In the closing pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904) Max Weber mused on the shape of things to come: No one knows who wilt live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might be said: “Specialists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”