1. The ‘Precursor’

The starting point for this study was the realization that the general understanding of Bernard Mandeville still is heavily slanted. The perspective of historian F.B. Kaye (who curated the Fable’s standard edition) and that of a series of economists, set forth in the first chapter, has persisted to describe his role as a precursor to later thinkers. His presumed seminal function in creating laissez-fair theory was based on Mandeville’s ideas regarding the division of labor and the concept of unintended consequences picked up by Adam Smith, even if the Scotsman failed to grant Mandeville any explicit reference. Aided by the inscrutable nature of his paradoxes, the dominant view of Mandeville has become that of a loud (i.e., cynical) defender of commercial society. Contrasts with the harmonious universe of Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, and the Deist worldview based on Shaftesbury’s vision of a naturally moral individual in a polite society, were sidelined. The clarification of Mandeville’s vision of society, organized by ‘crafty politicians’, has been one of the threads unifying this study. Far from believing in a benevolent universe, Mandeville rather counted on the manipulation of our natural sentiments, which was required to produce, as far as the actors were concerned, unintended (and maybe useful, though not moral) consequences.

Mandeville’s worldview was – ‘still’ – based on an essentially Christian-Cartesian dualism. He founded his famous paradox of vices and benefits on the opposing concepts of a fallen human nature and spiritual values. Philosophically, his position betrayed the intrinsicist attitude towards virtue of the Jansenists and Pierre Bayle, but it should not be forgotten that this attitude is not far removed at all from the Calvinist idea of our fundamentally flawed nature. We saw in chapter five that his treatment of ‘the hypo’ betrayed the same dualism, be it in Cartesian dress. The soul plays a role in man’s oeconomia animalis with moral undertones. It turned out that the moral dimension to the unhappy state of his patient for Mandeville had parallels with the miserable condition of a grumbling society, afflicted with the ‘English disease’. The treatment that Doctor Mandeville suggested to his patient – while demonstrating talk therapy in action – was based on the balancing of the passions of the various kinds: the coarse and the more subtle.

Received opinion is that Mandeville celebrated commercial society. His diagnosis of patient Misomedoon and the corresponding analysis of the grumbling he heard in the collective bowels pointed us in a different direction. What his ideas on the ‘crafty politicians’, and the rejection of guidance by his patient, suggest is that Mandeville conceived of a specific way of treating (and certainly not curing) grumbling patients, individual and collective. The specific examples he draws from to make his case derive from his Dutch background, but perhaps not as much from theory as from the Dutch practice of monetizing sin. These examples bespoke the ‘realist’ approach of his motherland towards behavior that was deemed morally wrong, but impossible to extirpate. What the ‘crafty politician’ could achieve was not to transform the inveterately passionate nature of man, but he could manipulate behavior so that benefits would accrue to society. Mandeville’s concern for hypocrisy throughout his documented life evinces a perception of predicament on his part that is ‘Dutch realist’: our irredeemable sinfulness can only be dealt with by acknowledging the fact. Not only the ‘realist’ attitude towards sinful behavior, but also the plain speech he used to unmask the hidden drives behind people’s behavior had its origins across the Channel. These two aspects of his thinking have filled in (at least part) of the long-perceived Dutch lacuna in studies on Mandeville. His paradoxes expressed the contradictory character of Dutch society itself, as represented by the symbols of the affluent merchant on the one hand, and the Calvinist pastor on the other.

2. Commercial Republicanism

At the level of political theory, the same ‘Dutch lacuna’ obfuscated attempts by Dutch political theorists to adapt the available philosophical models to the accidental reality of the Dutch commercial republic. We considered the role of Grotius, who introduced the idea that the state of nature (and therefore society as such) was not based on man’s ‘sociable nature’, but that it was founded on the benevolent affiliation of self-interest. Political theorist Boxhorn had elaborated various elements, carefully carving out a space for the Dutch Republic that did not too openly contradict the example of classical Roman republican theory. He also proposed the idea that frankness and directness of speech perhaps were not a natural character transmitted through the ages, but rather a feature that commercial intercourse had honed, sharpening the senses of the Dutch like a whetstone. This search for a national ideological framework was stimulated in two significant ways in the period preceding Mandeville’s birth, one philosophical, and one political. Descartes’s mos geometricus and the ‘Orangist threat’ became a combined stimulus for the development of novel political theory. The most prominent exponents of these Cartesian political sciences were the brothers De la Court and Spinoza. Though we can trace the discourse of the passions from Descartes through these Dutch theorists on to Mandeville, we have encountered specific elements of discontinuity as well.

Though the general trend of ‘Cartesian’ political theory seemed to move towards moral relativism and determinist materialism – based on a mechanicist theory of the passions ordering our behavior – Mandeville deviated in certain ways. Whereas the theory of the passions had been an expression of rational optimism for Descartes, De la Court, and Spinoza, Mandeville infused the discourse with strict Augustinian standards. De la Court had had a similar conception of the overpowering character of the passions, in the sense that one could only be overpowered by a stronger one. Mandeville, however, dropped the Machiavellic concept of interest as the rational consideration that man was capable of as well. Though we can argue that the utilitarian perspective of De la Court and Spinoza is represented in Mandeville’s ‘public benefits’, the whole point of his paradox was that such a utilitarian value was linked to vice. And leaving aside his evolutionary understanding of society, neither in his comments on faith, on medicine, or on Spinozism or Epicureanism did we find Mandeville’s endorsement of rationalist materialism. Closest proximity was established to Van Velthuysen’s theory, integrating a Hobbesian and Cartesian approach to the evolution of society within a biblical understanding of man and morality. Where Mandeville diverged from his learned compatriot was in defining Van Velthuysen’s house of Creation as perched over an unnavigable canyon, studded by hypothetical thinking.

Another instance of discontinuity regards the fact that both De la Court and Spinoza were motivated to consolidate and reinforce the republican nature of the Netherlands. Mandeville declared his allegiance to the post-Revolutionary settlement and the mixed and balanced system of his country of adoption. The underlying cultural features, however, are a different matter. Mandeville seemed to rejoice in his assimilation in England by opting for a bit more power distance in social relations than in the ‘boorish’ Netherlands. England apparently struck the right balance between the hierarchical tendencies of France and the egalitarian extreme of Holland. His thoroughly burgher outlook, however, should also be noted, as is bluntly expressed by his vicious attack on the aristocratic non-committal lifestyle and life choices of Shaftesbury. His crusade against polite society was a statement against veiled language and concealed social intercourse itself.

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The three final works of Bernard Mandeville mark his departure if not from the principles then at least from the style of the polemical works he produced previously.^[1] Whether it was age that made him express himself in milder terms or whether he thought it wise to defend his legacy as the moment drew nearer when he could no longer counter his detractors, the fact is that these final books dedicated ample space to the defense of the ‘author of the Fable of the Bees‘. A recurring point in this defense was the rejection of the accusation of being an atheist, or a proponent of godlessness or immorality. We saw above that he accounted for his abrasive style in his previous years with an appeal to the audience he sought to influence: deists and the beau monde. While his Letter to Dion was a straightforward, unironic answer to his critics, the other two books shared the form of the dialogue, as well as the two interlocutors he used to bring his message across. Horatio performed the role of the fashionable gentleman who nevertheless had the honesty – and presumably the self-knowledge – to be persuaded by Cleomenes, the declared admirer of Mandeville’s theories. Horatio starts out as a convinced follower of Shaftesbury in the second part of the Fable but ends up ably and convincedly summarizing Mandeville’s ideas at the end of the Origin of Honour.^[2]

Mandeville starts his Enquiry with a historical-etymological explanation of virtue itself, after assuring the reader that he is very much in favor of morality. This – he specifies – amounts to listening to the rules of reason, which is both good for the individual and for society. But, he explains, the term originally derives from virtus (in turn deriving from vir), representing the manliness and fortitude that were vital at the more violent, bellicose stages of society.^[3] The purpose of virtue was to overcome fear of death, the most forceful of all our passions. Only over time did the softer virtues come to play a part at all, in response to minor passions. In this manner:

... it will be easy to imagine how and why, soon after Fortitude had been honored with the Name of Virtue, all the other Branches of Conquest over our selves were dignify’d with the same Title... what I have always so strenuously insisted upon, viz. That no Practice, no Action or good Quality, how useful or beneficial soever they may be in themselves, can ever deserve the Name of Virtue, strictly speaking, where there is not a palpable Self-denial to be seen.^[4]

What is implicit in this conception of virtue is rendered explicit a little later, when he ridicules the anthropomorphizing of God. After all, to call our Creator virtuous presupposes he has the same base inclinations we have ourselves, which would be as silly as saying he has “Hands and Feet, and is angry.” If God ever is represented as having a corporeal body, with frailties and passions, this must be understood as an attempt to render an idea to those of vulgar understanding.^[5] Since his definition anchors the very meaning of virtue in the conquest of one’s passions, we can understand his fundamental objection against the idea of virtue being conceivable in harmony with our nature at all. He repeats his objection once more, though this time without mentioning whom he considered the chief propagator of the idea, Lord Shaftesbury. He insists recognition of the fact is “more advantageous to Society than the contrary Doctrine, which is a vast Inlet to Hypocrisy.”^[6] This is an explicit confutation of the contention that he really was in favor of those vices that turned into material benefits.

After the introduction of basic concepts, he presents the objective of the work proper, linking it to the aims of both parts of the Fable, doubtlessly as a form of self-advertising as well.^[7] Cleomenes reminds his interlocutor of the new concept he/Mandeville had introduced in Fable, Part II, called self-liking. “Self-liking I have call’d that great Value, which all Individuals set upon their own Parsons; that high Esteem, which I take all Men to be born with for themselves... it is plainly distinct from Self-love.” When it is excessive “it is counted a Vice and call’d Pride: but when it is kept out of Sight, or is so well disguis’d as not to appear in its own Colours, it has no Name, tho’ Men act from that and no other Principle.”^[8] This, Mandeville explains, is the origin of honor that is tucked away in human nature. It can express itself as a love of praise, and in this manner be a motivation to do good. When excessive, it asserts itself as pride. The gratification following the satisfaction of this passion is honor, while we call the feeling entailed by its frustration dishonor or shame.^[9] Knowing our doctor, we understand that these feelings are fit to be used for the ordering of society. And indeed, Mandeville makes this point immediately and in an insidious manner, suggesting that, while the principle of honor may be ancient, it is still widely used. Originally, the “Signification of the Word Honour is entirely Gothick, and sprung up in some of the most ignorant Ages of Christianity. It seems to have been an Inversion to influence Men, whom Religion had no Power over.”^[10]

The human lot has us tethered to an impossible ambition: to be perfectly happy on earth. Knowledge of the “Passions and Frailties” is what allows the few to “govern a Multitude”.^[11]

All Men are born with Fear; and as they are likewise born with a Desire of Happiness and Self-Preservation, it is natural for them to avoid Pain and every Thing that makes them uneasy; and which, by a general Word, is call’d Evil. Fear being that Passion which inspires use with a strong Aversion to Evil, it is very natural to think that it will put us up on enquiring into the Means to shun it. I have told you already, in our Fifth Conversation, how this Aversion to Evil..., this Principle of Fear, would always naturally dispose Human Creatures to suspect the Existence of an intelligent Cause that is invisible, whenever any Evil happen’d...^[12]

This also makes governance without religion impossible, though it is the law, contends Cleomenes, that keeps people from criminal behavior, not their faith. The main worldly benefit of religion for society is in ensuring oaths are kept.^[13] But while this fear of the unknown cause was a natural passion, and the idea that “there is but one God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, that is an all-wise and perfectly good Being, without any Mixture of Evil” was rational as well, it took ages of philosophical development to arrive at this conclusion “by the Light of Nature”.^[14] Our natural fear is so prominent, that it is impossible to turn the populace into atheists. You have to obey human nature, it seems, to command it, because “if you humour that Passion, and allow it to be just, you may regulate it as you please.”^[15] And at this point Mandeville starts presenting the contrasting mechanisms of faith and honor.

Horatio: But what is all this to the origin of Honour? What Reason have you to think it to be of Gothick Extraction?

Cleomenes: My Conjecture concerning Honour, as it signifies a Principle from which Men act, is that it is an Invention of Politicians, to keep Men close to their Promises and Engagements, when all other Ties prov’d ineffectual; and the Christian Religion itself was often found insufficient for that Purpose.^[16]

Let there be no doubt about the value of the Christian faith, says Cleomenes. It emphasizes the importance of belief, prescribes strictness of morality, and offers the exemplary lives of those preaching it. It was the first philosophy to produce honesty, mutual love and faithfulness, before moralists appealed to reason and human understanding. “But the Gospel, soaring beyond the Reach of Reason, teaches us many Things, which no Mortal could ever have known, unless they had been reveal’d to him; and several that must always remain incomprehensible to finite Capacities; and this is the Reason, that the Gospel presses and enjoins Nothing with more Earnestness than Faith and Believing.”^[17]

As people are ruled completely by their passions, the only thing that can overcome one passion, is a larger one, which in the case of religion is the fear of future punishment or hope for future rewards. The more people believe in rewards and punishments, the more strictly will they keep their word. Christianity had been very successful at meeting this requirement of society. But by initially rejecting arms and violence, it became clear the Christian faith would never exert itself as a national, worldly power. Over time, the clergy reconsidered this position and for the sake of such power conceded that “Christians might be Soldiers”.^[18] And the inevitable happened: it became clear that Christian soldiers were no examples of moral rectitude. “Pride, Avarice and Revenge ranged among them as they did among the Heathens”. Hypocritical behavior became apparent among the Christians as well. He explains, ‘anticipating’ Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments: “Things at a Distance, tho’ we are sure that they are to come, make little Impression upon us in Comparison with those that are present immediately before us.”^[19]

The human predicament as per Mandeville is clear. Our nature is suited for this world, and mastering this predisposition is next to impossible.

By the Light of Nature only, we are capable of demonstrating to our Selves the Necessity of a First Cause, a Supreme Being; but the Existence of a Deity cannot be render’d more manifest to our Reason, than his Essence is unknown and incomprehensible to our Understanding... I am endeavouring to account for the small Effect and little Force, which Religion, and the Belief of future Punishments, may be of to mere Man, unassisted with the Divine Grace. The Practice of nominal Christians is perpetually clashing with the Theory they profess.^[20]

So even given God’s ever-observant eye, people could not be kept in check. It was – and here the Theory of Moral Sentiments rings through still more strongly (though Van Velthuysen would be the logical origin) – the eyes of others who exerted disciplining control over us. But this principle could only work by acknowledging a principle of human nature, inherent in the individual. “Moralists and Politicians came to look for Something in Man himself, to keep him in Awe... It is highly probable, that skilful Rulers, having made these Observations for some Time, would be tempted to try if Man could not be made an Object of Reverence to himself.”^[21] The manipulation of our sense of shame (or whenever positive, our sense of pride) became an essential aspect of political rule. This process of socialization – and he makes clear this is a secular process with worldly benefits – takes many years and many actors, whom he describes as “Moralists and Politicians”.

Cleomenes reminds Horatio of the same discussion they had in the context of explaining the notion of “Politeness” in Part II of the Fable. What these rules essentially did was “to establish a Notion, by which a rational Creature is kept in Awe for Fear of it Self, and an Idol is set up, that shall be its own Worshipper.”^[22]This invention of honor was not only of a more recent date than that of virtue, Mandeville considers it as a greater achievement by far. “It was an Improvement in the Art of Flattery, by which the Excellency of our Species is raised to such a Height, that it becomes the Object of our own Adoration, and Man is taught in good Earnest to worship himself.” And if this mechanism is so effective, one reason is that whereas virtue requires self-denial, honor does not, granting it a greater, and immediate, reward.

The conflict between these two systems of behavioral rules – Christian virtue versus secular honor – is evident. Retrospective historiography has emphasized the relativist, historicized understanding of the ethical systems Mandeville identified through history. But the character of his discourse is much closer to Protestant thought than such a perspective suggests, if we forget the similarities we may distinguish in his naturalist explanation, based on an is- and not ought- understanding of human nature. “When Ignorance, for several Ages, had been successfully encouraged and was designedly introduced to make Way for Credulity, the Simplicity of the Gospel and the Doctrine of Christ were turn’d into Gaudy Foppery and vile Superstition. It was then that the Church of Rome began openly to execute her deep-laid plot for enslaving the Laity.” And knowing the importance of strength of arms, they “coax’d the Soldiery, and made all Men of Valor her Tools...” by “indulging some in their Vices, Humoring Others in their Folly, and Flattering the Pride of All.” Knightly orders were instituted to such effect, “to reconcile, in outward Shew, the Principle of Honour with that of the Christian Religion, and make Men stupidly believe, that the Height of Pride is not inconsistent with the greatest Humility.”^[23]

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In the previous chapters, a substantial part of the productive efforts of Bernard Mandeville between 1703 and 1724 was laid out. Despite the variety in topics and rhetorical styles, the themes discussed betrayed continuity. The same can be stated for the worldview underlying his analysis. He described a society grumbling with discontent. He may have considered hypocrisy society’s cornerstone, but that was not a morally neutral qualification, if his constant focus on ‘unmasking’ people’s pretenses means anything. He employed a naturalist theory of the passions to satirize a society that was trying to define itself first and foremost as polite. His answer was the ‘Dutch realism’ that has been so widely interpreted as a celebration of the excesses that he exposed. His calls for introspection and his less polemical works had to be ignored under that interpretation.

As he scaled back his satire and hyperbole in the last stage of his career, he became more explicit about his true intentions. If he thought that anything was a threat to a realistic appreciation of ourselves and our motivations, it was the formula of polite society. This concept was a siren’s call luring Augustan England with the promise of a painless cure for a sick society. For Mandeville, this amounted to the celebration of hypocrisy itself, and his increasing concern with Lord Shaftesbury showed he thought it was the Earl’s ideas that contributed most particularly to this dangerous delusion. This chapter is primarily concerned with Mandeville’s attempts to counter Shaftesbury’s influence. His Letter to Dion (broached in the previous chapter), and Part IIof the Fable explicitly engaged with his revered opponent, reiterating issues Mandeville had already expressed in 1723 in his History of the Nature of Society (bundled under the Fable’s Part I). Attention will first focus on the substance of Mandeville’s argument against him. Subsequently, the reasons behind the (vehemence of the) attack will be discussed, after which we will investigate whether the Origin of Honour can assist within this context to identify Mandeville’s substantive ideas on morality.

Historians have previously emphasized the discontinuity of Mandeville’s thinking. Leaving aside the fact that such theories have to step over the non-polemical works he published during his firebrand years, it seems at this point that the most logical explanation for the presumed differences is that our general understanding of Mandeville was incorrect to begin with. Historian Goldsmith, for example, noted he saw “few signs of the distinctive views he was to publish” earlier on. One can certainly argue that the hypocrisy he identified in individuals and society was just an aspect, a non-essential trait of his assessment. But the preceding has demonstrated that the hypocrisy of man and society was the axis around which most of his arguments revolved, whether he discussed medical matters, the clergy, the coming of age of a young lady, education, or so many other topics. Hypocrisy for Mandeville was the very essence of society – of samenleving, living together – itself. Nothing renders this clearer than the confrontation Mandeville sought, in the decade and a half between The Pamphleteers and Free Thoughts, with the novel discourse that was being forged in an attempt to combine public and private virtue in the new idiom of polite society. The foremost representative of this philosophical approach was Lord Shaftesbury, the theorist of the polished age.

7.1 Lord Shaftesbury

The Generality of Moralists and Philosophers have hitherto agreed that there could be no Virtue without Self-denial; but a late Author, who is now much read by Men of Sense, is of a contrary Opinion, and imagines that Men without any Trouble or Violence upon themselves may be naturally Virtuous. He seems to require and expect Goodness in his Species, as we do a sweet Taste in Grapes and China Oranges, of which, if any of them are sour, we boldly pronounce that they are not come to that Perfection their Nature is capable of. This Noble Writer (for it is the Lord Shaftesbury in mean in his Characteristicks) Fancies, that as Man is made for Society, so he ought to be born with a kind Affection to the whole, of which he is a part, and a Propensity to seek the Welfare of it. In pursuance of this Supposition, he calls every Action perform’d with regard to the Publick Good, Virtuous; and all Selfishness, wholly excluding such a Regard, Vice. In respect to our Species he looks upon Virtue and Vice as permanent Realities that must ever be the same in all Countries and all Ages, and imagines that a Man of sound Understanding, by following the Rules of good Sense, may not only find out that Pulchrum & Honestumboth in Morality and the Works of Art and Nature, but likewise govern himself by his Reason with as much Ease and Readiness as a good Rider manages a well-taught Horse by the Bridle.^[1]

At the surface, Shaftesbury and Mandeville had enough interests in common, regarding Stoa, religious toleration, and moderation. Their shared admiration of Pierre Bayle even renders the picture somewhat intriguing. Bayle had been Mandeville’s teacher in Rotterdam. In 1688, Shaftesbury’s tutor John Locke had spent time in Rotterdam while in temporary exile in the Netherlands. Through his former tutor’s introduction, Shaftesbury spent time in Rotterdam himself, first in the late 1690s and once more in 1703. He met Bayle himself and became a self-declared admirer of the Frenchman. With respect to religious toleration, Shaftesbury’s ideas harmonize with both Bayle and Mandeville. Shaftesbury’s tutor Locke and Bayle both published their work on religious toleration in the wake of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, between 1686 and 1688, shielded from persecution themselves in the Netherlands. In this context, we can read Mandeville’s comments in Free Thoughts in 1720, in a section where he repeatedly makes reference to Lord Shaftesbury.

