Page:The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.djvu/281

 the Cluny monks, a favourite ascetic means of education in self-control. Baxter also speaks in detail of the sinfulness of unnecessary words. Its place in his character has been pointed out by Sanford, op. cit., pp. 90 ff.

What contemporaries felt as the deep melancholy and moroseness of the Puritans was the result of breaking down the spontaneity of the status naturalis, and the condemnation of thoughtless speech was in the service of this end. When Washington Irving (Bracebridge Hall, chap. xxx) seeks the reason for it partly in the calculating spirit of capitalism and partly in the effect of political freedom, which promotes a sense of responsibility, it may be remarked that it does not apply to the Latin peoples. For England the situation was probably that: (1) Puritanism enabled its adherents to create free institutions and still become a world power; and (2) it transformed that calculating spirit (what Sombart calls Rechenhaftigkeit), which is in truth essential to capitalism, from a mere means to economy into a principle of general conduct.

11. Op. cit., I, p. 111.

12. Op. cit., I, p. 383 f.

13. Similarly on the preciousness of time, see Barclay, op. cit., p. 14.

14. Baxter, op. cit., I, p. 79. "Keep up a high esteem of time and be every day more careful that you lose none of your time, than you are that you lose none of your gold and silver. And if vain recreation, dressings, feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or sleep be any of them temptations to rob you of any of your time accordingly heighten your watchfulness." "Those that are prodigal of their time despise their own souls", says Matthew Henry (Worth of the Soul, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 315). Here also Protestant asceticism follows a well-beaten track. We are accustomed to think it characteristic of the modern man that he has no time, and for instance, like Goethe in the Wanderjahren, to measure the degree of capitalistic development by the fact that the clocks strike every quarter-hour. So also Sombart in his Kapitalismus. We ought not, however, to forget that the first people to live (in the Middle Ages) with careful measurement of time were the monks, and that the church bells were meant above all to meet their needs.

15. Compare Baxter's discussion of the calling, op. cit., I, pp. 108 H. Especially the following passage: "Question: But may I not cast off the world that I may only think of my salvation? Answer: You may cast off all such excess of worldly cares or business as unnecessarily hinder you in spiritual things. But you may not cast off all bodily employment and mental labour in which you may serve the common good. Everyone as a member of Church or Commonwealth must employ their parts to the utmost for the good of the Church and the Commonwealth. To neglect this and say: I will pray and meditate, is as if your servant should refuse his greatest work and tie himself