There is nothing more deplorable than those skeptics and reformers, liberal priests and humanistically-oriented scholars, who moan about “soullessness,†“barren materialism,†what is “unsatisfying in mere science,†and the “cold play of atoms,†and renounce intellectual precision, which is for them only a slight temptation. Then, with the help of some alleged “emotional knowledge†to satisfy the feelings, and with the “necessary†harmony and rounding-out of the world picture, all they invent is some universal spirit: a world-soul, or a God, who is nothing more than the world of the academic petite bourgeoisie which gives rise to him; at best, an oversoul who reads the newspaper and demonstrates a certain appreciation of social questions.
Robert Musil