The Fable of the Bees Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits

"Among the masterworks of Augustan England few can be said to anticipate our dilemmas of individual, social, economic and political morality more ably than Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. Much misunderstood by his Augustan contemporaries, many of whom declared his book pernicious, Mandeville turned his physician's eye upon his society's health, and found that it thrived everywhere upon individual corruptions. His analyses of the role of social ideals and personal impulses in human motivation are as stimulating today as they were in his time, and those who believe that the political morality of Machiavelli is still alive today cannot ignore the pungent social criticism of Mandeville, his kindred spirit"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).