The Fable of the Bees (Philosophy Study). Bernard Mandeville
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feed them, and go about the house to suckle and nurse their young ones; or that a kite should call the hens to their meat, as the cock does, and sit brooding over their chickens instead of devouring them; but if they should all do so, they would cease to be cats and kites; it is inconsistent with their natures, and the species of creatures which now we mean, when we name cats and kites, would be extinct as soon as that could come to pass.
Line 183. Envy itself, and vanity,
Were ministers of industry.
Envy is that baseness in our nature, which makes us grieve and pine at what we conceive to be a happiness in others. I do not believe there is a human creature in his senses arrived to maturity, that at one time or other has not been carried away by this passion in good earnest; and yet I never met with any one that dared own he was guilty of it, but in jest. That we are so generally ashamed of this vice, is owing to that strong habit of hypocrisy, by the help of which, we have learned from our cradle to hide even from ourselves the vast extent of self-love, and all its different branches. It is impossible man should wish better for another than he does for himself, unless where he supposes an impossibility that himself should attain to those wishes; and from hence we may easily learn after what manner this passion is raised in us. In order to it, we are to consider first, that as well as we think of ourselves, so ill we think of our neighbour with equal injustice; and when we apprehend, that others do or will enjoy what we think they do not deserve, it afflicts and makes us angry with the cause of that disturbance. Secondly, That we are employed in wishing well for ourselves, every one according to his judgment and inclinations, and when we observe something we like, and yet are destitute of, in the possession of others; it occasions first sorrow in us for not having the thing we like. This sorrow is incurable, while we continue our esteem for the thing we want: but as self-defence is restless, and never suffers us to leave any means untried how to remove evil from us, as far and as well as we are able; experience teaches us, that nothing in nature more alleviates this sorrow, than our anger against those who are possessed of what we esteem and want. This latter passion, therefore, we cherish and cultivate to save or relieve ourselves, at least in part, from the uneasiness we felt from the first.
Envy, then, is a compound of grief and anger; the degrees of this passion depend chiefly on the nearness or remoteness of the objects, as to circumstances. If one, who is forced to walk on foot envies a great man for keeping a coach and six, it will never be with that violence, or give him that disturbance which it may to a man, who keeps a coach himself, but can only afford to drive with four horses. The symptoms of envy are as various, and as hard to describe, as those of the plague; at some time it appears in one shape, at others in another quite different. Among the fair, the disease is very common, and the signs of it very conspicuous in their opinions and censures of one another. In beautiful young women, you may often discover this faculty to a high degree; they frequently will hate one another mortally at first sight, from no other principle than envy; and you may read this scorn, and unreasonable aversion, in their very countenances, if they have not a great deal of art, and well learned to dissemble.
In the rude and unpolished multitude, this passion is very bare-faced; especially when they envy others for the goods of fortune: They rail at their betters, rip up their faults, and take pains to misconstrue their most commendable actions: They murmur at Providence, and loudly complain, that the good things of this world are chiefly enjoyed by those who do not deserve them. The grosser sort of them it often affects so violently, that if they were not withheld by the fear of the laws, they would go directly and beat those their envy is levelled at, from no other provocation than what that passion suggests to them.
The men of letters, labouring under this distemper, discover quite different symptoms. When they envy a person for his parts and erudition, their chief care is industriously to conceal their frailty, which generally is attempted by denying and depreciating the good qualities they envy: They carefully peruse his works, and are displeased with every fine passage they meet with; they look for nothing but his errors, and wish for no greater feast than a gross mistake: In their censures they are captious, as well as severe, make mountains of mole-hills, and will not pardon the least shadow of a fault, but exaggerate the most trifling omission into a capital blunder.
Envy is visible in brute-beasts; horses show it in their endeavours of outstripping one another; and the best spirited will run themselves to death, before they will suffer another before them. In dogs, this passion is likewise plainly to be seen, those who are used to be caressed will never tamely bear that felicity in others. I have seen a lap-dog that would choke himself with victuals, rather than leave any thing for a competitor of his own kind; and we may often observe the same behaviour in those creatures which we daily see in infants that are froward, and by being over-fondled made humoursome. If out of caprice they at any time refuse to eat what they have asked for, and we can but make them believe that some body else, nay, even the cat or the dog is going to take it from them, they will make an end of their oughts with pleasure, and feed even against their appetite.
If envy was not rivetted in human nature, it would not be so common in children, and youth would not be so generally spurred on by emulation. Those who would derive every thing that is beneficial to the society from a good principle, ascribe the effects of emulation in school-boys to a virtue of the mind; as it requires labour and pains, so it is evident, that they commit a self-denial, who act from that disposition; but if we look narrowly into it, we shall find, that this sacrifice of ease and pleasure is only made to envy, and the love of glory. If there was not something very like this passion, mixed with that pretended virtue, it would be impossible to raise and increase it by the same means that create envy. The boy, who receives a reward for the superiority of his performance, is conscious of the vexation it would have been to him, if he should have fallen short of it: This reflection makes him exert himself, not to be outdone by those whom he looks upon as his inferiors, and the greater his pride is, the more self-denial he will practise to maintain his conquest. The other, who, in spite of the pains he took to do well, has missed of the prize, is sorry, and consequently angry with him whom he must look upon as the cause of his grief: But to show this anger, would be ridiculous, and of no service to him, so that he must either be contented to be less esteemed than the other boy; or, by renewing his endeavours, become a greater proficient: and it is ten to one, but the disinterested, good-humoured, and peaceable lad, will choose the first, and so become indolent and inactive, while the covetous, peevish, and quarrelsome rascal, shall take incredible pains, and make himself a conqueror in his turn.
Envy, as it is very common among painters, so it is of great use for their improvement: I do not mean, that little dawbers envy great masters, but most of them are tainted with this vice against those immediately above them. If the pupil of a famous artist is of a bright genius, and uncommon application, he first adores his master; but as his own skill increases, he begins insensibly to envy what he admired before. To learn the nature of this passion, and that it consists in what I have named, we are but to observe, that, if a painter, by exerting himself, comes not only to equal, but to exceed the man he envied, his sorrow is gone, and all his anger disarmed; and if he hated him before, he is now glad to be friends with him, if the other will condescend to it.
Married women, who are guilty of this vice, which few are not, are always endeavouring to raise the same passion in their spouses; and where they have prevailed, envy and emulation have kept more men in bounds, and reformed more ill husbands from sloth, from drinking, and other evil courses, than all the sermons that have been preached since the time of the Apostles.
As every body would be happy, enjoy pleasure, and, avoid pain, if he could, so self-love bids us look on every creature that seems satisfied, as a rival in happiness; and the satisfaction we have in seeing that felicity disturbed, without any advantage to ourselves, but what springs from the pleasure we have in beholding it, is called loving mischief for mischief’s sake; and the motive of which that frailty is the result, malice, another offspring derived from the same original; for if there was no envy, there could be no malice. When the passions lie dormant, we have no apprehension of them, and often people think they have not such a frailty in their nature, because that moment they are not affected with it.
A gentleman well dressed, who happens to be dirtied all over by a coach or a cart, is laughed at, and by his inferiors much more than his equals, because they envy him more: they know he