The Fable of the Bees. Bernard Mandeville

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СКАЧАТЬ generally not under the value, most people that want money only to spend it again presently, imagine they do more for it than it is worth. Men cannot forbear looking upon the necessaries of life as their due, whether they work or not; because they find that nature, without consulting whether they have victuals or not, bids them eat whenever they are hungry; for which reason, every body endeavours to get what he wants with as much ease as he can; and therefore when men find that the trouble they are put to in getting money is either more or less, according as those they would have it from are more or less tenacious, it is very natural for them to be angry at covetousness in general; for it obliges them either to go without what they have occasion for, or else to take greater pains for it than they are willing.

      Avarice, notwithstanding it is the occasion of so many evils, is yet very necessary to the society, to glean and gather what has been dropt and scattered by the contrary vice. Was it not for avarice, spendthrifts would soon want materials; and if none would lay up and get faster than they spend, very few could spend faster than they get. That it is a slave to prodigality, as I have called it, is evident from so many misers as we daily see toil and labour, pinch and starve themselves, to enrich a lavish heir. Though these two vices appear very opposite, yet they often assist each other. Florio is an extravagant young blade, of a very profuse temper; as he is the only son of a very rich father, he wants to live high, keep horses and dogs, and throw his money about, as he sees some of his companions do; but the old hunks will part with no money, and hardly allows him necessaries. Florio would have borrowed money upon his own credit long ago; but as all would be lost, if he died before his father, no prudent man would lend him any. At last he has met with the greedy Cornaro, who lets him have money at thirty per cent. and now Florio thinks himself happy, and spends a thousand a-year. Where would Cornaro ever have got such a prodigious interest, if it was not for such a fool as Florio, who will give so great a price for money to fling it away? And how would Florio get it to spend, if he had not lit of such a greedy usurer as Cornaro, whose excessive covetousness makes him overlook the great risk he runs in venturing such great sums upon the life of a wild debauchee.

      Avarice is no longer the reverse of profuseness, than while it signifies that sordid love of money, and narrowness of soul that hinders misers from parting with what they have, and makes them covet it only to hoard up. But there is a sort of avarice which consists in a greedy desire of riches, in order to spend them, and this often meets with prodigality in the same persons, as is evident in most courtiers and great officers, both civil and military. In their buildings and furniture, equipages and entertainments, their gallantry is displayed with the greatest profusion; while the base actions they submit to for lucre, and the many frauds and impositions they are guilty of, discover the utmost avarice. This mixture of contrary vices, comes up exactly to the character of Catiline, of whom it is said, that he was appetens alieni & sui profusus, greedy after the goods of others, and lavish of his own.

      Line 180. That noble sin——

      The prodigality, I call a noble sin, is not that which has avarice for its companion, and makes men unreasonably profuse to some of what they unjustly extort from others, but that agreeable good-natured vice that makes the chimney smoke, and all the tradesmen smile; I mean the unmixed prodigality of heedless and voluptuous men, that being educated in plenty, abhor the vile thoughts of lucre, and lavish away only what others took pains to scrape together; such as indulge their inclinations at their own expence, that have the continual satisfaction of bartering old gold for new pleasures, and from the excessive largeness of a diffusive soul, are made guilty of despising too much what most people overvalue.

      When I speak thus honourably of this vice, and treat it with so much tenderness and good manners as I do, I have the same thing at heart that made me give so many ill names to the reverse of it, viz. the interest of the public; for as the avaricious does no good to himself, and is injurious to all the world besides, except his heir, so the prodigal is a blessing to the whole society, and injures no body but himself. It is true, that as most of the first are knaves, so the latter are all fools; yet they are delicious morsels for the public to feast on, and may with as much justice, as the French call the monks the patridges of the women, be styled the woodcocks of the society. Was it not for prodigality, nothing could make us amends for the rapine and extortion of avarice in power. When a covetous statesman is gone, who spent his whole life in fattening himself with the spoils of the nation, and had by pinching and plundering heaped up an immense treasure, it ought to fill every good member of the society with joy, to behold the uncommon profuseness of his son. This is refunding to the public what was robbed from it. Resuming of grants is a barbarous way of stripping, and it is ignoble to ruin a man faster than he does it himself, when he sets about it in such good earnest. Does he not feed an infinite number of dogs of all sorts and sizes, though he never hunts; keep more horses than any nobleman in the kingdom, though he never rides them; and give as large an allowance to an ill-favoured whore as would keep a dutchess, though he never lies with her? Is he not still more extravagant in those things he makes use of? Therefore let him alone, or praise him, call him public-spirited lord, nobly bountiful and magnificently generous, and in a few years he will suffer himself to be stript his own way. As long as the nation has its own back again, we ought not to quarrel with the manner in which the plunder is repaid.

      Abundance of moderate men, I know, that are enemies to extremes, will tell me, that frugality might happily supply the place of the two vices I speak of, that if men had not so many profuse ways of spending wealth, they would not be tempted to so many evil practices to scrape it together, and consequently that the same number of men, by equally avoiding both extremes, might render themselves more happy, and be less vicious without, than they could with them. Whoever argues thus, shows himself a better man than he is a politician. Frugality is like honesty, a mean starving virtue, that is only fit for small societies of good peaceable men, who are contented to be poor, so they may be easy; but, in a large stirring nation, you may have soon enough of it. It is an idle dreaming virtue that employs no hands, and therefore very useless in a trading country, where there are vast numbers that one way or other must be all set to work. Prodigality has a thousand inventions to keep people from sitting still, that frugality would never think of; and as this must consume a prodigious wealth, so avarice again knows innumerable tricks to raise it together, which frugality would scorn to make use of.

      Authors are always allowed to compare small things to great ones, especially if they ask leave first. Si licit exemplis, &c. but to compare great things to mean trivial ones, is unsufferable, unless it be in burlesque; otherwise I would compare the body politic (I confess the simile is very low) to a bowl of punch. Avarice should be the souring, and prodigality the sweetening of it. The water I would call the ignorance, folly, and credulity of the floating insipid multitude; while wisdom, honour, fortitude, and the rest of the sublime qualities of men, which separated by art from the dregs of nature, the fire of glory has exalted and refined into a spiritual essence, should be an equivalent to brandy. I do not doubt but a Westphalian, Laplander, or any other dull stranger that is unacquainted with the wholesome composition, if he was to sell the several ingredients apart, would think it impossible they should make any tolerable liquor. The lemons would be too sour, the sugar too luscious, the brandy he will say is too strong ever to be drank in any quantity, and the water he will call a tasteless liquor, only fit for cows and horses: yet experience teaches us, that the ingredients I named, judiciously mixed, will make an excellent liquor, liked of, and admired by men of exquisite palates.

      As to our vices in particular, I could compare avarice, that causes so much mischief, and is complained of by every body who is not a miser, to a griping acid that sets our teeth on edge, and is unpleasant to every palate that is not debauched: I could compare the gaudy trimming and splendid equipage of a profuse beau, to the glistening brightness of the finest loaf sugar; for as the one, by correcting the sharpness, prevent the injuries which a gnawing sour might do to the bowels, so the other is a pleasing balsam that heals and makes amends for the smart, which the multitude always suffers from the gripes of the avaricious; while the substances of both melt away alike, and they consume themselves by being beneficial to the several compositions they belong to. I could carry on the simile as to proportions, and the exact nicety to be observed in them, which СКАЧАТЬ