Section 27 of The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Here I am obliged to make a digression, though I declare I never had a less mind to it than I have at this minute. But I see a thousand rods in piss and the whole posse of diminutive petants against me, for assaulting the Christ Cross Row and opposing the very elements of literature. This is no panic fear, and the reader will not imagine my apprehensions ill-grounded if he considers what an army of petty tyrants I have to cope with, that all either actually persecute with birch or else are soliciting for such a preferment. For if I had no other adversaries than the starving wretches of both sexes throughout the kingdom of Great Britain, that from a natural antipathy to working have a great dislike to their present employment, and perceiving within a much stronger inclination to command than ever they felt to obey others, think themselves qualified and wish from their hearts to be masters and mistresses of charity schools, the number of my enemies would, by the most modest computation, amount to one hundred thousand at least. Methinks I hear them cry out that a more dangerous doctrine was never broached, and popery is a fool to it, and ask what brute of a Saracen it is that draws his ugly weapon for the destruction of learning. It is ten to one, but they will indict me for endeavoring, by instigation of the Prince of Darkness, to introduce into these realms greater ignorance and barbarity than ever nation was plunged into by goths and vandals since the light of the gospel first appeared in the world. Whoever labors under the public odium has always crimes laid to his charge he never was guilty of, and it will be suspected that I have had a hand in obliterating the holy scriptures, and perhaps affirmed that it was at my request that the small Bibles, published by Patent in the year 1721, and chiefly made use of in charity schools, were, through badness of print and paper, rendered illegible, which yet I protest I am as innocent of as the child unborn. But I am in a thousand fears, the more I consider my case, the worse I like it, and the greatest comfort I have is in my sincere belief that hardly anybody will mind a word of what I say, or else, if ever the people suspected that what I write would be of any weight to any considerable part of society, I should not have the courage barely to think on all the trades I should disoblige. And I cannot but smile when I reflect on the variety of uncouth sufferings that would be prepared for me, if the punishment they would differently inflict upon me was emblematically to point at my crime. For if I was not suddenly stuck full of useless pen knives up to the hilts, the company of stationers would certainly take me in hand, and either have me buried alive in their hall under a great heap of primers and spelling books they would not be able to sell, or else send me up against tide to be bruised to death in a paper mill that would be obliged to stand still a week upon my account. The ink makers at the same time would, for the public good, offer to choke me with astringence, or drown me in the black liquor that would be left upon their hands, which, if they joined stock, might easily be performed in less than a month. And if I should escape the cruelty of these united bodies, the resentment of a private monopolist would be as fatal to me, I should find myself pelted and knocked on the head with little squat bibles clasped in brass, and ready armed for mischief, that charitable learning ceasing would be fit for nothing but unopens to fight with, and exercises truly polemic. The digression I spoke of just now is not the foolish trifle that ended with the last paragraph, and which the grave critic, to whom all mirth is unseasonable, will think very impertinent, serious, apologetical one I am going to make out of hand, to clear myself from having any design against arts and sciences as some heads of colleges and other careful preservers of human learning might have apprehended, upon seeing ignorance recommended as a necessary ingredient in the mixture of civil society. In the first place, I would have near double the number of professors in every university of what there is now. Theology with us is generally well provided, but the other two faculties have very little to boast of, especially physics. Every branch of that art ought to have two or three professors that would take pains to communicate their skill and knowledge to others. In public lectures, a vain man has great opportunities to set off his parts, but private instructions are more useful to students. Pharmacy and the knowledge of the symbols are as necessary as anatomy or the history of diseases. It is a shame that when men have taken their degree and are by authority and trusted with the lives of the subject, they should be forced to come to London to be acquainted with the Materia Medica and the composition of medicines and receive instructions from others that never had university education themselves. It is certain that in the city I named, there is ten times more opportunity for a man to improve himself in anatomy, botany, pharmacy, and the practice of physics than both universities together. What has an oil shop to do with silks, or who would look for hams and pickles at a mercers? Where things are well managed, hospitals are made as subservient to the advancement of students in the art of physics as they are to the recovery of health in the poor. Good sense ought to govern men in learning as well as in trade. No man ever bound his son Apprentice to a goldsmith to make him a linen draper. Why should he have a divine-virus tutor to become a lawyer or a physician? It is true that the languages, logic, and philosophy should be the first studies in all the learned professions. But there is so little help for physics in our universities that are so rich and where so many idle people are well paid for eating and drinking and being magnificently as well as commodiously lodged. That bar books, and what is common to all the three faculties, man may as well qualify himself at Oxford or Cambridge to be a turkey merchant, as he can to be a physician, which is, in my humble opinion, a great sign that some part of the great wealth they are possessed of is not so well applied as it might be. Professors should, besides their stipends allowed them by the public, have gratifications from every student they teach that self-interest as well as emulation in the love of glory might spur them on to labor and assiduity. When a man excels in any one study or part of learning and is qualified to teach others, he ought to be procured if money will purchase him without regarding what party or indeed what country or nation he is of, whether black or white. Universities should be public marts for all manner of literature as your annual fares that are kept at Leipzig, Frankfurt, and other places in Germany are for different wares and merchandises where no difference is made between natives and foreigners and which men resort to from all parts of the world with equal freedom and equal privilege. From paying the gratifications I spoke of, I would excuse all students designed for the ministry of the gospel. There is no faculty so immediately necessary to the government of a nation as that of theology. And as we ought to have great numbers of divines for the service of this island, I would not have the meaner people discouraged from bringing up their children to that function. For though wealthy men, if they have many sons, sometimes make one of them a clergyman as we see even persons of quality take up holy orders. And there are likewise people of good sense, especially divines, that from a principle of prudence bring up their children to that profession when they are morally assured that they have friends or interest enough and shall be able either by a good fellowship at the university, at Vausens, or other means to procure them a livelihood. But these produce not the large number of divines that are yearly ordained, and for the bulk of the clergy we are indebted to another original. Among the middling people of all trades there are bigots who have a superstitious awe for a gown and a cassock. Of these there are multitudes that feel an ardent desire of having a son promoted to the ministry of the gospel without considering what is to become of them afterwards. And many a kind mother in this kingdom consulting her own circumstances or her child's capacity, transported with this laudable wish, is daily feasting on this pleasing thought. And often before her son is twelve years old, mixing maternal love with devotion, throws herself into ecstasies and tears of satisfaction by reflecting on the future enjoyment she is to receive from seeing him stand in a pulpit and, with her own ears, hearing him preach the word of God. It is to this religious zeal, or at least the human frailties that pass for and represent it, that we owe the great plenty of poor scholars the nation enjoys. For, considering the inequality of livings and the smallness of benefices up and down the kingdom, without this happy disposition and parents of small fortune, we could not possibly be furnished from any other quarter with proper persons for the ministry to attend all the cures of souls so pitifully provided for that no mortal could live upon them that had been educated in any tolerable plenty, unless he was possessed of real virtue, which it is foolish and indeed injurious, we should more expect from the clergy than we generally find it in the laity. The great care I would take to promote that part of learning, which is more immediately useful to society, should not make me neglect the more curious and polite. But all the liberal arts and every branch of literature should be encouraged throughout the kingdom, more than they are, if my wishing could do it. In every county there should be one or more large schools erected at the public charge for Latin and Greek that should be divided into six or more classes with particular masters in each of them. The whole should be under the care and inspection of some men of letters and authority who would not only be titular governors but actually take pains at least twice a year in hearing every class thoroughly examined by the master of it and not content themselves with judging of the progress the scholars had made for the themes and other exercises that had been made out of their sight. At the same time, I would discharge and hinder the multiplicity of those petty schools that never would have had any existence had the masters of them not been extremely indigent. It is a vulgar error that nobody can spell or write English well without a little smatch of Latin. This is upheld by pedants for their own interest and by none more strenuously maintained than such of them as our poor scholars in more than one sense. In the meantime it is an abominable falsehood. I have known and I am still acquainted with several and some of the fair sex that never learned any Latin and yet kept to strict orthography and write admirable good sense. Where, on the other hand, everybody may meet with the scribblings of pretended scholars at least such as went to a grammar school for several years that have grammar faults and are ill-spelled. The understanding of Latin thoroughly is highly necessary to all that are designed for any of the learned professions and I would have no gentleman without literature. Even those who are to be brought up attorneys, surgeons, and apothecaries should be much better versed in that language than generally they are. But to youth who afterwards are to get a livelihood in trades and callings in which Latin is not daily wanted, it is of no use and the learning of it and evident loss of just so much time and money as are bestowed upon it. When men come into business, what was taught them of it in those petty schools is either soon forgot or only fit to make them impertinent and often very troublesome in company. Few men can forbear vaulting themselves on any knowledge they had once acquired even after they have lost it and unless they are