  THE most paradoxical of moralists, born at Dort, in Holland. He was brought up to the profession of medicine, and took the degree of M.D. He afterwards settled and practised in London. It was in 1714 that he published his short poem called The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turned Honest, to which he afterwards added long explanatory notes, and then republished the whole under the new and celebrated title of The Fable of the Bees. This work “which, however erroneous may be its views of morals and of society, is written in a proper style, and bears all the marks of an honest and sincere inquiry on an important subject, exposed its author to much obloquy, and met with answers and attacks.... It would appear that some of the hostility against this work, and against Mandeville generally, is to be traced to another publication, recommending the public licensing of ‘stews,’ the matter and manner of which are certainly exceptionable, though, at the same time, it must be stated that Mandeville earnestly and with seeming sincerity commends his plan as a means of diminishing immorality, and that he endeavoured, so far as lay in his power, by affixing a high price and in other ways, to prevent the work from having a general circulation.” In fact, Mandeville is one of those injudicious but well-meaning reformers who, by their propensity to perverse paradox, have injured at once their reputation and their usefulness for after times. A second part of The Fable appeared at a later period. Amongst other numerous writings were two entitled, Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness, and An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War. He appears to have been enabled to pursue his literary career in great measure by the liberality of his Dutch friends, and he was a constant guest of the first Earl of Macclesfield. “The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices Public Benefits may be received in two ways,” says the writer in the Penny CyclopÆdia, whom we have already quoted, Strange, as it may appear, that views of this kind should be seriously put forth, “it is yet more so that they should come from one whose object always was, however strange the way in which he set about it, to promote good morals, for there is nothing in Mandeville’s writings to warrant the belief that he sought to encourage vice.” Mandeville, like Swift, in the piece entitled An Argument against Abolishing Christianity; or like De Foe, in his Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which were taken au sÉrieux almost universally at the time of their appearance, may have used the style of grave irony, so far as the larger portion of his Fable is concerned, for the purpose of making a stronger impression on the public conscience. If such were his purpose, the irony is so profound that it has missed its aim. Yet that his purpose was true and earnest is sufficiently evident in his opinion of the practice of slaughtering for food:— “I have often thought [writes Mandeville] if it was not for the tyranny which Custom usurps over us, that men of any tolerable good nature could never be reconciled to the killing of so many animals for their daily food, so long as the bountiful Earth so plentifully provides them with varieties of vegetable dainties. I know that Reason excites our compassion but faintly, and therefore I do not wonder how men should so little commiserate such imperfect creatures as cray-fish, oysters, cockles, and, indeed, all fish in general, as they are mute, and their inward formation, as well as outward figure, vastly different from ours: they express themselves unintelligently to us, and therefore ’tis not strange that their grief should not affect our understanding which it cannot reach; for nothing stirs us to pity so effectually as when the symptoms of misery strike immediately upon our senses, and I have seen people moved at the noise a live lobster makes upon the spit who could have killed half a dozen fowls with pleasure. “But in such perfect animals as Sheep and Oxen, in whom the heart, the brain, and the nerves differ so little from ours, and in whom the separation of the spirits from the blood, the organs of sense, and, consequently, feeling itself, are the same as they are in human creatures, I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood and massacre, is able to see a violent death, and the pangs of it, without concern. “In answer to this [he continues], most people will think it sufficient to say that things being allowed to be made for the service of man, there can be no cruelty in putting creatures to the use they were designed for, “There is of all the multitude not one man in ten but will own (if he has not been brought up in a slaughter-house) that of all trades he could never have been a butcher; and I question whether ever anybody so much as killed a chicken without reluctancy the first time. Some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with while they were alive; others extend their scruples no further than to their own poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves; yet all of them feed heartily and without remorse on beef, mutton, and fowls when they are bought in the market. In this behaviour, methinks, there appears something like a consciousness of guilt; it looks as if they endeavoured to save themselves from the imputation of a crime (which they know sticks somewhere) by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves; and I discover in it some strong marks of primitive pity and innocence, which all the arbitrary power of Custom, and the violence of Luxury, have not yet been able to conquer.” |
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