 section 42 of The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Horatio, the advocates for the ancients will never allow that any modern philosophers have either thought or reasoned better than men did in former ages. Cleomenes, let them believe their eyes. What you say every man of sense may know, by his own reason, was in the beginning of Christianity contested and denied with zeal and vehemence by the greatest men in Rome. Celsus, Simachus, Porphyry, Heracles, and other famous rhetoricians, and men of unquestionable good sense, wrote in defense of idolatry, and strenuously maintained the plurality and multiplicity of their gods. Moses lived about fifteen hundred years before the reign of Augustus. If in a place where I was very well assured that nobody understood anything of coloring or drawing, a man should tell me that he had acquired the art of painting by inspiration, I should be more ready to laugh at him than to believe him. But if I saw him draw several fine portraits before my face, my unbelief would cease, and I should think it ridiculous any longer to suspect his veracity. All the accounts that other lawgivers and founders of nations have given of the deities, which they or their predecessors conversed with, contained ideas that were unworthy of the divine being, and by the light of nature only it is easily proved that they must have been false. But the image which Moses gave the Jews of the supreme being, that he was one, and had made heaven and earth, will stand all tests, and is a truth that will outlast the world. Thus I think I have fully proved, on the one hand, that all true religion must be revealed, and could not have come into the world without miracle, and, on the other, that what all men are born with towards religion before they receive any instruction is fear. Horatio, you have convinced me many ways, that we are poor creatures by nature, but I cannot help struggling against those mortifying truths when I hear them started first. I long to hear the origin of society, and I continually retard your account of it myself with new questions. Cleomenes, do you remember where we left off? Horatio, I do not think we have made any progress yet, for we have nothing towards it but a wild man, and a wild woman, with some children and grandchildren, which they are not able either to teach or govern. Cleomenes, I thought that the instruction of the reverence, which the wildest son must feel, more or less, for the most savage father, if he stays with him, had been a considerable step. Horatio, I thought so too, till you destroyed the hopes I had conceived of it yourself, by showing me the incapacity of savage parents to make use of it. And since we are still as far from the origin of society as ever we were, or ever can be in my opinion, I desire that before you proceed to that main point, you would answer what you have put off once already, which is my question concerning the notions of right and wrong. I cannot be easy before I have your sentiments on this head. Cleomenes, your demand is very reasonable, and I will satisfy you as well as I can. A man of sense, learning, and experience that has been well-educated will always find out the difference between right and wrong and things diametrically opposite. And there are certain facts which he will always condemn, and others which he will always approve of. To kill a member of the same society that has not offended us, or to rob him, will always be bad. And to cure the sick and to be beneficent to the public, he will always pronounce to be good actions. And for a man to do as he will be done by, he will always say is a good rule in life, and not only men of great accomplishments, and such as have learned to think abstractly, but all men of middling capacities that have been brought up in society will agree in this, in all countries and in all ages. Nothing likewise seems more true to all that have made any tolerable use of their faculty of thinking than that out of the society, before any division was made, either by contract or otherwise, all men would have an equal right to the earth. But do you believe that our wild man, if he had never seen any other human creature but his savage consort and his progeny, would ever have entertained the same notions of right and wrong? Horatio, hardly, his small capacity in the art of reasoning would hinder him from doing it so justly, and the power he found he had over his children would render him very arbitrary. Cleomenes, but without that incapacity, suppose that at three score he was, by a miracle, to receive a fine judgment and the faculty of thinking and reasoning consequentially, in as great a perfection as the wisest man ever did. Do you think he would ever alter his notion of the right he had to everything he could manage, or have other sentiments in relation to himself and his progeny? Then from his behavior it appeared he entertained when he seemed to act almost altogether by instinct? Horatio, without doubt, for if judgment and reason were given him, what could hinder him from making use of those faculties as well as others do? Cleomenes, you seem not to consider that no man can reason but apostiriori from something that he knows or supposes to be true. What I said of the difference between right and wrong, I spoke of persons who remember their education and lived in society, or at least such as plainly saw others of their own species that were independent of them, and either their equals or superiors. Horatio, I begin to believe you are in the right, but at second thoughts, why might not a man with great justice think himself the sovereign of a place where he knew no