I am very much mistaken, if a serious reflection on what has been said hitherto, will not furnish a thinking man, with many arguments for toleration; what I began this chapter with is none of the least, I mean, that schism, where once it has been suffer’d, can never be cur’d, but by an utter extirpation of the limbs infected, and a steady cruelty, zealously pursued without pity or remorse. That this is not my own private opinion, one of the most polite authors of the age shall witness. Nothing (says he) is more ridiculous in respect of policy, or so wrong and odious in respect of common humanity, as a moderate and half way persecution. It only frets the sore; it raises the ill humour of mankind; excites the keener spirits; moves indignation in beholders; and sows the very seeds of schism in mens bosoms. A resolute and bold fac’d persecution leaves no time or scope for these engendering distempers, or gathering ill humours. It does the work at once; by extirpation, banishment, or massacre, and like a bold stroke in surgery, dispatches by one short amputation, what a bungling hand would make worse and worse to the perpetual sufferance and misery of the patient.^[2]

Historian Isabel Rivers took this as proof of the deterioration over time of Mandeville’s appreciation for Shaftesbury. Whether that reading is accurate is not entirely clear to me. The idea that religious toleration was an essential condition for civic peace is elaborately set forth by Mandeville in Free Thoughts. That there were exceptions, whether relative to Catholics or in order to prevent schism, was not an extraordinary viewpoint within this framework. It is hard, however, to rule out a measure of sarcasm here, as he juxtaposes “one of the most polite authors of the age” with the gruesome metaphor of amputating limbs. It is a paradox, to say the least, or a quick stab at the champion of polite society for acknowledging the benefits of a rigorous intervention. Be that as it may, regarding the claim of a loss of respect over time we should consider the respect he expressly paid Shaftesbury in A Letter to Dion. Shaftesbury had died in Naples nearly two decades earlier, and Mandeville himself was nearing his end. His Letter was in defense against his detractor Bishop Berkeley, the context that of showing one could criticize someone’s ideas without being disrespectful.

But I declare, that I think your Book, for the Generality, to be well wrote; tho’ you have us’d me most unmercifully, and not acted, if you had read The Fable of the Bees, like an honest Man. When a Person has a handsome Face, I can’t be so stupid as to believe him ugly, because he has us’d me ill. I differ from My Lord Shaftesbury entirely, as to the Certainty of the Pulchrum & Honestum, abstract from Mode and Custom: I do the same about the Origin of Society, and in many other Things, especially the Reasons why Man is a Sociable Creature, beyond other Animals. I am fully persuaded, His Lordship was in the Wrong in these Things; but this does not blind my Understanding so far, as not to see, that he is a very fine Author, and a much better Writer than my self, or you either. If that noble Lord had been a much worse Author, and wrote on the Side of Orthodoxy and the Church, I fancy, you would have thought more favourably of his Capacity. I have seen what you have cited from him, and the Manner you have done it in. But what Proportion does that bear to Three large Volumes, and the many admirable Things he has said against Priestcraft, and on the Side of Liberty and Human Happiness. Upon the Whole, I dare say, that your Minute Philosopher will meet with very few Readers, among those that have read, and are not lash’d in the Characteristicks, who will think, that My Lord Shaftsbury deserves one Tenth Part of the Indignity and Contempt, which you treat Cratylus with.^[3]

Perhaps Mandeville’s memory failed him here, or we must assume something more deliberate – he had been less than gallant towards the Earl in the past. That particular part of Mandeville’s criticism will add a personal dimension that may give us insight into his inner world. It will not, however, change the nature of his disapproval, which we would do well to set forth first.

Even in the quote immediately above, we can see the divergence between these two students of Bayle. Though Shaftesbury considered himself a student of skepticism, we see Mandeville challenge him on this point, contesting the “Certainty of the Pulchrum & Honestum, abstract from Mode and Custom“. Both tried to make sense of current society based on a naturalistic view of man. Though both in the eyes of someone like Bishop Berkeley were libertines, their respective conclusions were diametrically opposed. Shaftesbury tended towards deism, clinging to principles such as the intelligent order of the universe and human sociability, as set forth in his Characteristics. Though he did not discuss politics directly, he analyzed the moral and cultural framework thereof, articulating a cultural ideology for Whiggism, based on his reevaluation of manners and culture. Politeness consisted of manners, and politeness depended completely on political liberty. He contrasted the practice with the court environment in his Miscellany, just like De la Court had and Mandeville would, but became a spokesperson for the type of refinement and polished “commerce” that the latter attacked in his Essay. In order to prove his point, Shaftesbury contrasted English society with others where lack of liberty led to buffoonery, spiritual tyranny, and knavery.

While for Mandeville society was fundamentally and necessarily artificial, Shaftesbury’s aim was to demonstrate how natural society was to man. His target was philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke who had “told us that virtue and vice had, after all, no other law or measure than mere fashion and vogue”.^[4]Mandeville dedicated six dialogues – called Part II of The Fable of the Bees – to an elaborate juxtaposition of the philosophical system of Shaftesbury and his own, obviously giving eventual sway to the latter.^[5] He made a point of calling out the “fashionable Virtue” that was prevalent in society around him, that was most concerned with compliance with the “Rules of Politeness” and “Pomp of Words”.^[6]

In order to anchor values to unalterable truth, Shaftesbury had developed his discourse of natural affections, tying man into society without the Hobbesian need for domination or the Mandevillean need for manipulation. “You have heard it, my friend, as a common saying that ‘interest governs the world’. But, I believe, whoever looks narrowly into the affairs of it will find Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, that passion, humour, caprice, zeal, faction and a thousand other springs, which are counter to self-interest, have as considerable a part in the movements of this machine. There are more wheels and counterpoises in this engine than are easily imagined.”^[7] The modern Epicureans just lacked the more profound understanding that the Earl had to offer. “They seem to have understood less of this force of nature and thought to alter the thing by shifting a name. They would so explain all the social passions and natural affections as to denominate them of the selfish kind.”^[8] His ideas of natural society and a benevolent universe countered the ethical egoism that he did not merely associate with Hobbes, but with Spinoza as well. Though he does not mention the latter, his An inquiry concerning virtue or merit departs from Bayle’s famous comment on the virtuous atheist, which clearly signals his awareness of the controversy.^[9] It is an issue that Mandeville – probably wisely, considering the accusations of atheism he had to deal with himself – left undiscussed, though we did encounter his comment on Epicureans, which could be interpreted as a paraphrase of Bayle on Spinoza, above.^[10] For Shaftesbury, it was the starting point for an investigation of our natural inclinations, and how they achieved the deist’s natural order at the level of the individual actor(s).

Though Shaftesbury uses the term passions frequently, his preferred concept is that of the affections, often qualified as the natural affections. He does not deny the existence of bad tendencies per se, but because it is “by affection merely that a creature is esteemed good or ill, natural or unnatural, our business will be to examine which are the good and natural and which the ill and unnatural affections.”^[11] Not only does he thereby anchor values in our nature, the contrast we can perceive with Mandeville’s conception of values – which rests on his Augustinian juxtaposition of soul and flesh – also involves a harmonious view of man and his environment that is in diametrical opposition to Mandeville’s perspective. For Shaftesbury, the nature of virtue consisted of “a certain just disposition or proportionable affection of a rational creature towards the moral objects of right and wrong.”^[12] As a matter of fact, atheism was unable to plant immoral convictions in us, though he did think conditions for moral conduct to be altogether superior for people with theist persuasions.^[13] “Sense of right and wrong therefore being as natural to us as natural affection itself, and being a first principle in our constitution and make, there is no speculative opinion, persuasion or belief which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or destroy it. That which is of original and pure nature, nothing beside contrary habit and custom (a second nature) is able to displace.”^[14]

Shaftesbury’s vision is not only universalist, it establishes harmony between public and private affections.^[15]His idea was that the “moral sense” he introduced corresponded to our aesthetic sense, which he assumed to be equally universal. “This too is certain, that the admiration and love of order, harmony and proportion, in whatever kind, is naturally improving to the temper, advantageous to social affection, and highly assistant to virtue, which is itself no other than the love of order and beauty in society.”^[16]

From this perspective, we can properly gauge Mandeville’s comment quoted at the beginning of this section. He had pointed out “that there could be no Virtue without Self-denial” while Shaftesbury “imagines that Men without any Trouble or Violence upon themselves may be naturally Virtuous.”^[17] He presumed “Goodness in his Species”, where Mandeville only saw variants of sin. Shaftesbury thought “interestedness or self-love” were not a problem if they were “moderate and within certain bounds.”^[18] For him, immoral behavior was only possible “either by the deficiency or weakness of natural affections, or by the violence of the selfish, or by such as are plainly unnatural”, meaning that “if each of these are pernicious and destructive to the creature, insomuch that his completest state of misery is made from hence, to be wicked or vicious is to be miserable and unhappy.”^[19] Having integrated this vision with our aesthetic sense, the harmony of nature would be reflected both in man and in society. This is why he considered polite society the epitome of virtue.

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6.5 Publick Stews

Records do not show that Mandeville ever presented himself before the Grand Jury of Middlesex to defend himself against the accusations on account of his Essay. He did subsequently show caution in publishing his next book pseudonymously, as “Layman”, though associating the nature of its argument with the Dutch doctor did not require too much effort. Furthermore, its content was so scandalous that it is unlikely the outrage following the Fable cum Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools had intimidated him. As a matter of fact, he was aware how controversy may have tarnished his reputation, but still stimulated worldly sales, in a pattern not unlike the communicating vessels of vice and benefits he described as the foundation of society.^[1] He also made it crystal clear whom he directed his invective against.

His dedication to the “gentlemen of the societies”, that is, those for the reformation of manners, left no doubt that he had identified his target and would taunt them again. Just one year later, in 1724, his A Modest Defence of Publick Stews, or An Essay upon Whoring as it is now Practiced in this Kingdom rolled off the printing press.^[2] Another indication of his not being averse to scandal at all can be found in the allusion added to the 1725 edition that linked the author to the Fable of the Bees. The hypothesis that the same Mandeville had wanted to avoid overtly identifying as a materialist by letting his patient do the talking in the Treatiseseems highly unlikely.

He had broached the specific theme already in some of his Remarks on the Fable. The topic not being prostitution per se, but man’s incapacity to control the overpowering influence of his passions. As he demonstrated in his Essay that pity and compassion were passions that, combined with pride, masqueraded as charity, he set forth a similar, unmerciful analysis of love.

Who would imagine, that Virtuous Women, unknowingly, should be instrumental in promoting the Advantage of Prostitutes? Or (what still seems the greater Paradox) that Incontinence should be made serviceable to the Preservation of Chastity? and yet nothing is more true.^[3]

The problem is, says Mandeville, that the “Passions of some People are too violent to be curb’d by any Law or Precept.” He cites the example of Amsterdam that sees the disembarking of thousands of sailors “that have seen none but their own Sex for many Months together, how is it suppos’d that honest Women should walk the Streets unmolested, if there were no Harlots to be had at reasonable Prices? For which Reason the Wise Rulers of that well-order’d City always tolerate an uncertain number of Houses, in which Women are hired as publickly as Horses at a Livery-Stable.”^[4] He goes on to describe some of the bawdy customs of the sector (which he nevertheless describes as “the good Rules and strict Discipline that are observ’d in these Markets of Love”), only to conclude with the particular role played by the officers of the law. The latter exploit any excuse and opportunity – “upon the least Complaint” – to “squeeze a Living out of the immoderate Gains accruing from the worst of Employments, and at the same time punish those necessary Profligates the Bawds and Panders.”^[5] Not only does this keep vice within certain boundaries, it also protects the reputation of the officers of the law who – while refraining from extirpating the practice altogether – thus “preserve themselves in the good Opinion of the weaker sort of People.” This sort of theatre, or management of the passions, is not unique to Amsterdam, he says, as the examples of Venice and Naples show.

In another Remark on the Fable, he had explained how this practice was just another instance of society dealing with overbearing passions. Because love, when we distinguish it “from all other Affections of Friendship, Gratitude, and Consanguinity, that Persons of different Sexes, after liking, bear to one another” really is the “Effect as well as happy Disguise of that Passion that prompts us to labor for the Preservation of our Species.”^[6] In the “wild State of Nature”, man would have no hesitation to act upon this impulse and “be at a Loss no more than other Animals for a present Remedy.” But in society, “where the Rules of Religion, Law and Decency, are to be follow’d, and obey’d before any Dictates of Nature,” the discipline imposed and internalized is such that people become unable to discern what effectively motivates them. “Those then who would make Love and Lust Synonimous confound the Effect with the Cause of it: Yet such is the force of Education...”^[7] If we have any doubt about who or what subjected man to this discipline, Mandeville will make this sufficiently clear.

The Power and Sagacity as well as Labour and Care of the Politician in civilizing the Society, has been no where more conspicuous, than in the happy Contrivance of playing our Passions against one another. By flattering our Pride and still increasing the good Opinion we have of ourselves on the one hand, and inspiring us on the other with a superlative Dread and mortal Aversion against Shame, the Artful Moralists have taught us chearfully to encounter our selves, and if not subdue, at least so to conceal our darling Passion, Lust, that we scarce know it when we meet it in our own Breasts...^[8]

This view on society remains the basis for his Modest Defence. Interestingly, his commonplace of fallen man is absent this time. On the other hand, a concept that had been central to the discourse of ragion di stato and that had been essential for De la Court’s theory of commercial republicanism, interest, makes a surprising, though brief, appearance. This is where he argues that a woman’s chastity coincides with her interest. From an early age on, the importance of chastity is inculcated in girls – long before it has any meaning to them. So “when they grow up, they find their worldly Interest entirely depending upon the Reputation of their Chastity. This Sense of Honour and Interest, is what we may call artificial Chastity; and it is upon this Compound of natural and artificial Chastity, that every Woman’s real actual Chastity depends.”^[9]

The purpose the concept of interest had served was to create a standard parallel to Christian ethics to hold actions against. Whether it was introduced to apply an a-moral, utilitarian standard or to offer a measure of ‘right reason’ or rational interest to decision making, for De la Court it had been essential to counterbalance the emotive role of the passions in motivating us. Mandeville does not allocate such a function to reason. The fact he makes this cursory reference indicates his awareness of the role attributed to it in alternative visions of society – insofar as we could doubt this in the first place – without allocating it a similar role. Balancing one passion requires others. And it is crafty politicians who orchestrate this equilibrium. So let us turn to the arrangement Mandeville proposes with his Modest Defence.

He announces in his introduction that his anonymous pamphlet might best be compared to a bastard child which was nevertheless conceived with “rather their Country’s Publick Good, than their own Private Fame” in mind.^[10] On the premise of prostitution being impossible to eliminate altogether, he formulates a proposal that would counter the adverse effects of its practice ‘privately’. The negative effects he deems worthy of mention are not moral in nature, but practical. In the first place, French Pox (syphilis) has become “so ubiquitous among the civilized folks, that to be healthy is a sign of “Ungentility”.^[11] What is more, the disorderly way in which society currently deals with this “unruly Passion” seeps away time and attention that would be better invested in productive activities. After all, the one vice leads to many others, resulting in “indolence, no industry”, which is “the main Support of any, especially a trading, Nation.”^[12] Another disadvantage from this mercantilist perspective is that either through the “murdering of Bastard Infants”, by keeping people from getting married, or by dislodging families that exist already, the propagation of the species is disrupted. Yet it was national prosperity itself that depended on the number of inhabitants.^[13]

These are the several bad Effects of Whoring; and it is an unhappy Thing, that a Practice so universal as this is, and always will be, should be attended with such mischievous Consequences: But since few or none of them are the necessary Effects of Whoring, consider’d in itself, but only proceed from the Abuse and ill Management of it; our Business is certainly to regulate this Affair in such sort as may best prevent these Mischiefs. And I must here beg pardon of those worthy Gentlemen of the Society, if I can’t conceive how the Discouragement they have given, or rather attempted to give, to publick Whoring, could possibly have the desired Effect.^[14]

The prostitutes should receive periodic health checks, the rates would be fairly established. The customers would save time to dedicate to their regular business. Grooms would enter into matrimony with a reasonable level of experience.^[15] Without this “unruly Passion”, we would cease to exist, so it is useless to try to eliminate the vice itself. What society requires is to regulate it in such a manner that the negative effects are countered, while society is left to thrive, or rather: organized in such a manner that the passions produce the effects desired. The passions, for Mandeville, are not a matter for laissez-faire, but for careful regulation. He presents the case of Amsterdam and calls to formalize the practice.

The suggestion that this approach qualifies as utopianism, as has been argued by historian Irwin Primer, seems to me a misrepresentation of Mandeville’s insistent attempts at ‘realism’. Primer, however, has also made an observation that was overdue, suggesting the affinity between the Modest Defence and Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. It is surprising, indeed, that this comparison has not been more commonly made, even if both were Rotterdam-born. Mandeville graduated from the Erasmianum and read the old master as a matter of course on the curriculum. Mandeville quotes and refers to Erasmus as well. A theme shared by Erasmus, Bayle, and Mandeville is the constant failure of Christians to practice what they preach. Yet, the juxtaposition between the Modest Defence and Stultitiae Laus encounters a serious obstacle in interpretational assumptions. If received opinion has it, that Mandeville’s hyperbole and ridicule were intended to bring a materialist message home, it is necessarily difficult to discern the possibility that an inversion of values and logic might underlie Mandeville’s clamorous theses. In other words, were his nonchalant exaggerations intended to satirize discourse on a different subject? The humor and irony that his works are scattered with render it difficult to catch the truth in action, so to speak. An extreme instance of this problem can be found right at the beginning of his Modest Defence.

There is nothing more idle, or shows a greater Affectation of Wit, than the modern Custom of treating the most grave Subjects with Burlesque and Ridicule. The present Subject of Whoring, was I dispos’d, would furnish me sufficiently in this kind, and might possibly, if so handled, excite Mirth in those who are only capable of such low Impressions. But, as the chief Design of this Treatise is to promote the general Welfare and Happiness of Mankind, I hope to be excus’d, if I make no farther Attempts to please, than are consistent with that Design.^[16]

In other words, he challenges the reader from the very start on the topic of taking him seriously and suspending disbelief for as long as it may last. But there may be a clue that we are likely to miss if we focus on the provocatory foundational assumptions of his work. Can we look at vice and immoral behavior with a purely observant, realist eye?

And tho’ the Method I intend to propose, of erecting Publick Stews for that purpose, may seem at first sight somewhat ludicrous, I shall, nevertheless, make it appear to be the only Means we have now left for redressing this Grievance. As this Redress is the whole Scope and Design of this Treatise, I hope to be acquitted of my Design, when I have prov’d the following Proposition; That publick Whoring is neither so criminal in itself, nor so detrimental to the Society, as private Whoring...^[17]

The conclusion he announces singles out the contrast between public and private vice. He does so repeatedly over the course of his proposal. He continues the argument half a dozen pages further in, and again a bit further down. He states that “... the Publick Part of it is by far the least Criminal, and least Detrimental to the Society...” as “publick Whoring, will not only prevent most of the mischievous Effects of this Vice, but even lessen the Quantity of Whoring in general... When I talk’d of encouraging publick Whoring, I would be understood to mean, not only the erecting Publick Stews, as I at first hinted, but also the endowing them with such Privileges and Immunities, and at the same time giving such Discouragement to private Whoring, as may be most effectual to turn the general Stream of Lewdness into this common Channel.”^[18] He subsequently discusses all the measures he envisions in terms of a business proposition, indicating how professional maladies would be cured at public expense, how pricing would occur, and how men and women would prefer to bring their business to the public institutions. Regulation would solve the more troublesome issues.^[19] But were we to substitute prostitution by thievery, as he considered the ploy of the South-Sea Bubble to be, what would we read? The careful listener may have read that

> the public part of it is by far the least criminal, and least detrimental to the society. And public stealing will not only prevent most of the mischievous effects of this vice, but even lessen the quantity of stealing in general. When I talked of encouraging public stealing, I would be understood to mean, not only the erecting of public rackets, as I at first hinted, but also the endowing them with such privileges and immunities, and at the same time giving such discouragement to private stealing, as may be most effectual to turn the general stream of greed into this common channel. <

The substitution of economic for moral terms, in fact, is the rule for his Modest Defence. Regulation is not the only way he underlines the economic aspects of the issue of stews. Alternated with allusions to ebb and flood, he refers to the mechanisms of supply and demand and applies considerations of credit to the stews’ staff.^[20]And just as it is the former’s lack of chastity that protects the honor of private women, it is the relapse of private morals of the latter that will guarantee a supply to public stews.^[21] It is not ‘just morals’ or ethical discourse that is being mocked here. He is paraphrasing the economic slant to discussions on matters that concern society in general. It is from this perspective that we can understand his comment soon after, that “... since the necessity of debauching a certain Number of young Women, is entirely owing to the Necessity of supplying the Publick Stews; a Question may very reasonably arise, whether this Project might not be vastly improv’d, even to the total Extirpation of Private Whoring, by an Act for encouraging the Importation of foreign Women. This, I must confess, deserves a serious Debate...”^[22] Debates on the import of luxury were raging, indeed. But to conclude this line of thinking, can we better gauge the intent behind his sarcasm, now that we have opened up this possibility?

