The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
For only by a fundamental change in the whole meaning of life at every moment and in every action[73] could the effects of grace transforming a man from the status naturæ to the status gratiæ be proved.
The life of the saint was directed solely toward a transcendental end, salvation. But precisely for that reason it was thoroughly rationalized in this world and dominated entirely by the aim to add to the glory of God on earth. Never has the precept omnia in majorem dei gloriam been taken with more bitter seriousness.[74] Only a life guided by constant thought could achieve conquest over the state of nature. Descartes's cogito ergo sum was taken over by the contemporary Puritans with this ethical reinterpretation.[75] It was this rationalization which gave the Reformed faith its peculiar ascetic tendency, and is the basis both of its relationship[76] to and its conflict with Catholicism. For naturally similar things were not unknown to Catholicism.
Without doubt Christian asceticism, both outwardly and in its inner meaning, contains many different things. But it has had a definitely rational character in its highest Occidental forms as early as the Middle Ages, and in several forms even in antiquity. The great historical significance of Western monasticism, as contrasted with that of the Orient, is based on this fact, not in all cases, but in its general type. In the rules of St. Benedict, still more with the monks of Cluny, again with the Cistercians, and most strongly the Jesuits, it has become emancipated from planless otherworldliness and irrational self-torture. It had developed a systematic method of rational conduct with the purpose of overcoming the status naturæ, to free
