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

by Bernard Mandeville

Cleo. Nor he neither, and you very much wrong him if you assert that he ever did.

Hor. I refuse to commend what is not praise-worthy; but as bad as mankind are, virtue has an existence as well as vice, though it is more scarce.

Cleo. What you said last, nobody ever contradicted; but I do not know what you would be at: does not the Lord Shaftsbury endeavour to do good, and promote the social virtues, and am I not doing the very same? suppose me to be in the wrong in the favourable constructions I have made of things, still it is to be wished for at least, that men had a greater regard to the public welfare, less fondness for their private interest, and more charity for their neighbours, than the generality of them have.

Hor. To be wished for, perhaps, it may be, but what probability is there that this ever will come to pass?

Cleo. And unless that can come to pass, it is the idlest thing in the world to discourse upon, and demonstrate the excellency of virtue; what signifies it to set forth the beauty of it, unless it was possible that men should fall in love with it?

Hor. If virtue was never recommended, men might grow worse than they are.

Cleo. Then, by the same reason, if it was recommended more, men might grow better than they are. But I see perfectly well the reason of these shifts and evasions you make use of against your opinion: You find yourself under a necessity of allowing my panegyrics, as you call them, to be just; or finding the same fault with most of my Lord Shaftsbury’s; and you would do neither if you could help it: From mens preferring company to solitude, his Lordship pretends to prove the love and natural affection we have for our own species: If this was examined into with the same strictness as you have done every thing I have said in behalf of the three faculties, I believe that the solidity of the consequences would be pretty equal in both. But I stick to my text, and stand up for the social virtues: The noble author of that system had a most charitable opinion of his species, and extolled the dignity of it in an extraordinary manner, and why my imitation of him should be called a banter, I see no reason. He certainly wrote with a good design, and endeavoured to inspire his readers with refined notions, and a public spirit abstract from religion: The world enjoys the fruits of his labours; but the advantage that is justly expected from his writings, can never be so universally felt, before that public spirit, which he recommended, comes down to the meanest tradesmen, whom you would endeavour to exclude from the generous sentiments and noble pleasures that are already so visible in many. I am now thinking on two sorts of people that stand very much in need of, and yet hardly ever meet with one another: This misfortune must have caused such a chasm in the band of society, that no depth of thought, or happiness of contrivance, could have filled up the vacuity, if a most tender regard for the commonwealth, and the height of benevolence did not influence and oblige others, mere strangers to those people, and commonly men of small education, to afflict them with their good offices, and stop up the gap. Many ingenious workmen, in obscure dwellings, would be starved in spite of industry, only for want of knowing where to sell the product of their labour, if there were not others to dispose of it for them: And again, the rich and extravagant are daily furnished with an infinite variety of superfluous knicknacks and elaborate trifles, every one of them invented to gratify either a needless curiosity, or else wantonness and folly; and which they could never have thought of, much less wanted, had they never seen or known where to buy them. What a blessing, then, to the public, is the social toyman, who lays out a considerable estate to gratify the desires of these two different classes of people? He procures food and raiment for the deserving poor, and searches with great diligence after the most skilful artificers, that no man shall be able to produce better workmanship than himself: with studied civilities, and a serene countenance, he entertains the greatest strangers; and, often speaking to them first, kindly offers to guess at their wants: He confines not his attendance to a few stated hours, but waits their leisure all day long in an open shop, where he bears the summer’s heat, and winter’s cold, with equal cheerfulness. What a beautiful prospect is here of natural affection to our kind! For, if he acts from that principle, who only furnishes us with necessaries of life, certainly he shows a more superlative love and indulgence to his species, who will not suffer the most whimsical of it to be an hour destitute of what he shall fancy, even things the most unnecessary.

Hor. You have made the most of it indeed, but are you not tired yet with these fooleries yourself?

Cleo. What fault do you find with these kind constructions; do they detract from the dignity of our species?

Hor. I admire your invention, and thus much I will own, that, by overacting the part in that extravagant manner, you have set the social system in a more disadvantageous light than ever I had considered it before: But the best things, you know, may be ridiculed.