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

by Bernard Mandeville

Hor. I plainly see, that mankind might subsist and survive to multiply, and get the mastery over all other creatures that should oppose them; and as this could never have been brought about, unless men had assisted one another against savage beasts, it is possible that the necessity men were in of joining and uniting together, was the first step toward society. Thus far I am willing to allow you to have proved your main point: but to ascribe all this to Providence, otherwise than that nothing is done without the Divine permission, seems inconsistent with the ideas we have of a perfectly good and merciful Being. It is possible, that all poisonous animals may have something in them that is beneficial to men; and I will not dispute with you, whether the most venomous of all the serpents which Lucan has made mention of, did not contain some antidote, or other fine medicine, still undiscovered: but when I look upon the vast variety of ravenous and blood-thirsty creatures, that are not only superior to us in strength, but likewise visibly armed by nature, as it were on purpose for our destruction; when, I say, I look upon these, I can find out no use for them, nor what they could be designed for, unless it be to punish us: but I can much less conceive, that the Divine Wisdom should have made them the means without which men could not have been civilized. How many thousands of our species must have been devoured in the conflicts with them!

Cleo. Ten troops of wolves, with fifty in each, would make a terrible havoc, in a long winter, among a million of our species with their hands tied behind them; but among half that number, one pestilence has been known to slaughter more, than so many wolves could have eaten in the same time; notwithstanding the great resistance that was made against it, by approved of medicines and able physicians. It is owing to the principle of pride we are born with, and the high value we all, for the sake of one, have for our species, that men imagine the whole universe to be principally made for their use; and this error makes them commit a thousand extravagancies, and have pitiful and most unworthy notions of God and his works. It is not greater cruelty, or more unnatural, in a wolf to eat a piece of a man, than it is in a man to eat part of a lamb or a chicken. What, or how many purposes wild beasts were made for, is not for us to determine; but that they were made, we know; and that some of them must have been very calamitous to every infant nation, and settlement of men, is almost as certain: this you was fully persuaded of; and thought, moreover, that they must have been such an obstacle to the very subsistence of our species, as was insurmountable: In answer to this difficulty, which you started, I showed you, from the different instincts and peculiar tendencies of animals, that in nature a manifest provision was made for our species: by which, notwithstanding the rage and power of the fiercest beasts, we should make a shift, naked and defenceless, to escape their fury, so as to be able to maintain ourselves and multiply our kind, till by our numbers, and arms acquired by our own industry, we could put to flight, or destroy all savage beasts without exception, whatever spot of the globe we might have a mind to cultivate and settle on. The necessary blessings we receive from the sun, are obvious to a child; and it is demonstrable, that without it, none of the living creatures that are now upon the earth, could subsist. But if it were of no other use, being eight hundred thousand times bigger than the earth at least, one thousandth part of it would do our business as well, if it was but nearer to us in proportion. From this consideration alone, I am persuaded, that the sun was made to enlighten and cherish other bodies, besides this planet of ours. Fire and water were designed for innumerable purposes; and among the uses that are made of them, some are immensely different from others. But whilst we receive the benefit of these, and are only intent on ourselves, it is highly probable, that there are thousands of things, and perhaps our own machines among them, that, in the vast system of the universe, are now serving some very wise ends, which we shall never know. According to that plan of this globe, I mean the scheme of government, in relation to the living creatures that inhabit the earth, the destruction of animals is as necessary as the generation of them.

Hor. I have learned that from the Fable of the Bees; and I believe what I have read there to be very true; that, if any one species was to be exempt from death, it would in time crush all the rest to pieces, though the first were sheep, and the latter all lions: but that the Supreme Being should have introduced society at the expence of so many lives of our species, I cannot believe, when it might have been done much better in a milder way.

Cleo. We are speaking of what probably was done, and not of what might have been done. There is no question, but the same Power that made whales, might have made us seventy feet high, and given us strength in proportion. But since the plan of this globe requires, and you think it necessary yourself, that in every species some should die almost as fast as others are born, why should you take away any of the means of dying?

Hor. Are there not diseases enough, physicians and apothecaries, as well as wars by sea and land, that may take off more than the redundancy of our species?

Cleo. They may, it is true; but in fact they are not always sufficient to do this: and in populous nations we see, that war, wild beasts, hanging, drowning, and an hundred casualties together, with sickness and all its attendants, are hardly a match for one invisible faculty of ours, which is the instinct men have to preserve their species. Every thing is easy to the Deity; but to speak after an human manner, it is evident, that in forming this earth, and every thing that is in it, no less wisdom or solicitude was required, in contriving the various ways and means, to get rid and destroy animals, than seems to have been employed in producing them; and it is as demonstrable, that our bodies were made on purpose not to last beyond such a period, as it is, that some houses are built with a design not to stand longer than such a term of years. But it is death itself to which our aversion by nature is universal; as to the manner of dying, men differ in their opinions; and I never heard of one yet that was generally liked of.

Hor. But nobody chooses a cruel one. What an unspeakable and infinitely excruciating torment must it be, to be torn to pieces, and eat alive by a savage beast!

Cleo. Not greater, I can assure you; than are daily occasioned by the gout in the stomach, and the stone in the bladder.

Hor. Which way can you give me this assurance; how can you prove it?

Cleo. From our fabric itself, the frame of human bodies, that cannot admit of any torment, infinitely excruciating. The degrees of pain, as well as of pleasure, in this life are limited, and exactly proportioned to every one’s strength; whatever exceeds that, takes away the senses; and whoever has once fainted away with the extremity of any torture, knows the fall extent of what here he can suffer, if he remembers what he felt. The real mischief which wild beasts have done to our species, and the calamities they have brought upon it, are not to be compared to the cruel usage, and the multiplicity of mortal injuries which men have received from one another. Set before your eyes a robust warrior, that having lost a limb in battle, is afterwards trampled upon by twenty horses; and tell me, pray, whether you think, that lying thus helpless with most of his ribs broke, and a fractured skull, in the agony of death, for several hours, he suffers less than if a lion had dispatched him?