very modest and discreet the undigested scraps which such people commonly remember of Latin seldom fail of rendering them at one time or other ridiculous to those who understand it. Reading and writing I would treat as we do music and dancing. I would not hinder them nor force them upon the society, as long as there was anything to be got by them there would be masters enough to teach them. But nothing should be taught for nothing but at church and here I would exclude even those who could be designed for the ministry of the gospel. For if parents are so miserably poor that they cannot afford their children these first elements of learning it is impudence in them to aspire any further. It would encourage likewise the lower sort of people to give their children this part of education if they could see them preferred to those of idle sorts or sorry rake-hells that never knew what it was to provide a rag for their brats but by begging. If a boy or a girl are wanted for any small service we reckon it a duty to employ our charity children before any other. The education of them looks like a reward for being vicious and unactive a benefit commonly bestowed on parents who deserve to be punished for shamefully neglecting their families. In one place you may hear a rascal half-drunk damning himself call for the other pot and as a good reason for it add that his boy is provided for in clothes and has his schooling for nothing in another you shall see a poor woman in great necessity whose child is to be taken care of because herself is a lazy slut and never did anything to remedy her wants and good earnest but bewailing them at a gin shop. If everybody's children are well taught who by their own industry can educate them at our universities there will be men of learning enough to supply this nation and such another and reading, writing or arithmetic would never be wanting in the business that requires them, though none were to learn them but such whose parents could be at the charge of it. It is not with letters as it is with gifts of the Holy Ghost that they may not be purchased with money and bought wit, if we believe the proverb is none of the worst. I thought it necessary to say thus much of learning to obviate the clamours of the enemies to truth and fair dealing who, had I not so amply explained myself on this head, would have represented me as a mortal foe to all literature and useful knowledge and a wicked advocate for universal ignorance and stupidity. I shall now make good by promise of answering what I know the well-wishers to charity schools would object against me by saying that they brought up the children under their care to warrantable and laborious trades and not to idleness as I did insinuate. I have sufficiently showed already why going to school was idleness if compared to working, and exploded this sort of education in the children of the poor because it incapacitates them ever after for downright labor which is their proper province and, in every civil society a portion they ought not to repine or grumble at, if exacted from them with discretion and humanity. What remains is that I should speak to their putting them out to trades which I shall endeavor to demonstrate to be destructive to the harmony of a nation, and an impertinent intermeddling with what few of these governors know anything of. In order to this let us examine into the nature of societies and what the compound ought to consist of, if we would raise it to as high a degree of strength, beauty and perfection as the ground we are to do upon it will let us. The variety of services that are required to supply the luxurious and wanton desires as well as real necessities of man, with all their subordinate callings, is in such a nation as ours prodigious. Yet it is certain that though the number of those several occupations be excessively great, it is far from being infinite. If you add one more than is required it must be superfluous. If a man had a good stock and the best shop and cheap side to sell turbines in he would be ruined, and if Demetrius or any other silversmith made nothing but Diana's shrines he would not get his bread, now the worship of that goddess is out of fashion. As it is folly to set up trades that are not wanted so what is next to it is to increase in any one trade, the numbers beyond what are required. As things are managed with us it would be preposterous to have as many brewers as there are bakers or as many woollen drapers as there are shoemakers. This proportion as the numbers in every trade finds itself and is never better than when nobody metals or interferes with it. People that have children to educate that must get their livelihood are always consulting and deliberating what trade or calling they are to bring them up to until they are fixed, and thousands think on this that hardly think at all on anything else. First, they confine themselves to their circumstances, and he that can give but ten pounds with his son must not look out for a trade where they ask in hundred with an answer, but the next they think on is always which will be the most advantageous. If there be a calling where at that time people are more generally employed than they are in any other in the same reach, there are presently half a score fathers ready to supply it with their sons. Therefore the greatest care most companies have is about the regulation of the number of apprentices. Now, when all trades complain and perhaps justly that they are over stocked, you manifestly injure that trade to which you add one member more than would flow from the nature of society. Besides that, the governors of charity schools do not deliberate so much what trade is the best, but what tradesmen they can get that will take the boys with such a sum, and few men of substance and experience will have anything to do with these children. They are afraid of a hundred inconveniences from the necessitous parents of them, so that they are bound, at least most commonly, either to sots and neglectful masters, or else such as are very needy and do not care what becomes of their apprentices after they have received the money, by which it seems as if we studied nothing more than to have a perpetual nursery for charity schools. When all trades and handicrafts are over stocked, it is a certain sign there is a fault in the management of the whole, for it is impossible there should be too many people if the country is able to feed them. Are provisions dear? Whose fault is that, as long as you have ground untilled and hands unemployed? But I shall be answered that to increase plenty must at long run undo the farmer, or lessen the rents all over England, to which I reply that what the husbandmen complains of most is what I would redress. The greatest grievance of farmers, gardeners, and others, where hard labour is required and dirty work to be done is that they cannot get the servants for the same wages they used to have them at. The day labourer grumbles at 16 pence to do no other drudgery than what 30 years ago his grandfather did cheerfully for half the money. As to the rents, it is impossible they should fall while you increase your numbers. But the price of provisions and all labour in general must fall with them, if not before. And a man of 150 pounds a year has no reason to complain that his income is 100 if he can buy as much for that 100 as before he could have done for two. There is no intrinsic worth in money, but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for 20 pounds or for a shilling it is, as I have already hinted before, the labour of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold and silver which all the comforts of life must arise from. It is in our power to have a much greater plenty than that of a boy if agriculture and fishery were taken care of as they might be but we are so little capable of increasing our labour that we have hardly poor enough to do what is necessary to make us subsist. The proportion of the society is spoiled and the bulk of the nation which should everywhere consist of labouring poor that are unacquainted with everything but their work is too little for the other parts in all business where downright labour is shunned or overpaid with people. To one merchant you have ten bookkeepers or at least pretenders and everywhere in the country the farmer wants hands. Ask for a footman that for some time has been in gentlemen's families and you will get a dozen that are all butlers. You may have chambermaids by the score but you cannot get a cook under extravagant wages. Nobody will do the dirty slavish work that can help it. I do not discomment them but all these things show that the people of the meanest rank know too much to be serviceable to us. Servants require more than masters and mistresses can afford and what madness is it to encourage them in this by industriously increasing at our cost that knowledge which they will be sure to make us pay for over again.  The scarcity of servants occasioned by the education of the first gives a handle to the latter of advancing their price and demanding what ought only to be given to servants that understand their business and have most of the good qualities that can be required in them. There is no place in the world where there are more clever fellows to look at or to do an errand than some of our footmen but what are they good for in the mean? The greatest part of them are rogues who are entrusted and if they are honest half of them are sots and will get drunk three or four times a week. The surly ones are generally quarrelsome and valuing their manhood beyond all other considerations care not what clothes they spoil or what disappointments they may occasion when their prowess is in question. Those who are good natured are generally sad whore masters that are ever running after the wenches and spoil all the maid servants they come near. Many of them are guilty of all these vices whoring, drinking, quarreling and yet shall have all their faults overlooked and bore with because they are men of good main and humble address that know how to wait on gentlemen which is an unpardonable folly in masters and generally ends in the ruin of servants. Some few there are that are not addicted to any of these failings and understand their duty besides but as these are rarities so there is not one in fifty but what his wages must be extravagant and you can never have done giving him everything in the house is his perquisite and he will not stay with you unless his veils are sufficient to maintain a middling family and though you had taken him from the dung hill out of a hospital or a prison you shall never keep him longer than he can make of his place what in his high estimation of himself he shall think he deserves nay the best and most civilized that never were saucy and impertinent will leave the most indulgent master and to get handsomely away frame fifty excuses and tell downright lies as soon as they can mend themselves a man who keeps a half crown or twelve penny ordinary looks not more for money from his customers than a footman does from every guest that dines or sups with his master and I question whether the one does not often think a shilling or half a crown according to the quality of the person his do as much as the other a housekeeper who cannot afford to make many entertainments and does not often invite people to his table can have no creditable manservant and is forced to take up with some country booby or other awkward fellow who will likewise give him the slip as soon as he imagines himself fit for any other service and is made wiser by his rascally companions all noted eating houses and places that many gentlemen resort to for diversion or business more especially the precincts of Westminster Hall or the great schools for servants where the dullest fellows may have their understandings improved and get rid at once of their stupidity and their innocence they are the academies for footmen where public lectures are daily read on all sciences of low debauchery by the experienced professors of them and students are instructed in above seven hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon and find the blind side of their masters with so much application that in few years they become graduates in iniquity young gentlemen and others that are not thoroughly versed in the world when they get such knowing sharpers in their service are commonly indulging above measure and for fear of discovering their want of experience hardly dare to contradict or deny them in anything which is often the reason that by allowing them unreasonable privileges they expose their ignorance when they are most endeavouring to conceal it some perhaps will lay the things I complain of to the charge of luxury of which I said that it could do no hurt to a rich nation if the imports never did exceed the exports but I do not think this imputation just and nothing ought to be scored on the account of luxury that is downright the effect of folly a man may be very extravagant in indulging his ease and his pleasure and render the enjoyment of the world as operose and expensive as they can be made if he can afford it and at the same time show his good sense and everything about him this he cannot be said to do if he industriously renders his people incapable of doing him that service he expects from them it is too much money excessive wages and unreasonable veils that spoil servants in England a man may have five and twenty horses in his stables without being guilty of folly if it suits with the rest of his circumstances but if it keeps but one and over feeds it to show his wealth he is a fool for his pains is it not madness to suffer that servants should take three and others five percent of what they pay to tradesmen for their masters as is so well known to watchmakers and others that sell toys superfluous knickknacks and other curiosities if they deal with people of quality and fashionable gentlemen that are above telling their own money if they should accept of a present when offered it might be connived at but it is an unpardonable impudence that they should claim it as their do and contend for it if refused those who have all the necessaries of life provided for can have no occasion for money but what does them hurt as servants unless they were to hoard it up for age or sickness which among our skip kennels is not very common then it makes them saucy and insupportable end of section 27 section 28 of the fable of the bees by Bernard Mandeville this LibriVox recording is in the public domain I am creditably informed that a parcel of footmen are arrived to that height of insolence as to have entered into a society together and made laws by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than such a sum nor carry burdens or any bundle or parcel above a certain weight not exceeding two or three pounds with other regulations directly opposite to the interest of those they serve and altogether destructive to the use they were designed for if any of them be turned away for strictly adhering to the orders of this honorable corporation he is taken care of till another service is provided for him and there is no money wanting at any time to commence and maintain a lawsuit against any master that shall pretend to strike or offer any other injury to his gentleman footmen contrary to the statutes of their society if this be true as I have reason to believe it is and they are suffered to go on in consulting and providing for their own ease and convenience see any further we may expect quickly to see the French comedy La Métre Le Valais acted in good earnest in most families which if not redressed in a little time and those footmen increase their company to the number it is possible they may as well as assemble when they please with impunity it will be in their power to make a tragedy of it wherever they have a mind to it but suppose those apprehensions frivolous and groundless it is undeniable that servants in general are daily encroaching upon masters and mistresses and endeavoring to be more upon the level with them they not only seem solicitous to abolish the low dignity of their condition but have already considerably raised it in the common estimation from the original meanness which the public welfare requires it should always remain in I do not say that these things are altogether owing to charity schools there are other evils they may be partly ascribed to London is too big for the country and in several respects we are wanting to ourselves but if a thousand faults were to concur and conveniences could be produced we labor under can any man doubt who will consider what I have said that charity schools are accessory or at least that they are more likely to create an increase than to lessen or redress those complaints the only thing of weight then that can be said in their behalf is that so many thousand children are educated by them in the Christian faith and the principles of the Church of England to demonstrate that this is not a sufficient plea for them I must desire the reader as I hate repetitions to look back on what I have said before to which I shall add that whatever is necessary to salvation and requisite for poor laboring people to know concerning religion that children learn at school may fully as well either by preaching or catechizing be taught at church from which or some other place of worship I would not have the meanest of a parish that is able to walk to it be absent on Sundays it is the Sabbath the most useful day in seven that is set apart for divine service and religious exercise as well as resting from bodily labor and it is a duty incumbent on all magistrates to take particular care of that day the poor more especially and their children should be made to go to church on it both in the fore and afternoon because they have no time on any other by precept and example they ought to be encouraged and used to it by their very infancy the willful neglect of it ought to be counted scandalous and if downright compulsion to what I urge might seem too harsh and perhaps impracticable all diversions at least ought strictly to be prohibited and the poor hindered from every amusement abroad that might allure or draw them from it where this care is taken by the magistrates as far as it lies in their power ministers of the gospel may instill into the smallest capacities more piety and devotion and better principles of virtue and religion than charity schools ever did or ever will produce and those who complain when they have such opportunities that they cannot imbue their parishioners with sufficient knowledge of what they stand in need of as Christians without the assistance of reading and writing are either very lazy or very ignorant and undeserving themselves that the most knowing are not the most religious will be evident if we make a trial between people of different abilities even in this juncture where going to church is not made such an obligation on the poor and illiterate as it might be let us pitch upon a hundred poor men the first we can light on that are above 40 and were brought up to hard labor from their infancy such as never went to school at all and always lived remote from knowledge and great towns let us compare to these an equal number of very good scholars that shall all have had university education if you will, half of them divines well versed in philology and polemic learning then let us impartially examine into the lives and conversations of both and I dare engage that among the first who can neither read nor write we shall meet with more union and neighborly love less wickedness and attachment to the world more content of mind more innocent sincerity and other good qualities that conduce to the public peace and real felicity we shall find among the latter where, on the contrary we may be assured of the height of pride and insolence eternal quarrels and dissensions irreconcilable hatreds strife, envy, calamity and other vices destructive to mutual concord which the illiterate laboring poor are hardly ever tainted with to any considerable degree I am very well persuaded that what I have said in the last paragraph will be no news to most of my readers but if it be truth, why should it be stifled? and why must our concern for religion be eternally made a cloak to hide our real drifts and worldly intentions would both parties agree to pull off the mask we should soon discover that whatever they pretend to they aim at nothing so much in charity schools as to strengthen their party and that the great sticklers for the church by educating children in the principles of religion mean inspiring them with a superlative veneration for the clergy of the church of England and a strong aversion and immortal animosity against all dissent from it to be assured of this we are but to mind on the one hand what divines are most admired for their charity sermons and most fond to preach them and on the other whether of late years we have had any riots or parties scuffles among the mob in which the youth of a famous hospital in this city were not always the most forward ring leaders the grand assertors of liberty who are ever guarding themselves and skirmishing against arbitrary power often when they are in no danger of it are generally speaking not very superstitious nor seem to lay great stress on any modern apostleship yet some of these likewise speak up loudly for charity schools but what they expect from them has no relation to religion or morality they only look upon them as the proper means to destroy and disappoint the power of the priests over the laity reading and writing increase knowledge and the more men know the better they can judge for themselves and they imagine that if knowledge could be rendered universal people could not be priest rid which is the thing they fear the most the first I confess it is very possible we'll get their aim but sure wise men that are not read hot for a party or bigots to the priests are not worth while to suffer so many inconveniences as charity schools may be the occasion of only to promote the ambition and power of the clergy to the other I would answer that if all those who are educated at the charge of their parents or relations will but think for themselves and refuse to have their reason imposed upon by the priests we need not be concerned for what the clergy will work upon the ignorant that have no education at all let them make the most of them considering the schools we have for those who can and do pay for learning it is ridiculous to imagine that the abolishing of charity schools would be a step towards any ignorance that could be prejudicial to the nation I would not be thought cruel and am well assured if I know anything of myself that I abhor in humanity but to be compassionate to excess where reason forbids it and the general interest of the society requires steadiness of thought and resolution is an unpardonable weakness I know it will be ever urged against me that it is barbarous the children of the poor should have no opportunity of exerting themselves as long as God has not debarred them from natural parts and genius more than the rich but I cannot think this is harder than it is that they should not have money as long as they have the same inclinations to spend as others that great and useful men in hospitals I do not deny but it is likewise very probable that when they were first employed many as capable as themselves not brought up in hospitals were neglected that with the same good fortune would have done as well as they if they had been made use of instead of them there are many examples of women that have excelled in learning and even in war but this is no reason we should bring them all up to Latin and Greek or else military discipline instead of needlework and house waifery but there is no scarcity of sprightliness or natural parts among us and no soil and climate as human creatures to boast of better formed either inside or outside than this island generally produces but it is not wit, genius or docileity we want but diligence application and assiguity abundance of hard and dirty labor is to be done and course living is to be complied with where shall we find a better nursery for these