After what has been said, it may, perhaps, appear somewhat odd to talk of Religious Objections, as if either Christianity or Morality could possibly object against a Scheme, which is entirely calculated for the Welfare and Happiness of Mankind. But since a great many Men amongst us have entertained such whimsical Notions of Religion, as to imagine, that in some Cases, a Law may be unjust and wicked, tho’ it evidently promotes the Publick Good; as if the right Enjoyment of this Life was inconsistent with our Happiness in the next...^[23]

His argumentum ad absurdum finally makes sense. He has exposed the ridiculous expectations of those pretending this world and the next are compatible. Why would he insist that “Men of Business” should be able to dispatch their unruly passion in an efficient manner so as to swiftly return to more serious matters, if he was not mocking those he thought in such pursuit around him.^[24]

What would leave such an interpretation intact of a more traditional reading of his Modest Defence, i.e., that he – maybe hyperbolically but still seriously – proposed the foundation of public brothels on English soil? What one can perceive as a weakness of the instant hypothesis is the fact that Mandeville’s materialist description of man and society is so pervasive. Does that not suggest that his proposal, even if outrageous, was meant to be implementable, even if not the next day? In the next section, I will address this question by shedding light on the nature of his realism. His battle against hypocrisy was borne from the conviction that control over the passions depended on our willingness to acknowledge their role in driving us. We saw this focus on the importance of self-knowledge feature in medical context in the Treatise and in an educational context in the Virgin Unmask’d. Augustan England, in Mandeville’s eyes, had the contrary preoccupation: the formulation of the ideal of polite society, seeking explicitly to reconcile private virtue with public benefits. Mandeville responded and in 1714 had added the infamous motto “private vice, publick benefits” to the Fable. But let us conclude our reading of his Modest Defence first.

In his preface to the Modest Defence, Mandeville alludes to the circumstances that brought him to publish anonymously, suggesting that the printer set the condition of either hiding his own involvement or having Mandeville own up to his authorship. It proves to be an occasion for him to compare himself with “pious Authors” who “have studied rather their Country’s Publick Good, than their own Private Fame.” Any possible success of the book, he goes on, is certain to be claimed by someone anyway.

Adoption amongst the Machiavellian Laws of the Muses, is strictly kept up, and every day put in Practice: How few of our now bright Noblemen would otherwise have Wit? How many of our present Poets would else want a Dinner? ‘Tis a vulgar Error to imagine Men live upon their own Wits, when generally it is upon others Follies; A Fund that carries by much the best Interest, and is by far upon the most certain Security of any: The Exchequer has been shut up, the Bank has stopt Payment, South-Sea has been demolish’d, but White’s was never known to fail; and indeed how should it, when almost every Wind blows to Dover, or Holyhead, some fresh Proprietor amply qualified with sufficient Stock.

Gullibility and charm always find willing customers. With all the efforts of the societies for the reformation of manners he is dedicating his work to, “Lewdness still so much prevails.” So he would try something different that he calls “opposite Methods”: “if a Purge fails, is not a Vomit an infallible Recipe for a Looseness?”.

... I doubt not but my Readers will join with me, that as long as it is the Nature of Man (and Naturam expellas furca licet usque recurret) to have a Salt Itch in the Breeches, the Brimstone under the Petticoat will be a necessary Remedy to lay it; and let him be ever so sly in the Application, it will still be found out: What avails it then to affect to conceal that which cannot be concealed, and that which if carried on openly and above-board, would become only less detrimental, and of consequence more justifiable?

It is hypocrisy that renders us all vulnerable. It is the theme that binds all his works, and Mandeville’s method of unmasking it is too insistent not to search for his ethical purpose behind it. Can we brush off his juxtaposition of the South-Sea Bubble against the public brothel as a random rhetorical device, or was he utilizing the absurdity of his own proposal to ridicule the architects behind one of Britain’s first speculation scandals?^[25] In any event, two elements in his Modest Defence still merit mention. One regards the doctor’s perspective that – as an anonymous work – he was unable to market the way he had some of his other works. Apparently, he could not help but insert it anyway. He observes at a certain point that medical terminology is the idiom of choice for political writing.

Most Authors, who have writ of Government, have chose to express their Sentiments by comparing the Publick Body with the Body Natural; and Mr. Hobbes, in his Leviathan, has carry’d the Allegory as far as it will go. To make use of it in the present Instance, we may look upon Whoring as a Kind of Peccant Humour in the Body-Politick, which, in order to its Discharge, naturally seizes upon such external Members as are most liable to Infection, and at the same time most proper to carry off the Malignity. If this Discharge is promoted by a Licence for Publick Stews , which is a Kind of legal Evacuative, the Constitution will certainly be preserv’d: Whereas, if we apply Penal Laws, like violent Astringents, they will only drive the Disease back into the Blood; where, gathering Strength, and at last assimilating the whole Mass, it will break out with the utmost Virulence, to the apparent Hazard of those sound Members, which otherwise might have escaped the Contagion.^[26]

What is impossible to eliminate from human nature, should be dealt with in a different manner. And the body politic, for Mandeville, has more than allegorical meaning. We can say this is the real, underlying paradox of Mandeville. We can come to terms with the societal mechanisms, but only if we stare it in the face.

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We have reached the final stage of this study, where we will reconsider Mandeville’s position in the English debates he participated in. Before diving into Augustan discourse, let us recapitulate the steps that took us here. This study started by posing the question why Mandeville became so controversial if his famous motto – private vices, public benefits – essentially was a reiteration of traditional morality, be it in a provocatory form in an age that felt increasingly attracted to the material benefits of commercial society. It was subsequently surmised that the received interpretation of Mandeville was the product of an economic perspective, starting as early as Adam Smith, which essentially adhered to the characterization proposed by Mandeville’s contemporary opponents, in order to salvage him as a forerunner. In the process, he was defined as the precursor of a variety of economic theories, and Mandeville’s reputation had essentially been established.

The reserve that was added both by certain economists and by the editor of the standard edition of The Fable of the Bees, historian F.B. Kaye, was that Mandeville’s intellectual background in his country of origin was not clear, besides and beyond his proximity to Pierre Bayle. This ‘Dutch gap’ was subsequently filled in over the course of chapters two and three. The first of these chapters was dedicated to the socio-political history of the Netherlands, in which the biographical information gathered on the Mandeville family over the past decades was integrated. In the following chapter, the intellectual climate in which Mandeville grew up was described. This was a productive exercise, but not in the manner that the phrase of the ‘Dutch gap’ had seemed to suggest. Mandeville did, indeed, develop a discourse along similar lines of a naturalist history of society, involving a role for the passions, the danger of hypocrisy, and a concern with the epistemological function of mathematics. The republican drive behind the Dutch radicals, however, had disappeared. This left some of the familiar characterizations emphatically open for reconsideration, which purpose was served by the following two chapters.

First of all, his background as a doctor was useful to determine whether his description as a materialist (a substantive repetition of his original condemnation as an atheist) was warranted by his medical Treatise. The conclusions of several historians who had noted that this work was anything but an endorsement of commercial society were reconsidered. The third element of this chapter was the role medical Cartesianismplayed in his thinking. The conclusion was that the rational optimism that had characterized the Dutch radicals had transformed into a general sceptical attitude that Mandeville applied to all aspects of life. Descartes’s hailing of the pineal gland, the mysterious organ held to connect thought and extension, and Spinoza’s countering of this key metaphysical question, was further pursued by Mandeville. These matters did leave questions unanswered regarding his ideas on religion, morality, and society, especially where he posed as an authority on the nature of and differences between Dutch and English society, which were addressed in the previous chapter. Mandeville’s reserves towards commercial society were reconfirmed. Besides revealing Mandeville’s ambiguous feelings towards Dutch liberty and boorish behavior, his ideas proved to contrast with the theories inherent in the ‘Dutch gap’.

In the following pages, the literary career of Bernard Mandeville will be described in a chronological manner. Attention will obviously not go to the three works discussed thematically in the previous chapters, nor so much to the Fable, as it plays its part throughout this study. What will hopefully be demonstrated is the essential continuity of his concerns, even if he used contrasting rhetorical means to make the same points: pride was the guiding passion in human behavior; hypocrisy was the binding element of society, as unmasked behavior would give offense and disturb the peace; private morality and public benefits were, indeed, mutually exclusive; the moral answer to our fallen nature was introspection. The target Mandeville aimed for were the theorists of polite society, who wanted to believe in a fable in which “virtue was possible without self-denial” and all the conflicts of our fallen nature itself would somehow become reconciled. On this route, Mandeville became increasingly convinced that the main culprit of this anti-dualist moral perspective was Lord Shaftesbury. The last chapter of this study will discuss Mandeville’s three final works, dedicated mainly to countering Shaftesbury’s theory of a moral sense in a benevolent society.

As stated, it was not his parable in verse on how a wealthy and industrious society became virtuous and poor that made Mandeville controversial in his own day. Mandeville was responsible himself for this aspect of the interpretational confusion, at least, inasmuch as the works dedicated to his ideas on the evolution of society and the work that made him the target of the moral authorities were all included under the same, single title of The Fable of the Bees. So not only did Mandeville’s controversiality became something of a commendation to later commentators, the distinct groups of critics may have referred to the same title, the Fable, but in actual fact were commenting on different works. We will reach the historical controversy in 1723, about half-way through this chapter. Before that time, we will have to question whether Mandeville, even if he was criticized by High-Church Tories, can be categorized as a (neo-)Whig thinker. It will hopefully be shown that his classification as a Whig has obscured the role he meant to play himself.

In chapter four, it proved possible to substantiate the suspicion of some historians that the “grumbling” of society – just as the grumbling of Mandeville’s patient – was the symptom of a disorder. In the previous chapter, we saw that England confronted Mandeville with self-reflective discourse that did not always focus as much on political theory and substance as it did on societal form and social intercourse. These aspects of society had been a topic of debate in the Dutch Republic in the previous century, too. Awareness of the own cultural identity, and doubtlessly the need to give some sort of ideological justification vis-a-vis the differing outgroups, had been integrated in the Batavian myth and in theories on the commercial character of Dutch society. Perhaps Dutch directness – in other words, the boorishness Mandeville identified in the Virgin Unmask’d, associated with the low power distance typical of a burgher society – was not good for diplomacy, but it was an asset for commerce, and an inherent aspect of a decentralized, republican form of government. Augustan England, however, had a different perspective.

Augustan England demonstrated a similar concern for the form of discourse, one that expressed a comparable search after its own identity. Parliament’s refusal in 1694 to extend the Licensing Ordinance of 1643 meant that pamphleteering and the printing of books were no longer subject to prior censorship, allowing public debate to proliferate. Mandeville’s comments on the grumbling hive and the grumbling hypo can be considered commentary on this aspect of a transforming society. An unmistakable reference, in any event, is his description of theirs as a talkative age. This aspect of their society was acknowledged by Mandeville’s adversaries in debate yet appraised quite differently. Mandeville’s very first publication commented on this very phenomenon.

6.1 The Pamphleteers (1703)

The Pamphleteers is a eulogy in rhyme, dedicated to the memory of King William, a.k.a. William III, the man who had personally assured Mandeville’s father was banned from Rotterdam. William’s main merit as evinced by the verses was thwarting Louis XIV’s attempts to subjugate the Britons to Papist rule. After describing William’s daft crossing of the Channel, however, a change among commentators is registered.

Less Obstacles had daunted Hannibal,

Yet William dar’d and overcome ‘em all.

Whilst on the Attempt vain Politicians gaz’d,

The Work was done, and Europe stood amaz’d.

He reap’d the Glory, we the Benefit,

But oh! how soon can English Men forget?^[1]

Instead of showing gratitude, pamphleteers “Lampoon his Name” and rather than sing William’s glory, they “rob his Honour, and detract his Praise.”^[2]

What has he done? Has he betray’d his Trust?

Was he not Pious, Merciful, and Just?

Which were the Crimes of his Inglorious Reign?

Can y’ of his Sloth or Luxury complain?

What mighty Pleasures did divide his Years?

The softest Seasons still imploy’d in Wars;

The other’s spent in striving to Appease

A grumbling Nation that was ne’er at ease.^[3]

The lavish praise may surprise us, the prehistory considered. We can surmise irony, but his tone never reaches the absurd levels we will see successively in this chapter, for example in his Modest Defence of Public Stews. To all effects, his commendation corresponds with the careful propaganda prepared by William before and after his invasion. Mandeville’s criticism is reserved for ‘the pamphleteers’? They grumble, as does the nation. This was two years before writing his original fable about the bees, and eight before his case study of the grumbling stomach of the hypochondriac. But he gave his own pamphlet – and the irony cannot have been accidental – against the pamphleteers a sub-title that marked his indebtedness to his classical education. It was a statement on his view of society and his own role therein.

By sub-titling The Pamphleteers: “A Satyr“ and opening with Juvenal’s first: “Semper ego Auditor tantum?” the informed reader would add “numquamne reponam“ - amounting in full to: “am I always to be the audience, never to respond?” Before we reduce Mandeville’s intent by the quotation to mere literary reference, we may want to recall his inclusion of Juvenal in his Treatise on the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases a decade later, and especially how he led the reader up to it. “If you consult History, you’ll find that the more witty and talkative the Age is, the more fruitful it is of Sects, Opinions and Hypotheses... one encouraging the other, make it as catching as the Itch: so that you may apply to it what Juvenal says...”^[4] The comment seconds Juvenal’s purpose with his satires. According to the latter, literature is an unfortunate heap of chatter that, in Gilbert Highet’s words, has “nothing to do with real life... the only kind of literature which has a genuine reason for being written... in his own day – is satire. Satire deals with real life...” The target of Juvenal’s satires had been the corruption and decadence of the Roman upper classes. What did the corruption of Rome consist of according to Juvenal? It was not for cruelty or perversion that he criticized the Romans, their unforgiveable sin was money. And while greed alone may be bad, it is only combined with excess that it becomes disastrous. Doctor Mandeville, of course, speaks mostly of symptoms, not of causes.

The Pamphleteers offers few cues to presume he is directing specific scorn or ridicule with his comments, not even when he shifts his attention to Queen Anne.

Grant all your Ministers Integrity,

Esteem for Virtue without Flattery;

Your Councils Prudence, Truth, and Secrecy,

Your Forces Courage, and Fidelity;

...

Your Clergy, Learning, and Humility,

May they from Lust and Avarice be free;

...

May Judges be Impartial, and the Laws

Never distorted for the Rich Man’s Cause.

...

May in your Days the Gift of Heav’n be sent,

Which we ne’er tasted yet, to be CONTENT.^[5]

The conclusion The Pamphleteers offers – that is, the contrast with the situation of a “grumbling Nation” he calls attention for – is “content”. The “grumbling” that is a symptom of the seeping of the animal spirits is expressed in society as the restlessness and discontent of a multitude of voices. The impression created by the Treatise is confirmed: not merely patient Misomedoon is afflicted by the English malady, society as a whole is suffering. The symptom, grumbling, is the same, this time presented as the multitude of voices and opinions, the clatter of ideas and complaints. Considering the fact that he had left behind an extremely opinionated and contentious society, his focus on this aspect of his country of adoption should be noted. This multiplicity of opinions was not only a disorder for Mandeville in the medical sense. If we recall his theory of human motivation and agency, all these promulgated opinions also were inconsequential when it came to explaining human behavior. After all, it was passions, rather than ideas, that determined our conduct. Reviewing his personal history, it is difficult to isolate his idea of the irrelevance of ideas in motivating people in isolation from his own experience, especially if we relate it to the pessimism he feels regarding the human lot and man’s impotence to determine his fate. In chapters 2 and 3 we saw the collapse of the domineering States Party/Orangist ideological division in the Netherlands, something of an example of the sudden inconsequentiality of ideas by itself. Broadly, we can call Mandeville’s own journey from States Party affiliate to declared Williamite the parallel in his own life.

Following the Dutch collapse of ideologies and his repositioning, we see Mandeville seeking the attention of Hans Willem Bentick the 1st Earl of Portland, William’s confidant, after the latter’s passing. Mandeville’s fellow Dutch physician on English soil Groenevelt had written a book for which Mandeville wrote the preface in 1706, dedicated to Bentinck. Mandeville’s intent, for lack of substantive information, remains mere fuel for speculation. The realignment of the Oranges with the Anglicans in Britain (after their affiliation with the Dutch Reformed Church) was another example of ideological breakdown, but indeed: perhaps all these ideas had been rationalizations as well, utilized to justify and underpin decisions and actions that our passions had committed us to already. Had all the shifts in alliances and the repositioning been nothing but the result of the manipulations of crafty politicians? In any event, Mandeville’s concern with a sick society was not a theme he developed over time. It was on the forefront of his ideas and publications from the very start.

6.2 A Different Paradigm and the Grumbling Hive (1705)

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The Dutch model

The general assumption has been that Mandeville cynically prompted his audience to give in to their passions, encouraging luxury wherever possible. Supposedly, he did not provide an alternative ideal promising a more satisfying, ethical pursuit of values. He does have such suggestions, however, if we want to see them, immediately after.

Whoever would be happy should endeavour to be wise; and as this consists in having a diffusive knowledge of the real worth of things, and a capacity of chusing on all emergencies what to sound and unbyas’d reason would seem the most eligible, so it is by shaking off all cloggs of prejudice, and fetters of human authority, by thinking freely, that men can only mount to wisdom. There is no better way of curing groundless jealousy and pannick fears, than by daring to examine and boldly look things in the face.^[1]

We can see a measure, if not of Dutch directness, of realism here: the idea that matters of fact should be faced without adornment.

At the time of Mandeville’s relocation to England, elements of public administration followed the same path across the Channel. The lapsing of the Licensing Order in 1695 ending prior censorship, the institution of public credit via the institution of the Bank of England in 1694, a standing army, public/private ventures, economic ascendancy were all examples of Dutch practice being transferred to England. This was not surprising in itself, as Dutch power had been the object of jealousy across Europe. To what extent the Dutch model merited copying was a matter of contentious debate because the model challenged accepted political theory. Mandeville, as a Dutchman, was particularly well-positioned to weigh the arguments in this debate. He did not directly comment on all of these themes, but his criticism of Sir William Temple, former emissary to and admirer of the Republic, must be understood in this context.

Temple thought the frugality of the Dutch was an explanation for their economic success. His also was an argument that was morally easy to defend. Mandeville’s countering of the argument, and the fact that he suggested that frugality was not the way forward for England – if they wished to emulate Holland’s example – indeed was anything but moral endorsement. One can even say he left a decidedly unattractive impression by describing the enormous fiscal pressure, and lack of legal security, in Holland. How taxes were intertwined with moral enforcement is more closely considered in chapter six. It has also become clear, however, that despite all his relative praise for England, he did not consider its inhabitants particularly happy, either.

Did he present an attractive alternative by offering his knowledge of the Netherlands? He mentions lack of legal security and an extremely elevated fiscal pressure. He creates the impression that his choice to “let women speak about politics” was founded on his own Dutch habits. The next moment, however, he basically declared women were as unqualified as (almost) anybody else. Pride of opinion has people forget their own ignorance. By declaring matters of state the business of the few, he assumed a decidedly non-republican position. At the same time, when he describes the role of priesthood, it turns out that ignorance is not without risk either, as it makes us the target of manipulation. And he debunked that cherished aspect of Dutch identity, their frugality. Ironically, it only was his confrontational style that he imagined capable of morally enriching his English audience. He did not explicitly link this to his own Dutch background, though we may do so. His own terms to identify this theme were Seneca, satire, and his appeal to a fashionable audience. The next chapter addresses these terms explicitly. I believe it will be his battle against polite society that will ultimately explain why he chose such a confrontational style.

5.3 Faith, Virtue, and Hypocrisy

We saw above that despite his reputation – as an atheist then, a materialist today – Mandeville declared his position in matters of faith in positive terms in Free Thoughts. The Netherlands of the seventeenth century – where Socinians, Collegiants, and Calvinists such as Van Velthuysen strove towards the integration of reason in religion – could have guided him differently. We found, however, that Bayle once more had had a heavier moral impact on Mandeville. Page after page of rational arguments on theodicy were countered by Mandeville, via Bayle, with as many questions. Being rigorously critical would culminate in skepticism, an attitude that ultimately could only be answered by faith.

