Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. Today the spirit of religious asceticism -- whether finally, who knows? -- has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment seems also to be irretrievably fading and the idea of duty in one'scalling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. … No one knows who will live in this cage in the future … For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might be truly said: 'Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart: this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.'
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930.) 182.