Foreword
means confined to it, but was part of a general intellectual movement, which was reflected in the outlook of Catholic, as well as of Protestant, writers. Nor was the influence of Calvinist teaching itself so uniform in character, or so undeviating in tendency, as might be inferred by the reader of Weber's essay. On the contrary, it varied widely from period to period and country to country, with differences of economic conditions, social tradition, and political environment. It looked to the past as well as to the future. If in some of its phases it was on the side of change, in others it was conservative.
Most of Weber's illustrations of his thesis are drawn from the writings of English Puritans of the latter part of the seventeenth century. It is their teaching which supplies him with the materials for his picture of the pious bourgeois conducting his business as a calling to which Providence has summoned the elect. Whether the idea conveyed by the word "calling" is so peculiar to Calvinism as Weber implies is a question for theologians; but the problem, it may be suggested, is considerably more complex than his treatment of it suggests. For three generations of economic development and political agitation lay between these writers and the author of the Institutes. The Calvinism which fought the English Civil War, still more the Calvinism which won an uneasy toleration at the Revolution, was not that of its founder.
Calvin's own ideal of social organization is revealed by the system which he erected at Geneva. It had been a theocracy administered by a dictatorship of ministers. In "the most perfect school of Christ ever seen on
