tive unity of thought and life and is largely responsible for the present "heterogeneous collection of provincial moralities " that has been identified with the social conscience of the American people. As the comprehensive loyalties rooted in Calvinism gradually faded from the hearts and minds of men the residuary traditions of individualism were utterly unequal to the task of creating the new synthesis of loyalties demanded by the modern mutualized social order. The tragedy of the situation lay in the fact that Calvinism recognized no middle ground between the complete attainment of the ideal, perfect conformity to the divine order, and moral chaos.

83. THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF CALVINISM

Since no detail of life, even the most insignificant, fell outside the closed logical system of Calvinism, it followed that every phase of the individual's life felt the binding force of the moral ideal. Calvin justified an injunction to the magistrates to punish the drunkards and adulterers as well as the murderers on the ground "that they may have a sense of discretion in them and that they do not act like dogs and pigs ". Here we have the key to the moral ideal of Calvinism. It saw in the rationally ordered life the one that was most in harmony with the will of God. The "blue laws" of colonial days appear to the moral sense of a later age meddlesome and tyrannical. It must not be forgotten, however, that they were prompted by a lofty conception of the moral and spiritual unity, the dignity and infinite significance of life itself. Only some such feeling of the inherent worth of life could have induced men and women to submit to punishment for absence from church, the use of gold chains, for joking about the minister, consulting a gypsy, or for saying requiescat in pace over the grave of a husband. The high sense

of social responsibility born of this keen realization of the fundamental reasonableness and moral unity of life led to other regulations that were not so absurd from the standpoint of the modern victim of the food-profiteer. The butcher, for example, who sold spoiled meat or inedible parts of animals was forced

to make the round of the city, torch in hand, with "the aforesaid pieces of meat attached to him ".

With the loss of a vivid sense of the fundamental moral unity of life and its essential rationality went the discrediting of the corresponding comprehensive scheme of values that included the smallest details of existence. As the unity of the moral and spiritual life was broken down, these regulations inevitably took on an atmosphere of censoriousness, of unwarranted interference with personal rights and even of gossipy meddlesomeness that sapped life of its dignity. Hence it is but a step from the lofty ethical idealism of the Puritan to the hypocrisy that was almost always associated with Puritanism in its decadent forms. Moral insincerity was the necessary result of the failure to realize this lofty ethical idea. The tragedy of the situation was that Puritanism admitted of no compromise between spiritual and moral bankruptcy and the attainment of the ideal in all its impossible logical finality and its ethical absoluteness.

To be sure, there lingered in Puritan and Scotch-Irish communities, long after the theology of Calvin began to be discredited, a sort of moral residuum often called "the Puritan conscience". It is a familiar fact that the peculiar "set" given to the emotional life of an individual or of a community often remains after the institutional forms or the ideational framework which created this organization of sentiments has disappeared or been discredited. The Puritan or New England conscience with all its noble traditions of civic and political responsibility, its indomitable moral idealism, its splendid courage, is merely the result of the moral discipline of Puritan ideas and institutions. "Fabricated in the crucible of persecution from without and pragmatical criticism from within, stimulated by fervid idealism and a stern class necessity, the Puritan conscience became the finest, and, in some respects, the most irrational element of Puritan psychology. . . . The sense of duty, the service of right for the right's sake, the burden of the cause of righteousness to be borne, with no thought of self, in defiance of the sneers of the world, the

1

seductions of the flesh, the wiles and torments of the Arch Fiend himself," this is the essence of the Puritan conscience. This has been indeed the priceless legacy of Puritanism to later generations. But even the Puritan conscience is unable to survive the decentralization of our moral and spiritual loyalties; it is to-day a disappearing element in our national life.

Belated echoes of this once powerfully unified and religiously sanctioned scheme of morality can still be detected. Many good people to-day still take seriously the sin of the game of cards, condemn the theater or are scandalized at the thought of Sunday baseball. They are for the most part unconscious of the historical background of this moral attitude. Were they better acquainted with the history of the past they would know that games of chance were condemned because of their irrational element. The appeal to chance is to a certain extent an insult to the eternal rational order determined by the sovereign will of God. For the same reason the theater was opposed because the actors sought to portray the hopes and fears, the good and the evil in other personalities than their own. In this way they stultified real life and introduced confusion into the divine plan according to which each is to "work out his own salvation with fear and trembling". We have here a curious approximation to Plato's condemnation of the poets and players in his ideal state because they were imitators of imitators, that is to say, they were twice removed from moral and spiritual reality and therefore were a menace to the dignity and integrity of human life.'