necessities than the children of the poor none certainly are nearer to it or fitter for it besides that the things I called hardships neither seem nor are such to those who have been brought up to them and no no better there is not a more contented people among us than those who work the hardest and are the least acquainted with the pomp and delicacies of the world these are truths that are undeniable yet I know few people will be pleased to have them divulged what makes them odious is an unreasonable vein of petty reverence for the poor that runs through most multitudes and more particularly in this nation and arises from a mixture of pity folly and superstition it is from a lively sense of this compound that men cannot endure to hear or see anything said or acted against the poor without considering how just the one or insolent the other so a beggar must not be beat though he strikes you first journeymen tailors go to law with their masters and are obstinate in a wrong cause yet they must be pitied and murmuring weavers must be relieved and have fifty silly things done to humor them though in the midst of their poverty they insult their betters and on all occasions appear to be more prone to make holidays and riots than they are working or sobriety this puts me in mind of our woe which considering the posture of our affairs and the behavior of the poor I sincerely believe ought not upon any account to be carried abroad but if we look into the reason why suffering it to be fetched away is so pernicious our heavy complaint and lamentations that it is exported can be no great credit to us considering the mighty and manifold hazards none before it can be got off the coast and safely landed beyond sea it is manifest that the foreigners before they can work our woe must pay more for it very considerably than what we can have it for at home yet not withstanding this great difference in the prime cost they can afford to sell the manufactures made of it cheaper at foreign markets than ourselves this is the disaster we grown under the intolerable mischief by which the exportation of that commodity could be no greater prejudice to us than that of tin or lead as long as our hands were fully employed and we had still woe to spare there is no people yet come to higher perfection in the woollen manufacture either as to dispatch our goodness of work at least in the most considerable branches than ourselves and therefore what we complain of can only depend on the difference in the management of the poor and the other nations and ours if the laboring people in one country will work 12 hours in a day and 6 days in a week and in another they are employed but 8 hours in a day and not above 4 days in a week the one is obliged to have 9 hands for what the other does with 4 but if moreover the living the food and raiment and what is consumed by the workmen of the industrious costs but half the money of what is expended among an equal number of the other the consequence must be that the first will have the work of 18 men for the same price as the other gives for the work of 4 I would not insinuate neither do I think that the difference either in diligence or necessaries of life between us and any neighboring nation is near so great as what I speak of yet I would have it considered that half of that difference and much less is sufficient to overbalance the disadvantage they labor under as to the price of woe nothing to me is more evident than that no nation in any manufacture whatever can undersell their neighbors with whom they are at best but equals as to skill and dispatch and the convenience for working more especially when the prime cost of the thing to be manufactured is not in their favor unless they have provisions and whatever is relating to their sustenance cheaper or else workmen that are either more assiduous or be content with a meaner and coarser way of living than those of their neighbors this is certain that where numbers are equal the more laborious people are and the fewer hands the same quantity of work is performed by the greater plenty there is in a country of the necessities for life the more considerable and the cheaper that country may render its exports it being granted then that abundance of work is to be done the next thing which I think to be likewise undeniable is that the more cheerfully it is done the better as well for those that perform it as for the rest of society to be happy is to be pleased and the less notion a man has of a better way of living the more content he will be with his own and on the other hand the greater a man's knowledge and experience is in the world the more exquisite the delicacy of his taste and the more consummate judge of his things in general certainly the more difficult it will be to please him I would not advance anything that is barbarous or inhuman but when a man enjoys himself laughs and sings and in his gesture and behavior shows me all the tokens of content and satisfaction I pronounce him happy and have nothing to do with his wit or capacity I never enter into the reasonableness of his mirth from the effect which the thing that makes him merry would have upon me at that rate a man that hates cheese must call me a fool for loving blue mold de gustibus non es disputandum is as true in a metaphorical as it is in the literal sense and the greater the distances between people as to their condition their circumstances and manner of living the less capable they are of judging of one another's troubles or pleasures had the meanest and most uncivilized peasant leave incognito to observe the greatest king for a fortnight though he might pick out several things he would like for himself yet he would find a great many more which if the monarch and he were to exchange conditions he would wish for his part to have immediately altered or redressed and which with amazement he sees the king submit to and again if the sovereign was to examine the peasant in the same manner his labor would be unsufferable the dirt and squalor his diet and amours his past times and recreations would be all abominable but then what charms would he find in the other's peace of mind the calmness and tranquility of his soul no necessity for dissimulation with any of his family or feigned affection to his mortal enemies no wife in a foreign interest no danger to apprehend from his children no plots to unravel no poison to fear no popular statesmen at home or cunning courts abroad to manage no seeming patriots to bribe no unsatiable favorite to gratify no selfish ministry to obey no divided nation to please or fickle mob to humor that would direct and interfere with his pleasures was impartial reason to be judged between real good and real evil and a catalog made accordingly of the several delights and vexations differently to be met with in both stations I question whether the condition of kings would be at all preferable to that of peasants even as ignorant and laborious as I seem to require the latter to be the reason why the generality of people would rather be kings than peasants is first owing to pride and ambition that is deeply riveted in human nature and which to gratify we daily see undergo and despise the greatest hazards and difficulties secondly to the difference there is in the force with which our affection is wrought upon as the objects are either material or spiritual things that immediately strike our outward senses act more violently upon our passions than what is the result of thought and the dictates of the most demonstrative reason and there is a much stronger bias to gain our liking or aversion in the first and the latter having thus demonstrated that what I urge could be no injury or the least diminution of happiness to the poor I leave it to the judicious reader whether it is not more probable we should increase our exports by the methods I hint at than by sitting still and damning and sinking our neighbors for beating us at our own weapons some of them outselling us in manufacturers made of our own product which they dearly purchased despite of distance and trouble by the same fish which we neglect though it is ready to jump into our mouths as by discouraging idleness with art and steadiness you may compel the poor to labor without force so by bringing them up in ignorance you may inure them to real hardships without being ever sensible themselves that they are such by bringing them up in ignorance I mean no more as I have hinted long ago than that in the worldly affairs their knowledge should be confined within the verge of their own occupations at least that we should not take pains to extend it beyond those limits and by these two engines we shall have made provisions and consequently labor cheap we must infallibly outsell our neighbors and at the same time increase our numbers this is the noble and manly way of encountering the rivals of our trade and by dint of merit outdoing at foreign markets to allure the poor we make use of policy in some cases with success why should we be neglectful of it in the most important point when they make their boast that they will not live as the poor of other nations if we cannot alter their resolution why should we applaud the justness of their sentiments against the common interest I have often wondered formally how an Englishman that pretended to have the honor and glory of the welfare of his country at heart could take delight in the evening to hear an idle tenant that owed him above a year's rent ridicule the French for wearing wooden shoes when in the morning he had had the mortification of hearing the great King William, that ambitious monarch as well as able statesmen openly owned to the world and with grief and anger in his looks complain of the exorbitant power of France yet I do not recommend wooden shoes nor do the maxims I would introduce require arbitrary power in one person liberty and property I hope may remain secured and yet the poor be better employed than they are although their children should wear out their clothes by useful labor and blacken them with country dirt for something instead of tearing them off their backs at play and dobbing them with ink for nothing there is above three or four hundred years work for a hundred thousand or more than we have in this island to make every part of it useful and the whole thoroughly inhabited many rivers are to be made navigable canals to be cut in hundreds of places some lands are to be drained and secured from inundations for the future abundance of barren soil is to be made fertile and thousands of acres rendered more beneficial by being made more accessible d.e. laboribus omnia vedunt there is no difficulty of this nature that labor and patience cannot surmount the highest mountains may be thrown into their valleys that stand ready to receive them and bridges might be laid where now we would not dare to think of it let us look back on the stupendous works of the Romans more especially their highways and aqueducts let us consider in one view the vast extent of several of their roads how substantial they made them and what duration they have been of and in another a poor traveller that at every ten miles end is stopped by a turnpike and done for a penny for mending the roads in the summer with what everybody knows will be dirt before the winter that succeeds is expired the convenience of the public ought ever to be the public care and no private interest of a town or a whole country should ever hinder the execution of a project or contrivance that would manifestly tend to the improvement of the whole and every member of the legislature who knows his duty and would choose rather to act like a wise man than curry favor with his neighbors will prefer the least benefit accruing to the whole kingdom to the most visible advantage of the place he serves for we have materials of our own and want neither stone nor timber to do anything and was the money that people give uncompelled to beggars who do not deserve it and what every housekeeper is obliged to pay to the poor of his parish that is otherwise employed or ill applied to be put together every year it would