BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE BIOGRAPHY

MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE (1670-1733). —Satirist, a native of Dort in Holland, who having studied medicine at Leyden, came over to England to practise his profession. In 1705 he pub. a short poem, The Grumbling Hive , which in 1714 reappeared with a prose commentary, and various dissertations on the origin of moral virtue, etc., as The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits , and in 1729 was made the subject of a persecution for its immoral tendency. It was also vigorously combated by, among others, Bishop Berkeley and William Law, author of The Serious Call . While the author probably had no intention of subverting morality, his views of human nature were assuredly cynical and degrading in a high degree. Another of his works, A Search into the Nature of Society (1723), appended to the later versions of the Fable , also startled the public mind, which his last works, Free Thoughts on Religion and An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour and the Usefulness of Christianity did little to reassure.