The Fable of the Bees; Or, Private Vices, Public BenefitsMandeville, Bernard
Philosophy
The Fable of the Bees; Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits
Mandeville, Bernard
Charity-schools -- Early works to 1800; Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Virtue -- Early works to 1800
When obsequiousness and mean services are required, we shall always
observe that they are never so cheerfully nor so heartily performed,
as from inferiors to superiors; I mean inferiors not only in riches
and quality, but likewise in knowledge and understanding. A servant
can have no unfeigned respect for his master, as soon as he has
sense enough to find out that he serves a fool. When we are to
learn or to obey, we shall experience in ourselves, that the greater
opinion we have of the wisdom and capacity of those that are either
to teach or command us, the greater deference we pay to their laws
and instructions. No creatures submit contentedly to their equals;
and should a horse know as much as a man, I should not desire to be
his rider.
Here I am obliged again to make a digression, though I declare I never
had a less mind to it than I have at this minute; but I see a thousand
rods in piss, and the whole posse of diminutive pedants against me,
for assaulting the Christ-cross-row, and opposing the very elements
of literature.
This is no panic fear, and the reader will not imagine my apprehensions
ill grounded, if he considers what an army of petty tyrants I have to
cope with, that all either actually persecute with birch, or else are
soliciting for such a preferment. For if I had no other adversaries
than the starving wretches of both sexes, throughout the kingdom of
Great Britain, that from a natural antipathy to working, have a great
dislike to their present employment, and perceiving within a much
stronger inclination to command than ever they felt to obey others,
think themselves qualified, and wish from their hearts to be masters
and mistresses of charity schools, the number of my enemies would, by
the most modest computation, amount to one hundred thousand at least.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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