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In the preceding chapters we have taken a series of specific steps. First of all, we identified the causal timeframe traditionally imposed on his interpretation. The idea that Mandeville had been a forerunner of or had even founded capitalist theory meant that he was subordinated to the telling of different stories, that took shape after his passing. Not only did this shift the focus to how others interpreted and used him for their own purposes, it also entailed disregard for his own sources and inspirations. This is why we subsequently proceeded to lay out the history of his country of birth, with special attention for the socio-economic and philosophical aspects of a society that in the day was the prototype of commercial society. The so-called Dutch gap, the unknowns about Mandeville’s background, was thus filled in to an extent at least. In the last chapter, we started to read Mandeville’s texts in depth, selecting his dialogue on hypochondria as our point of departure.

The Treatise allowed us to consider an aspect of Mandeville’s (professional) life that, despite the weight he gave it himself, has not attracted most attention: his doctorhood. This entailed a number of advantages for our narrative. In the first place, this particular order permitted to embed Mandeville’s medical opinions immediately after the chapter on philosophical developments in the Netherlands, hopefully making it easier for the reader to take matters in. In the second place, as stated, Mandeville may have stopped practicing medicine in England, his identity – even as a Mandeville, one might say – was intimately connected to this aspect of his thinking. In the third place, as had been noticed before, the Treatise offers a series of perspectives that offer viewpoints very different from the frame usually pieced together from the satirical comments and provocations found in the Fable of the Bees.

This chapter will continue the thematic investigation of Mandeville’s ideas. Two more works will be discussed that fall outside the famous canon of the Fable and associated texts. The two books under scrutiny in the present chapter were not selected for reference to his vocation, as it was in the previous chapter. Nor can this selection be linked to biographical events, which for lack of such information would be an impossible task, too. The Virgin Unmask’d and Free Thoughts were not written in response to topical debates in the society around him. The works do discuss recent historical events, but his arguments are not polemical in the way many of Mandeville’s texts are. They steer clear of the extremes and paradoxes he is known for, while offering substantive clues.

The objective of the present chapter is an extension of the previous one: to identify Mandeville’s position on a number of philosophical topics, with specific reference to the tendencies we might associate with the ‘Dutch gap’ we spent the first two chapters filling in. While not polemical in character, all these works were written during his more controversial period. Their utility lies not in providing insight into the development of his thinking over time, an assumption used sometimes to account for incontrovertible discrepancies between statements in different works. The purpose is to offer a window onto his ideas when he expressed himself through something other than inscrutable paradoxes. The resulting sketch – rather different in character than his reputation suggests – will assist when returning to a chronological treatment, discussing Mandeville’s literary production in the context of Augustan debates.

While filling in the ‘Dutch gap’, this study has identified a wide range of potential influences, not only in the field of ideas but also in tendencies in the social and political history of the Netherlands. The material thus presented provided us with a standard to hold Mandeville’s works against. This benchmark includes not only the societal paradoxes of the Netherlands, but also the intellectual developments of (rational) materialism, rational theology and atheism, psychological egoism, political Cartesianism (theories of commercial society), and medical Cartesianism. This quest commenced in the previous chapter by way of a reading of Mandeville’s popular medical Treatise. It brought to the fore Mandeville’s skepticism regarding the potential of mathematics both in epistemology and in medicine; this position of his is a clear departure from Cartesianism and Spinozism. In addition, we have seen that the Treatise does not manifest the enthusiasm for commercial society that received interpretation of Mandeville told us to expect. Several passages indicated that his patient was a pars pro toto for English society. The grumbling referred to by Mandeville on so many occasions was the sign of a disorder.

Other findings were less conclusive. Though Mandeville discusses the possibility of the material soul, he does so only in the person of his patient. The label of atheism has been one of the most tenacious characterizations of Mandeville through the centuries. An answer to the question of his religious bona fides therefore is relevant to several pertinent issues, such as the sincerity of his Augustinian moral perspective, the materialist values he used as a standard, and his wider epistemological approach. Instead of extrapolating from his paradoxes, this chapter hopes to do the opposite: to sketch a set of opinions that were worded without concern for rhetorical effect. The resulting ‘sanitized’ version of his opinions will then support a reinterpretation of his intentions by his more extreme statements. This chapter will show that Mandeville did engage with the radical developments in Dutch philosophy, but that he made choices that went against their grain.

Our entry point into the texts themselves is a sampling of Mandeville’s religious opinions, on which topic we probably see least divergence between his contemporaries’ assessment and the interpretations of his thought later on. The same appraisal was occasion for the former to vilify him and for the latter to commend him for his presumed modernity. The discussion subsequently moves to common places not limited to Christian theology, considering his views on frugality and luxury, and what lessons he believed he, as a Dutchman, could offer to England. The extant debate on luxury encapsulated the crossroads of classical, humanist, Christian, and neo-civic humanist approaches to commercial society. Mandeville has generally been considered the champion of luxury and this interpretation will be called into question. Subsequently examined are his views on the clergy, along with his historical perspective on the Church, outside the context of his well-known paradoxes. If the ideas revealed here contrast with Mandeville’s reputation, the issue of coherence will present itself, which will have to be addressed in one way or another. These steps should prepare us to address anew his diagnosis of English society in the concluding chapters of this study.

Most readings of Mandeville have been domineered by the hyperbole and paradox of the Fable. It still is tempting to link the extreme positions of these rhetorical figures to themes and characteristics prominent in the intellectual revolution of the Dutch Golden Age. As was pointed out in chapter one, qualifications that were used to denounce him in the eighteenth century became badges of commendation for modern commentators, reconfirming prejudice, though not the vilification. The objective for the underlying chapter is not to determine his “Dutchness” (though it may be useful shorthand to subsume certain ideas), but whether certain radical ideas pioneered in the Dutch Republic (materialism, the ideological underpinning of commercial society, rationalist approaches to religion and atheism, political and medical Cartesianism) can be identified in his thinking. Did he continue on the radical path his compatriots had carved out, or did he move in a different, even contrary direction? In the process, we will also learn about the distinctions Mandeville made himself between his old and his new country.

The choice for The Virgin Unmask’d and Free Thoughts

Mandeville’s observations comparing Holland and England indeed are the first substantive reason for looking at The Virgin Unmask’d and Free Thoughts on Religion in the present chapter. As noted, he makes those observations in the absence of his customary exaggerations and caustic humor. In addition, he wrote both works (in 1709 and 1720 respectively) while he elected a more satirical style in the Female Tatler and the first collection of works published as the Fable of the Bees (1714) during the same period. We do not have the biographical information to contextualize these works within his personal life. The bibliographical chronology shows, however, that even while he wrote more provocatory material both in tone, style, and subject matter, there were still other messages he sought to convey. Mandeville would reach the pinnacle of provocation in 1724, after which he would conclude his literary production with three works that were not nearly as polemical. In other words, even if the content of both texts is at odds with received interpretation of Mandeville’s thought, this selection is a fair representation of his production across the second decade of the eighteenth century, in the middle of his literary career. The question of the (dis-)continuity of his thought over the course of his three decades of writing is addressed in the next chapter, where a thematic will give way to a chronological discussion. Right now, the objective is to take Mandeville’s statements seriously, even if they seem to run counter to either received interpretation or to the developments described while filling in the ‘Dutch gap’.

A majority of Mandeville studies have concentrated on The Fable of the Bees. This single title encompassed verse, a series of essays, and a lengthy dialogue in Part II, in all authored over the course of about two decades. At this (extended) stage of his writing career, Mandeville predominantly donned a rhetorical style that favored controversy and paradox over unambiguous clarity. Both his style and the predominant focus by historians on this aspect of his production have consolidated received views and have had a discouraging effect on alternative interpretations. For example, one of the major, relatively recent studies on Mandeville describes one of his minor works as “mildly pornographic”. As one might expect after such a qualification, the work itself subsequently only receives scant attention, and logically in the context predetermined by the prior characterization. It is clear that the work at issue, The Virgin Unmask’d, did cater to the adult, contemporary reader, not averse to finding some ‘naughty topics’. But we should not ignore the overall substance of this series of dialogues: life lessons an aunt imparts to her adolescent niece. The overall purpose seems to be educational, providing the audience with the psychological instruments to read our fellows and to understand ourselves. Mandeville’s discourse of the passions – more clearly than in other works – is offered as an instructional tool. We are all conditioned by our passions, and the only hope of empowerment we have is to understand how. Know yourself, the doctor says. His The Virgin Unmask’d is one of the works used here to consider Mandeville’s vicinity to the Dutch radicals.

The extreme nature of Mandeville’s thought has become an axiom of Mandeville studies. Though it has been noted that his penchant for provocation diminished later in his career, the substance of his arguments often is ignored or, if deviating from the expected standard, simply called “not ‘Mandevillian’ at all.” Such observations have been made regarding An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War(1732), for instance. But there is evidence in Mandeville’s earlier works as well that suggests he was neither the ungodly atheist his contemporaries depicted him as, nor the materialist and commercially inclined radical later interpretations held him for.

Both works discussed in this chapter (the aforementioned The Virgin Unmask’d (1709), and Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness (1720)) were published well before his name became synonymous with scandal and moral outrage in 1723. At the same time, the period of production coincided with most of the Fable, Part I, including the largest part of its controversial texts, which he had finished composing by 1714. If it is noted therefore that Mandeville changed tone later in life, this is only part of the story. The very title Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness, combined with the author’s reputation, seems to promise incendiary material. And the suggestive title of The Virgin Unmask’deffectively does the same. Whereas The Virgin Unmask’d is clearly intended to be both entertaining and instructional, Free Thoughts has the sober tone becoming to the seriousness of the topics. Going through Free Thoughts, however, one realizes it falls safely within the range of acceptable opinion, possibly excluding that of High-Church Tories.

The work develops arguments about the role of church and clergy in society, about the proper hierarchy between religious and secular authorities, and discusses questions related to the divine right of kings and the Act of Settlement of 1701, which had formally concluded the legal argument provoked by the Glorious Revolution. The work regularly features in the bibliography of Mandeville studies but has not been subjected to extensive scrutiny. My supposition is that this is because the opinions in the text seem to be so far removed from what is perceived as Mandeville’s intent behind his controversial works.

While the Fable flirts with materialist values and discussed morality separate from the Holy Scriptures, Free Thoughts steers clear of blasphemous positions and even rejects the rationalist theology that had become so popular in Holland. Later in life – as will be shown in the following chapters – he provided a specific explanation for his use of the controversial paradoxes and hyperbole that are still considered his trademark. He eventually distanced himself from the scandalous positions he was associated with, stating that his tone earlier on had only been meant to appeal to a particular audience. With that in mind, it becomes all the more urgent to look beyond his controversial stances and delve in somewhat deeper into his actual, more sober, statements. This choice is also supported by a thorough study of some of Mandeville’s minor works in the 1990s in which the author reached the conclusion that Mandeville was a critic, not an apologist, of commercial society, sketching a picture of him that was far removed from the image of the Dutch blasphemer that has been set in stone ever since 1723’s controversy. A final caveat regards the way in which I chose to present Mandeville’s ideas, embedding his statements within the arguments he made them in. Mandeville inserted many hyperbolic statements in his works. This leaves his thought extremely vulnerable to out-of-context ascriptions, which I have sought to avoid as much as possible.

Historiographical perspectives: De la Court versus Bayle

Before proceeding with a reading of the texts, some comments on contributions of other historians are in place. This will not only give us an idea of prior interpretations and of where the present reading deviates from that of other historians, it will also allow us to identify some of the philosophical terms that are central in the historical debate once the narrow perimeter of the debate on the nascence of Capitalist theory is let go of. An example is the Dutch naturalist tradition, more commonly applied to the arts than to ponderings on commercial society. Historian Hans Blom published his dissertation on the advent of naturalism in seventeenth-century Dutch political theory in 1995. Mandeville fell outside the scope of this study and so Free Thoughts is only briefly discussed in the conclusion, and more to argue for the durable influence of the thinkers discussed theretofore in the United Kingdom, via Mandeville. Blom nevertheless noted the “definite Dutch flavour” of Free Thoughts that exceeds the mere discussion of Dutch historical events involving Church and State. Part of this flavor is Mandeville’s insistence on identifying our “true motives” and his emphasis on representing matters as they truly are, without pomp or hypocrisy. It is easy enough to link this naturalism to intellectual developments such as Calvinism, Erasmian humanism, or even Dutch Golden Age iconography and burgher mores. In the preceding, we also considered Harold Cook’s hypothesis, postulating the importance of a culture of commerce for the honing of a focus on matters – and our fellows – as they truly are. The latter theory presupposes bottom-up historical causation, while a focus on the former assumes culture trickles down. Whichever is closer to the truth, the naturalism we are referring to at some point became a part of Dutch mentality, that set of unconscious assumptions about the world around them. I believe a component of Mandeville’s clash with Augustan society originated here, underlying the field of deliberate philosophical debate.

Blom also noted Mandeville’s appreciation for William III and even remarked that Mandeville’s praise for William (in Free Thoughts, but also in The Pamphleteers, as we will see in the next chapter) resembled Walten’s propaganda for the Stadtholder turned King. He did not ponder, however, on the curious fact of Walten and Mandeville being on opposing sides in the aftermath of the Kosterman Riots. Considerations of patronage and pecuniary dependency may be the simplest explanation here. At the same time, Mandeville’s volte-face begs for our prying. Most of his direct political references regard the ‘crafty politicians’. The political participation of the people, on the other hand, is reduced to the role of the manipulated. Was this division of roles between crafty politicians and the manipulated people his summary of what had happened to him as a young man? Or was the essential futility of ideas the conclusion that he drew from that experience? Whatever the answer(s) might be, the importance of both the event and Mandeville’s later stance should not be ignored. After all, instead of realizing the promise of his medical career in his country of birth, he had to reinvent himself in a different country. To assume none of this had had any impact on his thinking seems inadequate and superficial. As a matter of fact, we may be replacing the ‘Dutch gap’ by a different hiatus. Political theory was the main concern of the Dutch radicals before him, and – indeed with the exception of the two works discussed here – Mandeville generally avoided discussing matters of political philosophy (and the merits of the republic specifically). It is tempting to link this gap to Mandeville’s brief experience with local politics.

A different approach to the filling in of the original ‘Dutch gap’ has been, indeed, to look for the presumed parallels between Mandeville and political Cartesianism. What this reinterpretation primarily contends with is the importance of Pierre Bayle and of the Jansenist tradition for Mandeville. So while the latter are acknowledged a limited space in Mandeville’s thought when it comes to matters such as the overbearing power of the passions, man’s hypocrisy, and the narrow definition of moral virtue, heralded as the main thesis is the idea that “the commercial republicanism of Johan and Pieter de la Court provided Mandeville with a springboard for navigating passage into commercial modernity.” In contrast with the Frenchmen’s neo-Augustinian vision, De la Court saw an important, positive role for the passions and interest in the commonwealth, which supposedly would then form the basis foundation of Mandeville’s thought. While the qualification may be correct for De la Court, it needs to be challenged where it regards Mandeville.

Whereas the passions are a key ingredient for his discourse – uniting their respective conceptual frameworks – Mandeville does not award interest the same status. He uses the word ‘interest’ maybe five times throughout his abundant work, and most instances will be presented to the reader in the following chapters. For De la Court, interest was not just one of the passions, but something materially different. As a rationally understood motivation, it provided a way out of the prospect of humanity purely deciding on an emotional basis. If their work has been called Machiavellic, it should be understood in this sense. What we should try to avoid is equating De la Court’s interest with Mandeville’s self-love. De la Court, in fact, formulates the distinction in a fable towards the conclusion of Interest van Holland, where self-love (‘eige liefde’) can either be well-informed or harmful. The very book was dedicated to properly understanding the interest of Holland, so as, not in the Mandevillean sense, to manipulate the self-regarding passions towards purposes of public utility, but to prevent such manipulation and base action on well-understood, rational, self-interest. This concept of self-love, indeed, had been derived from amour-propre, as elaborated by the Jansenists.

Mandeville’s naturalism, as suggested in the Introduction, rests on the rigorous separation of the worldly and the moral, or in his own brief description: on man’s fallen nature. The principle of self-preservation for him, therefore, was a function of original sin, not a neutral observational fact of our nature. What interest did for theorists like De la Court, on the other hand, was to provide a rational handle in the midst of a naturalized understanding of man, who was otherwise depicted as an emotional automaton. This element of rational optimism cannot be found in Mandeville, who relied on Augustinian metaphysics. In the previous chapter, we saw Mandeville diverge from the Cartesian path in epistemology. Rather than a rational optimist, he proved to be a skeptical pessimist, like his teacher Bayle. Is this also the case for Mandeville’s narrow and intrinsicist interpretation of moral virtue: transmitted from Jansenism, via Bayle, to Mandeville? This also touches on the issue of De la Court’s (and Spinoza’s) presumed influence on Mandeville. If Mandeville proposed a utilitarian alternative to Christian and humanist ethics, the obvious source would have been those Dutchmen, rather than Bayle.

The utilitarian interpretation of Mandeville’s ethics relies on the motto of the Fable. Supposedly, he chose public benefits over private virtue. Had he juxtaposed private virtue with private benefits, or public virtue with public benefits, the interpretation of Mandeville’s intent would not have been so complicated. But he chose the paradox that he did, and the distinction between the private and the public should therefore not be ignored. What traditional interpretations of his thought have run with is the idea that his identification of a utilitarian standard (public benefits) amounted to the reformulation of an ethical standard for commercial society. As this study proceeds, we see less and less grounds, however, to maintain this assumption. Neither his narratives, nor his diagnostics or his conceptual tools provide us with much ammunition to defend that view.

Mandeville’s writing style – not only, but in particular in his polemical works – has rendered the identification of his ideas on private virtue rather complicated. A subordinate objective of this chapter is to create a picture of these ideas, but based on context and not on loose comments left with ambiguous effect throughout his work. Once we do take the time to describe his arguments in full, a very different Mandeville impresses the imagination. Once we let go of the assumption that he was a cynical utilitarian, he more closely resembles a Calvinist who has accepted he is living in this world, not the next. The final sections of this chapter are dedicated to identifying both Mandeville’s understanding of virtue, and the difference between his vision and that of De la Court and Spinoza.

So what issues does Mandeville’s Free Thoughts address? A walk through the chapters will give us the idea that writing it was not an iconoclastic materialist, but rather an anti-clerical latitudinarian.^[1] Mandeville certainly does not avoid sensitive topics, such as the worldly ambitions of the clergy, predestination and theodicy, and schisms and religious prosecution. He declares himself a fierce anti-Papist – as he did throughout his career – but does not spare Protestants his criticism for engaging in similar types of abuse. But is it the work one expects from an author who was called an atheist then and a materialist now? A short treatment of his discussion of the doctrine of predestination should give us an indication.

5.1 Mandeville’s bona fides

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4.4 Diagnosis

At this stage, Philopirio declines to speculate about “the Causes and Seat of the Distemper”, as he only wishes to deal with symptoms by removing them.^[1] Doctor and patient continue to discuss the various schools of medicine; the empirics, the Methodici. What he is against is “the speculative part of Physick, as it is distinct from the Practical, that teaches Men to cure all manner of Distempers in their Closets, without ever feeling a Patient… it is the Observations, and not Reasons, that constitute the Art…”^[2] Mandeville’s position vis-à-vis the various schools of Medicine will get our attention later on, but if we wonder what makes us so fond of “the idol Reason”, it is our Pride.^[3]

What we have seen here in the fifty-odd pages of his Treatise may not include all, yet it is a representative selection of the familiar Mandevillean commonplaces. Because as ‘modern’ as his concern for pure observation and his materialist explanations may be, it rests on a far more traditional assumption that is central to his thought. We have heard the patient complain of his grumbling stomach. And pride, as we will encounter time after time throughout his work, is the key passion. Now we may be tempted to interpret this passion as a mechanistically neutral principle directing our actions, but in the context of his Treatise, he did substitute the title referring to the hypochondriac passions for diseases, suggesting that – whatever he tended to call them – he did assume they were an affliction. Furthermore, while he is not judgmental towards these passions (at least not while treating his patient), we should beware of interpreting this as his moral approval. As a doctor, he observed our frailties as a fact of nature, that could only be dealt with by obeying nature. The greatest obstacle to this process was pride, which, ever since original sin, has been as much an epistemological, as a moral curse upon us. It leads us on and misleads us, it makes both doctor and patient liable to overreach their potential, if not their proper place. It has us hide true motives and the actual issues.

