Thorstein Veblen
Review author of: Der Bourgeois: zur Geistesgeschichte des modernen 
Wirtschaftsmenschen. By WERNER SOMBART. Leipzig: Duncker u. Humblot, 1913. 8vo, 
pp. vii + 540. M. 12.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 23, No. 8. (Oct., 1915), p. 846-848.
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[846] In the words of the Preface, the purpose of the volume is to supply what 
has been wanting in the many characterizations of the spirit of modern business 
hitherto offered, in that it aims to set forth the historica foundations of this 
spiritual development that comes to a head in the temper and working of the 
business community. And it is perhaps needless to say that the author achieves 
this purpose with the thoroughness sincerity, and felicitous presentation that 
has come habitually to be expected of him. As in Professor Sombart's earlier 
work on the development of capitalistic business, so here also the attention 
centers on the case of the German community, but with rather more detailed 
consideration given to outside and related lines of economic history than has 
been the case in his earlier studies in this field.
Wise with the insight born of scholarly impartiality and long familiarity with 
his subject-matter, Professor Sombart tells his readers:
Ein bestimmter Geist "herrscht" zu einer Zeit dann, wenn er überhaupt eine weite 
Verbreitung hat, er herrscht vor, wenn er die wirtschaftlichen Handlungen der 
meisten Wirtschaftssubjekte bestimmt. Gegen eine solche Annahme eines 
"herrschenden" oder "vorherrschenden" Geistes wird nur der Eigensinn oder der 
Unverstand geltend machen, dass in dieser selben Zeit auch Individuen gelebt 
haben, die anders orientiert, mit einem anderen Wirtschaftsgeiste erfüllt waren.
For our own time this dominant spirit is the spirit of business enterprise, the 
"capitalistic" spirit. English-speaking students might perhaps prefer to say 
that the affairs of any modern community are in the last resort guided by 
business principles, or by the principles enforced by the price system.
For its beginnings the history of this "capitalistic" spirit runs back into the 
prehistory of the Western peoples, taking its rise in the primordial struggle 
for wealth that comes in sight in the earliest antiquities of the Western world 
- die Gier nach Gold und Geld. The firstt item of documentation offered on this 
head (pp. 29-30), a passage from Völuspa, is [847] not altogether fortunate, in 
that it is drawn from Wolzogen's sophistication of the text rather than on the 
indubitable meaning of the original. No particular mischief results in this 
instance, it is true, but the incident may serve to call to mind that even a 
widely informed and intelligent scholar need be cautious in the documentary use 
of detailed passages taken at second hand.
With the advent of the "money-economy" and its fuller unfolding into a price 
system the lust after wealth and gold takes on the specific form of a love of 
money, and when this is associated with the bourgeois virtues that have come to 
shape the ethics of economic relations in later time, the product is the 
investing capitalist undertaker, or more simply the business man as we know him. 
These virtues that enter into the composition of a business man are well set out 
in Benjamin Franklin's tabulation: moderation, reticence, orderliness, 
resolution, economy, diligence, truthfulness, honesty, temperance, cleanliness, 
equanimity, chastity, modesty. These traits characteristic of the "desirable 
citizen" when backed up by and pervaded with an unfailing love of gain, give us 
the business man as he functions in the conduct of economic affairs in the 
modern world. It is the spirit of conservative enterprise so indicated, 
therefore, that dominates the concerns of the nations comprised in the world of 
the Western culture. This spirit, it will doubtless be noted, is typically self-
centered, not to say unmitigatedly self-seeking; but it is a spirit of self-
realization conventionalized in terms of pecuniary gain.
The sources from which this capitalistic spirit is derived are dealt with in the 
second of the two books into which the volume is divided. These sources, or 
lines of derivation, are exceedingly many and various, but in the author's view 
they fall conveniently under three distinctive captions: (1) the biological 
origins; (Grundlagen); (2) the moral factors (sittliche Mächte); and (3) the 
social conditions - comprising among the latter also the conditioning 
circumstances imposed by the growth of capitalism itself. Of the three 
categories the first-named is doubtless the most characteristic, at the same 
time that its contents are the least valuable of the three. The analysis of 
cause and effect under captions 2 and 3 is carried out in Professor Sombart's 
best and most engaging manner and is calculated to bring light and order into a 
great volume of materials that have hitherto not had reasonable attention from 
students of the business situation; but the same is scarcely to be said for this 
earlier section on the biological origins. Unfortunately, the author has gone 
into this biological domain armed with latter-day conceptions of the 
transmission of racial characteristics, coupled with antiquated notions [848] of 
racial identity, and the result is more picturesque than instructive. Quite 
uncritically, linguistic and national frontiers are accepted as marking racial 
distinctions, and therefore as marking distinct lines of inheritance. So, Celts, 
Franks, Friesians, Highlanders, Saxons are dealt with as distinctive racial 
stocks carrying each and severally a distinctive strain of spiritual endowment 
which by indefeasible heredity fits or unfits each for business enterprise; all 
the while overlooking the fact that none of these, or of the other peoples cited 
by Professor Sombart as illustrative instances, are racial groups, but only 
social groups made up out of the same range of racial elements combined in 
approximately the same proportions. It is true the author himself recognizes (p. 
281) that his exposition of capitalistic heredity may not find general 
acceptance, and with good reason remarks that its rejection will to no way 
diminish the substantial value of the rest of his discussion.
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI