Part 2

In his edition of The Fable of the Bees, Oxford, 1924, II. 415-416. All subsequent references to The Fable of the Bees will be to this edition.

Objective appraisal of the outcome of the debate between Berkeley and Mandeville would presumably lead to a verdict somewhere between those rendered, with appropriate loyalty to their authors, by their respective editors. It is mainly for other reasons, however, that the Letter to Dion is still of interest. There is first its literary merit. More important, the Letter presents in more emphatic and sharper form than elsewhere two essential elements of Mandeville's system of thought, the advocacy, real or pretended, of unqualified rigorism in morals, and the stress on the role of the State, of the "skilful Politician," in evoking a flourishing society out of the operations of a community of selfish rogues and sinners. The remainder of this introduction will be confined to comments on these two aspects of Mandeville's doctrine. Since the publication in 1924 of F. B. Kaye's magnificent edition of The Fable of the Bees, no one can deal seriously with Mandeville's thought without heavy reliance on it, even when, as is the case here, there is disagreement with Kaye's interpretation of Mandeville's position.

It was Mandeville's central thesis, expressed by the motto, "Private Vices, Publick Benefits," of The Fable of the Bees, that the attainment of temporal prosperity has both as prerequisite and as inevitable consequence types of human behavior which fail to meet the requirements of Christian morality and therefore are "vices." He confined "the Name of Virtue to every Performance, by which Man, contrary to the impulse of Nature, should endeavour the Benefit of others, or the Conquest of his own Passions out of a Rational Ambition of being good." If "out of a Rational Ambition of being good" be understood to mean out of "charity" in its theological sense of conscious love of God, this definition of virtue is in strict conformity to Augustinian rigorism as expounded from the sixteenth century on by Calvinists and, in the Catholic Church, by Baius, Jansenius, the Jansenists, and others. Mandeville professes also the extreme rigorist doctrine that whatever is not virtue is vice: in Augustinian terms, aut caritas aut cupiditas. Man must therefore choose between temporal prosperity and virtue, and Mandeville insists, especially in the Letter to Dion, that on his part the choice is always of virtue:

... the Kingdom of Christ is not of this World, and ... the last-named is the very Thing a true Christian ought to renounce. (p. 18)

Fable of the Bees, I. 48-49.

All page references placed in the main text of this introduction are to the Letter to Dion.

"Tho' I have shewn the Way to Worldly Greatness, I have, without Hesitation, preferr'd the Road that leads to Virtue." (p. 31)

Kaye concedes: that Mandeville's rigorism "was merely verbal and superficial, and that he would much regret it if the world were run according to rigoristic morality;" that "emotionally" and "practically, if not always theoretically," Mandeville chooses the "utilitarian" side of the dilemma between virtue and prosperity; and that "Mandeville's philosophy, indeed, forms a complete whole without the extraneous rigorism." Kaye nevertheless insists that Mandeville's rigorism was sincere, and that it is necessary so to accept it to understand him. It seems to me, on the contrary, that if Mandeville's rigorism were sincere, the whole satirical structure of his argument, its provocative tone, its obvious fun-making gusto, would be incomprehensible, and there would be manifest inconsistency between his satirical purposes and his procedures as a writer.

Fable of the Bees, II. 411. I, lxi, I, lvi.

Kaye argues that rigorism was not so unusual as of itself to justify doubt as to its genuineness in the case of Mandeville; rigorism was "a contemporary point of view both popular and respected, a view-point not yet extinct." To show that rigorism was "the respectable orthodox position for both Catholics and Protestants," Kaya cites as rigorists, in addition to Bayle, St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Daniel Dyke (the author of Mystery of Selfe-Deceiving, 1642), Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), William Law, and three Continental moralists, Esprit and Pascal, Jansenists, and J. F. Bernard, a French Calvinist.

Ibid., I. li, I. lv, I. cxxi.

Christian rigorism by Mandeville's time had had a long history. From and including St. Augustine on, it had undergone many types of doctrinal dilution and moderation even on the part of some of its most ardent exponents. In Mandeville, and in Kaye, it is presented only in its barest and starkest form. Kaye, however, required by his thesis to show that Mandeville's doctrine was "in accord with a great body of contemporary theory," while accepting it as "the code of rigorism" treats it as if it were identical with any moral system calling for any measure of self-discipline or associated with any type of religious-mindedness. He also identifies it with rationalism in ethics as such, as if any rationalistic ethics, merely because it calls for some measure of discipline of the passions by "reason," is ipso facto "rigorist."

Ibid. I. cxxiv, note.

For example, Kaye cites from Blewitt, a critic of Mandeville, this passage: "nothing can make a Man honest or virtuous but a Regard to some religious or moral Principles" and characterizes it as "precisely the rigorist position from which Mandeville was arguing when he asserted that our so-called virtues were really vices, because not based only on this regard to principle." (Ibid. II. 411. The italics in both cases are mine). The passage from Blewitt is not, of itself, manifestly rigoristic, while the position attributed to Mandeville is rigorism at its most extreme.

As further evidence of the prevalence of rigorism, Kaye cites from Thomas Fuller the following passage: "corrupt nature (which without thy restraining grace will have a Vent.)" Ibid. I. cxxi, note. But in Calvinist theology "restraining grace," which was not a "purifying" grace, operated to make some men who were not purged of sin lead a serviceable social life. (See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. II, Ch. III, () 3, pp. I. 315-316 of the "Seventh American Edition," Philadelphia, n.d.) As I understand it, the role of "restraining grace" in Calvinist doctrine is similar to that of "honnêteté" in Jansenist doctrine, referred to infra. The rascals whom Mandeville finds useful to society are not to be identified either with those endowed with the "restraining grace" of the Calvinists or with the "honnêtes hommes" of the Jansenists.

For other instances of disregard by Kaye of the variations in substance and degree of the rigorism of genuine rigorists, see ibid. II. 403-406, II. 415-416.

See especially F. B. Kaye, "The Influence of Bernard Mandeville," Studies in Philology, XIX (1922), 90-102.

Mandeville was presumably directing his satire primarily at contemporary Englishmen, not at men who had been dead for generations nor at participants in Continental theological controversies without real counterpart in England, at least since the Restoration. If this is accepted, then of the men cited by Kaye to show the orthodoxy and the contemporaneity of rigorism only William Law has any relevance. But Law was an avowed "enthusiast," and in the England of Mandeville's time this was almost as heretical as to be an avowed sceptic. Calvinism in its origins had been unquestionably--though not unqualifiedly--rigoristic. By Mandeville's time, however, avowed Calvinism was almost extinct in England; even in Geneva, in Scotland, in Holland, its rigorism had been much softened by the spread of Arminianism and by a variety of procedures of theological accommodation or mediation between the life of grace and the life of this sinful world. On the Continent, Jansenists were still expounding a severe rigorism. But Jansenist rigorism was not "orthodox." Though not as extreme as Mandeville's rigorism, it had repeatedly been condemned by Catholic authorities as "rigorisme outré."

Cf. Denziger-Bannwart, Enchiridion Symbolorum. (See index of any edition under "Baius," "Fénelon," "Iansen," "Iansenistae," "Quesnell.")

To take seriously Mandeville's rigorism, the narrowness with which he defines "virtue," the broadness with which he defines "vice," his failure to recognize any intermediate ground between "virtue" and outright "vice," or any shades or degrees of either, the positiveness with which he assigns to eternal damnation all who depart in any degree from "virtue" as he defines it, is therefore to accept Mandeville as a genuine exponent of a rigorism too austere and too grim not only for the ordinary run of orthodox Anglicans or Catholics of his time but even for St. Augustine (at times), for the Calvinists, and for the Jansenists.

Kaye justifiably puts great stress on the extent of Mandeville's indebtedness to Pierre Bayle. There is not the space here to elaborate, but it could be shown, I believe, that Mandeville was also indebted greatly, both indirectly through Bayle and directly, to the Jansenist, Pierre Nicole, and that Mandeville's rigorism was a gross distortion of, while Bayle's was essentially faithful to, Nicole's system. Nicole insisted that "true virtue" in the rigorist sense was necessary for salvation, but at the same time expounded the usefulness for society of behavior which theologically was "sinful." But it was the "sinful" behavior of honnêtes hommes, of citizens conforming to the prevalent moral standards of their class, not of rogues and rascals, which Nicole conceded to be socially useful. Mandeville, on the other hand, not only lumped the respectable citizens with the rogues and rascals, but it was the usefulness for society of the vices of the rogues and rascals more than--and rather than--those of honest and respectable citizens which he emphasized. In the flourishing hive, prior to its reform, there were:

... Sharpers, Parasites, Pimps, Players, Pick-pockets, Coiners, Quacks, South-sayers,

* * *

These were call'd Knaves, but bar the Name, The grave Industrious were the same.

The most pertinent writings of Nicole for present purposes were his essays, "De la charité & de l'amour-propre," "De la grandeur," and "Sur l'évangile du Jeudi-Saint," which in the edition of his works published by Guillaume Desprez, Paris, 1755-1768, under the title Essais de morale, are to be found in volumes III, VI, and XI.

For a similar distinction by Bayle between honnêtes hommes who are not of the elect and the outright rascals, see Pierre Bayle, Dictionaire historique et critiqué. 5th ed., Amsterdam, 1740, "Éclaircissement sur les obscénités," IV. () iv, p. 649.

Fable of the Bees, I. 19.

The moral reform which brought disaster to the "Grumbling Hive" consisted merely in abandonment of roguery and adoption of the standards of the honnête homme.