tion.17 To be noted also is the frequent extension of meaning where fortuna is used in the sense of wealth,175 property,176 prosperity,"

177

Finally, looking at individual writers as to the relative frequency of fortuna in all its meanings we discover considerable differences, due for the most part to the department represented and to the author's preference for rhetorical expression. It is found most often in the epic. The Aeneid shows more than 60 examples. In Lucan's Pharsalia with 144 occurrences, fortuna is mentioned or apostrophized from every point of view, and the work is thoroughly penetrated with the idea of fate and destiny. The Bellum Punicum of Silius Italicus, more than half as large again as the Pharsalia, has only 48 instances, the difference to be explained by the fact that Silius reveals little of Lucan's gifts of rhetoric and brilliancy of description, is lacking in bombast and exaggeration, and rarely apostrophizes on the issues of war and peace. The Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, marking a reaction against the rhetoric of display, has few examples. Statius, except in the Silvae, in which he frequently finds it difficult to say things naturally, shows marked restraint as compared with Lucan. Seneca's tragedies, as we should expect from the department, from the author's fondness for rhetorical devices and from plays so permeated with stoical doctrines, have much to do with fortuna-73 examples. In comedy, including the fragments, and the plays of Plautus and Terence, there is a considerable use of fortuna in the ordinary sense of luck or chance, or as the goddess of chance, but all told there are only about onehalf as many occurrences as in tragedy, including the fragments, and the plays of Seneca. Ovid, at once the most voluminous and most rhetorical of the elegiac writers, uses fortuna 117 times as against its appearance of about a dozen times in Propertius and twice in Tibullus. The word occurs only half as frequently in the satires of Horace as in the satires of Juvenal (21 instances). It is relatively infrequent in the lyrics of Horace, in the epigrams of Catullus and Martial, and in the didactic writings of Lucretius and Manilius.

University of Illinois.

174 Prop., III, 9, 2.

15 Hor. Epod., 4, 6; Lucan, vII, 743; Stat. Silv., v, 3, 47; Manil., Iv, 167; Juv., XIV, 113, 328; Ovid, Trist., Iv, 10, 8.

170 Manil., III, 96; Hor. Ep., 1, 7, 54.

17 Hor. Odes, 1, 37, 11, Ep., 1, 5, 12; Verg. Aen., III, 53; Juv., XVI, 34.

THE INFLUENCE OF BERNARD MANDEVILLE

BY F. B. KAYE

Even to scholars Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees is now little more than a name and the recollection of a long-dead scandal. Yet the book had an extraordinary effect on the history of thought, an effect international in scope and still felt. Indeed, so great was Mandeville's influence that he can, I believe, be shown to be a major dignitary of eighteenth century thought. To demonstrate this is the aim of the present paper.

After this introduction it may seem a humorous anti-climax to answer the question: What was The Fable of the Bees? but the way in which history has slighted the work renders such an answer necessary. The book opens with a twenty-page rhymed allegory called The Grumbling Hive, first published by itself in 1705. This hive is described as made up, like any human state, of the elements of selfishness, pride, ambition, viciousness, and dishonesty. Yet all this evil is the stuff out of which is made the complicated mechanism of a great and prosperous state with

Millions endeavouring to supply

Each other's Lust and Vanity (Fable, 1, 3).1

Indeed, it is precisely this lust and vanity, as it shows itself in the desire for power, the love of splendor, the round of fashions, and the give-and-take of prodigality and avarice, that is the motive force of the whole commonwealth.

Thus Vice nurs'd Ingenuity,

Which join'd with Time and Industry,
Had carry'd Life's Conveniences,

Its real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease,

To such a Height, the very Poor

Liv'd better than the Rich before (Fable, 1, 11).

The bees, however, are not satisfied to have their viciousness mixed with their prosperity. All the cheats and hypocrites disclaim

My page references apply equally to a number of editions to those of 1724, 1725, 1728, and 1732 of the first part, and to the editions of 1729 and 1733 of Part II of the Fable.

about the state of their country's morals, and pray the gods for honesty. This raises the indignation of Jove, who unexpectedly grants them their wish.

But, Oh ye Gods! What Consternation,

How vast and sudden was th' Alteration! (Fable, 1, 13)

As Pride and Luxury decrease,

So by degrees they leave the Seas

All Arts and Crafts neglected lie;

Content, the Bane of Industry,

Makes 'em admire their homely Store,

And neither seek nor covet more (Fable, 1, 21).

In this way, through the loss of its vices, the hive at the same time loses all its greatness.

When it's by Justice lopt and bound;

Nay, where the people would be great,

As necessary to the State,

As Hunger is to make 'em eat (Fable, 1, 23-4).

