. 1128/1716) praises Ibn khaldun in the introduction to his work and gives a summary of his ideas. (The first translation into Turkish, of part of the Muqaddima, was made by the Shaykh al-Islam Piri-zade Mehmed Ef. in 1143/1749 (see IA, s.v. Ibn Haldun, col. 740b); the most recent, complete, translation is by Zakir Kadiri Ugan, 2 vols., Istanbul 1954.) Yet it was in Europe that Ibn khaldun was discovered and the importance of his Muqaddima realized: by d'Herbelot (Bibliotheque Orienlale 1697), by Silvestre de Sacy (Chrestomatie arabe, 1806), by von Hammer-Purgstall (Ueber den Verfall des Islam ..., 1812) and especially by Quatremere, who, in 1858, produced the first complete edition of the Muqaddima--another edition of it was published in the same year in Cairo by Nasr al-Hurini, based on another manuscript containing in particular the dedication to the sultan Abu Faris of Fez (796-9/1394-7)--and by de Slane, who, some years afterwards, produced the first French translation of it (Les Prolegomenes, Paris 1863-8). Since then there has been a continual series of editions and studies on it, in both the East and the West, a proof of the increasing interest in Ibn khaldun's thought, and there have recently been so many of them that bibliographical works on them (by H. Peres and W. J. Fischel) became necessary. The most recent translation, by F. Rosenthal (into English, 3 vols. New York-London 1958), has the advantage of having been made from the Istanbul manuscript (Atif Efendi 1936), which contains a note in Ibn khaldun's writing stating that it had been 'scientifically revised' by the author. There should also be mentioned the Portuguese translation by Khoury, in 3 vols., Sao Paulo 1958-60; a French translation by V. Monteil is being published.

The 'Ibar, the Universal History itself, naturally aroused less interest. The first to produce an edition and translation of extensive passages from the 'Ibar was Noeel Desvergers, under the title Histoire de l'Afrique sous la dynastie des Aghlabites et de la Sicile sous la domination musulmane, Paris 1841. Another partial translation was published some years later by de Slane under the title Histoire des Berberes et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique Septentrionale (4 vols., Algiers 1852-6), followed by an edition of the passages translated (2 vols., Algiers 1863). Next there appeared the complete Bulaq edition (7 vols., 1868), and since then there have followed also some partial translations. There has not yet appeared, however, a truly critical edition of either the Muqaddima or the 'Ibar. The latest edition, that of Beirut (1956-9)--from which our references are taken--is a commercial one, which is however provided with useful indexes.

The criticism generally made of the 'Ibar is that it did not fulfil the promises made in the Muqaddima. This is obvious, but it could not have been otherwise. No one man could write alone a universal history according to the demands of the Muqaddima. But it has more serious shortcomings: Ibn khaldun at times demonstrates a surprising lack of learning, for example, concerning the Almohads and their doctrine: 'In addition, precise dates are rarely given; the chronological details throughout the work are too often contradictory, and one is obliged to prefer on many occasions those provided in other more humble and much more succinct works' (R. Brunschvig, Hafsides, ii, 392). Nevertheless, the Kitab al-'Ibar, through its intelligent arrangement of facts and the detail and scope of the account, remains, in the opinion of the specialist who has made most use of it, an incomparable tool, particularly 'for the two centuries nearest to our author, the 13th and the14th' (R. Brunschvig, op. cit., ii, 393). It should also be added that this work, often disappointing on the history of the East, is generally valuable especially for the Muslim West, and in particular for the Berbers.

But Ibn khaldun's main work, of universal value, is the Muqaddima. In the author's intention, and as the title indicates, it is an Introduction to the historian's craft. Thus it is presented as an encyclopaedic synthesis of the methodological and cultural knowledge necessary to enable the historian to produce a truly scientific work. Initially, in fact, Ibn khaldun was preoccupied with epistemology. Then gradually, meditating on the method and the matter of history, he was led, in full consciousness of what he was doing, to create what he refers to as his 'new science' ('ilm mustanbat al-nash'a, 63), which itself turned out to contain more or less implicitly the starting points of several avenues of research leading to the philosophy of history, sociology, economics and yet other disciplines.

