Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness

Bernard Mandeville was best known for The Fable of the Bees, in which he demolishes the supposed moral basis of society by a Hobbesian demonstration that civilization depends on vice. Today Mandeville is seen as a trenchant satirist of the manners and foibles of his age. He is also seen as a precursor of some of Adam Smith''s doctrines, a forerunner in the field of sociology. A prescient analyst o...