Quiz: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

10 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. What difference does Weber find between Catholic and Protestant journeymen?

   Catholics more often become master craftsmen Protestants more often leave the towns to become farmers Protestants more often emigrate to America and the colonies Catholics more often move into the factories to fill skilled and clerical posts
2. 2. From which document does Weber quote the doctrine of predestination?

   The Augsburg Confession The Canons of the Synod of Dort Calvin’s first edition of the Institutes The Westminster Confession of 1647
3. 3. How does Tawney state the question Weber attempts to answer?

   How American silver caused the price revolution Why Catholic countries industrialised faster than Protestant ones in the nineteenth century Why the Reformation broke out in Germany rather than in France, Italy or England The psychological conditions that made capitalist civilization possible
4. 4. What form of capitalism does Weber say developed only in the modern Occident?

   Tax-farming and colonial plantations Long-distance trade by travelling merchants Money-lending to princes to finance their wars The rational capitalistic organization of formally free labour
5. 5. Why, in Weber’s account, did Luther’s idea of the calling grow more traditionalistic after the 1520s?

   He adopted Calvin’s doctrine of predestination He came to believe that profit in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing on the believer A deepening belief in Providence equated obedience to God with accepting things as they were He was persuaded by the Jesuits’ compromise with the world and with worldly activity
6. 6. In Baxter’s view, as Weber quotes it, how should the care for external goods lie on the saint?

   Like a light cloak which can be thrown aside at any moment Like a steward’s account book to be rendered at the end Like a heavy yoke laid on the shoulders by God for life Like armour against temptation
7. 7. What does Weber say, at the end of the essay, it is not his aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic interpretation?

   An equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation A purely political interpretation of the Reformation and its results A statistical analysis of the occupations of each confession A theory of national character
8. 8. Where was Weber’s essay first published, according to the Translator’s Preface?

   As a book by Allen & Unwin in 1904 In the Gesammelte Aufsätze, 1905 In the Neue Zeit, 1905 In the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 1904–5
9. 9. Which society does Tawney give as an example of immense resources dissipated in luxury and war?

   Renaissance Venice The Spain of Philip II Golden-Age Holland The France of Louis XIV
10. 10. What consequence of predestination for the believer does Weber stress above all?

    Greater reliance on private confession Indifference to the question of one’s own salvation A new confidence in the sacraments Unprecedented inner loneliness