In his preface to the Introduction proper (muqaddimat al-Muqaddima, 1-68), Ibn khaldun begins by defining history--which he expands to include the study of the whole of the human past, including its social, economic and cultural aspects--defining its interest, denouncing the lack of curiosity and of method in his predecessors, and setting out the rules of good and sound criticism. This criticism is based essentially, apart from the examination of evidence, on the criterion of conformity with reality (qanun al-mutabaqa, 61-t), that is of the probability of the facts reported and their conformity to the nature of things, which is the same as the current of history and of its evolution. Hence the necessity of bringing to light the laws which determine the direction of this current. The science capable of throwing light on this phenomenon is, he says, that of 'umran, 'a science which may be described as independent ('ilm mustaqill bi-nafsih), which is defined by its object: human civilization (al-'umran al-bashari) and social facts as a whole' (62).

All that follows, that is the main part of the Muqaddima itself, is only the detailed exposition of this new and independent science which the author had perceived. In it he develops his argument, contrary to some opinions, according to a strict plan, the broad lines of which he states and clearly explains (68) before beginning his exposition. This exposition is divided into six long chapters which in turn are subdivided into many paragraphs of varying lengths and often mathematically arranged. Chapter 1: a general treatise on human society. In it Ibn khaldun makes an outline study of the influence of environment on human nature, an ethnological and an anthropological study. Chapter t: on the societies of rural and, generally speaking, fairly primitive, civilization ('umran badawi). Chapter 3: on the different forms of government, on states and institutions. Chapter 4: on the societies of urban civilization ('umran hadari), that is of the most developed and sophisticated forms of civilization. Chapter 5: on industries and economic affairs in general. Chapter 6: on scholarship, literature and cultural matters in general.

This plan clearly shows that Ibn khaldun in his Muqaddima was inclined to concentrate on social phenomena in general. The central point around which his observations are built and to which his researches are directed is the study of the aetiology of decline, that is to say the symptoms and the nature of the ills from which civilizations die. Henceqthe Muqaddima is very closely linked with the political experiences of its author, who had been in fact very vividly aware that he was witnessing a tremendous change in the course of history, which is why he thought it necessary to write a summary of the past of humanity and to draw lessons ('ibar) from it. He remarks that at certain exceptional moments in history the upheavals are such that one has the impression of being present 'at a new creation (ka'annahu khalqdhadid), at an actual renaissance (nash'a mustahdatha), and at [the emergence of] a new world (wa 'alam muhdath). It is so at present (li-hadha 'l-'ahd). Thus the need is felt for someone to make a record of the situation of humanity and of the world' (53). This 'new world', as Ibn khaldun knew (866), was coming to birth in other lands; he also realized that the civilization to which he belonged was nearing its end. Although unable to avert the catastrophe, he was anxious at least to understand what was taking place, and therefore felt it necessary to analyse the processes of history.

His main tool in this work of analysis is observation. Fairly recently there has been stressed the realistic aspect of his thought. Ibn khaldun, who has a thorough knowledge of the sources on logic and makes use of it, particular of induction, greatly mistrusts speculative reasoning. He admits that reason is a marvellous tool, but only within the framework of its natural limits, which are those of the investigation and the interpretation of what is real. He was much concerned about the problem of knowledge and it led him finally, after a radical criticism, to a refutation of philosophy. 'In casting doubts on the adequacy of universal rationality and of individual reality, Ibn khaldun at the same time casts doubts on the whole structure of speculative philosophy as it then existed' (N. Nassar, La pensee realiste d'Ibn khaldun, 66). Having thus calmly dismissed Arabo-Muslim philosophy, he chose, in order to explore reality and arrive at its meaning, a type of empiricism which has no hesitation in 'having recourse to the categories of rational explanation which derive from philosophy'. In short, Ibn khaldun rejects the traditional speculation of the philosophers, which gets bogged down in fruitless argument and controversy, only to replace it by another type of speculation, the steps of which are more certain and the results more fruitful since it is directly related to concrete facts.

