I. Of the ancient languages only Hebrew has any similar concept.

Most of all in the word '"'?'*f9' It is used for sacerdotal funntions (Exod. XXXV. 2t; Neh. xi. 22; i Chron. ix. 13; xxiii. 4; xxvi. 30), for business in the service of the king (especially i Sam. viii. 16; I Chron. iv. 23; xxix. 6), for the service of a royal official (Esther iii. 9; ix. 3), of a superintendant of labour (2 Kings xii. 12), of a slave (Gen. xxxix. 1 1), of labour in the fields (i Chron. xxvii. 26), of crafts- men (Exod. xxxi. 5; XXXV. 21; Kings vii. 14), for traders (Psa. cvii. 23), and for worldly activity of any kind in the passage, Sirach xi. 20, to be discussed later. The word is derived from the root "^X?, to send, thus meaning originally a task. That it originated in the ideas current in Solomon's bureaucratic kingdom of serfs (Fronstaat), built up as it was according to the Egyptian model, seems evident from the above references. In meaning, however, as I learn from A. Merx, this root concept had become lost even in antiquity. The word came to be used for any sort of labour, and in fact became fully as colourless as the German Beruf, with which it shared the fate of being used primarily for mental and not manual functions. The expression (pn), assignment, task, lesson, which also occurs in Sirach xi. 20, and is translated in the Septuagint with öiaOi^Krj, is also derived from the terminology of the servile bureaucratic regime of the time, as is Ql^""*?"! (Exod. v. 13, cf. Exod. v. 14), where the Septuagint also uses öiaOi^Krj for task. In Sirach xliii. 10 it is rendered in the Septuagint with Kpi/na. In Sirach xi. 20 it is evidently used to signify the fulfillment of God's commandments, being thus related to our calling. On this passage in Jesus Sirach reference may here be made to Smend's well-known book on Jesus Sirach, and for the words öiaOi'jKi], epyov, v6i>og, to his Index zur Weisheit des Jesus Sirach (Berlin, 1907). As is well known, the Hebrew text of the Book of. Sirach was lost, but has been rediscovered by Schechter, and in part supplemented by quotations from the Talmud. Luther did not possess it, and these two Hebrew concepts could not have had any influence on his use of language. (See below on Prov. xxii. 29.)
In Greek there is no term corresponding in ethical connotation to the German or English words at all. Where Luther, quite in the spirit of the modern usage (see below), translates Jesus Sirach xi. 20 and 21, bleibe in deinem Beruf, the Septuagint has at one point epyov, at the other, which however seems to be an entirely corrupt passage, 204
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vovoQ (the Hebrew original speaks of the shining of divine help!). Otherwise in antiquity to Ttpoai^Kox-xo is used in the general sense of duties. In the works of the Stoics Kafiarog occasionally carries similar connotations, though its linguistic source is indifferent (called to my attention by A. Dieterich). All other expressions (such as rd^ic, etc.) have no ethical implications.
In Latin what we translate as calling, a man's sustained activity under the division of labour, which is thus (normally) his source of income and in the long run the economic basis of his existence, is, aside from the colourless opus, expressed with an ethical content, at least similar to that of the German word, either by officium (from opificium, which was originally ethically colourless, but later, as especially in Seneca de benef, IV, p. i8, came to mean Beruf); or by munus, derived from the compulsory obligations of the old civic community; or finally by professio. This last word was also charac- teristically used in this sense for public obligations, probably being derived from the old tax declarations of the citizens. But later it came to be applied in the special modem sense of the liberal pro- fessions (as in professio bene dicendi), and in this narrower meaning had a significance in every way similar to the German Beruf, even in the more spiritual sense of the word, as when Cicero says of someone "non intelligit quid profiteatur", in the sense of "he does not know his real profession". The only difference is that it is, of course, definitely secular without any religious connotation. That is even more true of ars, which in Imperial times was used for handicraft. The Vulgate translates the above passages from Jesus Sirach, at one point with opus, the other (verse 21) with locus, which in this case means something like social station. The addition of mandaturatn tuorum comes from the ascetic Jerome, as Brentano quite rightly remarks, without, however, here or elsewhere, calling attention to the fact that this was characteristic of precisely the ascetic use of the term, before the Reformation in an otherworldly, afterwards in a worldly, sense. It is furthermore uncertain from what text Jerome's translation was made. An influence of the old liturgical meaning of '^S**^^ does not seem to be impossible.