The second part of the Treatise continues with a more focused discussion of the distemper. This discussion will include the theories of some of his peers, including Van Velthuysen, and will culminate in a statement on his scientific-epistemological position. “First, let us examine the several Causes to which the Hypochondriack Passion has been believed to owe its Rise.”^[4]

The generality of the Ancients accused the Spleen, but no otherwise, than as it was the Office of their Atra bilis, or Melancholy... Some of the Moderns lay all the Fault upon the Meseraick Vessels; others again blame nothing but the empty space, that is under the Diaphragm between the Stomach and the Spleen; as the most proper Nursery, as well as Receptacle for the many Winds that always infest the Hypochondriack Patients.^[5]

They move on to discuss some of the moderns, of whom Van Helmont may have been witty, but also rash and negligent in backing up his reasons with observations. Sylvius, on the other hand, was ready to put everything to the test of experience, and insisted a doctor should beware of persisting in error.^[6] The idea that Philopiriofinds most convincing is to absolve “the Spleen, Meseraick Vessels, Bilious, and Pancreatick Juice, &c. throw all fault upon the Stomach,” even if not in the specific way others have surmised.^[7] Then Misomedoonmentions his admiration for Willis.

What [Willis] says himself of Fermentation I like wonderfully, and have read several Passages in that Treatise above twenty times with a great deal of delight; the Office he assigns to the Spleen is certainly very rational, and sometimes I can’t help thinking, that he has hit upon the true Cause of my Distemper. I know you are no Admirer of those Flights of Invention in Physick, but I must read you a Passage or two of the fifth Chapter...^[8]

His quotation – an alchemic metaphor of the alembic that is intended to represent the functioning of the organs – meets the doctor’s scorn, however.

Willis was a Physician of great Note, a Man of Wit and Learning, who indulged Speculation in Physick, as far as Imagination could carry him... These Simile’s, I confess, are very diverting for People that have nothing else to do: In some of our Modern Hypotheses there is as much Wit to be discover’d as in a tolerable Play, and the Contrivance of them costs as much Labour; what Pity it is they won’t cure sick People.^[9]

Philopirio first of all takes apart the entire “simile”, showing how inept it was to represent the bodily functions. And after reducing his fellow’s theory to sheer fantasy, he wonders “what Willis says of the Spleen; where he treats of the Passio Hypochondriaca.”^[10] Philopirio concludes Willis’s theories were not supported by any observations. Instead of relying on these, Willis just spent all his exertions on defending his hypothesis, and even “adapts it to the Palates of splenetick Patients, where he quotes the Opinion of Velthusius...^[11] Willis had quoted from Van Velthuysen’s work on the spleen (the tract that likely was discussed by Mandeville with his father back in the days in Rotterdam), in which he had combined anatomy uncorroborated by observation with grand Cartesian hypotheses.

You see, Misomedon, how your witty Men give every thing a Gloss, and let not the least Shadow of Reason slip that can assist them: Proverbs, vulgar Sayings, any thing to give a lift to an Hypothesis...^[12]

Furthermore, their theory does not correspond to the popular understanding of spleen, either. It does not denote “sharpness and sagacity” at all “... for the Word Spleen in its figurative Sense is made use of to express Passion, Malice, Rancour, and a perversely satyrical Temper, rather than Sharpness and Sagacity...” And the name of “splenetick People... is given to no Body because he is Witty or Ingenious; but for being Touchy, Waspish, and Unsociable, always denoting a Vice, and not a Virtue of the Mind...”^[13] Mandeville offers some linguistic reserve at this point, considering he is a foreigner.^[14] He does offer, “that the Passio Hypochondriaca in High-Dutch is call’d Der Gelahrten Kranckheyt, the Disease of the Learned,” because learned people suffer from it more.

His own explanation is that the disproportionate exercise of our head, to the neglect of the rest of our body, must be a factor. But as regards a physiological explanation, he is rather reticent. He notes that we are “altogether in the Dark, as to the real use” of many of our organs.^[15] Referring to the methodological approach of Baglivi, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe, and expressing appreciation for their diligent study of the phenomena, he notes how different the theories are that have been extrapolated from what must have been the same observations. He argues that inasmuch as any theory necessarily carries back to the observations that were made in the first place, such hypotheses are not going to divulge “the true Cause of a Distemper” to us. If only we dedicate ourselves to tireless observation and to reason from those alone, and not from the theories we proudly develop, he thinks it is “as yet inconceivable, to what prodigious pitch human Knowledge” will carry us regarding both the terrestrial and the celestial bodies.^[16] This discussion could not but have led to a reference to Descartes, of course, juxtaposed against the ancients, though he may have been thinking of Van Velthuysen as well, and his contributions to the Copernican debates.^[17] Once more, the Cartesian battles at Leyden University shine through.^[18] His own allegiance - it is clear - no longer lies with the hypothetical sciences he had imbibed as a student.

Knowing Mandeville, he could not limit his rejection of Hypothetical reasoning to a scientific argument. He expresses his dislike for hypotheses by including a comparison to the fashions that come and go in all fields fallen man meddles with. He uses a range of metaphors to describe the weaknesses of hypothetical reasoning; it is as changeable as the fashions and as domineering as “a Sovereign, and receives the same Homage and Respect from its Vassals, as if it was Truth it self.”^[19] The multiplicity of hypotheses, of opinions, says Mandeville, is not unique to his age, but a characteristic of all “talkative” and witty times, when the venting of opinions spreads like the itch.^[20] It is at this point that the dialogue turns to a more focused discussion of the main medical question of the Treatise, the explanation of the hypochondriac pathology.

An objective challenge to this discussion was the ongoing disagreement in those days regarding the nature of digestion; whether it was a mechanical process, one involving heat, a process of fermentation, or one involving chyle – the process of ‘chylification’, an explanation Mandeville was partial to – had not been settled yet among the learned. Yet, leaving the presumed workings of these physical processes aside, the mechanism was seen as related to the “Animal Sprits”, as testified by the great number of nerves connected to the stomach, as well as by the impact experientially known to derive from “Appetite and Aversion, our Liking or Disliking our Food… upon Digestion.” ^[21] This leads to a re-discussion of Cartesian principles, as the interconnectedness of physical and mental factors entailed issues of soul and body. It is Philopirio this time to pronounce his position, concluding – rather more carefully – that while we are unable to know the intricacies of the link, we do know that there is “an immediate Commerce between the Body and the Soul” and “so there must be some exquisitely small Particles, that are the Internuncii between them,” which are otherwise called animal spirits.^[22] The means by which this process actually occurs is beyond the limits of their knowledge and optical tools, but it does not alter the function of the “Soul as skilful Artificer, whilst the Organs of the Body are her Tools...”^[23] Again this leads to the question of the immortality of the soul, which Mandeville then not too reluctantly leaves for what it is – a prickly question – and “as it is very immaterial to our Business in hand” prefers not to “consider this incorporeal Being” any further.^[24] His conclusion, however, is that “the Office of the Stomach is very much influenced by Thought it self, and consequently the Spirits employed in this Ministry are of the finest sort…”^[25] From this standpoint, it seems that Mandeville had not abandoned that other feature of Cartesian philosophy, its dualist metaphysics, which designated the soul as the communicator between both realms.

Subsequently, the two gentlemen address the distinction between the finer and the coarser spirits that effectuate communications between body and soul. Misomedoon prods his doctor for an explanation of the difference, and this is where Philopirio gets closer to an actual explanation of the pathology. The coarser spirits are involved in physical activity, and as is demonstrated by “labouring People that come home weary every Night,” having exhausted their spirits, exercise is healthy.^[26] Inversely, it is among the learned that one encounters a greater incidence of hypochondria.^[27] At this point the conversation is interspersed again by more theoretical observations. While there must be mechanical laws that would explain the workings of our body, Philopirio says, it is impossible to offer explanations of the ‘first elements of nature’ with the knowledge at their disposal; to say otherwise would merely be a sign of “Ignorance and Vanity.”^[28] And this turns out to be an occasion for another provocative statement by Philopirio, pertaining to the uselessness of mathematics for the physician, at least to cure his patient.^[29]

It had simply become the latest fashion, after Newton, so it was to ingratiate oneself with the public that one wanted to show off one’s familiarity with it. Mathematics has the charm of formulating truthful statements, but it cannot substitute observation, especially the lengthy observation of the sick. This exchange results in the ridiculing of the modern, fashionable physicians who play the game of impressing the public and always act àla mode, by dressing well and showing off.^[30] This entertaining section rests mainly on patient Misomedoon’scontributions. It is a fair question to wonder how much of this criticism should be supposed to include the concurring Philopirio – and, therefore, Mandeville – and how much of this should be interpreted as an expression of the bile of the outsider, criticizing those of his colleagues with societal success, even if in the guise of an attack on pride. Mandeville certainly did not exclude doctors from his criticism towards the professional classes elsewhere. In addition, it is tempting to interpret the reserve towards mathematics not only as a departure from the overbearing importance ascribed to the mos geometricus, Cartesian or Newtonian, per se, but specifically from the standpoint of someone who had seen the mathematical fashion rise up and decline before, already.

At this point doctor and patient realize how far they have drifted off from their topic; but just as well, Philopiriosays, as cheering up the patient will certainly contribute to his cure. As testified by Mandeville’s shift in terms in the title to his Treatise – from passions to diseases – and as demonstrated by his patient, afflicted by his grumbling stomach, discontent was not a sign of health or vitality. The medical conclusion of these paragraphs, though, leaves us on our toes. We are as yet incapable of discerning with any degree of accuracy what constitutes the spirits, states Philopirio. At the same time, we can reach conclusions “from the Effects they have upon the Actions of Men,” so we better leave aside musings after first causes and accept our body’s workings for what they are. The patient is delighted with “those nicest Qualifications of the Body, which, tho’ they seem to belong to the Soul, are wholly depending on the various Contexture of the Mass of Spirits…”^[31]Which opens the way for his physician to summarize the passages of his life so that he will clearly see himself “the Procatartick Causes of your Distemper.”^[32] He had married (too) young, had been a bit too enamored of the res Uxoria. But there had been more bad habits that had sapped his spirits. He had subsequently had his brain labor too much during five or six years of “hard Study”.

[I]ndeed the immoderate Exercise of the Brain, and Excess of Venery, are so generally the Occasion of the Hypochiondriack Passions, that in all my Experience I have hardly met with any, where I had not Reason to impute the Distemper… to one or other of these, if not to both… It was then the Waste of Spirits, that robbing the Stomachick Ferment of what was required for its Volatilization, occasion’d those fix’d acid Salts that gave you the Heart-burning, which was your first Complaint. The many absorbent and alkalick Medicines you took would have removed your Grievance, if the Fault had not been in the Spirits…^[33]

Following this initial stage of his disorder, the variety of physicians that tended to his situation had only succeeded at ruining his health further. The treatment suggested by Philopirio is no more complicated than relaxation for his mind and increased physical exercise. Misomedoon’s admitting of the role played by the animal spirits and the effect they had on the stomach, is the key opening the door towards his recovery from the Hypochondriack Passion.^[34] In any event, Doctor Philopirio adds, if his patient “had been reduced to the Want that threatened you, and forced to maintain your Family, either by Copying, Hackney-writing, or some other miserable Shift, where you must have work’d de pane ad panem… I am of Opinion, that your Distemper (if it had ever troubled you at all) would neither so soon, nor so severely have attack’d you.”^[35]

The patient should not get his hopes up too much, however, because total recovery cannot be expected, “but if your Distemper be skilfully managed, and Prescriptions diligently comply’d with, your grievous Pains, the Disorders of the Fancy, and habitual Costiveness, which influences the rest, may be removed, the Return of all that is dismal in your Affliction be prevented, and your Life again be made easie and comfortable.”^[36] We hear an echo here of Mandeville’s analysis of society; if we are willing to admit that certain mechanisms are operative, we may not be able to eliminate the pathology, but we will be able to passably live with it. Generally, those interpretations of Mandeville that presume his famous paradox amounted to a celebratory call for the victory of nascent commercial society, (dis)miss the unease he describes and testifies to, both where it regards his patients and society as a whole. It is clear why Kleiman-Lafon holds that the Treatise comprises a rejection of commercial society. Moreover, the skillful management of the passions of the patient does not ring that differently from the management by the crafty politicians. Indeed, another familiar theme of Mandeville in his writing on history and society that we see applied in – fictional – reality is the technique of flattery. As Philopirioinsists how dimwits are invulnerable to hypochondria, we imagine Misomedoon, as well as the interested reader, glowing with the awareness of manifesting the problems of the learned.^[37] Is he talking about me – a person less refined would not suffer from the hypo, would he? Is Doctor Mandeville really treating pride?

4.5 Hysteria

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Soon after obtaining his doctorate in medicine at Leyden in 1691, William III’s intervention in local Rotterdam politics led to the banishing of his father from the city and to a change of fate for Bernard himself. This major turn of events was never recounted by Mandeville in his favored plain language, but his expurgated version of affairs is presented below in this chapter, including the final few biographical details that are still available for him. The lack of information of this kind has undoubtedly contributed to Mandeville’s mystery. At the same time, one aspect of our topic is not only deprived of mystery, it also is an element that gave his life – on either side of the Channel, across the generations, and throughout his career – most continuity: his doctorhood.

Considering his work most medical in character, the question implicit in the final section of the previous chapter also is addressed: does medical Cartesianism provide a clue to understanding the intention behind Mandeville’s claims? Not coincidentally, Mandeville provided a nonchalant (and partial) sketch of his father’s and his own background in the context of this work as well. We have seen that medicine truly was his vocation, expressing both family tradition and the interest he had shown himself as a schoolboy already. While he encountered obstacles to the realization of this vocation in his new country, we can imagine he felt this element of continuity in his identity – his doctorhood – needed to be asserted more emphatically.

The other questions addressed within the discussion of this work also regard his Dutch background, or at least the contrast or correspondence between certain elements just retrieved by filling in the ‘Dutch gap’ on the one hand, and Mandeville’s ascertainable opinions on the other. The first question is whether Mandeville’s presumed enthusiasm for commercial society is as unassailable as often stated, or that his medical Treatisepoints us in a different direction. A suggestion recently made in historiography is that this work offers a definitive answer to the question of Mandeville’s supposed materialist leanings. As hinted above, addressing these issues will make apparent to what extent Mandeville had departed from the Cartesian perspective so prominent at Leyden, and to what extent he still adhered to it. This will not only involve his views on medicine, but also his general ideas on epistemology and the sciences. What was the proper role of mathematics? What was the potential of the hypothetical sciences? And why did he compare both to fashionable conduct? At its conclusion, this chapter should have shown why he thought presenting his diagnosis and understanding of the ‘English malady’ was pertinent, and what his Treatise purported to teach us about society. But before we engage in more textual interpretation, the last biographical ends will be tied together at the moment of his new start in England.

4.1 Acquaintance with England

The first documentary signs of life Mandeville has left for us in England are of a run-in with the authorities. It is 1693 when the College of Physicians issues a warning to Mandeville – as well as to a number of others, of whom at least one was a fellow Leyden medical school graduate – for the illegal practice of medicine. Unlike some of the others, he did not present himself for his defense before the College but disappeared from the institutional purview. He may have continued practicing anyway, but within a community of Dutch immigrants who had settled as weavers in Colchester. The context in which the College of Physicians exerted their authority was one of inexorable legal change following the Glorious Revolution, however. These changes eventually led to the House of Lords lifting regulatory controls from the field of medicine altogether in 1704. We can imagine the frustration of Mandeville and the other Leyden graduates over being snubbed, having the world-class attestation they did in their day and age. It may be tempting to look at Mandeville’s issues with the regulatory authorities and the subsequent, ‘Dutch-inspired’, liberalization as an accommodation of Dutch medicine. But there were cultural differences in medical practice between the Netherlands and England to begin with.

The Netherlands had been a stage for the mingling of more pedestrian skills with the honorable academic sciences. This more general cultural attitude of allowing the practical within the realm of austere studies was manifested in the field of medicine as well, showing rather cooperation than separation (or even antagonism) between physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, of whom only the former were a part of the world of academia. It is opportune to remember here that Mandeville’s own uncle had become a (non-academic) surgeon. In England, on the other hand, a more traditional standard still applied for the medical practitioner. What an institution like the College of Physicians was expected to vouch for was not merely the technical knowledge of the practitioner, but his moral standing. In a context in which a connection between the health and the virtue of the patient was presumed, the requirement of learning and ethical soundness of the doctor made perfect sense. It was this function of wise and impeccable judgment that clashed with the empiricism of academically untrained and therefore unvetted practitioners.

The litmus test for academic education was the mastery of Latin. Of course, Mandeville formally fit in with the requirements stipulated by his English peers – even if he had not been trained in Oxford or Cambridge. In the Netherlands, where humanist education had such a prominent role, we saw a reaction against this elitist approach to learning in the Dutch push towards the use of the vernacular that was intertwined with the democratic discourse of the third quarter of the seventeenth century. This backdrop makes Mandeville’s position all the more intriguing. Some of this tension, or reserve, certainly comes to the surface when he has the doctor and his patient exchange pleasantries in Latin in his Treatise, a work with learned pretense, yet presented for a general, educated audience. These cultural nuances are important to keep in mind while discussing this work. With all these competing developments of a cultural, medical, and philosophical nature, we will see Mandeville balancing in between.

We will address Mandeville’s ‘literary debut’ in 1703 in the following chapter. That work, The Pamphleteers,was published around the time Mandeville apparently dove into his educational past by publishing fables of Aesop and La Fontaine, as well as some of his own. More interesting from the medical perspective was the dedication he wrote during the same period for a Dutch colleague of his, Johannes Groenevelt, who may have held a license from the College of Physicians but nevertheless became the target of the accusation of quackery. The medical establishment may have tried to set an example for practitioners who intended to bring innovation to surgery. One also has to wonder whether this particular conflict was only liable to become a matter of public contention after the passing of William III, and Batavian influence no longer could count on protection from high places. Be that as it may, Groenevelt defended himself and his practices in a book in Latin in 1703, for which Mandeville wrote a poem in Latin as a preamble. 1706 saw the publication of the integral translation thereof, dedicated to the Earl of Portland, Willem Bentinck. Bentinck had been the long-time favorite of William III, but had fallen out of his patron’s favor a few years before the latter’s decease. In addition, Bentinck had been accused of treason and corruption following his withdrawal from politics in 1701. It therefore is impossible to draw an unequivocal conclusion from Mandeville’s rapprochement towards his famous, yet only formerly powerful, co-national. In view of Bentinck’s role as the probable recruiter and operator of Walten during William’s confrontation with the Amsterdam regenten in 1690, and Mandeville finding himself exchanging pamphlets with Walten the year after in Rotterdam, it is impossible not to wonder after Mandeville’s motives in seeking the Earl of Portland’s attention. His motives may well have been as simple as the search for a powerful patron, but it is clear that Mandeville could not have forgotten the events changing his life a little over a decade before across the Channel.

In any case, it wouldn’t be long until Mandeville was to publish his The Grumbling Hive, the original, rump version of the Fable of the Bees, in 1705. Before it became a succès de scandale in extended form, he seemed to come to terms with his non-practicing status by writing his treatise on the hypochondriac disease. It was a statement of his own dignity, if not of his status, as a learned doctor. It was also an opportunity for him to show his connectedness with his own family, as well as their and his partaking in a venerable medical discourse that was rife with moral implications. In the years until 1723, he expanded the Fable with Remarksfollowing Bayle’s style, as well as a number of essays. It was one of these that would eventually cause scandal and attract the attention of the public, clergy and intellectuals alike. His Treatise is his only publication on a medical topic, which sets it apart from the rest.

The preceding has made clear to what extent medical studies were enmeshed in metaphysical and moral questions. And if this had not been enough of an excuse for Mandeville, his choice to share his insights with a wider educated audience indicated he intended to address issues of wider relevance than just medical issues. This also means the Treatise is an occasion to gauge several of the qualifications used for him, such as that of atheist which plenty of contemporaries saw fit for Mandeville. His religious bona fides will be considered in the following chapters, but an obvious philosophical component thereof lies in the issue of materialism. Bearing in mind the compartmentalization of fields of inquiry, implemented at Leyden through the separation of theology and philosophy, the same question will be addressed from a different perspective here, that is, by determining whether Mandeville’s anatomy had space for our immortal soul. As a matter of fact, Harold Cook, an expert both in the Dutch scientific-philosophical revolution of the seventeenth century and in the early-modern medical sciences, while discussing the Treatise not only notes that Mandeville “explicitly defended Cartesianism”, but eventually even conceded the mortality of the soul, “fully embracing epicurean materialism”. Whether this assessment is accurate – or at least whether it can be upheld beyond reasonable doubt – is one of the challenges of this chapter.