This new positive speculation which he suggests and of which he provides an example in the Muqaddima is operated through a dialectical process which has been referred to in several studies (see in particular the recent works of Y. Lacoste and N. Nassar). He could not in fact penetrate to the heart of reality, describe the struggles and conflicts, the tensions and the successive failures of states and civilizations produced by their internal dissensions without encountering, and calling attention to, the process of dialectic, especially since he had encountered logic in his earlier years and since the ideas of contradiction, antithesis, opposition, the complementariness of opposites, of ambiguity, of complexity and of confusion had long been familiar to the Muslim thinking in which he had been educated. They are thus often evoked as operative concepts permitting understanding and explanation. In surmounting the contradictions dialectically, and in attempting to explain them and hence to resolve them, Ibn khaldun thus arrives at a dynamic conception of the dialectic development of the destiny of man, and at a system of history which is retrospectively intelligible, rational and necessary. His famous cyclic schema of historical interpretation, which in itself is not particularly original, must be included, in order for its true meaning to be seen, in this general view.

The wealth of the ideas provided in the Muqaddima has enabled several specialists to find in it the early beginnings of a number of disciplines which have become independent sciences only very recently. There is of course no argument about Ibn khaldun's quality as a historian. Y. Lacoste writes: 'If Thucydides is the inventor of history, Ibn khaldun introduces history as a science' (Ibn Khaldoun, 187). But he has been regarded also as a philosopher, and it is surprising in particular to discover in his Muqaddima a very elaborate system of sociology. His 'new science', his 'ilm al-'umran, the discovery of which dazzled even himself, is basically, strictly speaking, nothing but a system of sociology,--conceived it is true as an auxiliary science to history. He considers that the basic causes of historical evolution are in fact to be sought in the economic and social structures. He therefore set himself to analyse them, elaborating as he did so a certain number of new operative concepts, the most pregnant of which is incontestably that of 'asabiyya [q.v.]. It should be mentioned that this concept of 'asabiyya, and that of 'umran, have given rise in modern times to many discussions--which cannot be enumerated here--regarding their interpretation (see M. Talbi, Ibn khaldun et le sens de l'histoire, in SI, xxvi (1967), 86-90 and 99-112). He was interested particularly in the influence of the way of life and of methods of production on the evolution of social groups. In a famous sentence, he states: 'The differences which are seen between the generations (adhyal) in their behaviour are only the expression of the differences which separate them in their economic way of life' (210). This sentence is often compared with an equally famous one of Marx: 'The method of production in the material matters of life determines in general the social, political and intellectual processes of life'. The similarity is indeed striking, and it is not the only one between them. Thus Ibn khaldun's thought is often interpreted, particularly in recent years, in the spirit of dialectical materialism. But, in spite of the undoubted similarities, it would be difficult to regard Ibn khaldun as a forerunner of materialism. Moreover the explanation he gives is not exclusively a socio-economic one but also psychological. 'The Prolegomena do not contain only a general sociology but also a very detailed and subtle social psychology which may be divided into political psychology, economic psychology, ethical psychology and general psychology. The intermingled and closely linked elements of this social psychology and this general sociology form a whole complex which it is difficult to disentangle' (N. Nassar, op. cit., 178).

There have been identified also, in this complex, economic doctrines sufficiently detailed to justify a study devoted to them, and a philosophy of history to which M. Mahdi has devoted an important work. It also provides ethnographic, anthropological and demographic information of real value.

Thus the atypical figure of Ibn khaldun in Arabo-Muslim culture has been unanimously considered, since his discovery in Europe, as that of an authentic genius, 'un penseur genial et aberrant' (Brunschvig, op. cit., ii, 391), whose Muqaddima represents 'one of the solemn moments of human thought' (Bouthoul). Certainly a 'solitary genius', he does not belong to any definite current of Arabo-Muslimqthought, since his works are in fact the product of a multitude of agonizing enquiries. His thinking represents a radical change, which unfortunately remained as unproductive as his political misadventures. 'Just as he had no forerunners among Arabic writers, so he had no successors or emulators in this idiom until the contemporary period. Although he had a certain influence in Egypt on some writers of the end of the Middle Ages, it can be stated that, in his native Barbary, neither his Muqaddima nor his personal teaching left any permanent mark. And indeed the systematic lack of comprehension and the resolute hostility which this nonconformist thinker of genius encountered among his own people forms one of the most moving dramas, one of the saddest and most significant pages in the history of Muslim culture' (R. Brunschvig, op. cit., ii, 391).

