The Fable of the Bees; Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits

by Bernard Mandeville

His business is to sell as much silk as he can at a price by which he shall get what he proposes to be reasonable, according to the customary profits of the trade. As to the lady, what she would be at is to please her fancy, and buy cheaper by a groat or sixpence per yard than the things she wants are commonly sold at. From the impression the gallantry of our sex has made upon her, she imagines (if she be not very deformed) that she has a fine mien and easy behaviour, and a peculiar sweetness of voice; that she is handsome, and if not beautiful, at least more agreeable than most young women she knows. As she has no pretensions to purchase the same things with less money than other people, but what are built on her good qualities, so she sets herself off to the best advantage her wit and discretion will let her. The thoughts of love are here out of the case; so on the one hand, she has no room for playing the tyrant, and giving herself angry and peevish airs, and, on the other, more liberty of speaking kindly, and being affable than she can have almost on any other occasion. She knows that abundance of well-bred people come to his shop, and endeavours to render herself as amiable as virtue and the rules of decency allow of. Coming with such a resolution of behaviour, she cannot meet with any thing to ruffle her temper.

Before her coach is yet quite stopped, she is approached by a gentleman-like man, that has every thing clean and fashionable about him, who in low obeisance pays her homage, and as soon as her pleasure is known that she has a mind to come in, hands her into the shop, where immediately he slips from her, and through a by-way that remains visible only for half a moment, with great address entrenches himself behind the counter: here facing her, with a profound reverence and modish phrase, he begs the favour of knowing her commands. Let her say and dislike what she pleases, she can never be directly contradicted: she deals with a man in whom consummate patience is one of the mysteries of his trade, and whatever trouble she creates she is sure to hear nothing but the most obliging language, and has always before her a cheerful countenance, where joy and respect seem to be blended with good humour, and altogether make up an artificial serenity more engaging than untaught nature is able to produce.

When two persons are so well met, the conversation must be very agreeable, as well as extremely mannerly, though they talk about trifles. While she remains irresolute what to take, he seems to be the same in advising her; and is very cautious how to direct her choice; but when once she has made it and is fixed, he immediately becomes positive, that it is the best of the sort, extols her fancy, and the more he looks upon it, the more he wonders he should not before have discovered the pre-eminence of it over any thing he has in his shop. By precept, example, and great application, he has learned unobserved to slide into the inmost recesses of the soul, sound the capacity of his customers, and find out their blind side unknown to them: by all which he is instructed in fifty other stratagems to make her over-value her own judgment as well as the commodity she would purchase. The greatest advantage he has over her, lies in the most material part of the commerce between them, the debate about the price, which he knows to a farthing, and she is wholly ignorant of: therefore he no where more egregiously imposes on her understanding; and though here he has the liberty of telling what lies he pleases, as to the prime cost, and the money he has refused, yet he trusts not to them only; but, attacking her vanity, makes her believe the most incredible things in the world, concerning his own weakness and her superior abilities; he had taken a resolution, he says, never to part with that piece under such a price, but she has the power of talking him out of his goods beyond any body he ever sold to: he protests that he loses by his silk, but seeing that she has a fancy for it, and is resolved to give no more, rather than disoblige a lady he has such an uncommon value for, he will let her have it, and only begs that another time she will not stand so hard with him. In the mean time, the buyer, who knows that she is no fool, and has a voluble tongue, is easily persuaded that she has a very winning way of talking, and thinking it sufficient, for the sake of good-breeding, to disown her merit, and in some witty repartee retort the compliment, he makes her swallow very contentedly, the substance of every thing he tells her. The upshot is, that, with the satisfaction of having saved ninepence per yard, she has bought her silk exactly at the same price as any body else might have done, and often gives sixpence more than, rather than not have sold it, he would have taken.

It is possible that this lady, for want of being sufficiently flattered, for a fault she is pleased to find in his behaviour, or perhaps the tying of his neckcloth, or some other dislike as substantial, may be lost, and her custom bestowed on some other of the fraternity. But where many of them live in a cluster, it is not always easily determined which shop to go to, and the reasons some of the fair sex have for their choice, are often very whimsical, and kept as great a secret. We never follow our inclinations with more freedom, than where they cannot be traced, and it is unreasonable for others to suspect them. A virtuous woman has preferred one house to all the rest, because she had seen a handsome fellow in it, and another of no bad character for having received greater civility before it, than had been paid her any where else, when she had no thoughts of buying, and was going to Paul’s church: for among the fashionable mercers, the fair dealer must keep before his own door, and to draw in random customers, make use of no other freedom or importunities than an obsequious air, with a submissive posture, and perhaps a bow to every well dressed female that offers to look towards his shop.

What I have said last, makes me think on another way of inviting customers, the most distant in the world from what I have been speaking of, I mean that which is practised by the watermen, especially on those whom, by their mien and garb, they know to be peasants. It is not unpleasant to see half a dozen people surround a man they never saw in their lives before, and two of them that can get the nearest, clapping each an arm over his neck, hug him in as loving and familiar a manner, as if he was their brother newly come home from an East India voyage; a third lays hold of his hand, another of his sleeve, his coat, the buttons of it, or any thing he can come at, while a fifth or a sixth, who has scampered twice round him already, without being able to get at him, plants himself directly before the man in hold, and within three inches of his nose, contradicting his rivals with an open mouthed cry, shows him a dreadful set of large teeth, and a small remainder of chewed bread and cheese, which the countryman’s arrival had hindered from being swallowed.

