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fed by evil appetites and evil deeds. The work was, indeed, a first sign of the strength of the reaction that gathered force year after year, until it struck on Europe with the shock of Revolution. But there was nothing in Bernard Mandeville of the fine yearning for a higher life that was to rise above the ruins of all that had been based on human wrong. It was enough for him to maintain steadily that evil was man's good.-MORLEY, HENRY, 1880, ed., Shorter Works in English Prose, p. 253.

It would be a relief if we could look upon the work as an ironical satire upon the immorality of the age-a jeering exposure of the prevalent vicious practice. by flaunting it in the outrageous extravagance of a theory; but the whole manner of the book, taken along with the appended "Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue," is incompatible with such a supposition. The author has, therefore, been generally and justly interpreted as maintaining desirously a doctrine which is in flagrant antagonism alike with all the history of political society, with the results. of economical science, and with the high Hebrew morality on which Christianity founds the doctrine that the vices of individuals are economically beneficial to society, that it is unrighteousness that exalts a nation, while godliness is a reproach to any people.-MURRAY, J. CLARK, 1887, The Revived Study of Berkeley, Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 56, p. 171.

Mandeville gave great offence by this book, in which a cynical system of morality was made attractive by ingenious paradoxes. It was long popular, and later critics have pointed out the real acuteness of the writer as well as the vigour of his style, especially remarkable in a foreigner. His doctrine that prosperity was increased by expenditure rather than by saving fell in with many current economical fallacies not yet extinct. Assuming with the ascetics that human desires were essentially evil and therefore produced "private vices," and assuming with the common view that wealth was a "public benefit," he easily showed that all civilisation implied the development of vicious propensities. He argued again with Hobbists that the origin of virtue was to be found in selfish and savage instincts, and vigorously attacked Shaftesbury's contrary theory of

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a "moral sense. But he tacitly accepted Shaftesbury's inference that virtue so understood was a mere sham. He thus argued, in appearance at least, for the essential vileness of human nature; though his arguments may be regarded as partly ironical, or as a satire against the hypocrisies of an artficial society. In any case his appeal to facts, against the plausibilities of the opposite school, shows that he had many keen though imperfect previsions of later scientific views, both upon ethical and economical questions. Dr. Johnson was much impressed by the "Fable," which, he said, did not puzzle him, but "opened his views into real life very much."-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1893, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXVI, p. 21.

The author of the "Fable of the Bees" writes coarsely for coarse readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory merit the infamy generally awarded to them.-DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 215.

GENERAL

Mandeville's satires, though general, frequently exhibit strong and lively pictures.-MILLS, ABRAHAM, 1851, The Literature and the Literary Men of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II, p. 265.

Mandeville's object being chiefly negative and dialectical he has left little of positive ethical theory. Virtue he regards as de facto an arbitrary institution of society; what it ought to be, he hardly says, but the tendency of his writings is to make the good of the whole to be preferred to private interests. He denies the existence of a moral sense and of disinterestedness. The motive to observe moral rules is pride and vanity fomented by politicians. by politicians. He does not regard virtue as an independent end, even by association, but considers that pride in its naked form is the ever present incentive to good conduct. BAIN, ALEXANDER, 1868-72, Moral Science, p. 183.

Mandeville is said to have been in the habit of frequenting coffee-houses, and amusing his patrons by ribald conversation. The tone of his writing harmonises with this account of his personal habits. He is a cynical and prurient writer, who seems to shrink from no jest, however scurrilous, and from no paradox, however grotesque, which is calculated to serve

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the purpose, which he avows in his preface to be his sole purpose, of diverting his readers-readers, it may be added, not very scrupulous in their tastes. . Mandeville shares Swift's contempt for the human race; but his contempt, instead of urging him to the borders of madness, merely finds vent in a horselaugh. He despises himself as well as his neighbours, and is content to be despicable. He is a scoffer, not a misanthrope. You are all Yahoos, he seems to say, and I am a Yahoo; and so-let us eat, drink, and be merry.. Tell your fine stories to devotees or schoolgirls, he seems to say, but don't try to pass them off upon me, who have seen men and cities, and not taken my notions from books. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, pp. 33, 34.

Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine,
Come and review thy counsels: art thou still
Staunch to their teaching?--not as fools opine
Its purport might be, but as subtler skill
Could, through turbidity, the loaded line
Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till
It touched a quietude and reached a shrine
And recognized harmoniously combine
Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph-
thine,

Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville!

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-BROWNING, ROBERT, 1887, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day, pp. 23, 26.

The "Fable of the Bees" which, with its more immediate appendices, contains almost everything of Mandeville's that is of importance to any but the curious, is one of those unlucky books which have become known to posterity chiefly by the polemical efforts of others to suppress them. . . . His verse is very uncouth, and his prose is frequently incorrect and never in any way polished; but he makes up for this by many of the merits of Defoe, to whom in character as in period he is very close. Many of his characters -the special knack of the time-possess great felicity and truth of touch; his argument, sophistical as it commonly is, is put with a good deal of surface clearness and cogency; and his illustrations

and digressive passages have singular liveliness and force. And though

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his sudden and not very savoury notoriety tempted him to indulge in long and dull dissertations where the merit of his style is spun too thin to cover the nakedness of his sophistry, he must still at his best remain a striking exemplar of one of the most nervous if not the most elegant periods of English writing, and deserve a place in the division of English prose history which includes Latimer and Bunyan, Defoe and Cobbett.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1894, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. III, pp. 438, 439.

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the

ablest of the English deists, and though all the respectability of his time drew away from him, and voted him, like the grand jury of Middlesex, a public nuisance, he was not without his very distinct influence on the progress of English literature. He was an emancipator of thought, a rude and contemptuous critic of the conventions. In himself base and ugly for all his writings reveal a gross individuality-the brute courage of Mandeville helped English speculation to slip from its fetters. His style is without elegance, but, what is strange in a foreigner, of a remarkable homeliness and picturesque vigour.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1897, Short History of Modern English Literature, p. 225.

Mandeville is certainly not an innocent. writer, but he has been considerably misunderstood both by his contemporaries and by modern critics. His business is the exposure of humbug and hypocrisy, and he does his work consistently and thoroughly, though he dips his pen in a very nasty mixture and carefully poses as a very disreputable person. His taste is as abominable as his style is effective. The essentially satirical character of his work is however concealed by his constant indulgence in paradox, a method which enables him to give a maximum of offence, while keeping in the back-ground a few unexceptionable principles to which he can apppeal in case of need.—SELBYBIGGE, L. A., 1897, ed., British Moralists, vol. 1, Introduction, p. xv.

Matthew Tindal

1653?-1733

One of the successors of Toland and Shaftesbury in the school of English deists or freethinkers, was born at Beer-Ferrers, in Devonshire, about 1657. He was educated at Lincoln and Exeter Colleges, Oxford: took his A. B. in 1676; shortly after was elected fellow of All-Souls', and was admitted doctor of laws at Oxford in 1685. He retained his fellowship during the reign of James II. by professing the Roman Catholic faith; he afterwards recanted, however, and, adopting revolutionary principles, went to the other extreme, and wrote against the nonjurors. He now became an adovcate, and sat as judge in the court of delegates, with a pension from the crown of £200 per annum. Some time afterwards, considerable attention was drawn to him by his work entitled "The Rights of the Christian Church" (1706-7, 8vo), and the ensuing controversy; but the production which had rendered his name a memorable one was his "Christianity as Old as the Creation" (1730) which provoked replies from Dr. Warburton, Leland, Foster, and Conybeare. Tindal died in London, Aug. 16, 1733, and was interred in Clerkenwell Church. Mr. Tindal also wrote, "An Essay concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion" (London 1697, 8vo):-"A Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church" (ibid. 1709, 2 pts. 8vo):-"The Nation Vindicated" (ibid. 1711; pt. ii, 1712):-"War with Priestcraft, or the Freethinker's Iliad" (ibid. 1732, 8vo), a burlesque poem.M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG, eds., 1881, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. x, pp. 425, 426.

PERSONAL

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This day, at 12 o'clock at noon, St. Marie's great bell rung out for Dr. Matthew Tindall, fellow of All Soul's college, who died this last week out of the college. He was a man of most vile principles, and of no religion, as may appear from many books he wrote and published, in which he had the assistance of the late Mr. Collins, yet without his name to them, amongst which are the "Rights of the Christian Church," and "Christianity as old as the Creation." -HEARNE, THOMAS, 1733, Reliquia Hearniana, ed, Bliss, Aug. 20, vol. III, p. 102.