make a sufficient fund to keep a great many thousands at work I do not say this because I think it practicable but only to show that we have money enough to spare to employ vast multitudes of laborers neither should we want so much for it as we perhaps might imagine when it is taken for granted that a soldier whose strength and vigor is to be kept up at least as much as anybody's can live upon six pence a day I cannot conceive the necessity of giving the greatest part of the year sixteen and eighteen pence to a day laborer the fearful and cautious people that are ever jealous of their liberty I know will cry out that where the multitudes I speak of should be kept in constant pay property and privileges would be precarious but they might be answered that sure means might be found out and such regulations made as to the hands in which to trust the management and direction of these laborers that it would be impossible for the prince or anybody else to make an ill use of their numbers what I have said in the four or five last paragraphs I foresee will with abundance of scorn be laughed at by many of my readers and at best be called building castles in the air but whether that is my fault or theirs is a question when the public spirit has left a nation they not only lose their patience with it and all thoughts of perseverance but become likewise so narrow sold that it is a pain for them even to think of things that are of uncommon extent or require great length of time and whatever is noble or sublime in such conjectures is counted chimerical where deep ignorance is entirely routed and expelled and low learning promiscuously scattered on all the people self love turns knowledge into cunning and the more this last qualification prevails in any country the more the people will fix all their cares concern and application on the time present without regard of what is to come after them or hardly ever thinking beyond the next generation but as cunning according to my lord verileum is but a left handed wisdom so a prudent legislator ought to provide against this disorder of the society as soon as the symptoms of it appear among which the following are the most obvious imaginary rewards are generally despised everybody is for turning the penny and short bargains he that is diffident of everything and believes nothing but what he sees with his own eyes is counted the most prudent and in all their dealings men seem to act from no other principle than that the devil take the hindmost instead of planting oaks they will require a hundred and fifty years before they are fit to be cut down they build houses with a design that they shall not stand above twelve or fourteen years all heads run upon the uncertainty of things and the vicissitudes of human affairs the mathematics become the only valuable study and are made use of in everything even where it is ridiculous and men seem to repose no greater trust in providence than they would in a broken merchant it is the business of the public to supply the defects of the society and take that in hand first which is most neglected by private persons contraries are best cured by contraries and therefore as example is of greater efficacy than precept in the amendment of national failings the legislature ought to resolve upon some great undertakings that must be the work of ages as well as vast labor and convince the world that they did nothing without an anxious regard to their latest posterity this will fix or at least help to settle the volatile genius and fickle spirit of the kingdom put us in mind that we are not born for ourselves only and be a means of rendering men less distrustful and inspiring them with a true love for their country and a tender affection for the ground itself then which nothing is more necessary to aggrandize a nation forms of government may alter religions and even languages may change but Great Britain or at least if that likewise might lose its name the island itself will remain and in all human probability last as long as any part of the globe all ages have ever paid their kind acknowledgements to their ancestors for the benefits derived from them and a Christian who enjoys the multitude of fountains and vast plenty of water to be met with from the city of Saint Peter is an ungrateful wretch if he never cast a thankful remembrance on old pagan Rome that took such prodigious pains to procure it when this island shall be cultivated and every inch of it made habitable and useful and the whole the most convenient and agreeable spot upon the earth all the cost and labor laid out upon it will be gloriously repaid by the incense of them that shall come after and those who burn with a noble zeal and desire after immortality and took such care to improve their country may rest satisfied that a thousand and two thousand years hence they shall live in the memory and everlasting praises of the future ages that shall then enjoy it here I should have concluded this rhapsody of thoughts but something comes in my head concerning the main scope and design of this essay which is to prove the necessity for a certain portion of ignorance in a well ordered society that I must not omit because by mentioning it I shall make an argument on my side of what if I had not spoke of it might easily have appeared as a strong objection against me it is the opinion of most people and mine among the rest that the most commendable quality of the present Tsar of Muscovy is his unwirried application in raising his subjects from their native stupidity to realizing his nation but then we must consider it is what they stood in need of and that not long ago the greatest part of them were next to brute beasts in proportion to the extent of his dominions and the multitudes he commands he had not that number or variety of tradesmen and artificers which the true improvement of the country required and therefore was in the right in leaving no stone unturned to procure them but what is that to us who labor these sound politics are to the social body what the art of medicine is to the natural and no physician would treat a man in a lethargy as if he was sick for want of rest or prescribe in a drop see what should be administered in a diabetes in short Russia has too few knowing men and great Britain too many end of section 28 section 29 of the fable of the bees by Bernard Deville this LibriVox recording is in the public domain a search into the nature of society 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 I mean in his characteristics fancies that as a man is made for society so he ought to be born with a kind of 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 performed with regard to the public 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 polkrum et onestum both 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 writer manages a well-taught horse by the bridle the attentive reader who perused the foregoing part of this book will soon perceive that two systems cannot be more opposite than his lordships and mine his notions I confess are generous and refined they are a high compliment to humankind and capable by a little enthusiasm of inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of our exalted nature what pity it is that they are not true I would not advance thus much if I had not already demonstrated in almost every page of this treatise that the solidity of them is inconsistent with our daily experience but to leave not the least shadow of an objection that might be made unanswered I designed to expiate on some things which hitherto I have but slightly touched upon in order to convince the reader not only that the good and amiable qualities of men are not those that make him beyond other animals a sociable creature but moreover that it would be utterly impossible either to raise any multitudes into a populace rich and flourishing nation or when so raised to keep and maintain them in that condition without the assistance of what we call evil both natural and moral the better to perform what I have undertaken I shall previously examine into the reality of the polcrum et onestum the tocalon that the ancients have talked of so much the meaning of this is to discuss whether there be a real worth and excellency in things preeminence of one above another which everybody will always agree to that well understands them or that there are few things if any that have the same esteem paid them and which the same judgment is passed upon in all countries and all ages when we first set out in quest of this intrinsic worth and find one thing better than another and a third better than that and so on we begin to entertain great hopes of success but when we meet with several things that are all very good or all very bad we are puzzled and agree not always with ourselves much less with others there are different faults as well as beauties that as modes and fashions alter and men vary in their tastes and humours will be differently admired or disapproved of judges of painting will never disagree in opinion when a fine picture is compared to the dobing of a novice but how strangely have they differed as to the works of eminent masters there are parties among connoisseurs and few of them agree in their esteem as to ages and countries and the best pictures bear not always the best prices unnoted original will be ever worth more than any copy that can be made of it by an unknown hand though it should be better the value that is set on paintings depends not only on the name of the master and the time of his age he drew them in likewise in a great measure on the scarcity of his works but what is still more unreasonable the quality of the persons in whose possession they are as well as the length of time they have been in great families and if the cartons now at Hampton court were done by a less famous hand than that of Raphael and had a private person for their owner who would be forced to sell them they would never yield the tenth part of the money which with all their money they are now esteemed to be worth not withstanding all this I will readily own that the judgment to be made of painting might become universal certainty or at least less alterable and precarious than almost anything else the reason is plain there is a standard to go by that always remains the same painting is an imitation of nature a copying of things which men have everywhere before them my good humored reader I hope if thinking on this glorious invention I make a reflection a little out of season though very much conducive to my main design which is that valuable as the art is I speak of we are beholden to an imperfection in the chief of our senses for all the pleasures and ravishing delight we receive from this happy deceit I shall explain myself air and space are no objects of sight but as soon as we can see with the least attention we observe that the bulk of the things we see is lessened by degrees as they are further remote from us and nothing but experience gained from these observations can teach us to make any tolerable guesses at the distance of things if one born blind should remain so till 20 and then be suddenly blessed with sight he would be strangely puzzled as to the difference of distances and hardly able immediately his eyes alone to determine which was nearest to him a post almost within reach of his stick or a steeple that should be half a mile off let us look as narrowly as we can upon a hole in the wall that has nothing but the open air behind it and we shall not be able to see otherwise but that the sky fills up the vacuity and is as near to us as the back part of the stones that circumscribed the space where they are wanting this circumstance not to call it a defect in our sense of seeing makes us liable to be imposed upon and everything but motion may by art be represented to us on a flat in the same manner as we see them in life and nature if a man had never seen this art put into practice a looking glass might soon convince him that such a thing was possible and I cannot help thinking but that the reflections from very smooth and well polished bodies made upon our eyes