In 1714 Mandeville republished The Grumbling Hive with a prose commentary of about two hundred pages appended. This commentary was in the form of some twenty essays or "Remarks," as he called them-each Remark serving as note to some line or lines of the little rhymed allegory. This time he named his book The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices Publick Benefits. In 1723 he added several new passages, among them two long prose essays (one of them an attack on charity schools); in 1724, he included a "Vindication" of his book from the attacks already accumulating; and in 1728 (by title-page, 1729) he published a Part II, of size equal to the first volume.

Obviously, such a framework gave Mandeville the opportunity of incorporating any thought he liked on any topic he liked; and he took advantage of the fact. An extraordinarily fertile speculator,

he throws out original or suggestive opinions-some of much interest on education, evolution, feminism, criminology, medicine, duelling, vegetarianism, public stews, psychology, economics, French literature, and theology. Among his educational conceptions, for example, is a foreshadowing of the Montessori system (Fable, II, 183-5 and 211). Then, too, Mandeville's theories in Part II of the Fable concerning the evolution of society were quite extraordinary." He seems unique at the time in appreciation of the great slowness of the thing, the small part in it played by the individual, the unsteadiness of its progression, and its control by physical law. A similar anticipatory modernity will be found in Mandeville's embryonic feminism. These, however, are side issues for this paper, and are noted merely in passing.

We shall be occupied here with Mandeville's influence in three fields only: literature, ethics, and economics.

I

Mandeville's purely literary influence was not considerable. The Fable had no direct imitators. Its influence was limited to the offering of tid-bits for amalgamation or paraphrase by other writers. Such an influence, however, it did have, and on some big figures— chiefly, Pope, Johnson, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. Pope paraphrased the Fable both in the Moral Essays and in the Essay on Man. The manuscript of the latter, it should also be noted, had,

There are, before Mandeville, only embryonic and fragmentary considerations of the growth of society from an evolutionary point of view. Of the ancients (Horace, Satires, I, iii, Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, book 5, and Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, lines 442-506) Lucretius is the most elaborate. The moderns until Mandeville added nothing. There is either no or slight anticipation of Mandeville in Matthew Hale (Primitive Origination of Man), Bossuet (Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle, ed. 1845, pp. 9-10), or Temple (Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government); nor is he anticipated in such works as those of Giordano Bruno, Bodin, Thomas Burnet, Whiston, John Woodward, John Keill, or Vico.

See Fable, II, 187-9, and also the passage in Mandeville's Virgin Unmask'd, ed. 1724, pp. 115-7, beginning: "They have enslaved our Sex."

• Elwin considers the following passages derived from Mandeville: Moral Essays, III, 13-14 and 25-26; Essay on Man, II, 129-30, 157-8, and 193-4. That the Essay on Man, 11, 129-30 and 157-8, owes anything to Mandeville, however, is doubtful, although the other lines are probably Mandevillian.

instead of the present line II, 240, this direct paraphrase of the sub-title of the Fable of the Bees:

And public good extracts from private vice.

7

It is just possible also that Pope derived the famous "To err is human, to forgive, divine" from a passage in another well-known book by Mandeville-the Free Thoughts."-Dr. Johnson, who said that Mandeville opened his views into real life very much, and whose economic theories were borrowed from Mandeville, limited his literary indebtedness to a passage in one of his Idlers (No. 34), which is a paraphrase of a witty portion of the Fable (I, 106), and to some able discussions with Boswell about the book.-Adam Smith's literary obligation extends to at least one famous passage, but this matter will be considered later as incidental to Smith's debt to Mandeville in the field of economics.-The literary borrowings of Voltaire, whose great general indebtedness will also be touched on later, consisted in the paraphrasing in French verse of some seven pages of the Fable (I, 190-6), Voltaire's poem being called Le Marseillois et le Lion (Euvres, ed. Garnier, 1877-85, X, 140-8); and of passages in Le Mondain and the Défense du Mondain, and in the Observations sur MM. Jean Lass, Melon et Dutot; sur le Commerce, which have parallels in the Fable.8

All this, however, constitutes an unimportant phase of Mandeville's influence. His great effect was on ethics and economics, and a very practical effect it was; no mere interchange of theories, but one bound up with the destinies of England and of France.

Before undertaking an analysis of this effect, however, I wish to give some impression of the enormous vogue of the Fable, and the eighteenth century's interest in it, for in the light of this vogue points of relationship between the Fable and subsequent developments take on fuller significance.

The Fable first attracted attention in 1723, when Mandeville added to it his "Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools." There

"Free Thoughts (1729), p. 61: "If to err belongs to human fraility, let us bear with their errors."

Boswell, Life, ed. Hill, New York, 1889, III, 292.

'See below, note 66.

Derivations from Mandeville in these three works are noted in André Morize's interesting dissertation, L'Apologie du Luxe au XVIIIe Siècle et "Le Mondain "de Voltaire (Paris, 1909).