This point brings us to the particular role that Van Velthuysen (the Cartesian Calvinist and admirer of Hobbes) may have played for Mandeville. Not as famous as De la Court and Spinoza, and notably not as deeply involved in questions of political philosophy as the former two, this Utrecht-born doctor and philosopher developed a theory on natural morality and the history of society that presents parallels with the ideas of Mandeville. Mandeville refers to Van Velthuysen in the Treatise discussed in this chapter. He relates to him as a fellow doctor, discussing matters medical. It was as a doctor, of course, that Mandeville claimed authority and this vocational aspect of him and several more generations of Mandevilles likely acquired only greater weight for him in the face of the obstacles presented to him by the authorities in England. As it will turn out, Mandeville’s concern was even more specific – and more pertinent – than this, as his (and his forebears’) focus on the stomach will show. The debate he engages in with Velthusius (the latinized name of Lambert), and the extent to which we will be able to collocate the Utrecht doctor in the heart of the Rotterdam intellectual milieu, will provide a perspective on the impact Van Velthuysen had on Mandeville, and suggest he was eager to settle an old score.

A critical edition of Mandeville’s A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterical Diseases has been published recently, with an introduction by historian Sophie Kleiman-Lafon. Kleiman-Lafon’s reading of Mandeville’s diagnosis in this study on hypochondria is rather straightforward and goes beyond my more careful interpretation: The patient, “a rather affluent man of independent means,” has through his “excessive lifestyle” turned into a hypochondriac. Kleiman-Lafon registers that this “may seem to go against the Mandevillian doctrine of private vices inducing public benefits,” but she resolves the conflict by arguing that Mandeville sought the substitution of materialist cravings by “taste for leisure and pleasure.” I do not believe this distinction (implying that Mandeville’s ethics distinguish between the different objectives our pride may choose) represents Mandeville’s views in a useful way. Further below we will see that the history of the patient’s pathology included his frantic pursuit of medical knowledge, which seems to disprove the distinction between material and immaterial objectives as a fundamental one for Mandeville. Hopefully, the apparent divergence between Treatise and Fable will be considerably reduced towards the end of this study. Fully conceded has to be her point that the Treatise “is the work of a moral philosopher and of a physician... [and]... a vade mecum for self-knowledge as well as a guided meditation on luxury and consumption. Far from being an exceptional digression from Mandeville’s long-term preoccupations, it must be seen as a crucial complement to his other works, including The Fable of the Bees.”

Before we address the Treatise itself, it might be practical to consider the bearings of this popular-medical work relative to the medical sciences in Britain at the start of the eighteenth century. It is indeed a reflex induced by Mandeville’s reputation and the predominating interpretation of his ideas that we would expect to find a wayward doctor in him, or perhaps cynically tough prescriptions. His Treatise, however, was used and quoted as a medical source, despite the popular form it was written in, throughout the eighteenth century. Furthermore, with his interest in the stomach and digestion (a concern he shared with his father and uncle, which he had reconfirmed in his medical doctorate), he also maneuvered in a field that was under dynamic change. Theories on our digestive system and the role of the stomach were challenged and considered from a variety of perspectives that incorporated spiritual, mechanistic, and materialistic theories. If there was plenty of debate about the functions of organs and even the nature of digestion itself, the notion that there was a close relationship between mental and gastric health was widely shared, so Mandeville definitely was not an outlier in this respect. He also made it abundantly clear that he was fully informed of all the medical literature and theories that scientists from England, the Netherlands, and other countries had published. Lateral questions that will present themselves while reading the Treatise regard his positioning in the regulatory debates and his awareness of his standing, considering his trouble with the authorities.

4.2 The Medical Debate

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In the first place, Van Velthuysen wanted to formulate a naturalistic foundation for sociability and morality in the awareness that historical as well as newly found geographical evidence posed a challenge to certainty in ethics. Empirical facts had to account for the variety in conduct, rules, and morality known across time and space, wherein Van Velthuysen showed his readiness to challenge the traditional arbiters of reason and revelation. While Van Velthuysen demonstrated the need to integrate the intellectual-moral challenge of accounting for the discovery of the pre-Adamic man, this perspective is largely absent from Mandeville’s writings. In the second place, both doctors used their medical credentials to support their historical-ethical case, integrating physiology and morality. The most striking example of their similarity in approach is Van Velthuysen’s attempt at showing the role of shame as a socializing emotion. Van Velthuysen demonstrated this in particular in his Tractatus moralis de naturali pudore et dignitate hominis in quo agitur, de incestu, scortatione, voto caelibatus, conjugio, adulterio, polygamia et divortiis, etc. (Utrecht, 1676), in which he evidently dared discuss more taboos than Mandeville ever broached. It is noteworthy that whereas Van Velthuysen – the more optimistic of the two, as we will see – focused on the essential role of shame, Mandeville attributed this task to pride.

A third similarity between the theories of both thinkers was their willingness to discuss scandalous aspects of the human experience. Their interest in such matters and their temerity to put the same to paper betrays their confidence as medical doctors, and the naturalist banner under which they wanted to operate. But if we consider the unperturbed manner in which Van Velthuysen addressed topics such as nudity, incest, polygamy, adultery, and divorce, Mandeville in contrast almost looks bleak, and sophomoric. It adds to the suspicion developed in this study that he rather wished to satirize those he became associated with in the public’s eye, than to emulate them. The final point on which the two encounter – and for which Santvoort’s case was presented as a third reference – is the question of how to evaluate God’s Creation relative to the Fall, in other words, how to reconcile natural history and law with Revelation. In order to fully grasp the issue, we will have to return to Van Velthuysen’s start in natural philosophy.

Van Velthuysen, acknowledged as a common source for both De la Court and Spinoza, started his publishing career (well before he became known for his debates with Spinoza) with exactly this conciliatory objective in mind when he published his commentary on Hobbes’s De Cive, intending to demonstrate that the ideas of Hobbes, Descartes, and the Bible could all coexist, combining a Calvinist and a naturalist worldview (Epistolica Dissertatio de Principiis Justi et Decori, continens Apologiam pro tractatu Clarissimi Hobbaei, De Cive (1651). While an early promotor of Hobbes in the Netherlands, Van Velthuysen would become a fierce critic of Spinoza. Van Velthuysen found an alternative path between the consensual basis of Grotian natural law on the one hand and the Hobbesian unsociable postulate on the other by describing sociability as a social product. The irony on this point may be, at least from received hindsight, is that whereas Van Velthuysen was developing his naturalist, medicine-informed viewpoint, Spinoza stated in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus(I.V.36-38) that everyone “seeks his own interest, but does not do so in accordance with the dictates of sound reason, for most men’s ideas of desirability and usefulness are guided by their fleshly instincts and emotions, which take no thought beyond the present and the immediate object. Therefore, no society can exist without government, and force, and laws to restrain and repress men’s desires and immoderate impulses…” For Van Velthuysen, elaborating Hobbes’s finding, self-preservation was not merely a right, but also a duty that flowed from Creation. The Fall may have impaired our rational understanding, but has not left us debilitated and at the mercy of our passions. God had created the world with a purpose. And though the Fall poses an epistemological challenge to mankind, we have a natural understanding of God and are in the process of improving our natural understanding of morality. The Fall, with its implications for morality and biology, played no such part for Spinoza. For Van Velthuysen, it was an issue that had to be resolved, and he did so using the metaphor of a house: it was evidently built with a purpose, Creation had a design.

Van Velthuysen’s appreciation for Hobbes should be interpreted as approval of the latter’s Erastianism and naturalism – the appeal Hobbes had more widely, as laid out above – and his enthusiasm for Descartes made him one of the first to grapple with political Cartesianism. The extent to which his ethics relied on Ciceronian principles should not be ignored, either. But leaving this humanist framework aside, the difference with Mandeville should have become apparent by now. According to Van Velthuysen, passions are neither good nor bad. As he stated in the clarification added to the edition for his Opera Omnia almost thirty years after first publication, “before the Fall, human life being assailed by no evils, man did not judge the worth and dignity of those things from a fear of death and the hope of prolonging life opposed to the fear of death, so the assessment of virtues and vices will be different according to the difference between these two states.” But “even now after the Fall of Man, which upset and threw everything into confusion, it is of importance for man to strive after virtue so that he may provide himself with benefits and avoid misfortunes. This is another way of considering virtue than that which had its use in the state of innocence.” Whereas for Van Velthuysen, this was a viable path, Mandeville, by inching the moral benchmark that much more towards the incompatibility of God’s law and the laws of nature, towards the mutual exclusivity of soul and flesh, formulated a worldview that was fundamentally different. While Van Velthuysen used the principle of self-preservation as a way of gracing human nature with morality – something we saw Santvoort do implicitly above – Mandeville defined it as the essence of our miserable, fallen state.

Leaving this contrast between these two Dutch doctors until further investigation in the next chapter, it is time to look at the final thread in the “Dutch gap” to be investigated: Mandeville’s formal education and the Cartesian turn the Leyden medical faculty had taken in the years leading up to Mandeville’s enrollment there.

3.6 Mandeville’s Education and Medical Cartesianism

As philosophy tried to rid itself of the control of theology in the Dutch Republic of the mid-seventeenth century, medicine found itself at the frontline of these battles. In the first place, of course, because the subject matter was man itself, and a scientific understanding of the subject required emancipation from moral-theological considerations. The inherent paradox, however, was that what was safer theologically to investigate and debate was a purely materialist view of biology, which left questions of volition and ethics outside of their purview. We will see some of the intellectual acrobatics this situation led to below, as we discuss the tightrope walked over at the medical faculty of Leyden University from which Mandeville graduated in 1691. We can say his preparation as a doctor started long before, however, as his family background demonstrates.

Bernard was born in Rotterdam in 1670 with a certain likelihood of becoming a doctor. As all children of the professional and upper classes, he was sent to the Latin School. The Latin Schools not only ensured a particular curriculum was offered to those with a professional need for it, they also reflected a particular characteristic of Dutch society. Literacy, a robust and self-aware burgher class, and an education steeped in the classics that clearly went beyond the immediate necessities of daily life all indicate a dimension to society that is easy to forget if we focus on the contradictions between a strict Reformed Church on the one hand and the power of commerce and its practitioners on the other. The result was an extremely dense system of humanist schools that were a source of pride and prosperity for Dutch society.

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3.4 Spinoza, Materialism, and Determinism

We cannot detach Spinoza either from Descartes and the ongoing debate between moderns and ancients in the Netherlands of the 1650s-1670s, or from the way this intellectual battle was driven by a political one involving the limits of public debate itself, that is, censorship. The Orangist faction, supported by the Reformed Church, tried to censor the libertine thinkers who were infallibly associated with the States Party. Inasmuch as the latter also represented the socio-economic (and ruling) class of the regenten, part of their discourse was concerned with finding philosophical legitimation for the commercial republic, as we have seen in the case of thinkers such as Grotius, Boxhorn, Barlaeus, and De la Court. The identification of a modern equivalent to civic virtue would legitimize the economic flourishing of the republic and provide ideological support to the regenten-based power structure. A more benevolent interpretation of the passions and the counter-balancing concept of interest paved this way. As such, this quest is absent in Mandeville. Received opinion has it, of course, that he substitutes the idea of the thriving hive for any concern for moral order altogether. The question that remains, duly addressed in the following chapters, is how we are to interpret the fact that the hive is, in fact, grumbling

Even though Spinoza probably had started writing his Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demostrata as early as 1662, and the general objective of his studies had been clear since he had announced his general project with Pincipia Philosophiae Cartesianae (1663), his first public statement, positioning him at that particular moment in society, came with his Tractatus Theologico-politicus (1670). In it, he defended the Erastian idea that the power of the Church was subject to that of the worldly authorities, taking a stance that placed him clearly on the side of the republican theorists of the States Party and their free-thinking partisans. Suppression of the freedom to philosophize, he claimed, was a threat to the republic itself. The main focus of his studies, however, was not on political, or even religious, issues, but on the individual’s personal liberation from external pressures.

One form the battles between ancients and moderns had taken was the moderns’ attempt to reconsider Aristotelian political philosophy and its concept of the zoon politikon. Man’s sociability, and his natural embedding in society – still upheld by Grotius – was challenged by Boxhorn and his students, the brothers De la Court, and Spinoza. Spinoza took on the project of De la Court to base the republican ideal on an alternative vision of man, for which Descartes had laid out the intellectual tools but otherwise had not provided theoretical (political) guidelines.

The tools, the physico-psychological concept of the passions, led both De La Court and Spinoza to develop theories of psychological egoism based on man’s actual and observed nature and not on how he ought to be. But whereas De la Court strove to keep man anchored to his civic role, by devising a new purpose for the man of commerce who had become so prominent in the Republic, this economic theme was not so pronounced in Spinoza. An observation on personal circumstances seems due in this context, as the brothers De la Court were wealthy textile entrepreneurs, and Spinoza without regret gave up on his father’s – not so successful – business importing dried fruit. Where Spinoza did strive beyond De la Court was his formulation of an entirely new theory of the metaphysical order and of man’s position therein.

Descartes had wanted to apply the newly found scientific perspective on astronomical matters to man, describing laws with geometrical certitude for the entirety of Creation, describing all activities of mind and body as governed by the laws of mechanics. Arguably, he salvaged the Christian worldview, by keeping neatly separate the realms of soul and matter. He even went so far as to postulate a – physical – connection between man of the flesh and moral man in the pineal gland, the seat of the soul. This also meant he was able to salvage functions for man that were more congruent with received theological opinion. He still had volition, he had the faculty of reason, and he had a set of passions that were not sinful per se and that in any event could be willed towards moral behavior. One can imagine this optimism being a reflection of his own, as he was embarking on what he was convinced were revelations of the geometrical order of Creation itself. But while Descartes had set a specific boundary for the materialism inherent in his studies, Baruch de Spinoza showed less reserve. He wanted to emulate the French philosopher and, in the words of philosopher and Spinoza scholar Stephen Nadler, “do for metaphysics, epistemology, physics, psychology, and even ethics what Euclid had done for geometry.”

Spinoza did away with the duality of reality altogether. For him, only (a single) substance existed, though the simplicity of this statement does a poor job at rendering the complexity of his system. The single substance, comprising everything from the infinity of God to the tiniest concrete particular, had an endless number of expressions or attributes which were expressed through modes. Only two of these were conceivable to us: thought (the world of the mind) and extension (the world of concrete objects). All attributes were subject to the same laws of cause and effect, but strictly within their own realm. Spinoza thereby even worsened the implications of his materialist reading of reality, as everything was declared the inevitable effect of (a series of) causes, rendering all events determined and impervious to any act of volition, whether human or divine.

The uproar over the materialist implications of this philosophy was so tremendous, that his influence went largely undetected for a long time, for the simple reason that the mention of his name without an express rebuttal risked the author’s condemnation for atheism, as had been Spinoza’s lot. Conversely, today the contrary assumption is sometimes made, when Spinozist materialism seems to feature in other thinkers’ ideas. The accusations of atheism and Epicureanism were both wielded against Mandeville as well, but at least for Spinoza we can safely say that he did not condone materialist values. Because the realization of a happy and virtuous life for Spinoza meant rendering one less vulnerable to the onslaught of the chain of causal events bombarding us on a daily basis. It is our passions in response to events that torment us and prevent us from leading fulfilling lives. By nurturing reason and stimulating our active affects or passions we can reach what he calls ‘adequate ideas’. These can liberate us from our passive state of suffering, provide us with a level of control that has at least the semblance of volition, and allow us to partake in the infinite wisdom of what is God (or Nature). The net result of his materialist determinism therefore resembles Stoic wisdom much more closely than the accusation of ‘materialism’ would suggest.

Whether this similarity was a question of direct influence is difficult to answer as Spinoza – just like Descartes, for whom Stoic influence has been assumed as well – does not include explicit references to Stoic thinkers, though he does discuss the Stoic approach to dealing with emotions in the preface to part V of the Ethics. On the other hand, classical philosophy had become so pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe, that the issue of direct influence becomes something of a moot point. Historian Jon Miller has argued that besides the general intellectual environment, a likely Stoic source for Spinoza would have been Grotius. According to Miller, the fundamental difference between the Stoic type of determinism and that of Spinoza is the teleology that gives the Stoic philosophy purpose, while the latter’s remains deprived of such meaning. If we pan back to the quotation from Part II of the Fable under the heading of this chapter, Mandeville identified his own position as closer to Stoa than Epicureanism (or Spinozism) on this point. In any event, Stoic influence in a country with the thriving humanist school system that it had need not surprise us. The Netherlands had even integrated Stoic ‘applied wisdom’ in a long-standing literary tradition, which renders the receptivity to and the enthusiasm in engaging in the (post-)Cartesian debates in the period under attention unsurprising.

The literary tradition that over the course of several centuries laid the groundwork for the rationalist philosophers of the seventeenth century has been called ‘vernacular rationalism’. This tradition can be traced as far back as Jacob van Maerlant (ca.1230 to ca.1300). The use by these writers of the vernacular instead of Latin reflected the belief that the third estate was capable of learning, without the mediation of the clergy, an unthinkable concept in contemporary societies without a similarly emancipated burgher class. Social commentary and a practical, ‘emancipatory’ approach to moral advice, integrating Stoic elements, would culminate in the work of the highly influential Dutch poet Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522-1590). The themes that came to the fore in Cartesianism and Spinozism the century after had been sown already, especially the idea that by way of our reason we are able to discern what is true and what is false. This, often literary, tradition had prepared minds for the advent of late seventeenth-century’s rad­ical rationalism. A practical approach to ethics was an orientation prominent in Erasmus’s thought as well, of course.

Spinoza’s conception of virtue was in no way as radical as were his metaphysical views. He stuck to the general rules for behavior that could be found in the Bible itself. The way virtue was formulated generally in Collegiant, Socinian and similar circles did not counter the rules of the Holy Scripture anyway, but rather assumed the Bible encapsulated the basic rules of morality anybody would subscribe to. In addition, the Collegiant rejection of interpretational authority at their gatherings consecrated the idea – inherent in the Reformation – that the individual believer was well capable of making his own judgment, a position clearly formulated by Spinoza. The Collegiant perspective is clear throughout Spinoza’s circle, and beyond, as the Netherlands hosted a religious orientation that was about to be adopted in England under the name of latitudinarianism. We will see Mandeville follow this exact approach in his Free Thoughts on Religion. It is in the field of political theory, however, that we see the differences between the various theories – old and new – play out more clearly.

The contrast between Spinoza and De la Court was referred to above. The latter ‘modernized’ civic humanism by accommodating homo economicus. De la Court’s vision combined Machiavellic ambition with a Cartesian psychology of the passions, so as to create a society strident enough to overcome the vicissitudes of fate. In comparison, Spinoza’s view was considerably more demure. While the naturalist approach of Hobbes had certainly appealed to him, and there was a certain correspondence between their respective descriptions of the state of nature – as a situation of peril and vulnerability – it was Hobbes’s authoritarian solution that Spinoza wanted to reject. On the one hand, he did this by applying a utilitarian standard for any (social) contract, assuming people would never observe a rule they did not derive any advantage from. As society developed, the standards themselves were liable to change as well. On the other hand, however, his republican optimism was tied to his idea of the pursuit of virtue by the individual.

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I do not [understand], I confess, any more than I can comprehend Eternity, or the Deity itself: but when I cannot comprehend what my Reason assures me must necessarily exist, there is no Axiom or Demonstration clearer to me, than that the Fault lies in my want of Capacity, the Shallowness of my Understanding.

...

[S]ome are of the Opinion, that this all, the to pan, the Universe, was from all Eternity...

This is not more satisfactory or comprehensible, than the System of Epicurus, who derives every thing from wild Chance, and an undesign’d Struggle of senseless Atoms. When we behold things, which our Reason tells us could not have been produced without Wisdom and Power, in a degree far beyond our Comprehension, can any thing be more contrary to, or clashing with that same Reason, than that the things, in which that high Wisdom and great Power are visibly display’d, should be coeval with the Wisdom and Power themselves, that contriv’d and wrought them? Yet this Doctrine, which is Spinozism in Epitome, after having been neglected many Years, begins to prevail again, and the Atoms lose ground: for of Atheism, as well as Superstition, there are different Kinds, that have their Periods and Returns, after they have been long exploded.^[1]

Now that we have an idea of the political and social forces at work in Mandeville’s place of birth, it is time to focus on the ideas – traditional, novel, or recycled – he found himself surrounded with as he came of age. That he was Dutch, and a doctor, has never been a secret, of course. The picture sketched in the previous chapter is one of an entire family of doctors, striving if not struggling to better their position in the lower ranks of the upper burgher class: educated but without any apparent wealth. The ideological-political affiliation of father and son was an added detail, specifically with the States Party through its Rotterdam representative Adriaen Paets. As noted, the most evident intellectual source Mandeville drew from was Pierre Bayle.

In the introduction and in chapter one I outlined a number of the qualifications accorded to Mandeville that have remained ingrained in our modern interpretation of him. Some characterizations regard a simple philosophical position (atheist, materialist or Epicurean, psychological egoist), while others rather refer to the school of thinking or tradition he has been categorized under: political Cartesianism or commercial republicanism, medical Cartesianism, the societal paradox of merchant and pastor. The very term Cartesianism, of course, is a vessel containing varied components, often veering in directions Descartes himself had not wanted to go. The unifying element – that Descartes certainly would have approved of – was the emphasis on Descartes’ mathematical understanding. Topics that also drew attention from the Dutch Cartesians, however, frequently laid out in public pamphleteering battles, outside an academic environment and even in the vernacular, regarded public, outright political issues that were of particular concern for issues regarding the newly established Netherlands Republic.