Sociology is Both a Rational and an Empirical Science

2009-05-20T23:17:00.000-07:00

There are two broad ways of approach to scientific knowledge. One, known as empiricism, is the approach that emphasises experience and the facts that result from observation and experimentation. The other, known as rationalism, stresses reason and the theories that result from logical inference.

The empiricist collects facts; the rationalist co-ordinates and arranges them. Theories and facts are required in the construction of knowledge. In sociological inquiry both are significant. A theory unsubstantiated by hard, solid facts are nothing more than an opinion. Facts, by themselves, in their isolated character, are meaningless and useless. As Immanuel Kant said, "theories without facts are empty and facts without theories are blind". All modern sciences, therefore, avail themselves of both empirical and rational resources. Sociology is not an exception.

Sociology is a General Science and not a Special Social Science

2009-05-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

The aria of inquiry of sociology is general and not specialised. It is concerned with human interaction and human life in general. Other sciences like political science, history, economics etc, also study man and human interaction, but not all about human interaction. They concentrate their attention on certain aspects of human interaction and activities and specialise themselves in those fields. Accordingly, economics specialises itself in the study of economic activities, political science concentrates on political activities and so on. Sociology of course, does not investigate economic, regions, political, legal, moral or any other special kind of phenomena in relation human life and activities as such. It only studies human activities in a general way. This does not however, mean that sociology is the basic social science nor does it imply sociology is the general social science. Anthropology and social psychology often claim themselves to be general social sciences.

Review of Sophie's World By Jostein Gaarder

2009-05-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

It's tempting to get all warm and gloopy over this well-intentioned response by a Norwegian writer and former philosophy teacher to the New Age "pornography" he fears may replace the Western philosophical canon. Sophie's World has rapidly become an international literary phenom. A genre-crossing European best-seller (file under fiction, philosophy, and young adulthood) with nearly a million copies sold to date, Jostein Gaarder's novel, at 400 pages, is a concise, clearly written corrective to philosophic obscurantism.

The foil for Gaarder's pedagogic fantasy is Sophie Amundsen, a spunky 14-year-old whose philosophic journey begins when a pair of timeless ontological posers--"Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?"

--appear mysteriously in her mailbox. A follow-up envelope containing typewritten pages titled "What Is Philosophy?" (11) orient her on a correspondence course in the history of philosophy that eventually turns into a Socratic tutorial. Sophie's enthusiasm shocks her mother, who attributes her newfound interest in the mysteries of life to the influence of drugs.

Nothing could be further from the truth (at least until the Kierkegaard chapter, when things do get a trifle psychedelic). Although Sophie's tutor, Alberto Knox, grounds the philosopher's project in maintaining a sense of wonder, his disquisition is clean and sober indeed. What keeps the novel moving are the tricks Gaarder plays with what we used to call the old r. and i.--reality and illusion. Sophie begins receiving postcards addressed from a United Nations observer in Lebanon to his own 15-year-old daughter, Hilde. As Sophie gradually becomes aware of her existence within a book (within a book (within a book)), the philosophical question gradually take on an existential tinge, embracing problems of determinacy and free will. While not nearly as highfalutin as such would-be popularizers as Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, or Stephen Hawkins, it's loads of fun in a cool, Scandinavian Alice-in-Wonderland fashion.

The book is for children of all ages, remember, so don't expect detailed synopses of the world's major philosophers, systems, or contexts. The risks Gaarder takes in the interests of simplicity and clarity definitely pay off, however. These include the translation of nearly all technical terms, the omission of the hundreds of titles that would otherwise clutter the book, and his emphasis on the echoing persistence of philosophical themes from the pre-Socratics (whose modernism is conveyed elegantly) to the existentialists Gaarder nutshells right before dropping a few gee-whiz notions about ecophilosophy and how star gazing constitutes a cosmic journey into the past ("Yes, we too are stardust" (392), croons Alberto).

Sophie's World is a model of classic pedagogical technique packaged in most tasteful modernism. From the Socratic dialogues up to and including Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ultimate collaboration (the perfect companion volume, their What Is Philosophy? tastefully packages chaos as classicism), philosophy has been intertwined with friendship, sharing, and equality. While on the one hand Sophie (and Hilde and every kid who receives this book as the gift of a concerned adult) serves as the willing receptacle of Alberto's wisdom (perform your own deconstruction here), Gaarder has her question frequently the absence of women in philosophy. The only women thinkers accorded a paragraph or two here are beheaded French revolutionary Olympe de Gouges and Simone de Beauvoir. Sophie, nevertheless, seems more than willing to, well, man the barricades in their name.

