Bernard Mandeville

"Though licentious and in many respects objectionable, there are a great number of valuable remarks and of just and profound observations in this work [The Fable of the Bees], especially with reference to the improvement of arts and the increase of wealth. Mandeville, indeed, by way of establishing his leading doctrine, that "private vices are public benefits," has represented sundry passions and desires as vicious which do not deserve any such character. Thus, the desire to rise in the world, to enjoy an increased command over necessaries and luxuries, and to attain to distinction, is said by him to be a vice: but it would be more correct to call it a cardinal virtue. So long as it is pursued by fair and proper means, and without injury or prejudice to the rights and interests of others, it is worthy of every commendation; and is, in fact, the prolific source of wealth, science, and civilization. Luxury and ostentation is also one of the vices on which Mandeville lays the greatest stress, as contributing to national opulence. But luxury is a most ambiguous term, and it is very difficult to say when it is or is not censurable... But however incorrect his classification of virtues and vices, and however lax his morality, his book contains a great many paragraphs that strikingly illustrate the progress of society, and may, therefore, be advantageously referred to by the political economist."

"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."

"Mandeville, the buffoon and sophister of the alehouse."

"There is not a book in the English language which is less chargeable with the guilt of administering incentives to the appetites and tastes of the vulgar. Improper gratifications are never spoken of but in a way to make them odious, even when the paradox is maintained, that certain things called public benefits are promoted by them. The object rather is, to degrade the things denominated benefits, than to exalt the things which cause them; from the baseness of which, on the other hand, is inferred the baseness of the things which spring from them."

"It [The Fable of the Bees] is a satire upon artificial society; and like other satires partakes of the nature of a caricature. The end is to expose the mummery of the world, and the affectations of those who laid traps for praise by singing eulogiums on the dignity of human nature; to which end he shews, how much of fair appearance there is which is nothing but pretence; and how much of the fine things, and fine actions, on which we pride ourselves, are the result of qualities in us of which we are ashamed, and which we never cease to decry."

"The poem in itself was not much more than a clever jeu d'esprit, but the Remarks and the Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue, which he published in defence of his thesis, are among the acutest psychological tracts of the age... The passions which produce the effect of virtue are those that spring from pride and the sense of power and the desire of luxury... Such a theory of the passions is a legitimate, if onesided, deduction from the naturalistic philosophy as it left the hands of Locke; the ethical conclusions, it will be observed, have a curious similarity with the later system of Nietzsche. The theory of Mandeville was too violently in opposition to the common sense of mankind to produce much direct influence, but it remained as a great scandal of letters."

"The natural depravity of mankind and remains of original sin were so fixed in Mr. Johnson's opinion, that he was indeed a most acute observer of their effects; and used to say sometimes; half in jest half in earnest, that they were the remains of his old tutor Mandeville's instructions. As a book however, he took care always loudly to condemn the Fable of the Bees, but not without adding, "that it was the work of a thinking man.""

"Shaftesbury's book is full of fine declamation about the worth and excellence of men's reason and natural qualities, with an obvious intention to set these up against Revelation. It was against this system that Mandeville wrote his 'Fable of the Bees.' This book has anticipated the French writers in all their offensive representations of human nature, and it is remarkable that the severely religious parties have always had a sneaking kindness for Mandeville, at least, they hate the Shaftesbury school more, and for an obvious reason. If man's nature be as Shaftesbury represented it, religion is by no means necessary. Mandeville, on the contrary, shows man in his fallen state, and so points out the necessity of a Redeemer."

"The wickedest cleverest book in the English language."

"He can hardly be called a "moralist;" and though it is impossible to deny him a considerable share of philosophical penetration, his anti-moral paradoxes have not even apparent coherence. He is convinced that virtue (where it is more than a mere pretence) is purely artificial; but he is not quite certain whether it is a useless trammel of appetites and passions that are advantageous to society, or a device creditable to the politicians who introduced it by playing upon the "pride and vanity" of the "silly creature man." The view, however, to which he gave eccentric expression, that moral regulation is something alien to the natural man and imposed on him from without, seems to have been very current in the polite society of his time, as we learn both from Berkeley's Alciphron and from Butler's more famous sermons."

"Um die Gesellschaft (die natürlich aus den Nichtarbeitern besteht) glücklich und das Volk selbst in kümmerlichsten Zuständen zufrieden zu machen, ist es nötig, daß die große Mehrheit sowohl unwissend als arm bleibt. Kenntnisse erweitern und vervielfachen unsere Bedürfnisse, und je weniger ein Mann bedarf, desto leichter können seine Notwendigkeiten befriedigt werden."

"Das einzige also, was den arbeitenden Mann fleißig machen kann, ist ein mäßiger Arbeitslohn. Ein zu geringer macht ihn je nach seinem Temperament kleinmütig oder verzweifelt, ein zu großer frech und faul."