ULRICH'S BIOGRAPHY, his erudition, and his intimate familiarity with the culture and politics of the scientific community closely reflect those of Musil himself. Musil had already received a diploma as a mechanical engineer when, in 1903, at the age of twenty-three, he registered at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin to study philosophy. After he finished his graduate studies in spring 1908 with a doctoral thesis on Ernst Mach, he received an offer from Alexius Meinong (1853–1920) to become assistant professor of psychology at the University of Graz. Meinong was the founder of the first laboratory for experimental psychology in Austria. Today he is mostly remembered for his phenomenological investigation into non-existent objects such as a round square. However, Musil opted to make writing his sole occupation. Presumably, he already felt then, as again later in life, that he did not possess the requisite qualities to become a scientist. More than three decades later, Musil remarked in his diaries that he had always been more interested in ethics than psychology (D 442–43). However, when he arrived as a student in Berlin, he felt insufficiently prepared to make ethics his proper field. Though it may come as a surprise to readers of The Man Without Qualities, Musil thought himself lacking the sufficient intellectual curiosity to become a professional scholar: “I have never ‘taken a look around’ my spiritual surroundings but have always buried my head in myself.” Looking back on his student years, Musil concludes, “the dreamer tripped up the thinker” (D 442–43).