“I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight and started it”—that is the project of a library which he had initiated—“as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my affair went on smoothly, and I ever after practised it on such occasions; and from my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it. The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid. If it remains awhile uncertain to whom the merit belongs, someone more vain than yourself will be encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will be disposed to do you justice by plucking those assumed feathers and restoring them to their right owner.” Autobiography, p. 140. ↩
Brentano (Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, pp. 125, 127, note 1) takes this remark as an occasion to criticize the later discussion of “that rationalization and discipline” to which worldly asceticism418 has subjected men. That, he says, is a rationalization toward an irrational mode of life. He is, in fact, quite correct. A thing is never irrational in itself, but only from a particular rational point of view. For the unbeliever every religious way of life is irrational, for the hedonist every ascetic standard, no matter whether, measured with respect to its particular basic values, that opposing asceticism is a rationalization. If this essay makes any contribution at all, may it be to bring out the complexity of the only superficially simple concept of the rational. ↩
In reply to Brentano’s (Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, pp. 150 ff.) long and somewhat inaccurate apologia for Franklin, whose ethical qualities I am supposed to have misunderstood, I refer only to this statement, which should, in my opinion, have been sufficient to make that apologia superfluous. ↩
The two terms profession and calling I have used in translation of the German Beruf, whichever seemed best to fit the particular context. Vocation does not carry the ethical connotation in which Weber is interested. It is especially to be remembered that profession in this sense is not contrasted with business, but it refers to a particular attitude toward one’s occupation, no matter what that occupation may be. This should become abundantly clear from the whole of Weber’s argument. —Translator’s Note ↩
I make use of this opportunity to insert a few anti-critical remarks in advance of the main argument. Sombart (Bourgeois) makes the untenable statement that this ethic of Franklin is a word-for-word repetition of some writings of that great and versatile genius of the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti, who besides theoretical treatises on Mathematics, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, and Love (he was personally a woman-hater), wrote a work in four books on household management (Della Famiglia). (Unfortunately, I have not at the time of writing been able to procure the edition of Mancini, but only the older one of Bonucci.) The passage from Franklin is printed above word for word. Where then are corresponding passages to be found in Alberti’s work, especially the maxim “time is money,” which stands at the head, and the exhortations which follow it? The only passage which, so far as I know, bears the slightest resemblance to it is found towards the end of the first book of Della Famiglia (ed. Bonucci, II, p. 353), where Alberti speaks in very general terms of money as the nervus rerum of the household, which must hence be handled with special care, just as Cato spoke in De Re Rustica. To treat Alberti, who was very proud of his descent from one of the most distinguished cavalier families of Florence (Nobilissimi Cavalieri, op. cit., pp. 213, 228, 247, etc.), as a man of mongrel blood who was filled with envy for the noble families because his illegitimate birth, which was not in the least socially disqualifying, excluded him as a bourgeois from association with the nobility, is quite incorrect. It is true that the recommendation of large enterprises as alone worthy of a nobile è onesta famiglia and a libero è nobile animo, and as costing less labour is characteristic of Alberti (p. 209; compare Del governo della Famiglia, IV, p. 55, as well as p. 116 in the edition for the Pandolfini). Hence the best thing is a putting-out business for wool and silk. Also an ordered and painstaking regulation of his household, i.e. the limiting of expenditure to income. This is the santa masserizia, which is thus primarily a principle of maintenance, a given standard of life, and not of acquisition (as no one should have understood better than Sombart). Similarly, in the discussion of the nature of money, his concern is with the management of consumption funds (money or possessioni), not with that of capital; all that is clear from the expression of it which is put into the mouth of Gianozzo. He recommends, as protection against the uncertainty of fortuna, early habituation to continuous activity, which is also (pp. 73–4) alone healthy in the long run, in cose magnifiche è ample, and avoidance of laziness, which always endangers the maintenance of one’s position in the world. Hence a careful study of a suitable trade in case of a change of fortune, but every opera mercenaria is unsuitable (op. cit., I, p. 209). His idea of tranquillita dell’ animo