Ongoing advertisements for environmental activism and world federalism via the United the Nations add to the novel's liberal agenda--which is about where my enthusiasm ends. Gaarder's well-measured conciliatory tone masks the rhetorical (and physical) violence philosophic discourse has generated over the past few thousand years, so don't expect to find Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, or Derrida--even Heidegger and Nietzsche earn s little as a paragraph each. As noted above, Gaarder holds no truck with the outlaw alternatives sold under the New Age and mysticism rubrics. "The difference between real philosophy and these books," grumps Alberto, "is more or less the same as the difference between real love and pornography" (357). Do we detect an old-fashioned moralist in this dismissal? Gaarder, having stripped down the canon's arguments to their leanest Western cuts, thereby ignoring Muslim or pagan can't or won't see philosophy's manfully conceptualized recourses to faith, transcendence, and immanence as actually forming much of the spiritual bedrock for crystal worship or ufology.

At worst, Gaarder's book is a philosophical Ikea, whose clean lines and slick marketing offer a one-size-fits-all coziness masking the bitter ideological rivalries and utter radicalism characterizes so much of the field's history. On the other hand, any Sophie's World reader inspired to further investigation will collide with all that soon enough, which suggests an even more provocative sequel.

Sociology is a Genaralising and not a Particularising or Individualising Science

2009-05-12T03:11:00.000-07:00

Sociology tries to find out the general laws or principles about human interactions and association, about the nature, form, content and structure of human groups and societies. It does not study each and every event that takes place in society. It is not possible also. It tries to make generalisation on the basis of the study of some select events. For example, a sociologists makes generalisations about the nature of secondary groups. He may conclude that secondary groups are comparatively bigger in size, less stable, not necessarily spatially limited, more specialised, and so on. This, he does, not by examining all the secondary groups but by observing and studying few.

Sociology is Relatively an Abstract Science and not a Concrete Science

2009-05-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

This does not mean that sociology is an art and not a science. Nor does it mean, it is unnecessarily complicated and unduly difficult. It only means that Sociology is not interested in concrete manifestation of human events. It is more concerned with the form of human events and their patterns. For example, sociology is not concerned with particular wars and revolutions but with war and revolution in general, as social phenomena, as types of social conflict. Similarly, sociology does itself to the study of this society or that particular society or social organization, or marriage, or religion, or group and so on. It is in this simple sense that sociology is an abstract not a concrete science.

Sociology is a Pure Science and not an Applied Science

2009-05-02T04:30:00.000-07:00

A distinction is often made between pure sciences and applied sciences. The main aim of pure sciences is the acquisition of knowledge and it is not bothered weather the acquired knowledge is useful or can be put to use. On the other hand, the aim of applied science is to apply the acquired knowledge into life and to put it to use. Each pure science may have its own applied field. For example, physics is a pure science and engineering is its applied field. Similarly the pure sciences such as economics, political science, history, etc., have their applied field such as administration, diplomacy, social work etc. Each pure science may have more than one application.

Sociology is a pure science, because the immediate aim of sociology is the acquisition of knowledge about human society, not utilisation of knowledge. Sociologists never determine questions of public policy and do not recommend legislators what laws should be passed or replaced. But the knowledge acquired by a sociologist is of great help to administrator, the legislator, the diplomat, the teacher, the foreman, the supervisor, the social worker and citizen. But sociologists themselves do not apply the knowledge to life and use, as a matter of their duty and profession.

Sociology is a Categorical and not a Normative Dicipline

2009-04-28T03:53:00.000-07:00

Sociology "confines itself to statements about what is, not what should be or ought to be". "As a science, sociology is necessarily silent about questions of value. It does not make any kind of value-judgements. Its approach is neither moral nor moral but amoral. It is ethically neutral. It cannot decide the directions in which sociology ought to go. It makes no recommendations on maters of social policy or legislation's or programme. But it does not mean that sociological knowledge is useless and serves no propose. It only means that sociology as a discipline cannot deal with problems of good and evil, right and wrong, and moral or immoral.

Sociology is a Social Science not a Physical Science.