1 Clarence Meily, Puritanism, p. 63.

2 For a somewhat belated defense of the Calvinistic ethic see Kuyper, Calvinism. John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration and president of Princeton, gives the typical Scotch-Irish Presbyterian attitude in his little book on the stage. An interesting sketch of the rigid application of Calvinistic ethic among Scotch-Irish Presbyterians as far west as southern Indiana and as late as the middle of the last century may be found in Professor J. A. Woodburn's brochure, The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in Monroe County, Indiana, Indiana Historical Publications, Vol. IV, No. 8, PP. 493 ff.

§ 4. THE PURITAN ETHICS OF BUSINESS

That there is a very close connection between Puritanism and the rise of capitalism is now being increasingly recognized by economists and historians. This is particularly in evidence in connection with the Puritan emphasis of one's "calling ". What must have been the effect upon the business ethic of the English middle class of the seventeenth century, where we must seek the beginnings of the modern capitalism, of such exhortations as the following addressed by the Puritan Richard Baxter to his congregation of Kidderminster weavers? "Especially be sure that you live not out of your calling, that is, such a stated course of employment, in which you may best be serviceable, to God. No man must live idly or content himself with doing some little chars as a recreation or on the by: but every one that is able must be statedly and ordinarily employed in such work as is serviceable to God and the common good." This "calling" may not be lightly changed and the injunction is "avoid avocations".

The reason for this emphasis of a fixed calling is evident. It is part of the divinely ordained plan for the attainment of moral and spiritual perfection. A Jack-of-all-trades is an affront to God, a moral and spiritual menace. He is a wandering star in the spiritual firmament because he is not in the position to "make his calling and election sure". Not work per se, therefore, but a certain sort of work, that which is prosecuted according to a carefully thought-out plan, covering years of time and adjusted to the countless social responsibilities of the worker, work in short that falls in with and reflects the eternally predestined plan of God-this is the type of work demanded by Puritanism. With such vast emphasis placed upon one's business it is not surprising to learn, “A man that makes his calling his business is not lazy but laborious. What pains will he take! What strength will he spend! How will he toil and moil at it early and late."

Intimately associated with the obligation to diligence in business was the element of thrift, especially in connection

with the injunction to redeem the time. "It is a more necessary thriftiness to be sparing and saving of your time", writes Baxter, "than of your money". For time is "man's opportunity for all those works for which he liveth, and which his Creator doth expect of him, and on which his endless life dependeth". When we connect this emphasis upon productive capacity due to the notion of "calling" and the duty of redeeming the time with the ascetic element which forbade the expenditure of surplus earnings upon articles of luxury, such as dress, theaters, games, and the like, we have the two elements in the character of early Puritanism that played no small part in the creation of capitalism. The moral obligation which impelled the Puritan to make use of his talents to the utmost of his ability as a divinely ordained method of assuring his soul's salvation forced him to reinvest his accumulated earnings which the ascetic simplicity of his life would not allow him to spend. Thus was a circle of activities created that undoubtedly furthered the rise of capitalism. It is, therefore, no accident, as Max Weber and others have pointed out, that capitalism has flourished most vigorously among those groups and in those countries where Calvinism has prevailed.

There are certain important corollaries arising from the Puritan philosophy of work and of wealth. Calvinism is the only great historical form of institutionalized Christianity that saw in the sheer accumulation of wealth a possible indication of God's blessing and an assurance of the eternal welfare of the soul. For, since wealth is one indication of success in one's calling and since success in one's calling comes as a result of coöperation with the divine plan, it follows that wealth rightly gained is a token of God's favor and an evidence of spiritual growth. Not only is this true but the man with wealth-producing capacity has no other alternative than to make use of his powers. To refuse to do so would be to reject the economic destiny ordained of God and this would be a sin. "If God show you a way", says Baxter, "in which you may lawfully get more than in another way, if you refuse