Summary
David Hume: My Life and Other Essays
"There is no doubt that a serious attention to science and the liberal arts softens and humanizes human nature and cultivates those tender feelings in which true virtue and honor consist. It very, very rarely happens that a man of taste and science is not, at least, an honest man, whatever his weaknesses may be. This inclination of his spirit to speculative studies must subdue the passion in him for profit and ambition, and at the same time enable him to have greater ambition sensitivity to civilities and the duties of life. He feels better the moral differences in characters and behavior, and this sense of his is not weakened but, on the contrary, strengthened by speculation.
Perhaps the main profit from philosophy arises in an indirect way and comes more from its mysterious, insensible influence, than from its immediate application."
David Hume (1711-1776)
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