The history of religious thought on questions of social ethics is a topic which has been treated in England by the late Dr. Cunningham, by Sir William Ashley, whose essay on The Canonist Doctrine first interested me in the subject, by Mr. G. G. Coulton, Mr. H. G. Wood, and Mr. G. O’Brien. But it is no reflection on their work to say that the most important contributions of recent years have come from continental students, in particular Troeltsch, Choisy, Sombart, Brentano, Levy and, above all, Max Weber, whose celebrated essay on Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus gave a new turn to the discussion. No one can work, on however humble a scale, in the same field, without being conscious of the heavy obligation under which these scholars have laid him. While I have not always been able to accept their conclusions, I am glad to have this opportunity of expressing my indebtedness to them. I regret that Mr. Coulton’s The Mediæval Village appeared too late for me to make use of its abundant stores of learning and insight.
It only remains for me to thank the friends whose assistance has enabled me to make this book somewhat less imperfect than it would otherwise have been. Mr. J. L. Hammond, Dr. E. Power, and Mr. A. P. Wadsworth have been kind enough to read, and to improve, the manuscript. Professor J. E. Neale, in addition to reading the proofs, has helped me most generously throughout with advice and criticism. I am deeply indebted both to Miss Bulkley, who has undertaken the thankless task of correcting the proofs and making an index, and to the London School of Economics and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund for enabling me to make use of her services. My obligation to the help given by my wife is beyond acknowledgment.
R. H. Tawney.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | [ix] | |
| CHAPTER | ||
| I. THE MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND | [1] | |
| THE SOCIAL ORGANISM | [14] | |
| THE SIN OF AVARICE | [36] | |
| THE IDEAL AND THE REALITY | [55] | |
| II. THE CONTINENTAL REFORMERS | [63] | |
| THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION | [66] | |
| LUTHER | [79] | |
| CALVIN | [102] | |
| III. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND | [133] | |
| THE LAND QUESTION | [137] | |
| RELIGIOUS THEORY AND SOCIAL POLICY | [150] | |
| THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALISM | [175] | |
| IV. THE PURITAN MOVEMENT | [195] | |
| PURITANISM AND SOCIETY | [198] | |
| A GODLY DISCIPLINE VERSUS THE RELIGION OF TRADE | [211] | |
| THE TRIUMPH OF THE ECONOMIC VIRTUES | [227] | |
| THE NEW MEDICINE FOR POVERTY | [253] | |
| V. CONCLUSION | [275] | |
| NOTES | [289] | |
| INDEX | [327] |
CHAPTER I
THE MEDIEVAL BACKGROUND
“La miséricorde de Dieu est infinie: elle sauvera même un riche.”
Anatole France, Le Puits de Sainte Claire.
“Que pourrions-nous gagner,” once wrote a celebrated economist, “à recueillir des opinions absurdes, des doctrines décriées, et qui méritent de l’être? Il serait à la fois inutile et fastidieux de les exhumer.”[[1]] One who studies the development of social theory can hardly hope to avoid the criticism which is brought against those who disturb the dust in forgotten lumber-rooms. If he seeks an excuse beyond his own curiosity, he may find it, perhaps, in the reflection that the past reveals to the present what the present is capable of seeing, and that the face which to one age is a blank may to another be pregnant with meaning. Writing when economic science was in the first flush of its dogmatic youth, it was natural that Say should dismiss as an unprofitable dilettantism an interest in the speculations of ages unillumined by the radiance of the new Gospel. But to determine the significance of opinion is, perhaps, not altogether so simple a matter as he supposed. Since the brave days when Torrens could say of Political Economy, “Twenty years hence there will scarcely exist a doubt respecting any of its fundamental principles,”[[2]] how many confident certainties have been undermined! How many doctrines once dismissed as the emptiest of superstitions have revealed an unsuspected vitality!
The attempt to judge economic activity and social organization by ethical criteria raises problems which are eternal, and it is possible that a study of the thought of an age when that attempt was made, if with little success, at least with conviction and persistence, may prove, even today, not wholly without instruction. In the present century, the old issues seem, indeed, to have acquired a new actuality. The philosophy which would keep economic interests and ethical idealism safely locked up in their separate compartments finds that each of the prisoners is increasingly restive. On the one hand, it is evident that the whole body of regulations, by which modern societies set limits to the free play of economic self-interest, implies the acceptance, whether deliberate or unconscious, of moral standards, by reference to which certain kinds of economic conduct are pronounced illegitimate. On the other hand, there are indications that religious thought is no longer content to dismiss the transactions of business and the institutions of society as matters irrelevant to the life of the spirit.
Silently, but unmistakably, the conception of the scope and content of Christian ethics which was generally, though not universally, accepted in the nineteenth century, is undergoing a revision; and in that revision the appeal to the experience of mankind, which is history, has played some part, and will play a larger one. There have been periods in which a tacit agreement, accepted in practice if not stated in theory, excluded economic activities and social institutions from examination or criticism in the light of religion. A statesman of the early nineteenth century, whose conception of the relations of Church and State appears to have been modeled on those of Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is said to have crushed a clerical reformer with the protest, “Things have come to a pretty pass if religion is going to interfere with private life”; and a more recent occupant of his office has explained the catastrophe which must follow, if the Church crosses the Rubicon which divides the outlying provinces of the spirit from the secular capital of public affairs.[[3]]