… only ignored the benevolent impulses of human nature but also corrupted them. 4 . Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge and New York: … the rest of Characteristicks in such ‘sociable’ forms as the letter, dialogue, or commentary (Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness , 48). 6 . Lord Shaftesbury to James Stanhope, November 7 (1709), TNA: PRO 30/24/22/7, fol. 491. … points out, this is ultimately a 'social virtue'; 7 indeed, it helped Shaftesbury draw a comparison between the refined cultures of the Greek Polis and Roman Republic as opposed to the degenerate Roman Empire, a contrast that he used to …