The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
of labour as a means of securing to the inner man mastery over the body. (4) Labour is hence, as the reasoning is continued with another appearance of the idea of lex naturæ in another sense (here, natural morality), an original instinct given by God to Adam (before the fall), which he has obeyed "solely to please God". Finally (5) (pp. 161 and 199), there appears, in connection with Matt. vii. 18 f., the idea that good work in one's ordinary calling is and must be the result of the renewal of life, caused by faith, without, however, developing the most important Calvinistic idea of proof. The powerful emotion which dominates the work explains the presence of such contradictory ideas.
7. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love; and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages" (Wealth of Nations, Book I, chap. ii).
8. "Omnia enim per te operabitur (Deus), mulgebit per te vaccam et servilissima quæque opera faciet, ac maxima pariter et minima ipsi grata erunt" (Exigesis of Genesis, Opera lat. exeget., ed. Elsperger, VII, p. 213). The idea is found before Luther in Tauler, who holds the spiritual and the worldly Ruf to be in principle of equal value. The difference from the Thomistic view is common to the German mystics and Luther. It may be said that Thomas, principally to retain the moral value of contemplation, but also from the view-point of the mendicant friar, is forced to interpret Paul's doctrine that "if a man will not work he shall not eat" in the sense that labour, which is of course necessary lege naturæ, is imposed upon the human race as a whole, but not on all individuals. The gradation in the value of forms of labour, from the opera servilia of the peasants upwards, is connected with the specific character of the mendicant friars, who were for material reasons bound to the town as a place of domicile. It was equally foreign to the German mystics and to Luther, the peasant's son; both of them, while valuing all occupations equally, looked upon their order of rank as willed by God. For the relevant passages in Thomas see Maurenbrecher, op. cit., pp. 65 ff.
9. It is astonishing that some investigators can maintain that such a change could have been without effect upon the actions of men. I confess my inability to understand such a view.
10. "Vanity is so firmly imbedded in the human heart that a camp-follower, a kitchen-helper, or a porter, boast and seek admirers. . . ."(Faugeres edition, I, p. 208. Compare Koester, op. cit., pp. 17, 136 ff.). On the attitude of Port Royal and the Jansenists to the calling, to which we shall return, see now the excellent study of Dr. Paul Honigsheim, Die Staats- und Soziallehren der französischen Jansenisten im 17ten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg Historical Dissertation, 1914. It is a separately printed part of a more comprehensive work on the Vorgeschichte der französischen Aufklärung. Compare especially pp. 138 ff.).
