LXVII
The error of Mandeville, as well as of those opposed to him, is in concluding that man is a simple and not a compound being. The schoolmen and divines endeavour to prove that the gross and material part of his nature is a foreign admixture, distinct from and unworthy of the man himself. The misanthropes and sceptics, on the other hand, maintain the falsity of all human virtues, and that all that is not sensual and selfish is a mere theatrical deception. But in order that man should be a wholly and incorrigibly selfish being, he should be shut up like an oyster in its shell, without any possible conception of what passes beyond the wall of his senses; and the feelers of his mind should not extend their ramifications under any circumstance or in any manner, to the thoughts and sentiments of others. Shakspeare has expressed the matter better than the pedants on either side, who wish unreasonably to exalt or degrade human nature.—‘The web of our lives is as of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not, and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’