The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

have at least avoided important misunderstandings of fact. The discussion contributes something new, for those familiar with theological literature only in the sense that the whole is, of course, considered from the point of view of our problem. For that reason many of the most important points, for instance the rational character of this asceticism and its significance for modern life, have naturally not been emphasized by theological writers.

This aspect, and in general the sociological side, has, since the appearance of this study, been systematically studied in the work of E. Troeltsch, mentioned above, whose Gerhard und Melancthon, as well as numerous reviews in the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, contained several preliminary studies to his great work. For reasons of space the references have not included everything which has been used, but for the most part only those works which that part of the text follows, or which are directly relevant to it. These are often older authors, where our problems have seemed closer to them. The insufficient pecuniary resources of German libraries have meant that in the provinces the most important source materials or studies could only be had from Berlin or other large libraries on loan for very short periods. This is the case with Voet, Baxter, Tyermans, Wesley, all the Methodist, Baptist, and Quaker authors, and many others of the earlier writers not contained in the Corpus Reformatorum. For any thorough study the use of English and American libraries is almost indispensable. But for the following sketch it was necessary (and possible) to be content with material available in Germany. In America recently the characteristic tendency to deny their own sectarian origins has led many university libraries to provide little or nothing new of that sort of literature. It is an aspect of the general tendency to the secularization of American life which will in a short time have dissolved the traditional national character and changed the significance of many of the fundamental institutions of the country completely and finally. It is now necessary to fall back on the small orthodox sectarian colleges. ↩

On Calvin and Calvinism, besides the fundamental work of Kampschulte, the best source of information is the discussion of Erick Marcks (in his Coligny). Campbell, The Puritans in Holland, England, and America (2 vols.), is not always critical and unprejudiced. A strongly partisan anti-Calvinistic study is Pierson, Studien over Johan Calvijn. For the development in Holland compare, besides Motley, the Dutch classics, especially Groen van Prinsterer, Geschiedenis v. h. Vaderland; La Hollande et l’influence de Calvin (1864); Le parti anti-révolutionnaire et confessionnel dans l’église des Pays-Bas (1860) (for modern Holland); further, above all, Fruin’s Tien jaren mit den tachtigjarigen oorlog, and especially Naber, Calvinist of Libertijnsch. Also W. J. F. Nuyens, Geschiedenis der kerkelijke en politieke geschillen in de republiek der zeven vereenigde provincien (Amsterdam, 1886); A. Köhler, Die niederländische reformirte Kirche (Erlangen, 1856), for the nineteenth century. For France, besides Polenz, now Baird, Rise of the Huguenots. For England, besides Carlyle, Macaulay, Masson, and, last but not least, Ranke, above all, now the various works of Gardiner and Firth. Further, Taylor, A Retrospect of the Religious Life in England (1854), and the excellent book of Weingarten, Die englischen Revolutionskirchen. Then the article on the English Moralists by E. Troeltsch in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, third edition, and of course his Soziallehren. Also E. Bernstein’s excellent essay in the Geschichte des Sozialismus (Stuttgart, 1895, I, p. 50 ff.). The best bibliography (over seven thousand titles) is in Dexter, Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years (principally, though not exclusively, questions of Church organization). The book is very much better than Price (History of Nonconformism), Skeats, and others. For Scotland see, among others, Sack, Die Kirche von Schottland (1844), and the literature on John Knox. For the American colonies the outstanding work is Doyle, The English in America. Further, Daniel Wait Howe, The Puritan Republic; J. Brown, The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and Their Puritan Successors (third edition, Revell). Further references will be given later.

For the differences of doctrine the following presentation is especially indebted to Schneckenburger’s lectures cited above. Ritschl’s fundamental work, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (references to Vol. III of third edition), in its mixture of historical method with judgments of value, shows the marked peculiarities of the author, who with all his fine acuteness of logic does not always give the reader the certainty of objectivity. Where, for instance, he differs from Schneckenburger’s interpretation I am often doubtful of his correctness, however little I presume to have an opinion of my own. Further, what he selects out of the great variety of religious ideas and feelings as the Lutheran doctrine often seems to be determined by his own preconceptions. It is what Ritschl himself conceives to be of permanent value in Lutheranism. It is Lutheranism as Ritschl would have had it, not always as it was. That the works of Karl Müller, Seeberg, and others have everywhere been made use of it is unnecessary to mention particularly. If in the following I have condemned the reader as well as myself to the penitence of a malignant growth of footnotes, it has been done in order to give especially the nontheological reader an opportunity to check up the validity of this sketch by the suggestion of related lines of thought. ↩

In the following discussion we are not primarily interested in the origin, antecedents, or history of these ascetic movements, but take their doctrines as given in a state of full development. ↩

For