Note 39 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

But in Shaftesbury’s Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709) the phrases “free-writers” and “a freethought”39 have reference to “advanced” opinions, though in his letters to Ainsworth (May 10, 1707) he had written, “I am glad to find your love of reason and freethought. Your piety and virtue I know you will always keep.”40 Compare the Miscellaneous Reflections (v, 3) in the Characteristics41 (1711), where the tendency to force the sense from the general to the special is incidentally illustrated. Shaftesbury, however, includes the term “free liver” among the “naturally honest appellations” that have become opprobrious.