This paper interprets the interaction between Protestantism and commercial spirit in David Hume’s account of English development, mostly drawing from The History of England. Hume saw Protestant theology—especially the more enthusiastic strains of English Puritanism—as having fortuitously shifted the landscape of political and economic sensibilities in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by affecting believers’ political, social, and economic psychologies. Those shifting psychologies exhibited affinities with concurrent developments, especially the decline of feudalism, the rise of consumerism, and the creation of an independent middle class of merchants. The peculiar synergy between such changes and Protestant theological innovations led to the emergence of England, by the eighteenth century, as a polite and commercial people—a people for whom commerce became, Hume claimed, more honorable than in any other nation. Hume, like Max Weber, saw a distinctive Protestant spirit as having contributed to the modern commercial order.

中文翻译：

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休谟论新教伦理和英国商业精神的兴起

本文解释了大卫·休谟对英国发展的描述中新教与商业精神之间的相互作用，主要取材于英国历史。休谟认为新教神学——尤其是英国清教主义中更为热情的流派——通过影响信徒的政治、社会和经济心理，偶然地改变了 16 世纪和 17 世纪英国政治和经济敏感性的格局。这些转变的心理表现出与同时发生的发展的密切关系，特别是封建主义的衰落、消费主义的兴起以及独立的商人中产阶级的建立。这些变化与新教神学创新之间的奇特协同作用，导致英国在十八世纪成为一个有礼貌和商业化的民族——休谟声称，对于这个民族来说，商业比任何其他国家都更加光荣。休谟和马克斯·韦伯一样，认为独特的新教精神对现代商业秩序做出了贡献。