Bernard Mandeville

Bernard Mandeville , 1670-1733, English author, b. Dordrecht, Holland. A physician, he went to London in 1692 ostensibly to learn the language, but eventually settled there permanently, practicing medicine and writing on ethical subjects. His most important work, The Fable of the Bees (1714, enl. ed. 1723, 1728), was an expansion of his poem The Grumbling Hive (1705). Mandeville declared that the mainspring of a commercial and industrial society is the self-seeking effort of individuals. Religious or legal restraints are mere fictions invented by rulers and clergymen to put men under domination. Mandeville's attitude was attacked by his contemporaries George Berkeley and William Law. However, his work had a strong influence on the doctrine of utilitarianism of the 19th cent.

Mandeville, Bernard de (1670–1733), published A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions (1711, expanded into three dialogues, 1730). His other prose works include The Virgin Unmasked (1709, 1714), arguing for a better status and better education for women; Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church and National Happiness (1720), a defence of Deism and an attack on clericalism; A Modest Defence of Public Stews (1724), recommending governmental regulation of bawdy-houses; and An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour (1732), distinguishing self-esteem from self-love. Of his moral and satirical verse the best known is ‘The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turn'd Honest’ (1705), which was incorporated with various prose supplements into The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits (1714, 1723). Mandeville here rejects the optimistic view of benevolent human nature put forward by Shaftesbury, and argues that the mutual help on which society thrives like a colony of bees is due to personal acquisitiveness and the love of luxury. He was attacked by W. Law, Dennis, Hutcheson, Watts, and G. Berkeley, and he was a literary target in Pope's Dunciad and Fielding's Amelia.