Sublime

Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the deadliest of sins. The span of human life is infinitely short and precious to make sure of one’s own election. Loss of time through sociability, idle talk,10 luxury,11 even more sleep than is necessary for health,12 six to at most eight hours, is worthy of absolute moral condemnation.

Hence, the third principle of democratic socialism is the one formulated by Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”57 Marx does not develop the meaning of the principle, but in light of the first two principles of democratic socialism we can elaborate the implications. The aim of democratic socialism is to allow

Locke’s political philosophy was, on the whole, adequate and useful until the industrial revolution. Since then, it has been increasingly unable to tackle the important problems. The power of property, as embodied in vast corporations, grew beyond anything imagined by Locke.

The Puritan, like every rational type of asceticism, tried to enable a man to maintain and act upon his constant motives, especially those which it taught him itself, against the emotions. In this formal psychological sense of the term it tried to make him into a personality.

The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; and this virtue and proficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin’s ethic, as expressed in the passages we have quoted, as well as in all his works

The peculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appears to be the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself. Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one’s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infra

Thus election could not be proved by theological learning at all.111 Hence Pietism, with a deep distrust of the Church of the theologians,112 to which—this is characteristic of it—it still belonged officially, began to gather the adherents of the praxis pietatis in conventicles removed from the world.

In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves.63 Thus the Calvinist, as it is sometimes put, himself creates64 his own salvation, or, as would be more correct, the conviction of it.