PREFACE (v-x)
     The preface will discuss how this fits into my work as a whole which has two main interests.
     My first interest is understanding the intellectual and religious situation of the present day in order to deduce the significance and possibilities of Christianity. This involves studying history because the spirit of the modern world can only be understood in light of its relation to previous Christian civilisation.
     My second interest is to distinguish those elements in modern civilisation which have proved their value from those which are merely temporary and lead nowhere [in order to] reconcile Christianity (the only religious force in Europe and superior to Eastern religion) with the modern spirit [in order to preserve and justify Christianity??].
     This book is about the first interest, and seeks to determine by an examination of cause and effect what effect Protestantism and other sources have had on the Modern Spirit.

INTRODUCTION (1-7)
     The understanding of the present is always the final goal of all history. The purpose of this book is to help us to understand ourselves by explaining the modern world in an empirical manner by examining history in terms of general concepts and the causal and transmitted/inherited relationships between types of civilisation.

CHAPTER I (9-42) THE MEANING OF "THE MODERN WORLD"
      Modern civilisation will be mostly defined in terms of its contrast to the period of civilisation before it, Church-civilisation.

Church Civilisation: (11)
     Church-civilisation was based on the belief in an absolute and immediate Divine revelation and the embodiment of this revelation in the Church as the organ of redemption and moral discipline.This is based on the theory that the supernatural and the natural are only separated by sinful humanity, and that the Church as an authority can resolve this separation by leading men from the natural corrupted world to the higher world.
     This [belief in the separation of natural and supernatural] results in ascetic view of life which takes on two forms: (1) Quietism which involves extinguishing all that is natural, and (2) methodical action which involves direction of action towards the ends of the supernatural.
      The Church reconciled [natural and supernatural or quietism and methodical action?] by creating a system where the ascetic life is confined to clergy and monastic orders and the mass of people live the freer natural life in the world.

Modern Civilisation: (17)
      The essential characteristic of modern civilisation is that it opposes Church civilisation and substitutes for it ideals independently arrived at based on independent rational, and inner personal conviction rather than on submission to authority resulting in relativism because there will always be a divergence among the various views and utterances of reason.
     A second characteristic (22) of modern civilisation is the limitation of the interests of life to the present world (as opposed to asceticism). This is a result of the new recognition of man's containing the principles of truth and moral conduct and the breakdown of church authority which said that the Divine and the human were opposites, that mankind is corrupted absolutely through original sin, and that the purpose of life has to do with the heavenly world.
     A final characteristic (25) of modern civilisation (spirit) is its self-confident optimism and belief in progress. The Church's ordinances of redemption: despairing sense of sin, the sense of a great world-suffering imposed on us for purification and punishment, have been banished.
     Other, practical characteristics (26) of modern civilisation (spirit) include giant states, capitalistic business, applied science, population increase, world-politics, and new social classes.
     There are also features of modern civilisation (spirit) which can be stated in positive terms when compared to late antiquity (30) rather than to Church civilisation: a thronging host of new creations, increasing practical mastery of things, representative politics, an ocean horizon, an end to slave production, an organised national economy, a middle-class, monogamy, increased knowledge, incessant new invention, [and the practical characteristics above.]
     Last but not least, the modern world is characterised by an Individualism (35) which has a deeply and strongly rooted metaphysical constitution. This modern individualism is based on the essentially Christian idea of the destination of man to acquire Perfected personality through the ascent to God.These metaphysics of absolute Personality permeate our world and gives a metaphysical background to the thought of freedom, personality, and the autonomous self. This includes the influences of Platonism and Stoicism which Christianity drew into and fused with itself.

CHAPTER II (43-57) THE MEANING OF "PROTESTANTISM"
      To define Protestantism, we must distinguish between modern and the genuine early Protestantism (44) of Lutheranism and Calvinism which is a Church civilisation like that of the Middle Ages, claiming to regulate State and society, science and education, law, commerce and industry, according to the supernatural standpoint of revelation. Modern Protestantism does not attempt to control secular life through the State and recognises a plurality of different religious convictions, based on voluntary effort and personal convistion, independent from the State.

CHAPTER III (58-88) PROTESTANTISM AND THE MODERN WORLD: POINTS OF CONTRAST
     

CHAPTER IV (89-127) PROTESTANTISM AND POLITICO-SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
     

CHAPTER V (128-170) PROTESTANTISM AND ECONOMIC ORGANISATION, SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS, SCIENCE AND ART

ECONOMIC ORGANISATION (128)

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS (142)

THOUGHT AND LEARNING (155)

ART AND AESTHETICS (165)      

CHAPTER VI:(172-207) PROTESTANTISM AND MODERN RELIGIOUS FEELING

     This book has now shown two things. First, Protestantism has furthered the rise of the modern world. Second, Protestantism has not been the creator of the modern world. Protestantism has secured for the modern world greater freedom of development by doing away with the hindrances to the modern world. Above all, Protestantism gave to the new ideas a firm foundation of a good conscience and an impulse towards progress.
     In view of this (174), it can be said with certainty that if Protestantism has had an immediate influence on the modern spirit, it is within the domain of religious thought and feeling.
     Here(178-9) We will attempt to answer the qestion of whether the religious life of to-day actually bears the features of protestantism. This is a complex question which takes for granted that there is a religious spirit peculiar to the modern world.
     If we look only bat the political, social, economic, and technical aspects of the modern world, we can see a softened form of Protestant orthodoxy. But on the other hand, this same modern system is also efffectively without any religious foundation.
     But, if we look more deeply at the spiritual elements of the modern world, the priniciple of thought contained in natural science, technical development, and organisation of state and society there are differences from the old beliefs and completely new ethico-religious ideas.

     Looking at this presents a very complex set of circumstances, but, if one holds it to be an established fact...that without a religious basis, without a metaphysic and an ethic, a strong self-consistent spirit of civilisation cannot exist. (184)