In the Romance languages only the Spanish t^ocaaon in the sense of an inner call to something, from the analogy of a derical oflSce, has a connotation partly corresponding to that of the German word, but it is never used to mean calling in the external sense. In the Romance Bible translations the Spanish vocacion, the Italian vocazione and chiamatnento, which, otherwise have a meaning partly correspond- ing to the Lutheran and Calvinistic usage to be discussed presently, are used only to translate the kXtjok; of the New Testament, the call of the Gospel to eternal salvation, which in the Vulgate is vocatio. Strange to say, Brentano, op. cit., maintains that this fact, which I have myself adduced to defend my view, is evidenced for the existence
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of the concept of the calling in the sense which it had later, before the Reformation. But it is nothing of the kind. /cAj/atg had to be translated by vocatio. But where and when in the Middle Ages was it used in our sense? The fact of this translation, and in spite of it, the lack of any application of the word to worldly callings is what is decisive. Chiamamento is used in this manner along with vocazione in the Italian Bible translation of the fifteenth century, which is printed in the Collezione di opere inedite e rare (Bologna, 1887), while the modern Italian translations use the latter alone. On the other hand, the words used in the Romance languages for calling in the external worldly sense of regular acquisitive activity carry, as appears from all the dictionaries and from a report of my friend Professor Baist (of Freiburg), no religious connotation whatever. This is so no matter whether they are derived from ministerium or officium, which originally had a certain religious colouring, or from ars, professio, and implicare (impeigo), from which it has been entirely absent from the beginning. The passages in Jesus Sirach mentioned above, where Luther used Beruf, are .translated: in French, v. 20, office; v. 21, labeur (Calvinistic translation); Spanish, v. 20, obra; v. 21, lugar (following the Vulgate); recent translations, posto (Protestant). The Protestants of the Latin countries, since they were minorities, did not exercise, possibly without even making the attempt, such a creative influence over their respective languages as Luther did over the still less highly rationalized (in an academic sense) German official language.
2. On the other hand, the Augsburg Confession only contains the idea implicitly and but partially developed. Article XVI (ed. by Kolde, p. 43) teaches: "Meanwhile it (the Gospel) does not dissolve the ties of civil or domestic economy, but strongly enjoins us to maintain them as ordinances of God and in such ordinances {ein jeder nach seinem Beruf) to exercise charity." (Translated by Rev. W. H. Teale, Leeds, 1842.)
(In Latin it is only "et in talibus ordinationibus exercere cari- tatem". The English is evidently translated directly from the Latin, and does not contain the idea which came into the German version. — Translator's Note.)
The conclusion drawn, that one must obey authority, shows that here Beruf is thought of, at least primarily, as an objective order in the sense of the passage in i Cor. vii. 20.
And Article XXVII (Kolde, p. 83) speaks of Beruf (Latin in voca- tione sua) only in connection with estates ordained by God: clergy, magistrates, princes, lords, etc. But even this is true only of the German version of the Konkor dienbuch, while in the German Ed. princeps the sentence is left out.
Only in Article XXVI (Kolde, p. 81) is the word used in a sense ^yhich at least includes our present meaning: "that he did chastise his body, not to deserve by that discipline remission of sin, but to 206
Notes
have his body in bondage and apt to spiritual things, and to do his calling". Translated by Richard Taverner, Philadelphia Publications Society, 1888. (Latin jMA-fa vocationem suam.)
3. According to the lexicons, kindly confirmed by my colleagues Professors Braune and Hoops, the word Beruf {Dutch beroep, English calling, Danish kald, Swedish kallelse) does not occur in any of the languages which now contain it in its present worldly (secular) sense before Luther's translation of the Bible. The Middle High German, Middle Low German, and Middle Dutch words, which sound like it, all mean the same as Ruf in modern German, especially inclusive, in late mediaeval times, of the calling (vocation) of a candidate to a clerical benefice by those with the power of appointment. It is a special case which is also often mentioned in the dictionaries of the Scandinavian languages. The word is also occasionally used by Luther in the same sense. However, even though this special use of the word may have promoted its change of meaning, the modern conception of Beruf undoubtedly goes linguistically back to the Bible translations by Protestants, and any anticipation of it is only to be found, as we shall see later, inTauler (died 1361). All the languages which were fundamentally influenced by the Protestant Bible trans- lations have the word, all of which this was not true (like the Romance languages) do not, or at least not in its modern meaning.
Luther renders two quite diflferent concepts with Beruf. First the Pauline KXfjaig in the sense of the call to eternal salvation through Qod.Thus: i Cor. i. 26; Eph.i. 18; iv. 1,4; 2 Thess.i. 11 ; Heb.iii. i ; 2 Peter i. 10. All these cases concern the purely religious idea of the call through the Gospel taught by the apostle; the word KAfjaig has nothing to do with worldly callings in the modern sense. The German Bibles before Luther use in this case ritffunge (so in all those in the Heidelberg Library), and sometimes instead of "von Gott geruffet" say "von Gott gefordert". Secondly, however, he, as we have already seen, translates the words in Jesus Sirach discussed in the previous note (in the Septuagint £v reo epyco aov T:a\aiwOi)Ti and Kai e/x/xeve TO) novo) aov), with "beharre in deinem Beruf" and "bliebe in deinem Beruf", instead of "bliebe bei deiner Arbeit". The later (authorized) Catholic translations (for instance that of Fleischütz, Fulda, 1781) have (as in the New Testament passages) simply followed him. Luther's translation of the passage in the Book of Sirach is, so far as I know, the first case in which the German word Beruf appears in its present purely secular sense.The preceding exhortation, verse 20, axTJdi ev diaOriKj) aov, he translates "bliebe in Gottes Wort", although Sirach xiv. i and xliii. 10 show that, corresponding to the Hebrew pr\, which (according to quotations in the Talmud) Sirach used, öiadi]Kr] really did mean something similar to our calling, namely one's fate or assigned task. In its later and present sense the word Beruf did not exist in the German language, nor, so far as I can learn,
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in the works of the older Bible translators or preachers. The German Bibles before Luther rendered the passage from Sirach with Werk. Berthold of Regensburg, at the points in his sermons where the modern would say Beruf, uses the word Arbeit. The usage was thus the same as in antiquity. The first passage I know, in which not Beruf but Ruf (as a translation of KXfjaio) is applied to purely worldly labour, is in the fine sermon of Tauler on Ephesians iv (Works, Basle edi- tion, f. 117. v), of peasants who misten go : they often fare better "so sie folgen einfeltiglich irem Ruff denn die geistlichen Menschen, die auf ihren Ruf nicht Acht haben". The word in this sense did not find its way into everyday speech. Although Luther's usage at first vacillates between Ruf and Beruf (see Werke, Erlangen edition, p. 51.), that he was directly influenced by Tauler is by no means certain, although the Freiheit eines Christenmenschen is in miany respects similar to this sermon of Tauler. But in the purely worldly sense of Tauler, Luther did not use the word Ruf. (This against Denifle, Luther, p. 163.)
Now evidently Sirach 's advice in the version cf the Septuagint contains, apart from the general exhortation to trust in God, no suggestion of a specifically religious valuation of secular labour in a calling. The term tiovoz, toil, in the corrupt second passage would be rather the opposite, if it were not corrupted. What Jesus Sirach says simply corresponds to the exhortation of the psalmist (Psa. xxxvii. 3), "Dwell in the land, and feed on his faithfulness", as also comes out clearly in the connection with the warning not to let oneself be blinded with the works of the godless, since it is easy for God to make a poor man rich. Only the opening exhortation to remain in the p\\ (verse 20) has a certain resemblance to the KAfjai; of the Gospel, but here Luther did not use the word Beruf for the Greek Öiadi)Kq. The connection between Luther's two seemingly quite unrelated uses of the word Beruf is found in the first letter to the Corinthians and its translation.