must have given the first handle to the inventions of drawings and painting in the works of nature worth and excellency are as uncertain and even in human creatures what is beautiful in one country is not so in another how whimsical is the florist in his choice sometimes the tulip sometimes the auricula and at other times the carnation shall engross his esteem here a new flower in his judgment beats all the old ones though it is much inferior to them in both color and shape 300 years ago men were shaved as closely as they are now since that they have wore beards and cut them in vast variety of forms that were all as becoming when fashionable as now they would be ridiculous how mean and comically a man looks that is otherwise well dressed in a narrow brim when everybody wears broad ones and again how monstrous is a very great hat when the other extreme has been in fashion for a considerable time experience has taught us that these modes seldom last above 10 or 12 years and a man of three score must have observed five or six revolutions of them at least yet the beginnings of these changes though we have seen several seem always uncouth and are offensive afresh whenever they return what mortal can decide which is the handsomest abstract from the mode in being to wear great buttons or small ones the many ways of laying out a garden judiciously are almost innumerable and what is called beautiful in them varies according to the different tastes of nations and ages in grass, plaques, knots, and parters a great diversity of forms is generally agreeable but a round may be as pleasing to the eye as a square an oval cannot be more suitable to one place than it is possible for a triangle to be to another and the preeminence an octagon has over an hexagon is no greater in figures than it hazard eight has above six among the chances churches ever since Christians have been able to build them resemble the form of a cross with the upper end pointing toward the east and an architect where there is room and it can be conveniently done who should neglect it would be thought to have committed an unpardonable fault but it would be foolish to expect this of a Turkish mosque or a pagan temple among the many beneficial laws that have been made these hundred years it is not easy to name one of greater utility and at the same time more exempt from all inconveniences than that which regulated the dresses of the dead those who are old enough to take notice of things when that act was made and are yet alive must remember the general clamour that was made against it at first nothing could be more shocking to thousands of people than that they were to be buried in woolen and the only thing that made the law supportable was that there was room left for people of some fashion to indulge their weakness without extravagancy considering the other expenses of funerals where mourning is given to several and rings to a great many the benefit that accrues to the nation from it is so visible that nothing ever could be said in any reason to condemn it which in few years made the horror conceived against it less and every day I observed then that young people who had seen but few in their coffins did the soonest to strike in with the innovation but that those who when the act was made had buried many friends and relations remained averse to it the longest and I remember many that never could be reconciled to it to their dying day by this time burying in linen being almost forgot it is the general opinion that nothing could be more decent than woolen and the present manner of dressing a corpse which shows that our liking or disliking of things chiefly depends on mode and custom and the precept and example of our betters and such whom one way or other we think to be superior to us morals there is no greater certainty plurality of wives is odious among Christians and all the wit and learning of a great genius and defense of it has been rejected with contempt but polygamy is not shocking to a Mohammedan what men have learned from their infancy enslaves them and the force of custom warps nature and at the same time imitates her in such a manner that it is often difficult to know which of the two we are influenced by at least formerly sisters married brothers and it was meritorious for a man to marry his mother such alliances are abominable but it is certain that whatever horror we conceive at the thoughts of them there is nothing in nature repugnant against them but what is built upon mode and custom a religious Mohammedan that has never tasted any spiritus liquor and has often seen people drunk may receive as great an aversion against wine as another with us of the least morality in education may have against lying with his sister and both imagine that their antipathy proceeds from nature which is the best religion is a question that has caused more mischief than all other questions together ask it at Peking at Constantinople and at Rome and you will receive three distinct answers extremely different from one another yet all of them equally positive and preemptory Christians are well assured of the falsity of the pagan and Mohammedan superstitions as to this point there is a perfect union and concord among them but inquire of the several sex they are divided into which is the true church of Christ and all of them will tell you it is theirs and to convince you go together by the ears it is manifest then that the hunting after this pulchrum at Anestem is not much better than a wild goose chase that is but little to be depended on but this is not the greatest fault I find with it the imaginary notions that men may be virtuous without self-denial are a vast inlet to hypocrisy which being once made habitual we must not only deceive others but likewise become altogether unknown to ourselves and in an instance I am going to give it will appear how for want of duly examining himself this might happen to a person of quality of parts and erudition one every way resembling the author of the characteristics himself a man that has been brought up in ease and affluence if he is of a quiet, indolent nature learns to shun everything that is troublesome and chooses to curb his passions more because of the inconveniences that arise from the eager pursuit after pleasure and the yielding to all the demands of our inclinations than any dislike he has to sensual enjoyments and it is possible that a person educated under a great philosopher who was a mild and good natured as well as able tutor may in such happy circumstances have a better opinion of his inward state than it really deserves and believe himself virtuous because his passions lie dormant he may form fine notions of the social virtues and the contempt of death write well of them in his closet and talk eloquently of them in company but you shall never catch him fighting for his country or laboring to retrieve any national losses a man that deals in metaphysics may easily throw himself into an enthusiasm and really believe that he does not fear death while it remains out of sight but should he be asked why after his having this intrepidity either from nature or acquired by philosophy he did not follow arms when his country was involved in war or when he saw the nation daily robbed by those at the helm and the affairs of the exchequer perplexed why he did not go to court and make use of all his friends and interests to be a Lord Treasurer that by his integrity and wise management he might restore the public credit it is probable he would answer that he loved retirement had no other ambition than to be a good man and never aspired to have any share in the government or that he hated all flattery and slavish attendance the insincerity of courts and bustle world I am willing to believe him but may not a man of an indolent temper and unactive spirit say and be sincere in all this and at the same time indulge his appetites without being able to subdue them though his duty summons him to it virtue consists in action and whoever is possessed of the social love and kind affection to his species and by his birth or quality can claim any post in the public management ought not to sit still when he can be serviceable but exert himself to the utmost for the good of his fellow subjects had this noble person been of a war like genius or a boisterous temper he would have chose another part in the drama of life and preached a quite contrary doctrine for we are ever pushing our reason which way so ever we feel passion to draw it and self love pleads to all human creatures for their different views still furnishing every individual with arguments to justify their inclinations that boasted middle way and the calm virtues recommended in the characteristics are good for nothing but to breed drones and might qualify a man for the stupid enjoyments of a monastic life or at best a country justice of peace but they would never fit him for labor and aciduity or stir him up to great achievements and perilous undertakings man's natural love and ease and idleness and proneness to indulge his sensual pleasures are not to be cured by precept his strong habits and inclinations can only be subdued by passions of greater violence preach and demonstrate to a coward the unreasonable of his fears and you will not make him valiant more than you can make him taller by bidding him to be ten foot high whereas the secret to raise courage as I have made it public on remark online 321 is almost infallible the fear of death is the strongest when we are in our greatest vigor and our appetite is keen when we are sharpsighted quick of hearing and every part performs its office the reason is plain because then life is most delicious and ourselves most capable of enjoying it how comes it then that a man of honor should so easily accept of a challenge though at 30 perfect health it is his pride that conquers his fear for when his pride is not concerned this fear will appear most glaringly if he is not used to the sea let him but be in a storm or if he never was ill before have but a sore throat or slight fever and he will show a thousand anxieties and in them the inestimable value he sets on life had man been naturally humble and proof against flattery the man could never have had his ends or known what to have made of him without vices the excellency of the species would have ever remained undiscovered and every worthy that has made himself famous in the world is a strong evidence against this amiable system if the courage of the great Macedonian came up to distraction when he fought alone against a whole garrison his madness was not less when he fancied himself to be a god or at least doubted whether he was or not and as soon as we make this reflection we discover both the passion and the extravagancy of it that buoyed up his spirits in the most imminent dangers and carried him through all the difficulties and fatigues he underwent there never was in the world a brighter example of an able and complete magistrate than Cicero when I think on his care and vigilance the real hazards he slighted and the pains he took for the safety of Rome his wisdom and sagacity and detecting and disappointing the stratagems of the boldest and most subtle conspirators and at the same time on his love to literature arts and sciences his capacity in metaphysics the justness of his reasonings the force of his eloquence the politeness of his style and the gentile spirit that runs through his writings when I think I say on all these things together I am struck with amazement and the least I can say of him is a prodigious man but when I have set the many good qualities he had in the best light it is as evident to me on the other side that had his vanity been inferior to his greatest excellency the good sense and knowledge of the world he was so eminently possessed of could never have let him be such a fulsome as well as noisy trumpeter as he was of his own praises or suffered him rather than not proclaim his own merit to make a verse that a schoolboy laughed at for oh fortuna tam etc how strict and severe was the morality of rigid Cato how steadily and unaffected the