The previous and the present chapter are dedicated to determining to what extent these elements had been hidden from interpretational purview inside the “Dutch gap”. While this chapter will investigate the sources for these directions of thought, elaborating both on the material circumstances conducive thereto and on the philosophical foundation provided for the same, the following two chapters will reassess the accuracy of these qualifications with Mandeville’s texts in hand.

Some features of Mandeville’s work are hard to catch in terms of intellectually formulated positions. This applies in particular for “Dutch directness”, or his tendency to describe people’s motivations without mercy or generous excuses. This inclination touches upon the cultural-political identity of the Dutch. This characteristic, visible throughout the period of nation building, regarded the open, irreverent, and direct character of communication, and was viewed as a defining feature of burgher society. Mandeville would copy this outlook, and arguably based his very literary style on this approach. This thread will also make clear once more why the term burgher is preferable over that of bourgeois, as the latter would imply socio-economic overtones (and perhaps connotationally even a tendency towards unobtrusiveness and controversy avoidance), while the mentality displayed is one of low power distance and plain speech for all. As we will see in chapter five, Mandeville was aware of this aspect of Dutch culture, though his negative appraisal of the “Dutch boors” suggests he saw his own application of blunt discourse as a deliberate intellectual strategy. The final chapters will show that his penchant for provocation was meant to appeal to a specific section of the audience, asserted in opposition to the newly-formulated ideal of polite society.

An issue that was investigated explicitly throughout the Golden Age and that was addressed by Mandeville as well was whether society was the product of man’s sociability. Addressed initially by Grotius in terms of natural law, the discussion would be drawn into the scope of ‘Cartesianism’, which strove to formulate a mechanics of man that would be as incontrovertible as mathematical axioms, using man’s passions as the mechanism that could be scientifically described. This quest at one point – in the person of Spinoza – veered off towards metaphysical mechanicism, constituting that other ‘Dutch’ theme reflected in Mandeville’s ideas. These three topics – sociability, man’s passions, and mechanicism (where at times determinism or materialism may seem more appropriate terms) – cannot be neatly separated or distilled into three distinct types of discourse. Distinguishing them, however, will allow us to track the sources of some of Mandeville’s ideas, to contrast his answers to these debates, and come to an interpretation of his thought that is more anchored to the historical context, based less on the shock value of certain ideas that he was willing – quite literally – to entertain.

In the wake of my recounting of Mandeville’s role in the Kosterman Riots, a proviso is in place. A sizeable amount of Dutch ‘Cartesian’ discourse in the third quarter of the seventeenth century was inextricably tied to the battle of the States Party trying to render the accidental republic a permanent one. Following the Orangist restoration in 1672, this overtly political purpose and perspective disappeared. We will be able to see a similar disengagement from questions regarding political rule in Mandeville and identifying and describing this shift will hopefully shed light on the nature of his response to the political-philosophical climate he grew up in.

3.1 Intellectual Climate and General Themes

The cultural feats of the Netherlands Republic have long been described as mostly limited to painting. Typically, when philosophy emanating from the morass did get attention – with the exception of Hugo Grotius – the focus would be on the odd men out, such as Descartes, Bayle, and Spinoza, outsiders if not foreigners, whose relationship to the territory was assumed as rather utilitarian than inspirational, taking maximum advantage of the relative liberty of thought and the printing press that happened to be available to them there. A straightforward explanation for the previous lack of attention would be the lingual isolation that, as a matter of fact, was stimulated and increased those very years as a linguistic identity was considered a requirement for the new nation. While this isolation pertains to this day, the past twenty years have seen an accumulation of studies on Dutch intellectual production during this period. Much of this attention has been reserved to ‘Spinoza’s circle’, that group of daring thinkers who had so little in common in personal background yet shared the temerity of challenging some of the ideas held most sacred in those days.

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2.5 Shifts in Power, Shifts in Values

Not for all members of the States Party were the practical consequences of the Year of Disaster as dramatic as they were for their leader, the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother, who were lynched in The Hague. Prince William nevertheless purged the States of Holland and Zeeland of 130 of their 460 regents (in the province of Holland, the purge involved 30% of the aldermen) leaving a number of them, including a series of Rotterdam burgomasters, feeling compelled to flee the country, moving considerable amounts of capital abroad. William’s strategy over the coming years was to counter any reinstatement of the States Party in a position of power by way of his own direct appointments. This was to become a prominent complaint of those intent on regaining some of the influence they had recently lost, though we saw above that the petitioning of the authorities took root more generally during these years. While it may not be an established fact that William III’s appointees were corrupt relative to the standards of those days – certainly in the European context – his imposition on the institutions did offer a point of ideological contrast with the republican period that had just been concluded. As far as the economic situation was concerned, the ongoing war with France entailed constantly high fiscal pressure. The concept of corruption itself, on the other hand, had been subject to change.

Traditionally, public officers had charged a fee for their services, or the office as such would be subject to lease and the officials would retain the proceeds from their public duties. A notable example of this practice were the tax collectors, of course, extended from the 15th century to the so-called baljuwschappen, the offices of bailiffs. Public order thereby fell into the orbit of private gain by individuals with an official appointment. It was during the Revolt against Spanish rule that this practice was altered, as can be read specifically from the office of the pensionary itself. This public function was elaborated to give formal structure to the role of legal advisor to local and provincial government, as the Spanish central authority had to be replaced. Whereas originally the ridderschap, the nobles’ representation, appointed the official and allocated income from territory, over time this became a direct, financial remuneration, his pension. While Van Oldebarnevelt – De Witt’s predecessor, who had succumbed to another Prince of Orange, Maurice, when he was beheaded in The Hague for treason in 1619 – had still had to content himself with a small emolument and otherwise make do with the gifts offered to him domestically or abroad, this was no longer deemed acceptable in the period starting after the death of Prince William II (1650).

De Witt’s remuneration was increased, while it was prohibited to him, as well as to other public officials, to accept gifts. That this new rule was intended to be observed was shown by the example of Cornelis Musch, registrar of the States-General and a favorite of Stadtholder William II who, despite having underwritten the new regulation, was caught accepting donations. His political affiliation is likely to have been a part of the accusations, as he was rumored, as well, to have had a hand in William II’s coup attempt in 1650, when the latter had imprisoned a number of Holland regenten and had tried to occupy Amsterdam militarily. The final nail to the coffin of Musch was the innuendo he had committed suicide. Scandal, involving pamphleteering, ensued, culminating in an investigation by the States-General, as many bailiffs came under scrutiny as well in this period. As Early as 1625, a corruption scandal arose in Rotterdam involving the Admiralty regarding misdoings with import and export levies and the rigging of the auctioning of the booty deriving from enemy ships.

It is in the context of this newly engaged public morality that De Witt publicly embodied the value of republican incorruptibility both domestically and internationally. Now corruption may have been a commonplace of republican theory, going back to Sallust and Cicero, embodying the decay of the body politic. But if the re-conception of corruptio in legal terms in the Netherlands Republic demonstrated anything, it was the very tenuous nature of applying Roman republican values, or even their version as modified by civic humanism, to a political situation that clearly was not founded on the Ciceronian ideal of the farmer/citizen/soldier integrating citizen and res publica. The next chapter is dedicated in part to the reinvention of the republican ideology for the Dutch context, but in the world of (international) politics Grand Pensionary De Witt symbolized this ethical approach, with incorruptibility as its ideal.

De Witt’s ‘hobby’ in developing the actuarial sciences had clear purpose for both business and public finance, aiding him and his fellow regenten to plan for their own future and that of the Republic. But his calculations of risk had increasing weight in the international arena as well. While the image of upholding Dutch republican values in a jungle filled with absolutist contenders had a propagandistic aspect to it, underlying it there was great concern about being a small swath of land – with a dominant orientation towards the seas at that – surrounded by Machiavellically plotting kings. When he is called a raison d’état politician, we must distinguish the qualification from the association more directly made with ragion di stato, as De Witt’s concern was not territorial expansion and state power, but the security and independence of the state and the protection of the trade both rested on. Schama described the man as relying “on Cartesian actuarial calculations of diplomatic contingency, [rendering him] more vulnerable ... to acts of public unreason,” until the unlikely coalition of Catholic France and Anglican England came about, inaugurating the final act of his diplomatic tightrope act. With the fate of the Republic in the balance, De Witt juggled the Emperor against the French, the Danes against the Swedes, Spain against France, and the English against all. As well as the mathematical model worked for public finance, ‘Cartesianism’ was not as easily applied in international relations, even if the balancing of one passion against another was the formula that his acquaintances the brothers De la Courts were theorizing on. One can say it was not geometry as such that failed De Witt in his calculations, but instead the optimism inherent in facing a world of perils armed with mathematical certainties; the spider spinning his web was caught dangling. Homo mercator was still in the game, but homo calculans took a blow. In any event, 1672 saw the country nearly conquered and the States Party crumbling, while the Cartesian theory of the passions and the search for the mechanical laws ordering human experience survived at medical faculties, especially at Leyden.

The Year of Disaster did not end the de facto republic. Irony had it that the faux monarch, the Stadtholder, saved it. The neat ideological ordering of society did start to falter. Even though Spinoza went on to publish during the first years of the Orangist restoration, the republican fervor that had characterized political theory published between 1652 and 1672 slipped away, as did the attempts to reformulate republican theory on a commercial basis. The Netherlands still were rich, but they no longer were the quintessential commercial commonwealth. The next chapter will show how the Dutch had tried to reconcile their economic perspective with a classical understanding of the role of the burgher, an element that the numerous humanist schools had not failed to promote. Grotius had been one of the first to take up the challenge, though he only resolved the embarrassment that was held by tradition to pertain to trade by claiming the Dutch were not such mercenaries as to accept just any source of income: they focused, after all, on the riskiest of trades. In addition, the Republic to him represented the antithesis to oppression and usurpation, a quality he projected into the Batavian past as well, giving their independence, directness and egalitarianism a mythical background, though in the cloak of a rhetorical common place. He thereby drew from Erasmus himself, who had explored the potential of a sidenote to classical history to build up a myth involving the original inhabitants of the swampy lowlands. Writers Coornhert and P.C. Hooft gave a more literary expression to the theme, while Grotius obviously had a more legal approach. Grotius’s project otherwise had to focus on the moral viability of the republic he was seeking to preserve with his pen. His focus was on the concept of sociability rather than on that of citizenship. As man was blessed with a natural sense of justice, people would unite voluntarily and out of self-interest. Against the background of this myth, and the eventual faltering of commercial republican theory, Mandeville’s approach towards this very issue will stand out in contrast.

More explicit support for the merchants’ republic had come from Casper Barlaeus in his inaugural address for the newly founded Amsterdam Athenaeum Illustrae in 1632. This speech is often quoted and referred to. In his speech, Barlaeus argued that the traditional juxtaposition of trade and wealth with virtue and wisdom was, in fact, wrong. As self-preservation was the most fundamental law of nature – as had argued Grotius – and there was no conflict between self-interest and sociability, and the virtue of an active life found fruition in a life of commerce, he had all exhibits required for his case within an arm’s length. It was the wealth of the merchants’ city around him that had made possible a new institute of (humanist) learning. Though the occasion was prominent, attended by all the dignitaries of the city and beyond, and his appeal to local pride must have fallen to welcoming ears, these were not ideas that were massively adopted and copied in the following years. The fact that many historians take recourse to referencing this speech speaks for itself in this regard. The strictures of the Reformed Church on the one hand, and the rules for a moral life according to (civic) humanism held out very different ideals to the aspiring virtuous. These two philosophies shared values such as moderation and honesty. The gap, on the other hand, lay in the difference between virtue that was privately held, with an other-worldly orientation, and a virtue that would have to be asserted through the polis or civitas that one was a part of. In parallel, Dutch decay for the former may have represented disfavor incurred from the Almighty for wayward behavior, while for the latter it was thought to reflect negligence of public virtue by citizens. The publications of the De la Court brothers starting from 1660 were an attempt to take Grotius’s and Barlaeus’s overtures in a direction that defended the Dutch anomalies more consistently.

Before we examine the intellectual panorama Bernard Mandeville grew up against, we will finish our history of the political events he lived through before his departure for England. William III had been able to fight off the armies from France, Münster, and Cologne, while in a series of successful campaigns Admiral Michiel de Ruyter beat the navies of France and England combined. The war with England ended in March 1674, concluding the third of the series of Anglo-Dutch Wars (the first 1652-1654 and the second 1666-1667). The Franco-Dutch War dragged on until 1678, however, and even then, the root of the conflict remained unresolved. Besides Louis XIV’s appetite for territorial conquests in the Spanish Netherlands in the south, the economic warfare started by the mercantilist Colbert through the imposition of import duties on commodities transported from the Netherlands and by Dutch shipping did not stop with the peace of Nijmegen (1678). The collapse of the stock market that had occurred upon the imminent defeat of the Dutch in 1672 thus was followed by more economic challenges, as the English and the French aimed to take over the source of wealth that international trade had brought the Republic.

The irony of this situation perhaps was that while the States Party had a maritime orientation and focused on trade and navy and William III imposed himself through personal appointments to break the power of the regenten locally, the former only felt compelled to take William’s preoccupation with the territorial French threat more seriously due to the tariffs that caused economic pressure and social unrest. Textile from Leyden (the so-called laken) and herring from Rotterdam encountered an effective ban by France in the later 1680s, causing hardship and uproar, events that Mandeville – who had gone to study in Leiden in 1685 – witnessed firsthand. While William had relative success with inserting his own circle of trustees in smaller towns, resistance by the States Party in larger towns was visible as early as 1673. He increased his authority over diplomacy and the military, both strategically and as regarded promotions, and extended control over the funding thereof. He also attempted to make less likely the risk of a renewed coalition between France and England by marrying Charles II’s niece in 1677, culminating in an Anglo-Dutch defense pact the next year. Fear of the prospect of a Catholic successor to the English throne, Charles II’s brother James, illustrated the importance of the religious motif in international politics – and the fear of a repetition of 1672 – as did the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, leading to a stream of Huguenot refugees to the Netherlands.

In 1684, the States Party had obtained some success in pushing back Orangist influence in Rotterdam, as Adriaen Paets took control of the city again. It had been Paets, a friend of Michael Mandeville, who had some years before invited Pierre Bayle to teach at the Athenaeum Illustrae of the city . The ideological tension may not have been an important issue for William himself, but locally his power base did depend on the stricter Calvinists who had no sympathy for such adventurous thinkers. In any event, it was in the context of a fierce and ongoing debate about military spending – with William favoring the funding of the army over the navy – and a financial crisis increasing from 1688 after Colbert’s tariffs of 1667 were reinstated in France, that public unrest soared in Amsterdam, Leyden, and Rotterdam in the years 1689-90. In Rotterdam, a rather banal case of excise-dodging and an unfortunate death led to massive rioting and protests against William’s local favorite, the bailiff (baljuw) Jacob van Zuylen van Nyevelt. His allegiance to the Orangist party on the one hand, and his reputation as an extremely corrupt public officer on the other became the focal point of violent protests by States Party adherents, in which Bernard Mandeville, on leave from his studies in Leyden, became involved.

2.6 Mandeville’s less-than-glorious Revolution

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The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was founded in 1581 through the proclamation of the Act of Abjuration, declaring the seven provinces on the North Sea independent of Spanish rule. Spanish governance was a relative novelty itself, the product of dynastic marriage policies resulting in Habsburg rule over large parts of Europe. Though it is satisfying and not untruthful to see the Dutch decision to end monarchical rule as a step towards the modern age, what clashed at the political level between the Habsburg king of Spain Philip II and the rebellious provinces can also be differently formulated. Whereas Philip II sought to centralize power and exercise his God-given sovereignty with total control from his court in Madrid, resistance from the Dutch to a large extent was the product of awareness of the provincial and urban privileges that had been conquered in the Middle Ages from less assertive and not as distant rulers. But local autonomy by no means was the only factor leading to the Dutch Revolt.

The 80-Years’ War (as the uprising is traditionally called) was one of many instances of the religious wars ravaging Europe ever since Martin Luther had nailed his proclamation to a Wittenberg church in 1517. The Lowlands (including present-day Flanders) had become the home to numerous Calvinists, as well as other Protestant denominations. Socio-economically, this coincided with a high level of urbanization and literacy. Had Philip II refrained from deploying the Inquisition in lands so unamenable to the type of rule he sought to establish, matters may have developed in a less dramatic fashion. Not only did a prolonged war become inevitable, however, growing autonomy also catalyzed and unleashed an economic boom that made this unplanned republic the richest country in Europe and the heir to Venetian republican and mercantile pride.

In the previous chapter, some of the issues inherent in traditional readings of Mandeville’s ideas were laid out. We found he was repeatedly recruited by economists – of very different theoretical orientations, at that – for having introduced insights that the claimants considered of importance for their own understanding of the field. This also revealed that an interest in the ‘nascence’ of certain ideas subjects our own topic to deterministic as well as anachronistic standards. Mandeville may have ‘paved the way’ for Smith, Marx, Keynes, and Hayek, but we should not apply their hindsight to him. The economic and societal referents that may have been obvious to later writers often held no meaning for Mandeville himself, let alone was he striving to reach goals that had not been formulated yet. The intuition of students like F.B. Kaye and Hayek – and the project laid out for us – was that those referents, in Mandeville’s case, would have to be found in his Dutch background.

Indeed, if we look at the infamous motto alone – ‘private vices, public benefits’ – it does not require an enormous leap of the imagination to detect some prototypically Dutch tension in it. The contrast between strict Calvinist ethics and material, commercial affluence has been a marker of Dutch society ever since the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule in the 1560s. The objective of this chapter is to identify the concrete referents, before we discuss the intellectual responses conceived in the Netherlands in the following chapter.

The context depicted goes well beyond a description of Dutch intellectual history of the third quarter of the Golden Age. Some salient aspects of Dutch culture, such as moral pragmatism and an openness to debate and political participation, crystallized over a far longer period. And many of the novel ideas that were tried and tested in the years preceding his birth were in direct response to challenges perceived in the material, political world around them. Not only the ideas, but the challenges themselves, and to some extent the ‘mentality’ dealing with both, will have to be identified to draw a more comprehensive picture of the country Mandeville came of age in.

Another issue that needs to be dealt with is the fact that the Dutch Republic Bernard Mandeville was born in (in 1670) was qualitatively different from the country he left behind a little over two decades later. Two major political overturns took place during this span. The first was the return of the House of Orange to political office in 1672, after French troops had overrun most of the country. The second was William III’s audacious campaign in England and Ireland, commonly referred to as the Glorious Revolution of 1688/9. The political turmoil of those years also got Bernard Mandeville involved in a mutiny against local government. All these events, as well as the intellectual reflections thereon by his compatriots, were part of the landscape he inhabited. Some of these concepts and themes were reproduced by him, especially the ‘Cartesian’ instruments that were developed to devise a science of man. Certain beliefs, such as the attitude of looking upon Creation as tainted by the fall of man, persisted. And some thoughts – most notably the growing political, even democratic awareness that arose during the First Stadtholderless Era – are remarkably absent in his writings. Instead of tracing back his ideas to their presumed origins in a deductive manner, I have tried to present matters in a more expository fashion.

As stated, the ambiguity of Mandeville’s writing makes it all too easy to make a deductive argument in one direction or another. His very ambivalence, as a matter of fact, can be detected in the Netherlands in the 1670s and 1680s generally. An argument addressing the question of – for example – Mandeville’s materialist leanings is easily tilted towards a presumed outcome. Some thinkers, indeed, responded to the lifting of certain taboos with novel, radical certainties. Others, however, prevaricated between the ‘new’ standard of rationalism and natural science on the one hand and horror before the prospect (or the accusation) of atheism. Johannes Bredenburg (1643-1691), Rotterdam wine merchant and meddler with Spinozist ideas, will provide us with an example of the uncertainties some of the freethinkers faced, and with a warning against finalistic expectations.

Another reason why a more inductive approach seems justified is the following. Received opinion has it that The Fable of the Bees is a wholehearted – even if somewhat cynical – defense of commercial society, only rendered unclear or distorted through his use of paradoxical non sequiturs. Assuming this interpretation of his intentions is correct, could he not have made a more straightforward argument? Or more specifically, were there samples available from his Dutch background that had done exactly that? Since he did use some of the conceptual tools developed in defense of commercial society before him, and proved himself familiar with others while rejecting them, a simple question seems legitimate. Cloth merchants and political theorists the brothers De la Court had praised the commercial republic in the Netherlands of his youth. Was this the model Mandeville had wanted to follow? If he had, we would be interested to understand why he gave his presumed defense this opaque form. We could pose a similar question regarding Spinoza’s influence on Mandeville. This argument does not involve commercial society per se, but rather the metaphysical foundation formulated by the Jewish philosopher – monism, determinism, moral naturalism – and possibly some political stances. Mandeville was aware of these choices on the menu. But while he did pick some of Spinoza’s offerings, it is rather by contrast that we get a sense of his own particular concoction. Because Spinoza and the brothers De la Court responded to specific circumstances which were no longer in place when Mandeville grew up, it seems fair to give a more complete picture of the situation in which certain radical ideas were formulated.

