SOURCE: Goldsmith, M. M. “Private Vices.” In Private Vices, Public Benefits: Bernard Mandeville's Social and Political Thought, second ed., pp. 33-49. Cybereditions, 2002.

In the following excerpt, Goldsmith analyzes Mandeville's theory of society, which “justified the activities of those who sought only their private good or pleasure—what many called vice.”

But something could be said against the ideology of public virtue. And it was, by Bernard Mandeville, an immigrant Dutch physician who had settled in London.¹

Mandeville began his literary career writing verses. His first published work seems to have been The Pamphleteers, a work which defended William's character and the policies pursued under his rule against those who alleged that millions had been misspent and who called for resumption of the grants that had been made.² He soon turned to verse fables. Some Fables after the Easie and Familiar Method of Monsieur de la Fontaine appeared in...