No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”
But this brings us to the world of judgments of value and of faith, with which this purely historical discussion need not be burdened. The next task would be rather to show the significance of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched in the foregoing sketch, for the content of practical social ethics, thus for the types of organization and the functions of social groups from the conventicle to the State. Then its relations to humanistic rationalism,414 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 medieval 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.415 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,416 but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth.417
Endnotes
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Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight, Ph. D. (George Allen & Unwin). A bibliography of Weber’s writings is printed at the end of the charming and instructive account of him by his widow, Max Weber, Ein Lebensbild, von Marianna Weber (J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1926). See also “Économistes et Historiens: Max Weber, un homme, une œuvre,” par Maurice Halbwachs, in Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, No. 1, January, 1929. ↩
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Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight, pp. 355–6. ↩
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Henri Pirenne, Les Périodes de l’Histoire Sociale du Capitalisme (Hayez, Brussels, 1914). ↩
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See, in particular, the following: E. Troeltsch, Die Sozialen Lehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (1912); F. Rachfahl, “Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus” (Internationale Wochenschrift, 1909, I. III); B. L. Brentano, Die Anfänge des Modernen Kapitalismus (1916) and Der Wirthschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte (1911); W. Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirthschaftsleben (1911 . English translation The Jews and Modern Capitalism, 1913), and Der Bourgeois (1913. English translation The Quintessence of Modern Capitalism, 1915); G. v. Schulze-Gaevernitz, “Die Geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen der Anglo-Amerikanischen Weltsuprematie. III. Die Wirthschaftsethik des Kapitalismus” (Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Bd. 61, Heft 2); H. Sée, “Dans quelle mesure Puritains et Juifs ont-ils contribué au Progrès du Capitalisme Moderne?” (Revue Historique, t. CLV, 1927) and Les Origines du Capitalisme Moderne (1926); M. Halbwachs, “Les Origines Puritaines du Capitalisme Moderne” (Revue d’histoire et philosophie religieuses, March-April 1925) and “Économistes et Historiens: Max Weber, une vie, un œuvre” (Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, No. I, 1929); H, Hauser, Les Débuts du Capitalisme Moderne (1927); H. G. Wood, “The Influence of the Reformation on ideas concerning Wealth and Property,” in Property, Its Rights and Duties (1913); Talcott Parsons, “Capitalism in Recent German Literature” (Journal of Political Economy, December 1928 and February 1929); Frank H. Knight, “Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Problem of Modern Capitalism” (Journal of Economic and Business History, November 1928); Kemper Fulberton, “Calvinism and Capitalism” (Harvard Theological Review, July, 1928). ↩
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H. Sée, “Dans quelle mesure Puritains et Juifs ont-ils contribué au Progrès Capitalisme Moderne?” (Revue Historique, t. CLV, 1927). ↩
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H. Pirenne, Les Périodes de l’Histoire Sociale du Capitalisme (1914). ↩
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Ständestaat. The term refers to the late form taken by feudalism in Europe in its transition to absolute monarchy. —Translator’s Note ↩
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Here, as on some other points, I differ from our honoured master, Lujo Brentano (in his work to be cited later). Chiefly in regard to terminology, but also on questions of fact. It does not seem to me expedient to bring such different things as acquisition of booty and acquisition by management of a factory together under the same category; still less to designate every tendency to the acquisition of money as the spirit of capitalism as against other types of acquisition. The second sacrifices all precision of concepts, and the first the possibility of clarifying the specific difference between Occidental capitalism and other forms. Also in Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes money economy and capitalism are
