Page:The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.djvu/18

 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published in the form of two articles in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904 and 1905. Together with a subsequent article, which appeared in 1906, on The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism, they form the first of the studies contained in Weber's Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. On their first appearance they aroused an interest which extended beyond the ranks of historical specialists, and which caused the numbers of the Archiv in which they were published to be sold out with a rapidity not very usual in the case of learned publications. The discussion which they provoked has continued since then with undiminished vigour. For the questions raised by Weber possess a universal significance, and the method of his essay was as important as its conclusions. It not only threw a brilliant light on the particular field which it explored, but suggested a new avenue of approach to a range of problems of permanent interest, which concern, not merely the historian and the economist, but all who reflect on the deeper issues of modern society.

The question which Weber attempts to answer is simple and fundamental. It is that of the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilization. Capitalism, in the sense of great individual undertakings, involving the control of large financial resources, and yielding riches to their masters