Goethe was afraid the modern world might turn into a hospital. Every citizen unwell. … when culture fails to deal with the feeling of emptiness and the panic to which man is disposed, other agents come forward to put us together with therapy, with glue, or slogans, or spit, or as that fellow Gumbein the art critic says, poor wretches are recycled on the couch. This view is even more pessimistic than the one held by Dostoevski's Grand Inquisitor who said: mankind is frail, needs bread, cannot bear freedom but requires miracle, mystery, and authority. A natural disposition to feelings of emptiness and panic is worse than that. Much worse. What it really means is that we human beings are insane.
— Saul Bellow, from Humboldt’s Gift
pg. 175.