Books in Review : THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF BERNARD MANDEVILLE by Thomas A. Horne. London and New York: Macmillan, 1978. Pp. 123. $10.

• DOI: 10.1177/009059177900700314
• Date: 01 August 1979
• Published date: 01 August 1979
• Author: Malcolm Jack
• Subject Matter: Articles

434
logically&dquo; are scarcely more than paraphrases of objections raised four
years earlier by Thompson.
Still, these are rather minor quibbles. Professors Lively and Rees
deserve our thanks for resurrecting and republishing these long-
inaccessible essays.
- Terence Ball
Nuffield College, Oxford
THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF BERNARD MANDEVILLE by
Thomas A. Horne. London and New York: Macmillan, 1978. Pp. 123.
$10.
It is Thomas Horne’s contention that Mandeville’s social theory
must be read as a challenge to that traditional political theory which
postulated a necessary connection between national well-being and
civic virtue. Proponents of this theory regarded economic activity as
the most dangerous threat to the virtuous life of citizens and conse-
quently to the nation. They therefore viewed the growth of commercial
prosperity in Augustan England with some concern and they associated
the corruption of manners which they found in contemporary society
with the increase in the material wealth of its citizens. Their reaction
consisted of a condemnation of material progress on moral grounds.
Mandeville directly challenged their central notion-virtuous be-
havior is in the public interest-by advancing the economic argument
that society benefits from the self-interested pursuit of gain by indi-
vidual citizens. Instead of considering selfishness a vice, Mandeville
identifies it as the source of political stability and, in the conditions
of commercial society, of national greatness. For this reason Horne
argues that Mandeville must be recognized as the apologist, par ex-
cellence, for the commercial society which emerged in post-Restoration
England and although he gives some indication of the diversity of the
intellectual background to Mandeville’s thought, it is only to support
this primary thesis. Thus in one chapter, he considers Mandeville’s
place in the mercantilist tradition, examining his controversial defense
of luxury and his notion of a division of labor, later...