Thank you, you have not only "gotten" it, but you stated my own reaction precisely, and more eloquently than I did.
Well thank you, but I happen to have also had limited correspondence with Stephen (through the library staff), mundane as it is in total. His mind follows the complexities of the universe, but he is a man of limited common sense, liberal in the main ... perhaps I should say an idealist in the main, though not too hopeful of the human species.