2009-03-27T02:53:00.000-07:00

Sociology belongs to the family of social sciences and not to the family of physical sciences. As a social science it concentrates its attention on man, his social behavior, social activities and social life. As a member of the family of social sciences it is intimately related to other social sciences like history, political science, economics, psychology, anthropology etc. The fact that sociology deals with the Social universe distinguishes from astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, mathematics and other physical sciences.

Sociology is an Independent Science.

2009-03-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

Sociology has now emerged into an independent science. It is not treated and studied as a branch of any other science like philosophy or political philosophy or history. As an independent science it has its own field of study, boundary and method.

NATURE OF SOCIOLOGY

2009-03-27T02:26:00.000-07:00

Sociology as a branch of knowledge, has its own unique characteristics It is different from other sciences in certain respects. An analysis of internal logical characteristics helps one to understand what kind of science it is. The following are the main characteristics of sociology as enlisted by Robert Bierstedt in his book "The Social Order". Those each characteristics are added to this blog within the label "Nature of Sociology" onwards as unique posts.

DEFINITION OF SOCIOLOGY

2009-03-24T04:51:00.002-07:00

'Sociology' which had once been treated as social philosophy, or the philosophy of the history, emerged as an independent social science in 19th century. Auguste Comte, a Frenchman, is traditionally considered to be the father of sociology. Comte is accredited with the coining of the term sociology (in 1839). "Sociology" is composed of two words : socius, meaning companion or associate; and 'logos', meaning science or study. The etymological meaning of "sociology" is thus the science of society. John Stuart Mill, another social thinker and philosopher of the 19th century, proposed the word ethology for this new science. Herbert Spencer developed his systematic study of society and adopted the word "sociology" in his works. With the contributions of Spencer and others it (sociology) became the permanent name of the new science.

The question 'what is sociology' is indeed , a question pertaining to the definition of sociology. No student can rightfully be expected to enter on a field of study which is totally undefined or unbounded. At the same time, it is not an easy task to set some fixed limits to a field of study. It is true in the case of sociology. Hence it is difficult to give a brief and a comprehensive definition of sociology.

Sociology has been defined in a number of ways by different sociologists. No single definition has yet been accepted as completely satisfactory. In fact, there are lot of definitions of sociology as there are sociologists. For our purpose of study a few definitions may be cited here.

Auguste Comete, the founding father of sociology, defines sociology as the science of social phenomena "subject to natural and invariable laws, the discovery of which is the object of investigation".
Kingsley Davis says that "Sociology is a general science of society".
Harry M. Johnson opines that "sociology is the science that deals with social groups".
Emile Durkheim: "Science of social institutions".
Park regards sociology as "the science of collective behavior".
Small defines sociology as "the science of social relationships".
Marshal Jones defines sociology as "the study of man-in-relationship-to-men".
Ogburn and Nimkoff : "Sociology is the scientific study of social life".
Franklin Henry Giddings defines sociology as "the science of social phenomena".
Henry Fairchild: "Sociology is the study of man and his human environment in their relations to each other".
Max Weber defines sociology as " the science which attempts the interpretative understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a casual explanation of its course and effects".
Alex Inkeles says, "Sociology is the study of systems of social action and of their inter-relations".
Kimball Young and Raymond W. Mack say, "Sociology is the scientific study of social aspects of human life".
Morris Ginsberg: of the various definitions of sociology the one given by Morris Ginsberg seems to be more satisfactory and comprehensive. He defines sociology in the following way: "In the broadest sense, sociology is the study of human interactions and inter-relations, their conditions and consequences".

A careful examination of various definitions cited above, makes it evident that sociologists differ in their opinion about definition of sociology. Their divergent views about the definition of sociology only reveal their distinct approaches to its study. However, the common idea underlying all the definitions mentioned above is that sociology is concerned with man, his social relations and his society.

Sociology - The Science of society

2009-03-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

"In all ages and human times, ever science our erect and restless species appeared upon the planet, men have been living with others of their kind in something called Societies. Wherever these societies may be and whatever their chapter of history-weather primitive Polynesian or ancient Egyptian, classical Chinese or contemporary Russian, medieval English or modern American-they all exhibit common elements and constant features. These are the elements that give to society its form and shape, that constitute its structure and that, in a word, comprise the social order. It is the task of general sociology to discover these constants, to describe them with an economy of concepts, and to delineate their inter-relations".