2.1 Society and Political Framework: an accidental republic

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CHAPTER 1 - MANDEVILLE’S POSTHUMOUS RECRUITMENT

This chapter seeks to identify the different interpretational frameworks that have been used to explain Bernard Mandeville’s thought. If received interpretation has distorted Mandeville’s intentions, it would be useful to determine how the lens he’s been studied through may have deformed his image. As noted, his fame and reputation today rest on far less than his complete works. One can even say they are based on a single motto: ‘private vices, public benefits’. As he transformed his original commentary in verse The Grumbling Hive (1705) into a collection of comments and essays in the following two decades and a half, he added this motto to the new title that at least nominally united the body of The Fable of the Bees. Eventually, The Fable comprised the original poem, Remarks A through Y, An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools, and A Search into the Nature of Society, as well as a preface and his Vindication of the Book, written in 1723 when controversy had started. As Part II, six Dialogues between Horatio, Cleomenes, and Fulvia were added to the Fable in 1729. If this ‘unit’ alone already presents notable variety, Bernard Mandeville published much more. He wrote for the periodical The Female Tatler, he published Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness on religious dissent and toleration and the balance of (religious) power in 1720, and a dialogue about medicine for a wider audience as A Treatise of the hypochondriack and hysterick passions (1711). This is not a comprehensive overview (it is recommended to peruse the chronological bibliography immediately before this chapter), but it should create sufficient warning when we see Mandeville being equated with a single slogan.

The singular focus on the particular motto that was added to a later edition of the Fable of an earlier work (the Grumbling Hive) becomes more remarkable still when we realize that the locus of controversy in Mandeville’s time may have been included in 1723’s edition of The Fable of the Bees, but did not regard the Grumbling Hiveand its moral story about the mutual exclusivity of material progress and ethical uprightness at all. The great controversy that acquired him ill fame sprouted from a very specific discussion in Augustan society that he weighed in on. This controversy will be discussed in the context of his publishing career in England. By that time, an alternative reading of Mandeville, based on the terms of contemporary debate, is within reach. This interpretation will no longer depend on the assumption that he was a defender of commercial society. The problem with that presupposition is – especially considering his repeated use of the paradox as a rhetorical figure – that analysis tends to become a deductive exercise that rather explains how exactly he would come to the destination we knew he was to reach from the very start. Any element that might contradict either the route or the terminus must be dismissed in one way or another. In Mandeville’s case, this terminus was conjectured well after his own time, while the origins of the presumed defense of commercial society in his country of birth, in contrast, was generally ignored.

Over time, several historical studies have been dedicated to ‘other’, or ‘minor’ works of his, and attention has been dedicated in particular to how his thought evolved over the course of his publishing career. Generally speaking, however, and with a few exceptions, received opinion on Mandeville has changed little over the past century and a half. If we want to see the object more clearly, then, checking the lens through which we have studied it for so long would be a sensible first step. An overview of interpretations accorded to him will not suggest how we could read him in proper historical perspective but will help us understand how his representation may have been slanted. As it turns out, his recruitment for others’ battles was mainly the work of economists.

The overview of economic perspectives on Mandeville will be followed by a consideration of historical views, starting from historian F.B. Kaye, who prepared the standard edition of the Fable in 1924. An exhaustive listing of interpretative issues will not be provided, but the main challenges to a comprehensive understanding of the man and his paradoxes will be identified. The chapter will be concluded with a series of historical perspectives that were not presented with immediate pertinence to Mandeville, but that will help us redefine the backdrop against which we can focus on specific questions. One of these perspectives regards the nature of the early Enlightenment itself and serves as a caveat against the type of determinist views that Mandeville interpretations have often been subject to. Another perspective will posit the question whether what we are dealing with is pure intellectual history, or whether aspects of broader culture – or even ‘mentality’ – add to our understanding of the provocateur from Rotterdam. Somewhere in between these extremes of philosophy and ‘lower culture’, a perspective on the history of ideas of the Dutch Republic was proposed by Harold Cook that suggests that even purely abstract, philosophical ideas can find their origins in practical experience of a much more mundane kind.

If we assume that Mandeville was one of the first thinkers to present a defense of commercial society, we place him in a historical tradition with a specific terminus and a presumed trajectory. Before him, a major steppingstone on this itinerary was laid by the brothers De la Court in the Netherlands Republic. If and how we can perceive their influence on Mandeville will be addressed later on, but a century after the brothers De la Court, Adam Smith consecrated this direction in moral-political philosophy with his Wealth of Nations. Leaving Mandeville somewhere in the middle, even implicitly, ties him in with a continuum that becomes a self-propagating and finalistic whole. That this is problematic is more than a matter of abstract principles. It fails to acknowledge the contrasts between Mandeville’s views of man and those developed over the course of the Dutch Golden Age and that of the Scottish Enlightenment. The fact that this perspective has left a heavy imprint on interpretations of Mandeville seems a good reason to start our investigation there.

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(Bernard Mandeville, A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterical Diseases (1730), p. 125-6)

INTRODUCTION

Almost 300 years after his passing, Bernard Mandeville still is the object of both vilification and celebration. The fate of this Dutch doctor, who settled in England under uncertain circumstances and would develop a career as the writer of provocative commentary and controversial theories on society, is comparable to the lot of all individuals who are perceived to have exerted a ‘modernizing’ influence on their contemporaries. While Mandeville’s transgressive discourse, resulting in the incorporation of his thought in economic theory and materialist philosophy in the ages after him, has ensured our enduring interest in him, it has also led to the anchoring of our understanding of him to our perspective on those he may have influenced. Concretely, as he has been declared a primary defender of commercial society, the place attributed to him has become one of assisting successive developments. Considering Bernard Mandeville in his own right, as the unique formulator of his own conclusions regarding his experience, rather than as a forerunner, is the overarching ambition of this study. What should become apparent in the process is that, while he may be an attractive subject for being controversial, the nature of the controversy he engendered in his own days does not correspond to today’s received opinion on what may have made him a ground-breaking thinker. In parallel, but distinctly, we will become aware that the appraisal of his intellectual contribution took somewhat of an opposite course: from being vehemently rejected in his own days, he would be commended by later readers, in large part because of his contentiousness. But before engaging in debate and interpretational subtleties, it is useful to begin with as neutral and unassailable a description of Mandeville and his ideas as possible.

Bernard Mandeville was born in Rotterdam in 1670, the son and grandson of a medical doctor. Though he would appeal to his professional background to substantiate his contentions throughout his life, it was not to medicine that he owed the (ill) fame he would acquire in England in the latter part of his life. He had moved to England in the early 1690s, a period during which he has left us next to no trace of his activities. The one thing he must have spent part of his time on was the mastery of the English language, something that became apparent early in the next century, when he started publishing fables and pamphlets in verse (after Scarron and De la Fontaine, as well as his own). He published satire in a periodical, and a dialogue on medical matters for a general audience but acquired wide attention only when he extended his original fable in verse The Grumbling Hive (1705) into a collection of comments on the original work, essays, and enquiries, bundled as The Fable of the Bees. In 1723, one of these additions would lead to wider public attention for Mandeville, though predominantly of the negative kind. In the Fable, the works already referred to, and a series of other publications, Mandeville set forth his views on man, society, and its history. Now theoretical rigor and philosophical exactitude are not prevalent in his works. His views are nevertheless consistent enough to allow him to hold an integrated worldview that permitted to formulate provocative ideas on a series of subjects, many of topical interest. It is to these views that we will now turn.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing to realize about Mandeville, is that the central tenet upon which his ideas were based was not new, revolutionary, or the slightest bit deviant. The foundational moral claim of most of his writings was the contention that wealth and virtue were incompatible. Generations of philosophers and theologians had argued pretty much the same before him. Mandeville, of course, formulated his paradox – private vices, public benefits – in such a way that he allowed (and seemingly pushed) for a different interpretation. The suggestion was that the mutual exclusivity between virtue and riches implied that vice led to wealth, at least for society as a whole. The contrasting of public and private has in modern times come to signify Mandeville’s defense of a utilitarian standard, presuming that the public benefits were what he intended to promote. While discussing Mandeville in the context of Augustan society towards the end of this work, it should become apparent that the criticism he thereby expressed was not aimed at private (Christian) morality. His argument was directed at those who sought to obliterate the contrast between the standards for this, and the other life. These were the optimists, the proponents of polite society, who believed that society was based on man’s benevolent nature and that post-Revolutionary England demonstrated the harmony of Creation, and who contended that private ethics, public morals, and material wellbeing could all be attained simultaneously. Mandeville thought this revealed the hypocrisy that not only characterized English society as it was evolving around him, but society – i.e., man living in organized groups – itself, as the outcome of a social process. In addition, contrary to his moralist forebears, he would show how all of this came about mechanistically, where possible drawing and claiming authority from his background as a doctor.

This brings us to another point – besides the famous paradox and its received interpretation – on which the present interpretation may be counterintuitive. The development of the mechanics of man seems to have been the outcome of a secularized understanding of man’s nature. What Mandeville’s case demonstrates, however, is that a neo-Augustinian, essentially non-voluntarist worldview was exactly what allowed for the ‘scientific’ framework of the passions that he exploited. This perspective had certainly been the outcome of his Dutch background – both with respect to the theory (in philosophy and in medicine) he had studied, the mentality he had absorbed, and the practice he had become accustomed to – and the following two chapters will seek to demonstrate how these themes had developed in the Dutch Republic during the decades preceding and following his birth. As a matter of fact, it seems Mandeville’s eventual position should be understood as a reaction to the rational, mathematical optimism that swayed the Netherlands in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. His motives were certainly not only theoretical, but political, and personal, as well. The irony of his personal trajectory was that intellectual fashion in Augustan society invoked some of the very themes he had distanced himself from, both intellectually and geographically: belief in the power of math, rational optimism, and a concern for material development.

To return to the issue of the hypocritical nature of society, Mandeville demonstrated how it had come about historically, fusing two concepts that in our eyes may seem incompatible: the state of nature and the fall of man. Seventeenth-century philosophers such as Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes had used the abstraction of the state of nature as a theoretical framework for the science of man. The political Cartesianism that developed in the second half of the Dutch Golden Age elaborated this abstract principle into a naturalist approach for the purpose of political philosophy, replacing either Aristotelian teleology or Roman republican theory with a focus on man apart from the polis and prior to civilization. The brothers De la Court set this approach in a Machiavellic framework. Cartesian physician Lambert Van Velthuysen applied the perspective of medical observation, but not without making the Scriptural distinction between the perfection of Creation and man’s imperfect nature after Paradise was lost. Mandeville would echo this approach. But whereas the Cartesian optimism had reflected the confidence prevalent at the pinnacle of power and riches the Dutch Republic represented during the third quarter of the seventeenth century, the character of Mandeville’s views clearly differed. Mandeville considered man a morally deficient, naturally failing living being. And he proceeded to describe his functioning with the keen eye of a medical doctor.

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The latter comment begs for clarification. Completing my study on Mandeville was the fulfillment of a 30-year pledge. During the concluding years of the past century, I wrote my thesis on the same topic. All these years, I knew Bernard Mandeville had way more to offer, though this conviction was mainly focused on my original hypothesis, i.e., that the received interpretation of the man as a defender of commercial society was inaccurate. Doing a proper and thorough deep dive into the subject several decades later not only took me into cross streets and detours I had not even been aware of before. Several of the hot topics Mandeville had enthusiastically debated on in his age – medicine, mechanicism, rationalism, fashion and fads in commercial society – seemed to acquire renewed relevance in the society around me as well. I certainly do not intend to use Mandeville to push my own opinion, but what I do hope is that the reader might see that the mirror Mandeville was aiming to hold up to his contemporaries still is a valid tool for the society that to a considerable extent is the outcome of the intellectual choices made in his.

This may sound as an overture to politicizing my historical narrative, but I believe the contrary should be the result. One of the oddest aspects of the craft of the historian lies in the fact that he is expected to explain an outcome on the assumption that it wasn’t predetermined. This is a challenge, of course, because the historian, by definition, writes about matters the outcome of which has become clear. To steer clear of such a deterministic approach, he must suspend after-knowledge, so as not to reason towards a specific result that we do know now, but people did not then would ensue. If history was predetermined, of course, there would be no sense in writing it, because we would be engaged in predicting the future. In a field of specialization such as military history, this caveat may seem more obvious than in the field of cultural and intellectual history. If we consider, however, that Mandeville was an exponent of the early Enlightenment, as well as the fact that a number of core premises of modern society were founded during this period, it is clear that we easily and insensibly review certain, at the time very much undecided, debates not only with the foreknowledge but in a sense even the blessing from hindsight: ‘See, they had to put up a fight, but they were almost ready to reach the conclusion we know they would – and should!’

Within this framework of retroactive expectations, received interpretation of Mandeville’s ideas has been set in stone. Opening up the possibility to look at the evidence differently takes an effort that we will have to facilitate in three ways. In the first place, we will reconsider the controversy Mandeville caused among his contemporaries. It will become apparent that his true intentions were clearly identified by his opponents, the target of his invective. Over the years, however, another Mandeville was created in the imagination of many others, many of them economists, for their own purposes. These authors were happy to make rhetorical use of the Dutchman, taking his controversial status as proof of his modernity, rather than concerning themselves with the man’s own intentions. This will be the next layer of controversy to peel off for a clearer vision of our subject. And in the third place, many assumptions of our own will have to be identified. An example is Mandeville’s labeling as a modernist. His numerous references to especially Stoic classical authors suggest ‘modernism’ does not tell the whole story. A different but comparable challenge to our imagination will present itself when considering developments in the anatomical understanding of Mandeville and contemporary doctors and philosophers. We can, of course, from our perspective decide that the exact location of the soul in the body is of no relevant concern to us, but that essentially means choosing to be willingly blind to the background of a central tenet of Western thought, the cerebrocentrism that was derived from Cartesian theory. Many more cases will present themselves where I will try to pursue an equitable treatment of historical positions rather than coopting what I perceive to have been the winner in historical debates. Mandeville used satire to expose situations he considered absurd. This rendered his interpretation complicated and often led to his being equated with the very absurdity he sought to criticize. Of the absurd we certainly have our portion today. Maybe it’s time to give Mandeville another listen.

Bernard Mandeville was born in 1670 in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands Republic. Though he was destined – by family, vocation, and education – to become a physician, we remember him because he carved out a career for himself as a publicist in Augustan England, retroactively assuming the reputation, if not the title, of père terrible of capitalism. The fact that so little was known about his private life for so long undoubtedly contributed to the myth surrounding this polemical figure. His reputation was founded on a single work of his, The Fable of the Bees, though it was rather its motto (and a minor work that upset all the right, virtuous leaders of Augustan society) that made him a boogey man for many and a provocative hero for some others: private vices, public benefits. At least, that is what we have come to believe. Once we zoom in on the chronology of his publications and the reactions these drew, however, we become aware that each generation created its own Mandeville, not for historical accuracy, but to make its own point.

Throughout the centuries and according to nearly all critics, Mandeville had essentially defended the commercial society that was taking shape in his country of adoption, the smoking gun being the motto quoted above. In historiography, he was termed a forerunner of a chorus singing the praises of early capitalism that would culminate in the philosophical victory of the Scottish Enlightenment. Part of this instrumentalization is certainly due to the inevitable role of the ‘minor thinking’ as meriting space and attention merely in function of the ‘major thinkers’ who came after and were able to crown something that was merely nascent or implicit in the one before (a case of the determinism referred to above). Most flagrantly missing from this perspective was the role played by his country of origins, an omission which is all the more striking if we consider the role of precursor the Netherlands had practically played in political economy with respect to the United Kingdom.

Not only were the Netherlands of the seventeenth century the richest and most powerful country in the world, its culture harbored the very type of cultural conflict and ambiguity that Mandeville’s motto had encapsulated. Sociologically and symbolically this ambivalence found expression in the two most prominent representations of Dutch society: merchant and pastor. While it is clear how the merchants could be seen as producing the ‘public benefits’ as advertised, it requires our venturing into the field of evaluative ethics to acknowledge that the part of the equation referencing ‘private vice’ depends on someone, somewhere, defining the moral standard. This is another of the assumptions referred to above that must be identified and debated. One of the central intellectual conflicts in the Enlightenment was fought over the nature of man, especially in discussions pertaining to Natural Law. Too often, Mandeville’s choices in the matter are taken at face value, rendering an essential aspect of the philosophical conflict invisible, and a prominent part of his reactive impact (most prominently Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments), impossible to follow.

In any event, not only had Dutch economic practice prepared the way for the United Kingdom in the century preceding British ascendance, the Dutch Golden Age had also been a hotbed for groundbreaking philosophical developments. For several reasons (including linguistic isolation and Dutch cultural mistrust of affectation beyond the practical), this topic was basically an intellectual non-event for many centuries, with interest historiographically limited to Dutch painting. Over the past decades, however, interest in Dutch seventeenth-century philosophy has bloomed, creating a precondition for the elaboration of this previously unseen aspect of the Mandevillean equation. Consideration of his intellectual upbringing will lead us to unexpected venues as well, when differences in mentality between Mandeville’s country of birth and that of adoption present a us with a different dimension.

A cultural mentality is shaped by assumptions on how the world works that have become second nature, remained implicit, and that therefore easily escape attribution of any role in intellectual debates. I believe, however, that not only the intellectual but also the cultural Dutchness of Mandeville is a key to grasping how he was primed to view English society and why he formulated his critique the way he did. But our search for the real Mandeville and his true intentions will not stop here. The scarcity of information about Mandeville’s private life was partially resolved in the 1990s, when Dutch historian Dekker dug up saliant details about his family and about the circumstances under which he left the country as a young man. To my knowledge, this novel information had never been integrated in a study of his ideas. As perhaps is befitting for a historical figure like him, these revelations do not lift all of the mysteries, but rather add some others.

The unearthed particulars of Mandeville’s early life infuse drama into an intellectual narrative that may otherwise have remained terse. His tribulations may not concern the open questions of Mandeville studies directly, but they are relevant to his discourse, and to the thoughtscape he is usually embedded in by historians. The relative importance of political affiliation, principles, and patronage, the story behind his career change, and the evolution of his thinking will all acquire the meaning and nuance that a story from real life has over abstract ideas. Of particular importance will be the realization that certain concepts remained in his focus throughout his life. Interpreting these, however, will turn out to be a challenge, with the triple frames of reference – humanist, early modern, or modern – available to Mandeville, and to us. The substance of his background will be discussed in the first part of this book, but some of the implications will only be addressed towards the end. Which brings us to an overview of the chapters that I hope will tell the story of this remarkable man, instead of the various arguments so many used him for, generally after his decease.

This story will have to start with a description of the society Mandeville was born in, home of the preacher and the merchant, and the richest and most powerful nation in the world at the time. Subsequently, our focus will be directed on the ideas that were formulated in this socio-economic and political context. When Dutch seventeenth-century philosophy is discussed, the impression still prevails that it was the territory of two Frenchmen who had found refuge there and a Portuguese Jew who had been excommunicated (RenéDescartes, Pierre Bayle, and Baruch Spinoza). That this small country produced revolutionary ideas, besides stunning art, during its heyday merits discussion in this context. Somewhere between this society and these ideas, the question of mentality arises. What cultural tendencies, what tacit assumptions were absorbed by Mandeville in his youth and not-so-silently expressed later in life? This part of the story will be concluded with the political turmoil in his city of birth that Mandeville became an active participant in before he disappeared, only to turn up in England several years later.

Mandeville’s career in England will be recounted in three parts. The first will describe his first stints in publishing as his options as a medical doctor in his new residence turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle course. The second chapter of this section will tell the story of his (ill) fame, when his reputation was established for later ages. The concluding part will describe how Mandeville took a step back and wrote his three-volume defense, explaining why he had chosen hyperbole and satire the years before. The conclusion will allow us to tie some of these threads together, while, as is probably befitting for a character like Mandeville, other questions will have to be speculated on. Mandeville’s life and ideas present us with questions that scream for a psychologist, and though I will not pretend to take that place I am sure readers will want to consider these questions for themselves. For me it will not be the scandals and his raucous reputation, but this personal mystery that will keep his memory alive.

I will be publishing this book on Substack, chapter by chapter, after which I will proceed with the publication of a paper version of the whole. The chapters will be behind a paywall, but on the upside, I am happy to offer a paper copy to all paid subscribers at no extra charge. I’d be delighted to be able to afford publishing everything for free, but we’re not there yet. I look forward to welcoming you there.

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