WEBER, MAX (1864–1920), German sociologist, was the most influential (and in many respects the most profound) of twentieth-century social scientists. Educated as a legal historian, Max Weber made original contributions to the study of modern social structure, to the analysis of the economy and the law, to the comparative analysis of civilizations, and to the methodology of the social sciences. Engaged in the politics of his place and time, he brought to his inquiries into authority and power an acute sense of reality. What gave significance and unity to his entire work, however, were his dark reflections on the problem of meaning in human culture. He was acutely aware of the conflict between what he called the metaphysical needs of the human spirit and the constraints of social existence, with the limits of human historical automony. It was in this context that his studies of religion acquired...