economic machine—an important one if he had much capital, an insignificant one if he had none—but always a cog to serve a purpose outside of himself. This readiness for submission of one’s self to extrahuman ends was actually prepared by Protestantism, although nothing was further from Luther’s or Calvin’s mind than the approval of such supremacy of economic activities. But in their theological teaching they had laid the ground for this development by breaking man’s spiritual backbone, his feeling of dignity and pride, by teaching him that activity had no further aims outside of himself.
