“Pardon me, I merely apply the concept of the classic where it is in place: that is to say, wherever an idea reaches its culmination. Antiquity was not always classic. And I note in you a general repugnance to the Absolute; to the broader application of categories. You don’t even want absolute Spirit. You only want to have Spirit synonymous with democratic progress.”

“I should hope we are at one in the conviction that Spirit, however absolute, ought never to become the advocate of reaction.”

“Yet you are always claiming it as the advocate of freedom!”

“Why do you say ‘yet’? Is it freedom that is the law of love of one’s kind, or is it nihilism and all uncharitableness?”

“At any rate, it is the last two of which you are so obviously afraid.”