 Individualism, a Reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. 26. From Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, H. M. Robertson. Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, a criticism of Max Weber and his school, London, Cambridge University Press, 1933. The economic historian H. M. Robertson was senior lecturer in economics at the University of Cape Town. The excerpt reprinted here is the conclusion of Aspects of the Rise of Economics and Individualism, a criticism of Max Weber and his school. Contrary to Weber, who traced the spirit of capitalism to the rise of puritanism, Robertson attributes the rise of capitalism and economic individualism to an emerging secularism. The chief factor in the triumph of bourgeois liberalism was the factor of economic development which made the bourgeoisie important. It came into its own as a secular force. The rise of bourgeois morality in England as a substitute for religion was not the product of puritanism. In Catholic France one found preachers complaining in the 18th century that a gospel of worldly probity in which comprised all the duties of reason and religion had arisen on the ruins of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that the bourgeois preferred to be known as honnête homme rather than as a good Christian. The churches in each country had been unable in the end in spite of all their efforts to assimilate the class of self-made men. The decline of the churches in England as witnesses to a Christian code of social ethics was not due to a puritan belief that the Lord was with Joseph and he was a lucky fellow. It was due to the unwillingness of a rising bourgeoisie to be bound by what it considered to be antiquated rules. Even so, there is no reason to decry to violently the new bourgeois individualism with its profane, not puritan origins. It was not a mere product of greed. It inculcated a belief in honour and justice. It believed firmly in justice, thought that independently of all religion there was implanted in man a love of justice and on this it built. It did not ask for liberty for men to indulge their anti-social greed. It asked liberty for them to look after themselves in accordance with the rules which life and business both require to be respected and the observance of which was thought to be innate to man's nature. The rules of respecting contracts and of not doing to others what one would not have done to oneself. It did not ask for economic freedom because it believed that man's spirit of emulation raised an antithesis between the common and the private good but because it disbelieved it. It believed that man was rational enough to prefer justice to injustice that free competition would be more efficacious in promoting just dealing on the assumption that in general men had a preference for justice whilst any who had not would find it bad policy to indulge their love of cheating than restrictions based on the assumption that all men were rogues. It was not from greed that the new individualism attacked the restrictions on forestalling and regrading. It was because it believed that free competition would see the market better and more cheaply supplied. It was not greed that silently broke down the restrictions on usury. It was a recognition that the usury restrictions did not work as they were intended. It was not mere greed that protested against the restrictions on foreign trade formed by the existence of the chartered companies. It was a just protest against injurious monopolies. It was a demand that regard should be had for the realities of things, not words, that sentimentalism should not be allowed to mask the grasping selfishness of the corporations which were impairing the well-being of the country they were supposed to serve. Self-interest played a part in promoting the rise of economic individualism but not the only part. Even when it is recognized that much apparently disinterested reasoning may be merely the rationalization of selfish motives. The problem must not be simplified too far. Someday the tangled antecedents of the doctrine of economic individualism may be unraveled, but they will not be unraveled by concentrating on religion or by search for the clues in greed, selfishness, and the self-centered righteousness of men who work hard in their calling. Perhaps those who are interested in the problems of the rise of modern capitalism and economic individualism will turn more to secular channels for enlightenment. The chief school of the economists of the 16th and 17th centuries was business experience. Re-explore after them the commercial field in which they worked and one cannot fail to pick up some indications of the growth of their philosophy. This is not the only field for research, law and literature, philosophy and politics, all sorts of considerations are relevant to the problem, but it is a most promising field and one which has been unduly neglected. This has been Individualism a Reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. Copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute Production Copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute