The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits is a 1714 book by the Anglo-Dutch philosopher Bernard Mandeville. It consists of the satirical poem The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest, which was first published anonymously in 1705; a prose discussion of the poem, called "Remarks"; and an essay, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue. In 1723, a second edition was published with two new essays.
In The Grumbling Hive, Mandeville describes a bee community that thrives until the bees decide to live by honesty and virtue. As they abandon their desire for personal gain, the economy of their hive collapses, and they go on to live simple, "virtuous" lives in a hollow tree. Mandeville's implication—that private vices create social benefits—caused a scandal when public attention turned to the work, especially after its 1723 edition.
Mandeville's social theory and the thesis of the book, according to E. J. Hundert, is that "contemporary society is an aggregation of self-interested individuals necessarily bound to one another neither by their shared civic commitments nor their moral rectitude, but, paradoxically, by the tenuous bonds of envy, competition and exploitation". Mandeville implied that people were hypocrites for espousing rigorous ideas about virtue and vice while they failed to act according to those beliefs in their private lives. He observed that those preaching against vice had no qualms about benefiting from it in the form of their society's overall wealth, which Mandeville saw as the cumulative result of individual vices (such as luxury, gambling, and crime, which benefited lawyers and the justice system).
Mandeville's challenge to the popular idea of virtue—in which only unselfish, Christian behaviour was virtuous—caused a controversy that lasted through the eighteenth century and influenced thinkers in moral philosophy and economics. In recent years, philosophers have imported the idea of Mandevillean virtue and vice from ethics to epistemology, arguing that what might seem like intellectual vices in individuals sometimes contribute to group inquiry. The Fable influenced ideas about the division of labour and the free market (laissez-faire), and the philosophy of utilitarianism was advanced as Mandeville's critics, in defending their views of virtue, also altered them. His work influenced Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith.
Publication history The genesis of The Fable of the Bees was Mandeville's anonymous publication of the poem The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn'd Honest on 2 April 1705 as a sixpenny quarto, which was also pirated at a half-penny. In 1714, the poem was included in The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, also published anonymously. This book included a commentary, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue, and twenty "Remarks". The second edition in 1723 sold at five shillings and included two new parts: An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools and A Search into the Nature of Society. This edition attracted the most interest and notoriety. Beginning with the 1724 edition Mandeville included a "Vindication", first published in the London Journal, as a response to his critics. Between 1724 and 1732, further editions were published, with changes limited to matters of style, slight alterations of wording, and a few new pages of preface. During this period, Mandeville worked on a "Part II", which consisted of six dialogs and was published in 1729 as The Fable of the Bees. Part II. By the Author of the First.
A French translation was published in 1740. The translation, by Émilie du Châtelet, was not particularly faithful to the original; according to Kaye, it was "a free one, in which the Rabelaisian element in Mandeville was toned down".See also . By this time, French literati were familiar with Mandeville from the 1722 translation by Justus van Effen of his Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church and National Happiness. They had also followed the Fable'''s scandal in England. The book was especially popular in France between 1740 and 1770. It influenced Jean-François Melon and Voltaire, who had been exposed to the work in England between 1726 and 1729 and reflected on some of its ideas in his 1736 poem Le Mondain. A German translation first appeared in 1761.
F. B. Kaye's 1924 edition, based on his Yale dissertation and published by Oxford University's Clarendon Press, included extensive commentary and textual criticism. It renewed interest in the Fable, whose popularity had faded through the 19th century. Kaye's edition, a "model of what a fully annotated edition ought to be" and still important to Mandeville studies, was reprinted in 1988 by the American Liberty Fund.
Synopsis PoemThe Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest (1705) is in doggerel couplets of eight syllables over 433 lines. It is a commentary on contemporary English society. Economist John Maynard Keynes described the poem as setting forth "the appalling plight of a prosperous community in which all the citizens suddenly take it into their heads to abandon luxurious living, and the State to cut down armaments, in the interests of Saving". It begins:
A Spacious Hive well stock'd with Bees, That lived in Luxury and Ease; And yet as fam'd for Laws and Arms, As yielding large and early Swarms; Was counted the great Nursery 5 Of Sciences and Industry. No Bees had better Government, More Fickleness, or less Content. They were not Slaves to Tyranny, Nor ruled by wild Democracy; 10 But Kings, that could not wrong, because Their Power was circumscrib'd by Laws.
The "hive" is corrupt but prosperous, yet it grumbles about lack of virtue. A higher power decides to give them what they ask for:
But Jove, with Indignation moved, At last in Anger swore, he'd rid 230 The bawling Hive of Fraud, and did. The very Moment it departs, And Honesty fills all their Hearts;
This results in a rapid loss of prosperity, though the newly virtuous hive does not mind:
For many Thousand Bees were lost. Hard'ned with Toils, and Exercise They counted Ease it self a Vice; Which so improved their Temperance; 405 That, to avoid Extravagance, They flew into a hollow Tree, Blest with Content and Honesty.
The poem ends in a famous phrase:
Bare Virtue can't make Nations live In Splendor; they, that would revive A Golden Age, must be as free, For Acorns, as for Honesty.
Charity schools In the 1723 edition, Mandeville added An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools. He criticised charity schools, which were designed to educate the poor and, in doing so, instill virtue in them. Mandeville disagreed with the idea that education encourages virtue because he did not believe that evil desires existed only in the poor; rather he saw the educated and wealthy as much more crafty. Mandeville believed that educating the poor increased their desires for material things, defeating the purpose of the school and making it more difficult to provide for them.Marx, Karl (1990) . Capital. Vol. 1, ch. 25, "The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation", p. 765. Penguin Classics.
Contemporary reception At the time, the book was considered scandalous, being understood as an attack on Christian virtues. The 1723 edition gained a notoriety that previous editions had not, and caused debate among men of letters throughout the eighteenth century. The popularity of the second edition in 1723 in particular has been attributed to the collapse of the South Sea Bubble a few years earlier. For those investors who had lost money in the collapse and related fraud, Mandeville's pronouncements about private vice leading to public benefit would have been infuriating.
The book was vigorously combatted by, among others, the philosopher George Berkeley and the priest William Law. Berkeley attacked it in the second dialogue of his Alciphron (1732). The 1723 edition was presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who proclaimed that the purpose of the Fable was to "run down Religion and Virtue as prejudicial to Society, and detrimental to the State; and to recommend Luxury, Avarice, Pride, and all vices, as being necessary to Public Welfare, and not tending to the Destruction of the Constitution". In the rhetoric of the presentment, Mandeville saw the influence of the Society for the Reformation of Manners. The book was also denounced in the London Journal.
Other writers attacked the Fable, notably Archibald Campbell (1691–1756) in his Aretelogia. Francis Hutcheson also denounced Mandeville, initially declaring the Fable to be "unanswerable"―that is, too absurd for comment. Hutcheson argued that pleasure consisted in "affection to fellow creatures", and not the hedonistic pursuit of bodily pleasures. He also disagreed with Mandeville's notion of luxury, which he believed depended on too austere a notion of virtue. The modern economist John Maynard Keynes noted that "only one man is recorded as having spoken a good word for it, namely Dr. Johnson, who declared that it did not puzzle him, but 'opened his eyes into real life very much'."
Adam Smith expressed his disapproval of The Fable of the Bees in Part VII, Section II of his Theory of Moral Sentiments. The reason that Smith heavily criticizes Mandeville is that Mandeville mistakes greed as a part of self-interest. Smith claims that, in reality, greed and the self-interest he comments on in the Wealth of Nations are separate concepts that affect the market very differently.
The book reached Denmark by 1748, where a major Scandinavian writer of the period, Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), offered a new critique of the Fable—one that did not centre on "ethical considerations or Christian dogma". Instead, Holberg questioned Mandeville's assumptions about the constitution of a good or flourishing society: "the question is whether or not a society can be called luxurious in which citizens amass great wealth which is theirs to use while others live in the deepest poverty. Such is the general condition in all the so-called flourishing cities which are reputed to be the crown jewels of the earth."Holberg quoted in . Holberg rejected Mandeville's ideas about human nature—that such unequal states are inevitable because humans have an animal-like or corrupt nature—by offering the example of Sparta, the Ancient Greek city-state. The people of Sparta were said to have rigorous, immaterialistic ideals, and Holberg wrote that Sparta was strong because of this system of virtue: "She was free from internal unrest because there was no material wealth to give rise to quarrels. She was respected and honored for her impartiality and justice. She achieved dominion over the other Greeks simply because she rejected dominion."Holberg quoted in .
Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented on the Fable in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754):