Bernard Mandeville: born at Dordrecht (Dort), Holland, about 1670; studied medicine, and took his degree at Leyden, Mar. 30, 1691, after which he settled in London as a physician. Published “Esop Dressed, or a Collection of Fables in Familiar Verse” (1704); a “Treatise of the Hypochondriac and Hysteric Passions” (1711), highly commended by Dr. Johnson; “The Grumbling-hive or Knaves turned Honest” (1705); and in 1714 an enlarged edition, under the title “The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits” (2d ed., 1723), which was censured by Berkeley and others, and presented as a nuisance by the grand jury of Middlesex. A second part of the “Fable” appeared in 1728, and both parts in 1732. He also published “Free Thoughts on Religion” (1720); “Origin of Honor” (1732); “A Letter to Dion” (1732); and “A Modest Defense of Public Stews” (1740). He was patronized by Lord Macclesfield, and died in London, Jan. 21, 1733.

Personal

  He lived in obscure lodgings in London, and betook himself to the profession of physic, but was never able to acquire much practice…. I once heard a London physician, who had married the daughter of one of that trade, mention him as a good sort of man, and one that he was acquainted with, and at the same time assert a fact, which I suppose he had learned from Mandeville, that the children of women addicted to dram-drinking, were never troubled with the rickets. He is said to have been coarse and overbearing in his manners where he durst be so; yet a great flatterer of some vulgar Dutch merchants, who allowed him a pension. This last information comes from a clerk of a city attorney, through whose hands the money passed.

Fable of the Bees, 1705–28

  The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits…. I read Mandeville forty, or, I believe, fifty years ago. He did not puzzle me; he opened my views into real life very much.

  With respect to his capital and offensive paradox, that private vices are public benefits, Mandeville’s whole art consists in denominating our passions by the appellation assigned to their vicious excess, and then proving them, under this denomination, useful to society. There is a lively force, and caustic though coarse wit, in his performance, which occasionally reminds one of Paine.

  Mandeville was a man wholly destitute of morality, and without insight into the nature of man or the connexions between bodily and mental soundness and well-being…. This book no man would now trouble himself to read.

  If Shakspeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the “Fable of the Bees.” But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to consider those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man?

  Though licentious, and in many respects objectionable, there are a great number of valuable remarks and of just and profound observations in this work, especially with reference to the improvement of arts and the increase of wealth.

  The book occasioned a great commotion; but it is now generally admitted that, whatever may be the worth, or worthlessness, of the philosophical system propounded in it, the author’s object was not an immoral one. Independently altogether of its general principles and conclusions, the work is full both of curious matter and vigorous writing.

  The work possesses no literary merit.

  His humour is the coarsest of the coarse, but he cannot be denied great wit, happy expression, and ingenious illustrations.

  It represented strongly the increasing tendency to dwell upon the evils of society as a result of over-civilisation, and anticipated the teaching of those philosophers who saw no hope of a return to innocence but by returning to the state of nature…. Mandeville argued, not, like Shaftesbury, that all is for good, but that the world is bad, and its whole civilisation fed by evil appetites and evil deeds. The work was, indeed, a first sign of the strength of the reaction that gathered force year after year, until it struck on Europe with the shock of Revolution. But there was nothing in Bernard Mandeville of the fine yearning for a higher life that was to rise above the ruins of all that had been based on human wrong. It was enough for him to maintain steadily that evil was man’s good.

  It would be a relief if we could look upon the work as an ironical satire upon the immorality of the age—a jeering exposure of the prevalent vicious practice by flaunting it in the outrageous extravagance of a theory; but the whole manner of the book, taken along with the appended “Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue,” is incompatible with such a supposition. The author has, therefore, been generally and justly interpreted as maintaining desirously a doctrine which is in flagrant antagonism alike with all the history of political society, with the results of economical science, and with the high Hebrew morality on which Christianity founds—the doctrine that the vices of individuals are economically beneficial to society, that it is unrighteousness that exalts a nation, while godliness is a reproach to any people.

  Mandeville gave great offence by this book, in which a cynical system of morality was made attractive by ingenious paradoxes. It was long popular, and later critics have pointed out the real acuteness of the writer as well as the vigour of his style, especially remarkable in a foreigner. His doctrine that prosperity was increased by expenditure rather than by saving fell in with many current economical fallacies not yet extinct. Assuming with the ascetics that human desires were essentially evil and therefore produced “private vices,” and assuming with the common view that wealth was a “public benefit,” he easily showed that all civilisation implied the development of vicious propensities. He argued again with Hobbists that the origin of virtue was to be found in selfish and savage instincts, and vigorously attacked Shaftesbury’s contrary theory of a “moral sense.” But he tacitly accepted Shaftesbury’s inference that virtue so understood was a mere sham. He thus argued, in appearance at least, for the essential vileness of human nature; though his arguments may be regarded as partly ironical, or as a satire against the hypocrisies of an artificial society. In any case his appeal to facts, against the plausibilities of the opposite school, shows that he had many keen though imperfect previsions of later scientific views, both upon ethical and economical questions. Dr. Johnson was much impressed by the “Fable,” which, he said, did not puzzle him, but “opened his views into real life very much.”

  The author of the “Fable of the Bees” writes coarsely for coarse readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory merit the infamy generally awarded to them.

General

  Mandeville’s satires, though general, frequently exhibit strong and lively pictures.

  Mandeville’s object being chiefly negative and dialectical he has left little of positive ethical theory. Virtue he regards as de facto an arbitrary institution of society; what it ought to be, he hardly says, but the tendency of his writings is to make the good of the whole to be preferred to private interests. He denies the existence of a moral sense and of disinterestedness. The motive to observe moral rules is pride and vanity fomented by politicians. He does not regard virtue as an independent end, even by association, but considers that pride in its naked form is the ever present incentive to good conduct.

  Mandeville is said to have been in the habit of frequenting coffee-houses, and amusing his patrons by ribald conversation. The tone of his writing harmonises with this account of his personal habits. He is a cynical and prurient writer, who seems to shrink from no jest, however scurrilous, and from no paradox, however grotesque, which is calculated to serve the purpose, which he avows in his preface to be his sole purpose, of diverting his readers—readers, it may be added, not very scrupulous in their tastes…. Mandeville shares Swift’s contempt for the human race; but his contempt, instead of urging him to the borders of madness, merely finds vent in a horse-laugh. He despises himself as well as his neighbours, and is content to be despicable. He is a scoffer, not a misanthrope. You are all Yahoos, he seems to say, and I am a Yahoo; and so—let us eat, drink, and be merry…. Tell your fine stories to devotees or schoolgirls, he seems to say, but don’t try to pass them off upon me, who have seen men and cities, and not taken my notions from books.

  The “Fable of the Bees” which, with its more immediate appendices, contains almost everything of Mandeville’s that is of importance to any but the curious, is one of those unlucky books which have become known to posterity chiefly by the polemical efforts of others to suppress them…. His verse is very uncouth, and his prose is frequently incorrect and never in any way polished; but he makes up for this by many of the merits of Defoe, to whom in character as in period he is very close. Many of his characters—the special knack of the time—possess great felicity and truth of touch; his argument, sophistical as it commonly is, is put with a good deal of surface clearness and cogency; and his illustrations and digressive passages have singular liveliness and force…. And though his sudden and not very savoury notoriety tempted him to indulge in long and dull dissertations where the merit of his style is spun too thin to cover the nakedness of his sophistry, he must still at his best remain a striking exemplar of one of the most nervous if not the most elegant periods of English writing, and deserve a place in the division of English prose history which includes Latimer and Bunyan, Defoe and Cobbett.

  A misanthropical Dutch doctor…. Mandeville was a daring thinker, who permitted no traditional prejudice, no habit of decency, to interfere with the progression of his ideas. He was by far the ablest of the English deists, and though all the respectability of his time drew away from him, and voted him, like the grand jury of Middlesex, a public nuisance, he was not without his very distinct influence on the progress of English literature. He was an emancipator of thought, a rude and contemptuous critic of the conventions. In himself base and ugly—for all his writings reveal a gross individuality—the brute courage of Mandeville helped English speculation to slip from its fetters. His style is without elegance, but, what is strange in a foreigner, of a remarkable homeliness and picturesque vigour.

  Mandeville is certainly not an innocent writer, but he has been considerably misunderstood both by his contemporaries and by modern critics. His business is the exposure of humbug and hypocrisy, and he does his work consistently and thoroughly, though he dips his pen in a very nasty mixture and carefully poses as a very disreputable person. His taste is as abominable as his style is effective. The essentially satirical character of his work is however concealed by his constant indulgence in paradox, a method which enables him to give a maximum of offence, while keeping in the background a few unexceptionable principles to which he can appeal in case of need.