Throughout much of his life, Weber was preoccupied with the notion of asceticism. It has a central place in his early work the Protestant Ethic and it is prominent in the section devoted to religious communities in the later writing Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. At first glance, it seems that Weber did not have a similar interest in mysticism and it seems as if his discussions of it are not as important as the ones devoted to asceticism. However, upon closer inspection, this first glance is not substantiated for two reasons. First, he explains asceticism by contrasting it with mysticism and second, he does tend to give it equal importance. Regarding the first point, Weber tended to refer to asceticism as something that was active, as opposed to mysticism, which he tended to regard as passive. He did this primarily to emphasize the theoretical differences between the ascetic and the mystic; however, in doing so he seemed to ignore the actual history of ascetic mystics. However, this is a misunderstanding for several reasons. First, he often made use of contrasts in order to highlight concepts. Second, his primary focus was on asceticism and, specifically, on a particular type of Protestant asceticism.