Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/10

ii was addressed, without degrading the author. If any partiality appeared towards the patron, it was at least the partiality of friendship and affection.

instance of true liberty, of which antient times can alone afford us an example, is the liberty of thought, which engaged men of letters, however different in their abstract opinions, to maintain a mutual friendship and regard; and never to quarrel about principles, while they agreed in inclinations and manners. Science was often the subject of disputation, never of animosity. Cicero, an academic, addressed his philosophical treatises, sometimes to Brutus, a stoic; sometimes to Atticus, an epicurean.