the positive facts already noted suffice to prove the Fable of the Bees one of the most fundamental and persistent influences underlying the whole modern utilitarian movement.

III

Let us consider now Mandeville's effect on the course of economic theory, where his dominance was perhaps at its greatest.

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One aspect of Mandeville's effect on the history of economic thought was his association with the famous division of labor theory. It is generally known that Adam Smith made this principle into one of the foundation stones of modern economic thought, but it is not so well known that Adam Smith took this theory largely from Mandeville. Mandeville, in the Fable of the Bees, as early as the first edition in 1714, definitely developed this conception not only once but several times. Now, of course, the mere fact that Mandeville anticipated Smith would not mean that Smith derived his tenets from Mandeville, for Smith had been anticipated by others besides Mandeville. But Mandeville has special claims to influence. We know that Smith was intimately acquainted with the Fable of the Bees. He gave a most able analysis of it in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and devoted half an essay to the influence of Mandeville on Rousseau.62 Moreover, Mandeville not only sets forth the division of labor principle, but does so in the words that Smith was to make famous, speaking several times of " dividing" and "subdividing" "labour." Furthermore, one of the most famous passages in the Wealth of Nations-that about the laborer's coat-is only a padded paraphrase of a similar passage in the Fable of the Bees.63 Finally, Dugald Stewart, who knew Smith personally, credits Mandeville with having been Smith's inspiration. It does not seem that more need be said to indicate that considerable credit for putting the division of labor theory on its feet belongs to Mandeville.

See Fable, I, 182-3, 1, 411-4, II, 149, II, 335-6, II, 386, 11, 391, and index to Part II under, "Labour. The usefulness of dividing and subdividing it.” 2 See above, note 30.

63

Compare Fable, 1, 182-3 and 411-4 with Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, 1, 13-14. Cannan notes the parallel.

Stewart, Collected Works, ed. Hamilton, vIII, 323. Cf. also vIII, 311.

But, though important, his influence on the establishment of this doctrine is a minor aspect of Mandeville's effect on economic tendencies. A more important phase was his place in the international discussion concerning the usefulness of luxury, one of the most widely agitated questions in the eighteenth century. The Fable of the Bees contains many passages-perhaps the best known passages in the book-in which Mandeville shows not only the inseparability of luxury from a flourishing state, but holds that the production and consumption of luxuries is necessary to make it flourishing. This opinion was in opposition not only to all the more ascetic codes of morality, but in contradiction to what might be called the classic economic attitude, which set forth the ideal of a Spartan state, exalted the simpler agricultural pursuits, and denounced luxury as the degenerator of peoples and impoverisher of nations. The question of the value of luxury was to be one of the great battlegrounds of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.

Now, the Fable of the Bees was the practical starting place of the defense of luxury, and exerted an international effect, greatest, perhaps, in France. From Mandeville descend the chief exponents of this defense: Melon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and the Encyclopedists, and even defenders who were no economists, like Dr. Johnson.66 Voltaire, perhaps the most influential of all the defenders, is especially indebted to Mandeville. The famous Mondain of Vol

65 The indebtedness of Melon and Montesquieu is treated in Morize's L'Apologie du Luxe. Melon's debt is noted also by Espinas, “La Troisième Phase et la Dissolution du Mercantilisme (in Revue Internationale de Sociologie for Mar. 1902, p. 166).

* Johnson's economic tenets were apparently drawn from the Fable. Mandevillian passages abound; see Works (1825), XI, 349; Boswell, Life, ed. Hill, New York, 1889, II, 170-1, II, 217-9 (cf. Fable, 1, 118 ff.), III, 56, шII, 265 (cf. Fable, 1, 108-10 and ff.), III, 282 (of. Fable, 1, 198-9), III, 291-2, and IV, 173; Lives of the English Poets, ed. Hill, 1, 157 (Hill notes the origin of this in Mandeville). Johnson himself practically admits his debt (Life, I, 291): "He as usual defended luxury; 'You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor . . .' Miss Seward asked, if this was not Mandeville's doctrine of 'private vices publick benefits.'' And Johnson responds with a brilliant criticism of the Fable, the statement that he read the book forty or fifty years ago, and the acknowledgement that it 'opened my views into real life very much."

66

taire, one of the chief works which drove the defense of luxury into the public mind, is in large part simply a versification of some of the theories set forth in the Fable of the Bees."7

as

Nor was the Fable merely a potent influence in the works of other writers. It not only spurred on the others, but was itself in the van of the attack. In 1785, the learned Professor Pluquet, in a work approved by the Collège Royal, called Mandeville the first to defend luxury from the standpoint of economic theory; 68 and so thoroughly in the public mind was Mandeville conceived as spokesman for the defense of luxury that a popular American play 69 late as 1787 apostrophized not Voltaire, not any of the well-known encyclopedists, but Mandeville as the arch-advocate for this defense. We now come to perhaps the most important aspect of Mandeville's economic influence. In the Fable of the Bees Mandeville maintains, and maintains elaborately, the theory at present known as the laissez-faire theory, which dominated modern economic thought for a hundred years and is still a potent force. This is the theory that commercial affairs are happiest when least regulated by the government; that things tend by themselves to find their own proper level; and that unregulated self-seeking on the part of individuals will in society so interact with and check itself, that the result will be for the benefit of the community. But unnecessary interference on the part of the state will tend to pervert that delicate adjustment. Mandeville develops this hypothesis in regard both to national and international matters. In national affairs, he says and elaborates the thesis-"Proportion as to Numbers in every Trade finds it self, and is never better kept than when no body meddles or interferes with it" (Fable, I, 342). This advocacy of the laissez-faire theory he put into the most discussed part of the Fable-the notorious "Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools"; and the effect of his defense is evidenced by the number of replies directed specifically at this part of the Fable.