In the usual modern editions, the whole context in which the passage stands is as follows, i Cor, vii. 17 (English, King James version [American revision, iqoi]): "(17) Only as the Lord hath distributed to each man, as God hath called each, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches. (18) Was any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Hath any man been called in uncircumcision ? let him not be circumcised. (19) Circum- cision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God. (20) Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called (t'f rn KAr'jaei rj ekA/jOi] ; an undoubted Hebraism, as Professor Merx tells me). (21) Wast thou called being a bond- servant? care not for it; nay even if thou canst become free use it rather. (22) For he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant is the Lord's freedman; likewise he that was called being free is
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Christ's bondservant. (23) Ye were bought with a price; become not bondservants of men. (24) Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God."
In verse 29 follows the remark that time is shortened, followed by the well-known commandments motivated by eschatological expecta- tions: (31) to possess women as though one did not have them, to buy as though one did not have what one had bought, etc. In verse 20 Luther, following the older German translations, even in 1523 in his exigesis of this chapter, renders KXfjaiQ with Beruf, and interprets it with Stand. (Erlangen ed., LI, p. 51.)
In fact it is evident that the word KXfjan; at this point, and only at this, corresponds approximately to the Latin status and the German Stand (status of marriage, status of a servant, etc.). But of course not as Brentano, op. cit., p. 137, assumes, in the modern sense of Beruf. Brentano can hardly have read this passage, or what I have said about it, very carefully. In a sense at least suggesting it this word, which is etymologically related to sKKArjaia, an assembly which has been called, occurs in Greek literature, so far as the lexicons tell, only once in a passage from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, where it corresponds to the Latin classis, a word borrowed from the Greek, meaning that part of the citizenry which has been called to the colours. Theophylaktos (eleventh-twelfth century) interprets I Cor. vii. 20: iv oio) ßio) Kai ev olq) Tay/naTi Kai TToAirev/iazi wv evlarevaev. (My colleague Professor Deissmann called my attention to this passage.) Now, even in our passage, KXf^aiz does not correspond to the modern Beruf. But having translated KAfjaig with Beruf in the eschatologically motivated exhortation, that everyone should remain in his present status, Luther, when he later came to translate the Apocrypha, would naturally, on account of the similar content of the exhortations alone, also use Beruf for novog in the traditionalistic and anti-chrematistic commandment of Jesus Sirach, that everyone should remain in the same business. This is what is important and characteristic. The passage in i Cor. vii. 17 does not, as has been pointed out, use KAfjaiQ at all in the sense of Beruf, a definite field of activity. In the meantime (or about the same time), in the Augsburg Con- fession, the Protestant dogma of the uselessness of the Catholic attempt to excel worldly morality was established, and in it the expression "einem jeglichen nach seinem Beruf" was used (see previous note). In Luther's translation, both this and the positive valuation of the order in which the individual was placed, as holy, which was gaining ground just about the beginning of the 1530's, stand out. It was a result of his more and more sharply defined belief in special Divine Providence, even in the details of life, and at the same time of his increasing inclination to accept the existing order of things in the world as immutably willed by God. Vocatio, in the traditional Latin, meant the divine call to a life of holiness,
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especially in a monastery or as a priest. But now, under the influence of this dogma, life in a worldly calling came for Luther to have the same connotation. For he now translated novoc, and epyov in Jesus Sirach with Beruf, for which, up to that time, there had been only the (Latin) analogy, coming from the monastic translation. But a few. years earlier, in Prov. xxii. 29, he had still translated the Hebrew n3X?9> which was the original of epyov in the Greek text of Jesus Sirach, and which, like the German Beruf and the Scandinavian kald, kallelse, originally related to a spiritual call {Beruf), as in other passages (Gen. xxxix. 11), with Geschäft (Septuagint epyov, Vulgate opus, English Bibles business, and correspondingly in the Scandinavian and all the other translations before me).
The word Beruf, in the modern sense which he had finally created, remained for the time being entirely Lutheran. To the Calvinists the Apocrypha are entirely uncanonical. It was only as a result of the development which brought the interest in proof of salvation to the fore that Luther's concept was taken over, and then strongly empha- sized by them. But in their first (Romance) translations they had no such word available, and no power to create one in the usage of a language already so stereotyped.