CHRISTIANITY AS OLD AS CREATION 1730

If you was here, you would see how I have scribbled over the margins of Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation." I think I have him as sure as I had Collins: that is, overturn the pillars of this famous edifice of impiety: which all the writers against him hitherto have. left standing; busying themselves only to untile his roof.-WARBURTON, WILLIAM, 1758, Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, p. 267.

This was not only the most important work that deism had yet produced, composed with care, and bearing the marks of thoughtful study of the chief

contemporary arguments, Christian as well
as Deist, but derives an interest from the
circumstance that it was the book to
which more than to any other single
work, bishop Butler's "Analogy" was
designed as a reply.-FARRAR, ADAM
STOREY, 1862, Critical History of Free
Thought, Lecture iv, p. 195.

The replies to Tindal, taking them alto-
gether, were unsatisfactory. This may
have been owing to a want of definite-
ness as to the object of his book. It
was diffuse in its style, abounding in long
quotations, and many subjects were merely
alluded to and left for future treatment.

Tindal left another volume of his book in manuscript, but it fell into the hands of the Bishop of London, who thought the best way to answer it was to destroy it. Bishop Gibson had made Tindal's work the subject of one of his "Pastoral Letters." He had said the opponents, and he said them as well as same things against it as Tindal's other any of them had done. Gibson was a liberal Churchman as well as an assiduous bishop, and had some of the best qualities of the rational divines of his time, but the world will scarcely forgive him for the sacrilege of destroying the work of one of the most thoughtful men of that age. On the monument erected to his memory in the vestibule of Fulham Church this is not recorded among his noble

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virtues and the great acts of his life. Could the deed speak, it would say

"Non ego sum titulis surripienda tuis." -HUNT, JOHN, 1869, Matthew Tindal, Contemporary Review, vol. 10, p. 589.

He was about thirty at the time of his first escapade; at the ripe age of nearly fifty, he first attracted notice by a book called "The Rights of the Christian Church," which was a vigorous assault upon his former High Church allies; and he was already past seventy when he produced the first volume of "Christianity as Old as the Creation." The second which should have followed, was quietly burned by Bishop Gibson, into whose hands the MS. fell after the author's death, and who acted on the principle that prevention was better than cure. The first volume, however, had done its work. It has not the force of style or the weight of thought which could secure a permanent place in literature; and has become rather heavy reading at the present day. The arrangement is confused; it is full of repetition. Yet it had the merit of bringing out with great distinctness the most essential position of the deists. Tindal was, in reality, just one stage in advance of Tillotson, Hoadly, Clarke, and other latitudinarian divines from whom he borrowed, and whose authority he freely quotes. He was to Clarke what Toland had been to Locke. The indignation which he produced amongst their followers was the livelier because he seemed to be unmasking

their secret thoughts, and formulating the conclusions for which they had already provided the premises. Are you aware, asked some disputant, that the necessary inference from your argument is so and so? Yes, replied his antagonist, but I don't draw it. Tindal insisted upon drawing it, and was reviled, accordingly.-STEPHEN LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, p. 135.

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"Christianity as old as the Creation,' a work published without his name, and never finished, revealed how deeply and long meditated had been this protest against all positive religion. This book, to my mind, has many and grievous faults. Being in the form of a dialogue between A and B, it commits the Christian cause to one of the greatest weaklings known in controversy. It is radically ambiguous. It has endless repetitions, is full of the fallacy of citation, and is crowded. with particular objections to the Old Testament and New that do not belong to its main argument, holding right on, as in the case of the various readings, as if nothing had ever been said on the other side. But with all these drawbacks it compels the breaking up of new ground bearing on the relation of natural religion (so called) to revealed.

The

ground of Tindal was really the key of the Deistic position; and hence with his defeat the struggle became less close and stubborn. CAIRNS, JOHN, 1881, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 84, 85.

