Mandeville draws a nice distinction between self-love, and, what he calls, self-liking.  ’To increase the care in creatures to preserve themselves, Mature has given them an instinct, by which every individual values itself above its real worth.’  The more mettlesome and spirited animals (e.g., horses) are endowed with this instinct.  In us, it is accompanied with an apprehension that we do overvalue ourselves; hence our susceptibility to the confirmatory good opinion of others.  But if each were to display openly his own feeling of superiority, quarrels would inevitably arise.  The grand discovery whereby the ill consequences of this passion are avoided is politeness.  ’Good manners consists in flattering the pride of others, and concealing our own.’  The first step is to conceal our good opinion of ourselves; the next is more impudent, namely, to pretend that we value others more highly than ourselves.  But it takes a long time to come to that pitch; the Romans were almost masters of the world before they learned politeness.

3. Pride, Vanity, Honour.  Pride is of great consequence in Mandeville’s system.  ’The moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride.’  Man is naturally innocent, timid, and stupid; destitute of strong passions or appetites, he would remain in his primitive barbarism were it not for pride.  Yet all moralists condemn pride, as a vain notion of our own superiority.  It is a subtle passion, not easy to trace.  It is often seen in the humility of the humble, and the shamelessness of the shameless.  It simulates charity; ’pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all the virtues together.’  It is the chief ingredient in the chastity of women, and in the courage of men.  Less cynical moralists than Mandeville have looked with suspicion on posthumous fame; ’so silly a creature is man, as that, intoxicated with the fumes of vanity, he can feast on the thought of the praises that shall be paid his memory in future ages, with so much ecstasy as to neglect his present life, nay court and covet death, if he but imagines that it will add to the glory he had acquired before.’  But the most notable institution of pride is the love of honour.  Honour is a ‘chimera,’ having no reality in nature, but a mere invention of moralists and politicians, to keep men close to their engagements, whatever they be.  In some families it is hereditary, like the gout; but, luckily, the vulgar are destitute of it.  In the time of chivalry, honour was a very troublesome affair; but in the beginning of the 17th century, it was melted over again, and brought to a new standard; ’they put in the same weight of courage, half the quantity of honesty, and a very little justice, but not a scrap of any other virtue.’  The worst thing about it is duelling; but there are more suicides than duels, so that at any rate men do not hate others more than themselves.  After a half-satirical apology for duelling, he concludes with one insurmountable objection; duelling is wholly repugnant to religion, adding with the muffled scepticism characteristic of the 18th century, ’how to reconcile them must be left to wiser heads than mine.’