If he had chosen an ancient Greek philosopher, it would have been open to the critic to have said that that philosopher relied to some extent upon the most sunny and graceful social life that ever flourished.

If he had made him a modern sociological professor, it would have been possible to object that his energies were not wholly concerned with truth, but partly with the solid and material satisfaction of society.
But the man truly devoted to the things of the mind was the mediaeval magician.

It is a remarkable fact that one civilisation does not satisfy itself by calling another civilisation wicked--it calls it uncivilised.

We call the Chinese barbarians, and they call us barbarians.

The mediaeval state, like China, was a foreign civilisation, and this was its supreme characteristic, that it cared for the things of the mind for their own sake.