such as we meet at all periods of economic history, nor simply great financiers who have carried
through this change, outwardly so inconspicuous, but nevertheless so de-cisive for the penetration
of economic life with the new spirit. On the contrary, they were men who had grown up in the hard
school of life, calculating and daring at he same time, above all temperate and reliable, shrewd d
completely devoted to their business, with strictly bourgeois opinions and principles. One is tempted
to think that these personal moral qualities have not the slightest relation to any ethical maxims, to
say nothing of religious ideas, but that the essential relation between them is negative. The ability to
free oneself from the common tradition, a sort of liberal enlightenment, seems likely to be the most
suitable basis for such a business man's success. And to-day that is generally precisely the case.
Any relation-ship between religious beliefs and conduct is generally absent, and where any exists, at
least in Germany, it tends to be of the negative sort. The people filled with the spirit of capitalism to-
day tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church. The thought of the pious boredom of paradise
has little attraction for their active natures; religion appears to them as a means of drawing people
away from labor in this world. If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they
are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of
life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at all: "to provide for my children and
grand-children". But more often and, since that motive is not peculiar to them, but was just as
effective for the traditionalist, more correctly, simply: that business with its continuous work has
become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motiva-tion, but it at the
same time expresses what is, seen from the view-point of personal happiness, so irrational about
this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse.
Of course, the desire for the power and recognition which the mere fact of wealth brings plays its
part. When the imagination of a whole people has once been turned toward purely quantitative
bigness, as in the United States, this romanticism of numbers exercises an irresistible appeal to the
poets among business men. Otherwise it is in general not the real leaders, and especially not the
permanently successful entrepreneurs, who are taken in by it. In particular, the resort to en-tailed
estates and the nobility, with sons whose conduct at the university and in the officers' corps tries to
cover up their social origin, as has been the typical history of German capitalistic parvenu families,
is a product of later decadence. The ideal type of the capitalistic entrepreneur, as it has been
represented even in Germany by occasional outstanding examples, has no relation to such more or
less refined climbers. He avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure, as well as conscious
enjoyment of his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social recogni-tion which
he receives. His manner of life is, in other words, often, and we shall have to investigate the
historical significance of just this important fact, distinguished by a certain ascetic tendency, as
appears clearly enough in the sermon of Franklin which we have quoted. It is, namely, by no means
exceptional, but rather the rule, for him to have a sort of modesty which is essentially more honest
than the reserve which Franklin so shrewdly recommends. He gets nothing out of his wealth for
himself, except the irrational sense of having done his job well.
But it is just that which seems to the pre-capitalistic man so incomprehensible and mysterious, so
unworthy and contemptible. That anyone should be able to make it the sole purpose of his life-work,
to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods, seems to him
explicable only as the product of a perverse instinct, the aurisacrafames.
At present under our individualistic political, legal, and economic institutions, with the forms of
organiza-tion and general structure which are peculiar to our economic order, this spirit of capitalism
might be understandable, as has been said, purely as a result of adaptation. The capitalistic system
so needs this devotion to the calling of making money, it is an attitude toward material goods which
is so well suited to that system, so intimately bound up with the condi-tions of survival in the
economic struggle for existence, that there can to-day no longer be any question of a necessary
connection of that acquisitive manner of life with any single Weltanschauung. In fact, it no longer
needs the support of any religious forces, and feels the attempts of religion to influence economic
life, in so far as they can still be felt at all, to be as much an unjustified interference as its regulation
by the State. In such circumstances men's commercial and social interests do tend to determine
their opinions and attitudes. Whoever does not adapt his manner of life to the conditions of
capitalistic success must go under, or at least cannot rise. But these are phenomena of a time in
which modem capitalism has become dominant and has become emancipated from its old supports.
But as it could at one time destroy the old forms of medieval regulation of economic life only in
alliance with the growing power of the modern State, the same, we may say provisionally, may have
been the case in its relations with religious forces. Whether and in what sense that was the case, it