Page:The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.djvu/207

 reply, my article: "Antikritisches zum Geist des Kapitalismus," Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen), XX, 1910. Then Rachfahl's reply to that: "Nochmals Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus", 1910, Nos. 22-25, of the Internationale Wochenschrift. Finally my "Antikritisches Schlusswort", Archiv, XXXI. (Brentano, in the criticism presently to be referred to, evidently did not know of this last phase of the discussion, as he does not refer to it.) I have not incorporated anything in this edition from the somewhat unfruitful polemics against Rachfahl. He is an author whom I otherwise admire, but who has in this instance ventured into a field which he has not thoroughly mastered. I have only added a few supplementary references from my anti-critique, and have attempted, in new passages and footnotes, to make impossible any future misunderstanding. (2) W. Sombart, in his book Der Bourgeois (Munich and Leipzig, 1913, also translated into English under the title The Quintessence of Capitalism, London, 1915), to which I shall return in footnotes below. Finally (3) Lujo Brentano in Part II of the Appendix to his Munich address (in the Academy of Sciences, 1913) on Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, which was published in 1916. (Since Weber's death Brentano has somewhat expanded these essays and incorporated them into his recent book Der wirtschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte.—) I shall also refer to this criticism in special footnotes in the proper places. I invite anyone who may be interested to convince himself by comparison that I have not in revision left out, changed the meaning of, weakened, or added materially different statements to, a single sentence of my essay which contained any essential point. There was no occasion to do so, and the development of my exposition will convince anyone who still doubts. The two latter writers engaged in a more bitter quarrel with each other than with me. Brentano's criticism of Sombart's book, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, I consider in many points well founded, but often very unjust, even apart from the fact that Brentano does not himself seem to understand the real essence of the problem of the Jews (which is entirely omitted from this essay, but will be dealt with later [in a later section of the Religionssoziologie.—]).

From theologians I have received numerous valuable suggestions in connection with this study. Its reception on their part has been in general friendly and impersonal, in spite of wide differences of opinion on particular points. This is the more welcome to me since I should not have wondered at a certain antipathy to the manner in which these matters must necessarily be treated here. What to a theologian is valuable in his religion cannot play a very large part in this study. We are concerned with what, from a religious point of view, are often quite superficial and unrefined aspects of religious life, but which, and precisely because they were superficial and unrefined, have often influenced outward behaviour most profoundy.