At all this no offence is taken, and the peasant justly thinks they are making much of him; therefore, far from opposing them, he patiently suffers himself to be pushed or pulled which way the strength that surrounds him shall direct. He has not the delicacy to find fault with a man’s breath, who has just blown out his pipe, or a greasy head of hair that is rubbing against his chops: Dirt and sweat he has been used to from his cradle, and it is no disturbance to him to hear half a score people, some of them at his ear, and the furthest not five foot from him, bawl out as if he was hundred yards off: He is conscious that he makes no less noise when he is merry himself, and is secretly pleased with their boisterous usages. The hawling and pulling him about he construes the way it is intended; it is a courtship he can feel and understand: He cannot help wishing them well for the esteem they seem to have for him: He loves to be taken notice of, and admires the Londoners for being so pressing in the offers of their service to him, for the value of threepence or less; whereas, in the country at the shop he uses, he can have nothing but he must first tell them what he wants, and, though he lays out three or four shillings at a time, has hardly a word spoke to him unless it be in answer to a question himself is forced to ask first. This alacrity in his behalf moves his gratitude, and, unwilling to disoblige any, from his heart he knows not whom to choose. I have seen a man think all this, or something like it, as plainly as I could see the nose in his face; and, at the same time, move along very contentedly under a load of watermen, and with a smiling countenance carry seven or eight stone more than his own weight to the water side.

If the little mirth I have shown, in the drawing of these two images from low life, misbecomes me, I am sorry for it, but I promise not to be guilty of that fault any more, and will now, without loss of time, proceed with my argument in artless dull simplicity, and demonstrate the gross error of those, who imagine that the social virtues, and the amiable qualities that are praise-worthy in us, are equally beneficial to the public as they are to the individual persons that are possessed of them, and that the means of thriving, and whatever conduces to the welfare and real happiness of private families, must have the same effect upon the whole society. This, I confess, I have laboured for all along, and I flatter myself not unsuccessfully: But I hope nobody will like a problem the worse for seeing the truth of it proved more ways than one.

It is certain, that the fewer desires a man has, and the less he covets, the more easy he is to himself; the more active he is to supply his own wants, and the less he requires to be waited upon, the more he will be beloved, and the less trouble he is in a family; the more he loves peace and concord, the more charity he has for his neighbour, and the more he shines in real virtue, there is no doubt but that in proportion he is acceptable to God and man. But let us be just, what benefit can these things be of, or what earthly good can they do, to promote the wealth, the glory, and worldly greatness of nations? It is the sensual courtier that sets no limits to his luxury; the fickle strumpet that invents new fashions every week; the haughty duchess that in equipage, entertainments, and all her behaviour, would imitate a princess; the profuse rake and lavish heir, that scatter about their money without wit or judgment, buy every thing they see, and either destroy or give it away the next day; the covetous and perjured villain that squeezed an immense treasure from the tears of widows and orphans, and left the prodigals the money to spend: It is these that are the prey and proper food of a full grown Leviathan; or, in other words, such is the calamitous condition of human affairs, that we stand in need of the plagues and monsters I named, to have all the variety of labour performed, which the skill of men is capable of inventing in order to procure an honest livelihood to the vast multitudes of working poor, that are required to make a large society: And it is folly to imagine, that great and wealthy nations can subsist, and be at once powerful and polite without.

I protest against Popery as much as ever Luther and Calvin did, or Queen Elizabeth herself; but I believe from my heart, that the Reformation has scarce been more instrumental in rendering the kingdoms and states that have embraced it, flourishing beyond other nations, than the silly and capricious invention of hooped and quilted petticoats. But if this should be denied me by the enemies of priestly power, at least I am sure that, bar the great men who have fought for and against that layman’s blessing, it has, from its beginning to this day, not employed so many hands, honest, industrious, labouring hands, as the abominable improvement on female luxury, I named, has done in few years. Religion is one thing, and trade is another. He that gives most trouble to thousands of his neighbours, and invents the most operose manufactures, is, right or wrong, the greatest friend to the society.

What a bustle is there to be made in several parts of the world, before a fine scarlet or crimson cloth can be produced; what multiplicity of trades and artificers must be employed! Not only such as are obvious, as woolcombers, spinners, the weaver, the cloth worker, the scourer, the dyer, the setter, the drawer, and the packer; but others that are more remote, and might seem foreign to it; as the mill-wright, the pewterer, and the chemist, which yet are all necessary, as well as a great number of other handicrafts, to have the tools, utensils, and other implements belonging to the trades already named: But all these things are done at home, and may be performed without extraordinary fatigue or danger; the most frightful prospect is left behind, when we reflect on the toil and hazard that are to be undergone abroad, the vast seas we are to go over, the different climates we are to endure, and the several nations we must be obliged to for their assistance. Spain alone, it is true, might furnish us with wool to make the finest cloth; but what skill and pains, what experience and ingenuity, are required to dye it of those beautiful colours! How widely are the drugs, and other ingredients, dispersed through the universe that are to meet in one kettle! Allum, indeed, we have of our own; argol we might have from the Rhine, and vitriol from Hungary; all this is in Europe; but then for saltpetre in quantity, we are forced to go as far as the East Indies. Cocheneal, unknown to the ancients, is not much nearer to us, though in a quite different part of the earth: we buy it, it is true, from the Spaniards; but not being their product, they are forced to fetch it for us from the remotest corner of the new world in the East Indies. While so many sailors are broiling in the sun, and sweltered with heat in the east and west of us, another set of them are freezing in the north, to fetch potashes from Russia.