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the fable is a mere obvious pretext for a caustic impeachment of human and social shortcomings. He had also published, in 1704, Esop Dressed, Typhon in Verse, and The Planter's Charity. He enlarged his principal work, the Fable of the Bees; and in 1723 it was rendered more conspicuous by being presented to the grand jury of Middlesex on account of its immoral and pernicious tendency. His arguments were controverted by John Dennis, William Law, Bishop Berkeley, and others; and Mandeville replied to Berkeley in Letters to Dion. He also published Free Thoughts on Religion, and An Inquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War (1732), both of which, like his Fable, were explicitly subversive of the foundations of all ethical systems; The Virgin Unmasked (a story) and some disquisitions on the social evil are even more unpleasant in tone.

The satire of Mandeville is rather general, but his examples are strong and lively pictures. He describes the faults and corruptions of different professions and forms of society, and then attempts to show that they are subservient to the grandeur and worldly happiness of the whole. If mankind, he says, could be cured of the failings they are naturally guilty of, they would cease to be capable of forming vast, potent, and polite societies. But he confounds innocent pleasures and luxuries, which benefit society, with their vicious excesses, which are destructive of order and government. The Search into the Origin of Society was expressly designed to confute the optimism of Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics. Another of the paradoxes of Mandeville is, that charity schools, and all sorts of education, are injurious to the humbler ranks of the people. The view which he takes of human nature is low and degrading; many of his sallies are not unworthy of Swift in his least amiable humour. Professor Minto, without good grounds, regarded his cynical argumentation as ironical and not meant to be taken seriously. He no doubt had a humorous desire to shock his contemporaries by cynicism and paradox, as well as to divert them with clever satire. But there is no reason to doubt that he seriously meant that the 'moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride.' Man has been induced by designing politicians and moralists to believe that self-indulgence is inconsistent with his dignity and worthy only of the brutes. And in teaching that men who restrain their selfish appetites and sacrifice their own interests for the public good are fools and dupes, the Dutch doctor anticipated a good part of the teaching of Nietzsche. Some of his opinions on economic questions are sound and wonderfully well put. Let the value of gold and silver,' he says, 'either rise or fall, the enjoyment of all societies will ever depend upon the fruits of the earth and the labour of the people; both which joined together are a more certain, a more inexhaustible, and a more real treasure than the gold

of Brazil or the silver of Potosi.' His gift as an English writer was remarkable in a foreigner. Benjamin Franklin found him the soul of a tavern club, 'a most entertaining, facetious companion.'

The extracts given below are from the Grumbling Hive, from the 'Remarks' O. and P. appended thereto, and from A Search into the Nature of Society.

Vast Numbers throng'd the fruitful hive;
Yet those vast numbers made 'em thrive;
Millions endeavouring to supply
Each other's lust and vanity;
Whilst other millions were employ'd,
To see their handy-works destroy'd ;
They furnish'd half the universe;
Yet had more work than labourers.
Some with vast stocks and little pains
Jump'd into business of great gains;
And some were damn'd to sythes and spades,
And all those hard laborious trades
Where willing wretches daily sweat,
And wear out strength and limbs to eat :
Whilst others follow'd mysteries,
To which few folks bind 'prentices;
That want no stock, but that of brass,
And may set up without a cross;
As sharpers, parasites, pimps, players,
Pick-pockets, coiners, quacks, south-sayers,
And all those that in enmity,

With downright working, cunningly
Convert to their own use the labour
Of their good-natur'd heedless neighbour.
These were call'd knaves, but bar the name,
The grave industrious were the same :
All trades and places knew some cheat,
No calling was without deceit.

On Division of Labour.

If we trace the most flourishing nations in their origin, we shall find that, in the remote beginnings of every society, the richest and most considerable men among them were a great while destitute of a great many comforts of life that are now enjoyed by the meanest and most humble wretches; so that many things which were once looked upon as the invention of luxury are now allowed even to those that are so miserably poor as to become the objects of public charity, nay, counted so necessary that we think no human creature ought to want them. . . . A man would be laughed at that should discover luxury in the plain dress of a poor creature that walks along in a thick parish gown, and a coarse shirt underneath it; and yet what a number of people, how many different trades, and what a variety of skill and tools, must be employed to have the most ordinary Yorkshire cloth! What depth of thought and ingenuity, what toil and labour, and what length of time must it have cost, before man could learn from a seed to raise and prepare so useful a product as linen! . . .