virtue of that grand assertor of roman liberty but though the equivalent this stoic enjoyed for all the self-denial and austerity he practiced remained long concealed and his peculiar modesty hid from the world and perhaps himself a vast while the frailty of his heart brought him into heroism yet it was brought to light in the last scene of his life and by his suicide it plainly appeared that he was governed by a tyrannical power superior to the love of his country and that the implacable hatred and superlative envy he bore to the glory the real greatness and personal merit of Caesar had for a long time swayed all his actions under the most noble pretenses had not this violent motive overruled his consummate prudence he might not only have saved himself but likewise most of his friends that were ruined by the loss of him and would in all probability if he could have stooped to it been the second man in Rome but he knew the boundless mind and unlimited generosity of the victor it was his clemency he feared and therefore chose death because it was less terrible to his pride than the thoughts of giving his mortal foes so tempting an opportunity of showing the magnanimity of his soul as Caesar would have found in forgiving such an inveterate enemy as Cato and offering him his friendship and which it is thought by the judicious that penetrating as well as ambitious conqueror would not have slipped if the other had dared to live another argument to prove the kind disposition and real affection we naturally have for our species is our love of company and the aversion men that are in their senses generally have to solitude beyond other creatures this bears a fine gloss in the characteristics and is set off in very good language to the best advantage the next day after I read it first I heard abundance of people cry fresh herrings which with a reflection on the vast shoals of that and other fish that are caught together made me very merry though I was alone but as I was entertaining myself with this contemplation came an impertinent idle fellow whom I had the misfortune to be known by and asked me how I did though I was and dare say looked as healthy and as well as ever I was or did in my life what I answered him I forgot but remember that I could not get rid of him in a good while and felt all the uneasiness my friend Horace complains of from a persecution of the like nature I would have no sagacious critic pronounce me a manhater from this short story whoever does is very much mistaken I am a great lover of company and if the reader is not quite tired with mine before I show the weakness and ridicule of that piece of flattery made to our species and which I was just now speaking of I will give him a description of the man I would choose for conversation with a promise that before he has finished what at first he might only take for a digression foreign to my purpose he shall find the use of it by early an artful instruction he should be thoroughly imbued with the notions of honor and shame and have contracted and habitual aversion to everything that has the least tendency to impudence, rudeness, or inhumanity he should be well versed in the Latin tongue and not ignorant of the Greek and moreover understand one or two of the modern languages besides his own he should be acquainted with the fashions and customs of the ancients but thoroughly skilled in the history of his own country and the manners of the age he lives in he should besides literature have studied some useful science or other seen some foreign courts and universities and made the true use of traveling he should at times take delight in dancing, fencing, riding the great horse and knowing something of hunting and other country sports without being attached to any and he should treat them all as either exercises for health or diversions that should never interfere with business or the attaining to more valuable qualifications he should have a smash of geometry and astronomy as well as anatomy and the economy of human bodies to understand music so as to perform is an accomplishment but there is abundance to be said against it and instead of it I would have him know so much of drawing as is required to take a landscape or explain one's meaning of any form or model we would describe but never to touch a pencil he should be very early used to the company of modest women and never be a fortnight without conversing with the ladies gross vices as irreligion, whoring gaming, drinking and quarreling I will not mention even the meanest education guards us against them I would always recommend to him the practice of virtue but I am for no voluntary ignorance in a gentleman of anything that is done in court or city it is impossible a man should be perfect and therefore there are faults I would connive at if I could not prevent them and if between the years of 19 and 3 and 20 youthful heat should sometimes get the better chastity so it was done with caution should he on some extraordinary occasion overcome by the pressing solicitations of jovial friends drink more than was consistent with strict sobriety so he did it very seldom and found it not to interfere with his health or temper or if by the height of his metal and great provocation and a just cause he had been drawn into a quarrel which true wisdom and a less strict adherence to the rules of honour might have declined or prevented so it never befell him above once if I say he should have happened to be guilty of these things and he would never speak much less brag of them himself they might be pardoned or at least overlooked at the age I named if he left off then and continued discreet forever after the very disasters of youth have sometimes frightened gentlemen into a more steady prudence than in all probability they would ever have been masters of without them to keep him from interpitude and things that are openly scandalous there is nothing better than to procure him free access in one or two noble families where his frequent attendance is counted a duty and while by that means you preserve his pride he is kept in a continual dread of shame a man of a tolerable fortune pretty near accomplished as I have required him to be that still improves himself and sees the world till he is 30 cannot be disagreeable to converse with at least while he continues in health and prosperity and has nothing to spoil his temper when such a one either by chance or appointment meets with three or four of our equals and all agree to pass away a few hours together the whole is what I call a good company there is nothing said in it that is not either instructive or diverting to a man of sense it is possible they may not always be of the same opinion but there can be no contest between any but who shall yield first to the other from one only speaks at a time and no louder than to be plainly understood by him who sits the farthest off the greatest pleasure aimed at by every one of them is to have the satisfaction of pleasing others which they all practically know may as effectually be done by harkening with attention and an approving countenance as we said very good things ourselves most people of taste would like such a conversation and justly prefer it to being alone when they knew not how to spend their time but if they could employ themselves in something from which they expected either a more solid or a more lasting satisfaction they would deny themselves this pleasure and follow what was of greater consequence to them but would not a man though he had seen no mortal in a fortnight remain alone as much longer rather than get into company of noisy fellows that take delight in contradiction and place a glory in picking a quarrel would not one that has books read forever or set himself to ride upon some subject or other rather than be every night with party men who count the island to be good for nothing while their adversaries are suffered to live upon it would not a man be by himself a month and go to bed before seven o'clock rather than mix with fox hunters who having all day long tried in vain to break their necks join at night in a second attempt upon their lives by drinking and to express their mirth are louder and senseless sounds with indoors than their barking and less troublesome companions are only without I have no great value for a man who would not rather tire himself with walking or if he was shut up scatter pins about the room in order to pick them up again then keep company for six hours with half a score common sailors the day their ship was paid off I will grant nevertheless the greatest part of mankind rather than be alone any considerable time would submit to the things I named but I cannot see why this love of company this strong desire after society should be construed so much in our favor and alleged as a mark of some intrinsic worth in man not to be found in other animals for to prove from it the goodness of our nature and a generous love in man extended beyond himself on the rest of his species by virtue of which he was a sociable creature this eagerness after company and a version of being alone ought to have been most conspicuous and most violent in the best of their kind the men of the greatest genius parts and accomplishments and those who are the least subject to vice the contrary of which is true the weakest minds who can the least govern their passions guilty consciences that abhor reflection and the worthless who are incapable of producing anything of their own that is useful are the greatest enemies to solitude and will take up with any company rather than be without whereas the men of sense and knowledge that can think and contemplate on things and such as are but little disturbed by their passions can bear to be by themselves the longest without reluctancy and to avoid noise folly and impertinence will run away from 20 companies and rather than meet with anything disagreeable to their good taste will prefer their closet or garden nay a common or a desert to the society of some men but let us suppose the love of company is so inseparable from our species that no man could endure to be alone one moment what conclusions could be drawn from this does not man love company as he does everything else for his own sake no friendships or civilities are lasting that are not reciprocal in all your weekly and daily meetings for diversion as well as annual feasts and the most solemn carousels every member that assists at them has his own ends and some frequent a club which they would never go to unless they were the top of it I have known a man who was the oracle of the company be very constant and as uneasy at anything that hindered him from coming at the hour leave his society altogether as soon as another was added that could match and disputed superiority with him there are people who are incapable of holding an argument and yet malicious enough to take delight in hearing others wrangle and though they never concern themselves in the controversy would think a company insipid where they could not have that diversion a good house rich with furniture a fine garden horses dogs ancestors relations beauty strength excellency and anything whatever vices as well as virtue may all be accessory to make men long for society in hopes that what they value themselves upon will at one time or other become the theme of the discourse and give an inward satisfaction to them even the most polite people in the world and such as I spoke of at first give no pleasure to others that is not repaid of their self-love and does not at last center in themselves let them wind it and turn it as they will but the plainest demonstration that in all clubs and societies of conversable people everybody has the greatest consideration for himself is that the disinterested who rather overpays than wrangles the good humor that is never waspish nor soon offended the easy and indolent that hates disputes and never talks for triumph is everywhere the darling of the company whereas the man of sense and knowledge that will not be imposed upon or talked for the reason the man of genius and spirit that can say sharp and witty things