Thomas Woolston

1670-1733

Born at Northampton, England, 1669; died in London, 1732; was educated at Cambridge, and obtained a fellowship there. After attracting an unenviable attention by some other writings, he published, London, 1727-1729, six discourses "On the Miracles of our Saviour," which, on account of their tone of ridicule, gave so much offence that he was prosecuted by the attorney-general, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to pay a fine of £100. Being unable to pay the fine, he remained in prison and died there shortly after. There is some reason, however, for believing his mind was diseased.-JACKSON, SAMUEL MACAULEY, ed., 1889-91, Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, p. 980.

GENERAL

He might at the same rate of arguing have undertaken to prove that there was no such person as Jesus Christ, or his apostles, or that they were only allegorical persons, and that Christianity was never planted or propagated in the world at

all.-LELAND, JOHN, 1754-56, A View of the Deistical Writers, Letter VIII.

The letters ["Discourses"] were written. with a coarseness and irreverence so singular, even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be attributed to insanity. They contain the most.

. .

undisguised abuse which had been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens. In classifying Woolston with later writers against miracles, he may be compared in some cases, though with striking differences of tone, with those German rationalists, like Paulus, who have rationalized the miracles, but in more cases with those who, like Strauss, have idealized them. His method, however, is an appeal to general probability, rather than to literary criticism.-FARRAR, ADAM STOREY, 1862, Critical History of Free Thought, Lecture IV. No man was ever more thoroughly

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refuted than Thomas Woolston. a pity that such men as Pearce, Sherlock and Lardner should have been under the necessity of defending Christianity against one who, it is charitable to suppose, was not really sane. It was a pity in many respects that the Deist controversy reached its climax in a madman. Woolston's mind was typical of the minds of a large class which is fairly divided between believers and unbelievers. They can only be Christians while they can lean upon a book, a Church, Primitive antiquity, or some external authority. When this prop fails, they are unbelievers. So long as

Woolston could believe in the Fathers, he was a Christian. When he found it impossible to believe Christianity on their authority, he was no more a believer. He had no eye to see the everlasting harmonies. He had no soul to feel that there is a Divine Christ in the miracles, whatever else we may know about them. That spirit which giveth life was more dead to him than the letter which he despised. He wrote against the clergy; perhaps they deserved it. He wrote much against the Gospels, and he could have written much more of the same kind. It is easy to raise a thousand plausible and ingenious objections to anything whatever, and as easy to make a thousand answers as plausible and ingenious, while the thing itself remains where it was. HUNT, JOHN, 1871, Religious Thought in England from the Reformation to the End of the Last Century, vol. II, p. 431.

Woolston's discourses, written to prove the miracles of the new testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was

much struck by this writer's coarse and hardy way of dealing with the miraculous legends, and the article on miracles in the Philosophical Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston's book.MORLEY, JOHN, 1872, Voltaire, p. 84.

Through six straggling discourses, Woolston attempts to make fun of the miracles. There are, at intervals, queer gleams of distorted sense, and even of literary power, in the midst of his buffoonery. Occasionally he hits a real blot; more frequently he indulges in the most absurd quibbles, and throughout he shows almost as little approximation to a genuine critical capacity as to reverential. appreciation of the beauty of many of the narratives. He is a mere buffoon jingling his cap and bells in a sacred shrine; and his strange ribaldry is painful even to those for whom the supernatural glory of the temple has long utterly faded away. Even where some straggling shreds of sense obtrude themselves, the language is obtrusively coarse, and occasionally degenerates into mere slang. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, p. 231.

The discussion in regard to miracles, which immediately followed that as to prophecy, and made, in one sense the most flagrant and noted passages of the Deistical controversy, was unhappily connected with a leader who wanted every quality that could give it a solid and a permanent interest, being either so blunted in his moral perceptions, or, what is more probable, so near to madness in his mental condition, and in any case so destitute of judgment and learning, that the deniers of Christianity in our day would as little consent to be represented by him as his antagonists. This was Thomas Woolston.-CAIRNS, JOHN, 1881, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 79.

He bore the repute of a sound scholar, a good preacher, a charitable and estimable man. His reading led him to study the works of Origen, from whom he adopted the idea of interpreting the scripture as allegory.

The

vigour of the discourses is undeniable, and it has been said with some truth that they anticipate the mythical theory of Strauss. GORDON, ALEXANDER, 1900, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LXII, p. 439.

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