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 millwright, the pewterer, and the chymist, 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! Alum, 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 salt'petre 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, 'tis 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 West Indies. Whilst 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.

Virtues of the Great.

This contradiction in the frame of man [between professed principles and actual practice] is the reason that the theory of virtue is so well understood and the practice of it so rarely to be met with. If you ask me where to look for those beautiful shining qualities of primeministers, and the great favourites of princes, that are so finely painted in dedications, addresses, epitaphs, funeralsermons, and inscriptions, I answer, There, and nowhere else. Where would you look for the excellency of a statue but in that part which you see of it? 'Tis the polished outside only that has the skill and labour of the sculptor to boast of; what is out of sight is untouched. Would you break the head or cut open the breast to look for the brains or the heart, you would only show your ignorance, and destroy the workmanship. This has often made me compare the virtues of great men to your large china jars: they make a fine show, and are ornamental even to a chimney. One would, by the bulk they appear in and the value that is set upon them, think they might be very useful; but look into a thousand of them, and you will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.

Pomp and Superfluity.

If the great ones of the clergy, as well as the laity, of any country whatever, had no value for earthly pleasures, and did not endeavour to gratify their appetites, why are envy and revenge so raging among them, and all the other passions improved and refined upon in courts of princes more than anywhere else; and why are their repasts, their recreations, and whole manner of living, always such as are approved of, coveted, and imitated by the most sensual people of the same country? If, despising all visible decorations, they were only in love with the embellishments of the mind, why should they borrow so many of the implements, and make use of the most darling toys, of the luxurious? Why should a

lord treasurer, or a bishop, or even the Grand Signior, or the Pope of Rome, to be good and virtuous and endeavour the conquest of his passions, have occasion for greater revenues, richer furniture, or a more numerous attendance as to personal service than a private man? What virtue is it the exercise of which requires so much pomp and superfluity as are to be seen by all men in power? A man has as much opportunity to practise temperance that has but one dish at a meal, as he that is constantly served with three courses and a dozen dishes in each. One may exercise as much patience and be as full of self-denial on a few flocks, without curtains or tester, as in a velvet bed that is sixteen foot high. The virtuous possessions of the mind are neither charge nor burden: a man may bear misfortunes with fortitude in a garret, forgive injuries afoot, and be chaste, though he has not a shirt to his back; and therefore I shall never believe but that an indifferent sculler, if he was entrusted with it, might carry all the learning and religion that one man can contain, as well as a barge with six oars, especially if it was but to cross from Lambeth to Westminster; or that humility is so ponderous a virtue, that it requires six horses to

draw it.

Lord Bolingbroke.-Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was in his own day the most conspicuous and illustrious of that friendly band of Tory wits who adorned the reigns of Anne and George I. St John was descended from an ancient family, and was born at Battersea in 1678. He was educated at Eton (not at Oxford). After travelling on the Continent, he entered Parliament, was successively Secretary for War and Foreign Secretary of State, shared the Tory leadership with Harley, but estranged his followers by his mania for secret scheming. Made a peer in 1712, he negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. After intriguing successfully for Harley's downfall, he was plotting a Jacobite restoration when Queen Anne died and George I. succeeded. Retiring to France, he was attainted, and served the Pretender as secretary. Here also he became unpopular, and was accused of neglect or incapacity. Losing thus a second secretaryship, he had recourse to literature, and produced his Reflections upon Exile, and a letter to Sir William Wyndham, an apologia for his conduct containing some of his very best writing. In 1723 he obtained permission to return to England; his family inheritance was restored to him, but he was excluded from the House of Lords. He commenced an active opposition to Walpole, and wrote a number of political tracts against the Whig Ministry. Disappointed in his hope of re-entering political life, he retired again to France in 1735, and resided there seven years, writing now his most important contributions to literature-his Letters on the Study of History and a Letter on the True Use of Retirement. In 1738, on a visit to England, he entrusted to Pope the MS. of his Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism and his Idea of a Patriot King. Chesterfield said of the latter, Bolingbroke's most elaborate piece, that till he

read it he did not know the extent and power of the English language. After the death of Pope, it was found that an impression of 1500 of the Patriot King had been printed, and this Bolingbroke affected to consider a heinous breach of trust. After he settled at Battersea in 1744, he prepared a 'correct' edition of the Patriot King. The preface, believed to be by David Mallet, attacked Pope with coarse invective; and this began a bitter and acrimonious war of pamphlets, in which Warburton and others were involved. Bolingbroke died in 1751, and Mallet-to whom he left all his manuscripts-published a complete edition of his works in five volumes. A series of essays on religion and philosophy, first published in this collection, showed the attitude to the Scriptures and the Christian faith which led to Dr Johnson's characteristic denunciation of Bolingbroke: Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-acrown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'

'The Alcibiades of his time' (in Bagehot's phrase), he was idolised for the grace of his person, the charm of his manner, and the splendour of his talents. An admirable speaker and writer, he was not a great statesman. Even his enemies admitted the extraordinary power and charm of his oratory: Chesterfield said his style was better than that of any other, and Chatham counselled his nephew to get Bolingbroke's works by heart. But he was the arch-intriguer of his time, profligate, selfish, and insincere. Macaulay denounced him as a brilliant knave; Hallam was not less uncomplimentary, and the Tory Stanhope took the same view. In Walpole's eyes he was a perjured villain, and in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's words, a vile man. His patriotism has of late found strenuous defenders. A pronounced freethinker, he considered Christianity a fable, but held that a statesman ought to profess the doctrines of the Church of England. Though he borrowed many thoughts from Shaftesbury, his philosophy is sensational on its psychological side, commonplace and far from profound as an ethical theory of life. It is largely reflected in Pope's Essay on Man: admittedly Pope was on this side the peer's pupil. The master hardly thought his pupil fully comprehended the system (if system it may be called) expounded, as Bolingbroke complacently says to Pope, 'when we saunter alone or, as we have often done, with good Arbuthnot and the jocose Dean of St Patrick's, among the multiplied scenes of your little garden.' Voltaire was much influenced by Bolingbroke, whose works, philosophical and political, are models of polished, pointed, declamatory prose, often vivid, lively, and felicitous, but at times somewhat rambling and resembling rather spoken than written eloquence. In one of his letters to Swift we find him thus moralising:

The Decline of Life.

We are both in the decline of life, my dear Dean, and have been some years going down the hill; let us make the passage as smooth as we can. Let us fence against physical evil by care, and the use of those means which experience must have pointed out to us; let us fence against moral evil by philosophy. We may, nay-if we will follow nature and do not work up imagination against her plainest dictates-we shall, of course, grow every year more indifferent to life, and to the affairs and interests of a system out of which we are soon to go. This is much better than stupidity. The decay of passion strengthens philosophy, for passion may decay, and stupidity not succeed. Passions-says Pope, our divine, as you will see one time or other--are the gales of life; let us not complain that they do not blow a storm. What hurt does age do us in subduing what

[graphic]

VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE.

(From the Portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud in the National
Portrait Gallery.)

we toil to subdue all our lives? It is now six in the morning; I recall the time-and am glad it is overwhen about this hour I used to be going to bed surfeited with pleasure, or jaded with business; my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, serene, and calm; that the past and even the present affairs of life stand like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagreeable, so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer to me? Passions, in their force, would bring all these, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and reason would but ill defend me in the scuffle.

The Mind's Independence of Circumstances. Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest, lies most out of the reach of human power, can neither be given nor taken

away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature -the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world, where it makes the noblest part. These are inseparably ours; and as long as we remain in one, we shall enjoy the other. Let us march, therefore, intrepidly, wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall meet with men and women, creatures of the same figure, endowed with the same faculties, and born under the same laws of nature. We shall see the same virtues and vices flowing from the same general principles, but varied in a thousand different and contrary modes, according to that infinite variety of laws and customs which is established for the same universal end-the preservation of society. We shall feel the same revolutions of seasons; and the same sun and moon will guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be everywhere spread over our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may not admire those planets, which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same central sun; from whence we may not discover an object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns, whose beams enlighten and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around them; and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me little what ground I tread upon. (From Reflections upon Exile.)

National Partiality and Prejudice. There is scarce any folly or vice more epidemical among the sons of men than that ridiculous and hurtful vanity by which the people of each country are apt to prefer themselves to those of every other; and to make their own customs, and manners, and opinions the standards of right and wrong, of true and false. The Chinese mandarins were strangely surprised and almost incredulous when the Jesuits shewed them how small a figure their empire made in the general map of the world. .. Now, nothing can contribute more to prevent us from being tainted with this vanity than to accustom ourselves early to contemplate the different nations of the earth in that vast map which history spreads before us, in their rise and their fall, in their barbarous and civilised states, in the likeness and unlikeness of them all to one another, and of each to itself. By frequently renewing this prospect to the mind, the Mexican with his cap and coat of feathers, sacrificing a human victim to his god, will not appear more savage to our eyes than the Spaniard with an hat on his head, and a gonilla round his neck, sacrificing whole nations to his ambition, his avarice, and even the wantonness of his cruelty. I might shew by a multitude of other examples how history prepares us for experience, and guides us in it; and many of these would be both curious and important. I might likewise bring several other instances wherein history serves to purge the mind of those national partialities and prejudices that we are apt to contract in our education, and that experience for the most part rather confirms than removes; because it is for the most part confined, like our education. But I apprehend growing too prolix, and shall therefore conclude this head by observing, that though an early and proper application to the study of history will contribute extremely to keep our minds free

from a ridiculous partiality in favour of our own country, and a vicious prejudice against others, yet the same study will create in us a preference of affection to our own country. There is a story told of Abgarus. He brought several beasts taken in different places to Rome, they say, and let them loose before Augustus; every beast ran immediately to that part of the circus where

parcel of earth taken from his native soil had been laid. Credat Judæus Apella. This tale might pass on Josephus ; for in him, I believe, I read it; but surely the love of our country is a lesson of reason, not an institution of nature. Education and habit, obligation and interest, attach us to it, not instinct. It is, however, so necessary to be cultivated, and the prosperity of all societies, as well as the grandeur of some, depends upon it so much, that orators by their eloquence, and poets by their enthusiasm, have endeavoured to work up this precept of morality into a principle of passion. But the examples which we find in history, improved by the lively descriptions and the just applauses or censures of historians, will have a much better and more permanent effect than declamation, or song, or the dry ethics of mere philosophy.

(From On the Study of History.)

Complaints about the Shortness of Life
Unreasonable.

I think very differently from most men of the time we have to pass, and the business we have to do, in this world. I think we have more of one, and less of the other, than is commonly supposed. Our want of time, and the shortness of human life, are some of the principal common-place complaints which we prefer against the established order of things; they are the grumblings of the vulgar, and the pathetic lamentations of the philosopher; but they are impertinent and impious in both. The man of business despises the man of pleasure for squandering his time away; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the man of business for the same thing; and yet both concur superciliously and absurdly to find fault with the Supreme Being for having given them so little time. The philosopher, who misspends it very often as much as the others, joins in the same cry, and authorises this impiety. Theophrastus thought it extremely hard to die at ninety, and to go out of the world when he had just learned how to live in it. His master Aristotle found fault with nature for treating man in this respect worse than several other animals; both very unphilosophically! and I love Seneca the better for his quarrel with the Stagirite on this head. We see, in so many instances, a just proportion of things, according to their several relations to one another, that philosophy should lead us to conclude this proportion preserved, even where we do not discern it; instead of leading us to conclude that it is not preserved where we do not discern it, or where we think that we see the contrary. To conclude otherwise is shocking presumption. It is to presume that the system of the universe would have been more wisely contrived if creatures of our low rank among intellectual natures had been called to the councils of the Most High; or that the Creator ought to amend his work by the advice of the creature. That life which seems to our self-love so short, when we compare it with the ideas we frame of eternity, or even with the duration of some other beings, will appear sufficient, upon a less partial view, to all the ends of our creation, and of a just proportion in the successive course of generations. The term

itself is long; we render it short; and the want we complain of flows from our profusion, not from our poverty.