As early as the sixteenth century the concept of Beruf in its present sense became established in secular literature. The Bible translators before Luther had used the word Berufung for KXfjaig (as for instance in the Heidelberg versions of 1462-66 and 1485), and the Eck trans- lation of 1537 says "in dem Ruf, worin er beruft ist". Most of the later Catholic translators directly follow Luther. In England, the first of all, Wyclif's translation (1382), used cleping (the Old English word which was later replaced by the borrowed calling). It is quite characteristic of the Lollard ethics to use a word which already corresponded to the later usage of the Reformation. Tyndale's transla- tion of 1534, on the other hand, interprets the idea in terms of status: "in the same state wherein he was called", as also does the Geneva Bible of 1557. Cranmer's oflScial translation of 1539 substituted calling for state, whil^ the (Catholic) Bible of Rheims (1582), as well as the Anglican Court Bibles of the Elizabethan era, characteristically return to vocation, following the Vulgate.
That for England, Cranmer's Bible translation is the source of the Puritan conception of calling in the sense of Beruf, trade, has already, quite correctly, been pointed out by Murray. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century calling is used in that sense. In 1588 unlawful callings are referred to, and in 1603 greater callings in the sense of higher occupations, etc. (see Murray). Quite remarkable is Bren- tano's idea {op. cit., p. 139), that in the Middle Ages vocatio was not translated with Beruf, and that this concept was not knowTi, because only a free man could engage in a Beruf, and freemen, in the middle-class professions, did not exist at that time. Since the 210
4
Notes
whole social structure of the mediaeval crafts, as opposed to those of antiquity, rested upon free labour, and, above all, almost all the merchants were freemen, I do not clearly understand this thesis.
4. Compare with the following the instructive discussion in K. Eger, Die Anschauung Luthers vom Beruf (Giessen, 1900). Perhaps its only serious fault, which is shared by almost all other theological writers, is his insufficiently clear analysis of the concept of lex naturce. On this see E. Troeltsch in his review of Seeberg's Dogmengeschichte, and now above all in the relevant parts of his Soziallehren der christ- lichen Kirchen.
5. For when Thomas Aquinas represents the division of men into estates and occupational groups as the work of divine providence, by that he means the objective cosmos of society. But that the individual should take up a particular calling (as we should say; Thomas, however, says ministerium or officium) is due to causce naturales. Qucest. quodlibetal, VII, Art. 17c: "Haec autem diversi- ficatio hominum in diversis officiis contingit primo ex divina Pro- videntia, quae ita hominum status distribuit . . . secundo etiam ex causis naturalibus', ex quibus contingit, quod in diversis hominibus sunt diversae inclinationes ad diversa officia. . . ."
Quite similar is Pascal's view when he says that it is chance which determines the choice of a calling. See on Pascal, A. Koester, Die Ethik Pascals (1907). Of the organic systems of religious ethics, only the most complete of them, the Indian, is different in this respect. The difference between the Thomistic and the Protestant ideas of the calling is so evident that we may dismiss it for the present with the above quotation. This is true even as between the Thomistic and the later Lutheran ethics, which are very similar in many other respects, especially in their emphasis on Providence. We shall return later to a discussion of the Catholic view-point. On Thomas Aquinas, see Maurenbrecher, Thomas von Aquino's Stellung zum Wirtschafts- leben seiner Zeit, 1888. Otherwise, where Luther agrees with Thomas in details, he has probably been influenced rather by the general doctrines of Scholasticism than by Thomas in particular. For, accord- ing to Denifle's investigations, he seems really not to have known Thomas very well. See Denifle, Luther und Luthertum (1903), p. 501, and on it, Koehler, Ein Wort zu Denifles Luther (1904), p. 25.
6. In Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, (i) the double nature of man is used for the justification of worldly duties in the sense of the lex natures (here the natural order of the world). From that it follows (Erlangen edition, 27, p. 188) that man is inevitably bound to his body and to the social community. (2) In this situation he will (p. 196: this is a second justification), if he is a believing Christian, decide to repay God's act X)f grace, which was done for pure love, by love of his neighbour. With this very loose connection between faith and love is combined (3) (p. 190) the old ascetic justification
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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 natures 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.
(^y. "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 quaeque 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 natura, 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 astonishirtg 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, o/).aV.,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 lyten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg Historical Dissertation, 1914. It is a separately printed part of a more comprehensive work on the Vorge- schichte der französischen Aufklärung. Compare especially pp. 138 ff.).
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