"Antiquity and modernity are terms that have no fixed connotation.

They are purely relative and their application in a particular instance has to be determined by a sort of sliding scale.

To a furniture collector, a Tudor chair or a Jacobean chest is ancient; to an architect, their period is modern, whereas an eleventh-century church is ancient; but to an Egyptologist, accustomed to remains of a vast antiquity, both are products of modern periods separated by an insignificant interval.

And, I suppose," he added, reflectively, "that to a geologist, the traces of the very earliest dawn of human history appertain only to the recent period.

Conceptions of time, like all other conceptions, are relative." "You appear to be a disciple of Herbert Spencer," I remarked.
"I am a disciple of Arthur Jellicoe, sir," he retorted.