though he never lashes but what deserves it the man of honor who neither gives nor takes in a front may be esteemed but it seldom so well beloved as a weaker man less accomplished as in these instances the friendly qualities arise from our contriving perpetually our own satisfaction so on other occasions they proceed from the natural timidity of man and the solicitous care he takes of himself to Londoners whose businesses oblige them not to have any commerce together may no see and pass by one another every day upon the exchange with not much greater civility than bowls would let them meet at Bristol they will pull off their hats and on the least opportunity enter into conversation and be glad of one another's company when French English and Dutch meet in China or any other pagan country being all Europeans they look upon one another as countrymen and if no passion interferes we'll feel a natural propensity to love one another nay two men that are at enmity if they are forced to travel together will often lay by their animosities be affable and converse in a friendly manner especially if the road be unsafe and they are both strangers in the place they are to go to these things by superficial judges are attributed to man's sociableness his natural propensity to friendship and love of company but whoever will duly examine things and look into man more narrowly will find that on all these occasions we only endeavor to strengthen our interest and are moved by the causes already alleged what I have endeavored hitherto has been to prove that the polkrum et onestum, excellency and real worth of things are most commonly precarious and alterable as modes and customs that consequently the inferences drawn from their certainty are insignificant and that the generous notions concerning the natural goodness of man are hurtful as they tend to mislead and are merely chimerical the truth of this latter I have illustrated by the most obvious examples in history I have spoke of our love of company and a version to solitude examined thoroughly the various motives of them and made it appear that they all center in self love and I intend now to investigate into the nature of society and diving into the very rise of it make it evident that not the good and the amiable but the bad and hateful qualities of man his imperfections and the want of excellencies which other creatures are endued with are the first causes that made man sociable beyond other animals the moment after he lost paradise and that if he had remained in his primitive innocence and continued to enjoy the blessings that attended it there is no shadow of probability that he ever would have become that sociable creature he is now how necessary our appetites and passions are for the welfare of all trades and handicrafts has been sufficiently proved throughout the book and that they are our bad qualities or at least produce them nobody denies it remains then that I should set forth the variety of obstacles that hinder and perplex man in the labor he is constantly employed in the procuring of what he wants and which in other words is called the business of self preservation while at the same time I demonstrate that the sociableness of man arises only from these two things vis the multiplicity of his desires and the continual opposition he meets with in his endeavors to gratify them the obstacles I speak of relate either to our own frame or the globe we inhabit I mean the condition of it since it has been cursed I have often endeavored to contemplate separately on the two things I named last but could never keep them asunder they always interfere and mix with one another and at last make up together a frightful chaos of evil all the elements are our enemies water drowns and fire consumes those who unskillfully approach them the earth in a thousand places produces plants and other vegetables that are hurtful to man while she feeds and cherishes a variety of creatures that are noxious to him and suffers a legion of poisons dwell within her but the most unkind of all the elements is that which we cannot live one moment without it is impossible to repeat all the injuries we receive from the wind and weather and though the greatest part of mankind have ever been employed in defending their species from the inclemancy of the air yet no art or labor have hitherto been able to find a security against the wild rage of some meteors hurricanes it is true happen but seldom and few men are swallowed up by earthquakes or devoured by lions but while we escape those gigantic mischiefs we are persecuted by trifles what a vast variety of insects are tormenting us what multitudes of them insult and make game of us with impunity the most despicable scruple not to trample and graze upon us as cattle do upon a field which yet is often born with if moderately they use their fortune but here again our clemency becomes a vice and so encroaching are their cruelty and contempt of us on our pity that they make lay stalls of our hands and devour our young ones if we are not daily vigilant in pursuing and destroying them there is nothing good in all the universe to the best designing man if either through mistake or ignorance he commits the least failing in the use of it there is no innocence or integrity that can protect a man from a thousand mischiefs that surround him on the contrary everything is evil which art and experience have not taught us to turn into a blessing therefore how diligent in harvest time is the husbandman in getting in his crop and sheltering it from rain without which he could never have enjoyed it as seasons differ with the climates experience has taught us differently to make use of them and in one part of the globe we may see the farmer so while he is reaping in the other from all which we may learn how vastly this earth must have been altered since the fall of our first parents for should we trace man from his beautiful his divine original not proud of wisdom acquired by haughty precept or tedious experience but in dude with consummate knowledge the moment he was formed I mean the state of innocence in which no animal nor vegetable upon earth nor mineral underground was noxious to him and himself secured from the injuries of the air as well as all other harms was contended with the necessities of life which the globe he inhabited furnished him with without his assistance when yet not conscious of guilt he found himself in every place to be the well obeyed unrivaled Lord of all and unaffected with his greatness was wholly wrapped up in sublime meditations on the infinity of his creator who daily did vouchsafe intelligibly to speak to him and visit without mischief in such a golden age no reason or probability can be alleged why mankind ever should have raised themselves into such large societies as there have been in the world as long as we can give an intolerable account of it where a man has everything he desires and nothing to vex or disturb him there is nothing can be added to his happiness and it is impossible to name a trade, art, science dignity or employment that would not be superfluous in such a blessed state if we pursue this thought we shall easily perceive that no societies could have sprung from the amiable virtues and loving qualities of man but on the contrary that all of them must have had the origin from his wants, his imperfections and the variety of his appetites we shall find likewise that the more their pride and vanity are displayed and all their desires enlarged the more capable they must be of being raised into large and vastly numerous societies was the air always as inoffensive to our naked bodies and as pleasant as to our thinking it is to the generality of birds in fair weather and man had not been affected with pride, luxury and hypocrisy as well as lust I cannot see what could have put us in the clothes and houses I shall say nothing of jewels of plate, painting, sculpture fine furniture and all that rigid moralists have called unnecessary and superfluous but if we were not soon tired with walking a foot and were as nimble as some other animals if men were naturally laborious and none unreasonable in seeking and indulging their ease and likewise free from other vices and the ground was everywhere even solid and clean we would have thought of coaches or ventured on a horse's back what occasion has the dolphin for a ship or what carriage would an eagle ask to travel in I hope the reader knows that by society I understand a body politic in which man either subdued by superior force or by persuasion drawn from his savage state is become a disciplined creature that can find his own ends in laboring for others and where under one head in another form of government each member is rendered subservient to the whole and all of them by cunning management are made to act as one for if by society we only mean a number of people that without ruler government should keep together out of a natural affection to their species or love of company as a herd of cows or a flock of sheep then there is not in the world a more unfit creature for society than man a hundred of them that should all be equals although subjection or fear of any superior upon earth could never live together awake two hours without quarreling and the more knowledge, strength, wit, courage and resolution there was among them the worse it would be it is probable that in the wild state of nature parents would keep a superiority over their children at least while they were in strength and that even afterwards the remembrance of what the others had experienced might produce in them something between love and fear which we call reverence it is probable likewise that the second generation following the example of the first a man with a little cunning would always be able as long as he lived and had his senses to maintain a superior sway over all his own offspring and descendants how numerous so ever they might grow but the stock once dead the sons would quarrel and there could be no peace long before there had been war eldership and brothers is of no great force and the preeminence that is given to it is only invented as a shift to live in peace man as he is a fearful animal naturally not rapacious loves peace and quiet and he would never fight if nobody offended him and he could have what he fights for without it to this fearful disposition and the aversion he has to his being disturbed are owing all the various projects and forms of government monarchy without doubt was the first aristocracy and democracy are two different methods of mending the inconveniences of the first and a mixture of these three and improvement on all the rest but be we savages or politicians it is impossible that man mere fallen man should act with any other view but to please himself while he has the use of his organs and the greatest extravagancy either of love or despair can have no other center there is no difference between will and pleasure in one sense and every motion made in spite of them must be unnatural and convulsive since then action is so confined and we are always forced to do what we please and at the same time our thoughts are free and uncontrolled it is impossible we could be sociable creatures without hypocrisy the proof of this is plain since we cannot prevent the ideas that are continually arising within us all civil commerce would be lost if by art and prudent dissimulation we had not learned to hide and stifle them and if all we think was to be laid open to others in the same manner as it is to ourselves it is impossible that in dude with speech we could be sufferable to one another I am persuaded that every reader feels the truth of what I say and I tell my antagonist that his conscience flies in his face while his tongue is preparing to refute me in all civil societies men are taught insensibly to be hypocrites from their cradle nobody dares to own that he gets by public calamities or even by the loss of private persons the sexton would be stoned should he wish openly for the death of the parishioners though everybody knew that he had nothing else to live upon end of section 29