This is demonstrated in Morize's L'Apologie du Luxe au XVIIIe siècle. es For the college's approval see Pluquet, Traité Philosophique et Politique sur le Luxe (Paris, 1786), п, 501. Pluquet's statement concerning Mandeville's priority (Traité, 1, 16) is not quite accurate. Bayle had preceded Mandeville in defending luxury. However, the very error shows how closely Mandeville had become indentified popularly with the defense of luxury.

Tyler, The Contrast, III, ii.

His application of the laissez-faire attitude to international concerns took the form of an attack on the then prevailing mercantile theory-the belief that a nation's wealth could be gauged by the amount of money in the country, and that, consequently, to keep bullion in the country, imports should be either limited or prohibited. In opposition to this, Mandeville, in keen analysis, demonstrated that a community's imports cannot be restricted without affecting the ability of other nations to buy that community's exports; and he developed, also, some of the disadvantages of a nation's possessing a disproportionate amount of the world's bullion." This, of course, is a predominant phase of the philosophy underlying English free trade, and of the philosophy of free trade in general. Some historians of economics have considered the Fable of the Bees 71 an effectual source of the doctrine; but here the case must be developed by other means than such definite citations as those which demonstrate Mandeville's relation to the division of labor theory and the defense of luxury. To begin with, considering the effect of Mandeville's other economic tenets, and the extraordinary popularity of the Fable; and in view also of the fact that the great apostle of the laissez-faire theory (both in its national and international applications), Adam Smith, had such a knowledge of and such a debt to the Fable of the Bees, it becomes more than possible that as regards the laissez-faire theory also Mandeville's influence must have been considerable. And to these considerations must be added another more weighty. In the thought of the great leaders of the laissez-faire movement-Hume and Smith-economic theory is, as has been noted, the outgrowth of their ethical systems. They saw man as a mechanism of interacting passions which he cannot help indulging as they come uppermost. Fortunately, however, according to their belief, these passions, although at first sight

70 For Mandeville's defense of free trade see especially Fable, 1, 110-4 and 284, and, for his theories concerning money, 1, 213-5 and 345.

71 Thus Hasback, "Les Fondements Philosophique de l'Économie Politique de Quesnay et de Smith" (in Revue d'Economie Politique for 1893, ví, 782); Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus (1887), p. 743; Laviosa, La Filosofia Scientifica del Diritto in Inghilterra (Turin, 1897), p. 683. Schatz calls it (L'Individualisme Economique et Social, ed. Paris, 1907, p. 62) "l'ouvrage capital ou se trouve tous les germes essentiels de la philosophie économique et sociale de l'individualisme."

their dominion might seem to threaten anarchy, are so composed and arranged that under the influence of society their apparent discords harmonize to the public good. This immensely complicated adjustment is not the effect of premeditated effort, but is the automatic reaction of man in society; premeditated effort could only bungle and interfere with the complex social harmony which the facts of man's nature have of themselves created and will maintain. Thus, from this conception of human nature, the laissezfaire, or individualistic, theory of economics naturally followeda descendant of ethical speculation.

Now, as has been indicated above, the relations between Mandeville and the ethical philosophers of his age were very close, especially as to the conception of human nature which underlies the economic theory of Smith and of Hume. Indeed, this conception of human nature, without which there would have been no philosophy of laissez-faire, and with which there could hardly help but be, is specifically Mandeville's. It is Mandeville who describes man as a mechanism of personal interests, which, however, functions in society for the public benefit. Mandeville is the creator of the "economic man" about whom Smith and Hume built their system. The laissez-faire theorists who followed Mandeville, whatever they may have said about his terminology of "vice" and "virtue,” accepted his analysis of human nature, and used it, without adding essentially to its completeness, as the foundation of their systems."

This sketch of Mandeville's influence on economic thought through the division of labor theory, the defense of luxury, and the laissezfaire philosophy does not exhaust his consequence in the field of economics; nor is our view of his general importance compléte when we have added to his total effect on economics his commanding position in the development of the utilitarian movement. To complete our picture we should have to study the significance of that mass

"Schatz has developed this matter in his "Bernard de Mandeville" (in Vierteljahrschrift für Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte for 1903, 1, 434-80). Hume, it is true, came finally to assert the reality of benevolence, and Smith had always maintained this. However, their analysis of human nature really paralleled Mandeville's; they differed only in giving the same compassionate emotions contrary names, as Hutcheson did (see above, note 48). And, apart from that, in their economic writings they concentrated on man as a selfish mechanism, leaving his benevolence to be considered in more ethical works.