Sociology is the science of society. No other science endeavours to study it in its entirety. Economics studies man as a wealth-getter and wealth-disposer and inquires into the relations of wealth and welfare. History deals with the human past in accordance with the time order. Cultural Anthropology studies man, particularly the primitive man and it concentrates more on the primitive communities and their cultures. Psychology studies the man as a behaving individual. Social Psychology, as a branch of psychology, concerned with the ways in which the individual reacts to his social conditions. Political Science studies man as a citizen, as a ruler and as being ruled. Religion deals with man as a spiritual being and inquires into his faith in the supernatural power. Sociology alone studies social relationships, society itself. Thus the 'focus' of no other social science is identical with with that of sociology. Indeed, it is the focus of interest that distinguishes one social science from another.

Sociology is interested in social relationships not because they are economic or political or religious or legal or educational but because they are at the same time, social. "Society", as Mac Iver says, "is the marvellously intricate and ever-changing pattern of the totality of these relationships". Further, in sociology we do not study everything that happens "in society" or under social conditions. But we study culture, for example, only for the light it throws on social relationships, their specific forms, variates and patternings. We study how the relations combine, how they build up smaller or greater systems, and how they respond to changes and changing demand or needs. Hence our study of society is essentially analytical

The Ulitimate Goals of Sociology

2009-03-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

The immediate goal of sociology is to acquire knowledge about society like all the sciences. However, sociology is not content with descriptions, exhibitions and analysis. It has a more remote and ultimate purpose. Robert Bierstedt's views are meaningful in this regard. He says "The final questions to which sociology addresses itself are those that have to do with the nature of human experience and this earth and the succession of societies over the long centuries of human existence..............What are the factors responsible for the disintegration of one social structure, like that of the medieval world, and the coming into being of another? Do human societies like the individuals who comprise them, grow old after a while, and very and finally disappear from the face of the earth? Is there an ebb and flow in the affairs of men, a systole and diastole of human history? These too are problems of sociology... But some day, if sociology, through its intimate analysis of the dynamics of society, can archive some understanding of problems of this kind, and contribute to their resolution, it will fulfil its initial promise and its ultimate destiny. In brief, as Samuel Koenig has pointed out the ultimate aim of sociology is " to improve man's adjustment to life by developing objective knowledge concerning social phenomena which can be used to deal effectively with social problems".

Development of Sociology in the 20th Century

2009-03-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

In the second half of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th centuries a large number of sociologists and social thinkers contributed a great deal to the development of sociology. Karl Marx 1818-1833, Lester F. Ward 1841-1913, George Simmel 1858-1918, Alfred Vierkandt 1867-1953, Gabrial Trade 1843-1904, Small 1854-1926, Giddings 1855-1931, C.H. Cooley 1864-1929, James Ward 1843-1925, Llyod Morgan 1852-1932, L.T. Hobhouse 1864-1929, E. A. Westermarck 1862 -1939, Pareto 1848-1923, Charles A. Elwood 1873-1946, Benjamin Kidd 1858-1916, E. B. Tylor 1832-1917, J. G. Frazer 1854-1941, B. Malinowski 1884-1942 and others are some of them.

Sociology experienced a rapid development in the 20th century, most notably in France, Germany, the United States and England. Recently famous sociologist like P. A. Sorokin, Talcott parsons, R. K. Merton, R. M. MacIver, M. Ginsberg, Kingsley Davis, W. F. Ogburn, A. W. Green, Kimball Young, P. G. Murdock. W. I. H. Sprott, E. A. Ross, Wilbert Moore, Karl Manheim and a host of others have further enriched the subject by their social investigations and writings. Today, sociology is firmly established as a discipline. The developments of the 20th century provided a great stimulus for the study of social sciences in general, and sociology in particular. All major universities in the world, now offer instruction in this subject. Even in the U. S. S. R. sociology is a legitimate discipline now. "It is not yet in many respects, mature science and the student will find in it therefore, more divergent points of view and rather less systematic agreement than in such other sciences as physics, astronomy and biology". (Robert Bierstedt)

What did Four Founding Fathers (Comte, Spencer, Durkheim and Weber) of Sociology did in Common ?