Let us leave the men of pleasure and of business, who are often candid enough to own that they throw away their time, and thereby to confess that they complain of the Supreme Being for no other reason than this, that he has not proportioned his bounty to their extravagance. Let us consider the scholar and the philosopher, who, far from owning that he throws any time away, reproves others for doing it; that solemn mortal who abstains from the pleasures, and declines the business of the world, that he may dedicate his whole time to the search of truth and the improvement of knowledge. When such an one complains of the shortness of human life in general, or of his remaining share in particular, might not a man more reasonable, though less solemn, expostulate thus with him: Your complaint is indeed consistent with your practice; but you would not possibly renew your complaint if you reviewed your practice. Though reading makes a scholar, yet every scholar is not a philosopher, nor every philosopher a wise man. It costs you twenty years to devour all the volumes on one side of your library; you came out a great critic in Latin and Greek, in the oriental tongues, in history and chronology; but you was not satisfied. You confessed that these were the litera nihil sanantes, and you wanted more time to acquire other knowledge. You have had this time; you have passed twenty years more on the other side of your liberty, among philosophers, rabbis, commentators, schoolmen, and whole legions of modern doctors. You are extremely well versed in all that has been written concerning the nature of God, and of the soul of man, about matter and form, body and spirit, and space and eternal essences, and incorporeal substances, and the rest of those profound speculations. You are a master of the controversies that have arisen about nature and grace, about predestination and freewill, and all the other abstruse questions that have made so much noise in the schools, and done so much hurt in the world. You are going on, as fast as the infirmities you have contracted will permit, in the same course of study; but you begin to foresee that you shall want time, and you make grievous complaints of the shortness of human life. Give me leave now to ask you how many thousand years God must prolong your life in order to reconcile you to his wisdom and goodness? It is plain, at least highly probable, that a life as long as that of the most aged of the patriarchs would be too short to answer your purposes; since the researches and disputes in which you are engaged have been already for a much longer time the objects of learned inquiries, and remain still as imperfect and undetermined as they were at first. But let me ask you again, and deceive neither yourself nor me, have you, in the course of these forty years, once examined the first principles and the fundamental facts on which all those questions depend, with an absolute indifference of judgment, and with a scrupulous exactness? with the same care that you have employed in examining the various consequences drawn from them, and the heterodox opinions about them. Have you not taken them for granted in the whole course of your studies? Or, if you have looked now and then on the state of the proofs brought to maintain them, have you not done it as a mathematician looks over a demon

stration formerly made-to refresh his memory, not to satisfy any doubt? If you have thus examined, it may appear marvellous to some that you have spent so much time in many parts of those studies, which have reduced you to this hectic condition of so much heat and weakness. But if you have not thus examined, it must be evident to all, nay to yourself on the least cool reflection, that you are still, notwithstanding all your learning, in a state of ignorance. For knowledge can alone produce knowledge; and without such an examination of axioms and facts, you can have none about inferences.'

In this manner one might expostulate very reasonably with many a great scholar, many a profound philosopher, many a dogmatical casuist. And it serves to set the complaints about want of time and the shortness of human life in a very ridiculous but a true light.

(From On the True Use of Retirement and Study.)

Pleasures of a Patriot.

Neither Montaigne in writing his essays, nor Descartes in building new worlds, nor Burnet in framing an antediluvian earth, no, nor Newton in discovering and establishing the true laws of nature on experiment and a sublimer geometry, felt more intellectual joys than he feels who is a real patriot, who bends all the force of his understanding, and directs all his thoughts and actions, to the good of his country. When such a man forms a political scheme and adjusts various and seemingly independent parts in it to one great and good design, he is transported by imagination, or absorbed in meditation, as much and as agreeably as they; and the satisfaction that arises from the different importance of these objects, in every step of the work, is vastly in his favour. It is here that the speculative philosopher's labour and pleasure end. But he who speculates in order to act, goes on and carries his scheme into execution. His labour continues, it varies, it increases; but so does his pleasure too. The execution, indeed, is often traversed, by unforeseen and untoward circumstances, by the perverseness or treachery of friends, and by the power or malice of enemies; but the first and the last of these animate, and the docility and fidelity of some men make amends for the perverseness and treachery of others. Whilst a great event is in suspense, the action warms, and the very suspense, made up of hope and fear, maintains no unpleasing agitation in the mind. If the event is decided successfully, such a man enjoys pleasure proportionable to the good he has done-a pleasure like to that which is attributed to the Supreme Being on a survey of his works. If the event is decided otherwise, and usurping courts or overbearing parties prevail, such a man has still the testimony of his conscience, and a sense of the honour he has acquired, to soothe his mind and support his courage. For although the course of state affairs be to those who meddle in them like a lottery, yet it is a lottery wherein no good man can be a loser; he may be reviled, it is true, instead of being applauded, and may suffer violence of many kinds. I will not say, like Seneca, that the noblest spectacle which God can behold is a virtuous man suffering and struggling with afflictions; but this I will say, that the second Cato, driven out of the forum and dragged to prison, enjoyed more inward pleasure and maintained more outward dignity than they who insulted him, and who triumphed in the ruin of their country.

(From On the Spirit of Patriotism.)

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