2009-03-23T07:26:00.000-07:00

These "Four pioneers" - Comte, Spencer, Durkheim and Weber - it seems, agreed upon the proper subject-matter of Sociology.

Firstly, all of them urged the sociologists to study a wide range of institutes from the family to the state.
Secondly, they agreed that a unique subject-matter for sociology is found in the interrelations among different institutions.
Thirdly, they came to the common consensus on the opinion that society as a whole can be taken as a distinctive unit of sociological analysis. They assigned sociology the task of explaining wherein and why societies are alike or different.
Finally, they insisted that sociology should focus on 'social acts' or 'social relationships' regardless of their institutional setting. This view was most clearly expressed by Weber.

Max Weber (1864 - 1920)

2009-03-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Max Weber's approach is almost contrary to that of Durkheim. For Weber, the individual is the basic unit of the society . He opines that the finding of sociological laws is but a means to understand man. In his system, sociological laws are "empirically established probabilities or statistical generalisations of the course of social behavior of which an interpretation can be given in terms of typical motives and intentions. Sociological method is a combination of inductive or statistical generalisation with verstchen (understanding) interpretation by the aid of an ideal type of behavior, that is, assumed to be rationally or purposefully determined".

Weber devoted much of his efforts to expand a special method called the method of understanding (verstchen) for the study of social phenomena. He stressed the importance of maintaining objectively and neutrality of value-judgement in social sciences. He wrote much on such topics as religion; various aspects of economic life, including money and the division of labour, political parties and other forms of political organisation and authority; bureaucracy and other varieties of larger-scale organisation; class and caste; the city; and music. His influence on contemporary sociologists especially those of analytic school is rapidly increasing. His major works are: Economics and Society, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The City, Bureaucracy and various other books and essays.

Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917)

2009-03-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

Prof. Durkheim, the French thinker, like Spencer, considered societies as such to be important units of sociological analysis. He stressed the importance of studying different types of society comparatively "Comparative Sociology is not a particular branch of sociology; it is sociology itself,"
he maintained.

In Durkheim's theory the ultimate social reality is the group, not the individual. Social life has to be analysed in terms of 'social facts', according to him. Social facts are nothing but collective ways of thinking , feeling and acting which through coming from the individual, "are external" to him and expert an external "constraint" or pressure on him. These social facts are the proper study of sociology and to them all social phenomena should be reduced, he opined. Further, each social fact, he felt, must be released "to a particular social milieu, to a definite type of society".

Durkheim also mentioned various fields of sociological inquiry such as - General Sociology, 'Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Law and Morals, including sub-sections on political organisations, social organisation, marriage and family; The sociology of Crime, Economic Sociology including studies on urban and rural communities; and Sociology of Aesthetics. His major works are: The division of Labour in Society, The rules of Sociological Method, Suicide, The Elementary Forms of Republic Life.

Karl Marx (1818 - 1883)

2009-03-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

Karl Marx is was one of the most important thinkers of the 19th century. He wrote brilliantly on subjects such as philosophy, political science, economics and history. He never called himself a sociologist, but his work is very rich in sociological insights. Hence he is regarded as one of most profound and original sociological thinkers. His influence has been tremendous. Millions of people throughout the world accept it theories with almost religious fervour.

Marx believed that the task of the social scientist was not merely to describe the world, it was to change it. Whereas Spencer saw social harmony and inevitability of progress, Marx saw social conflict and the inevitability of revolution. The key of history, he believed is class conflict the bitter struggle between the capitalist and the labours or between those who own the means of producing wealth and those who do not. Marx also believed that the historic struggle would end only with overthrow of the ruling exploiters, and the establishment of a free, harmonious, classless society. Marx placed too much emphasis on the economic base of society. Marx thought that the economic base of the society influence the general character of all other aspects of culture and social structure, such as law, religion, education, government etc.

Modern sociologists thought reject many teachings of Marx, do generally recognise the fundamental influence of the economy on other areas of society. The 'conflict approach' to the study of social phenomena devoted by Marx is still in currency. Later sociologists and social thinkers could hardly escape the influence of Marxian ideas and theories. Great number of writers and thinkers still subscribe to his views and theories.

2009-03-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

It is relevent here to make a little mention of the contributions of other founding fathers like Marx, Durkheim and weber to the development of sociology.