human creature but his own wife and the descendants of both? Cleomenes, with all my heart, but may there not be an hundred such savages in the world with large families that might never meet nor ever hear of one another? Horatio, a thousand if you will, and then there would be so many natural sovereigns. Cleomenes, very well, what I would have you observe is that there are things which are commonly esteemed to be eternal truths that an hundred or a thousand people of fine sense and judgment could have no notion of. What if it should be true that every man is born with this domineering spirit and that we cannot be cured of it but by our commerce with others, and the experience of facts by which we are convinced that we have no such right? Let us examine a man's whole life from his infancy to his grave and see which of the two senses to be most natural to him, a desire of superiority and grasping everything to himself, or a tendency to act according to the reasonable notions of right and wrong, and we shall find that in his early youth the first is very conspicuous, that nothing appears of the second before he has received some instructions, and that this latter will always have less influence upon his actions the more uncivilized he remains. From whence I infer that the notions of right and wrong are acquired, for if they were as natural, or if they affected us as early as the opinion, or rather the instinct we are born with, of taking everything to be our own, no child will ever cry for his eldest brother's playthings. Horatio, I think there is no right more natural, nor more reasonable than that which men have over their children, and what we owe our parents can never be repaid. Cleomenes, the obligations we have to good parents for their care and education is certainly very great. Horatio, that is the least, we are indebted to them for our being. We might be educated by a hundred others, but without them we could never have existed. Cleomenes, so we could have no malt liquor without the ground that bears the barley. I know no obligations for benefits that never were intended. Should a man see a fine parcel of cherries, be tempted to eat, and devour them accordingly with great satisfaction, it is possible he might swallow some of the stones, which we know by experience do not digest. If twelve or fourteen months after, he should find a little sprig of a cherry tree growing in a field where nobody would expect it. If he recollected the time he had been there before, it is not improbable that he might guess at the true reason how it came there. It is possible likewise that for curiosity's sake this man might take up this plant and take care of it. I am well assured that whatever became of it afterwards, the right he would have to it from the merit of his action would be the same which a savage would have to his child. Horatio, I think there would be a vast difference between the one and the other. The cherry stone was never part of himself, nor mixed with his blood. Cleomenes, pardon me, all the difference, as vast as you take it to be, can only consist in this, that the cherry stone was not part of the man who swallowed it so long, nor received so great an alteration in its figure whilst it was, as some other things which the savage swallowed were and received in their figure whilst they stayed with him. Horatio, but he that swallowed the cherry stone did nothing to it. It produced a plant as a vegetable, which it might have done as well without his swallowing it. Cleomenes, that is true, and I own that as to the cause to which the plant owes its existence, you are in the right, but I plainly spoke as to the merit of the action, which in either case could only proceed from their intentions as free agents, and the savage might and would in all probability act with as little design to get a child as the other had at cherries in order to plant a tree. It is commonly said that our children are our own flesh and blood, but this way of speaking is strangely figurative. However, allow it to be just, though rhetoricians have no name for it. What does it prove? What benevolence in us? What kindness to others in the intention? Horatio, you shall say what you please, but I think that nothing can endear children to their parents more than the reflection that they are their own flesh and blood. Cleomenes, I am of your opinion, and it is a plain demonstration of the superlative value we have for our own selves and everything that comes from us, if it be good and counted laudable, whereas other things that are offensive, though equally our own, are in complement to ourselves, industriously concealed, and, as soon as it is agreed upon that anything is unseemly, and rather a disgrace to us than otherwise, presently it becomes ill manners to name or so much as to hint at it. The contents of the stomach are variously disposed of, but we have no hand in that, and whether they go out to the blood or elsewhere, the last thing we did to them voluntarily, and with our knowledge, was swallowing them, and whatever is afterwards performed by the animal economy a man contributes no more to than he does to the going of his watch. This is another instance of the unjust claim we lay to every performance we are, but in the least concerned in, if good comes of it, though nature does all the work, but whoever places a merit in his prolific family ought likewise to expect the blame when he has the stone or a fever. Without this violent principle of innate folly, no rational creature would value himself on his free agency, and at the same time accept of applause for actions that are visibly independent of his will. Life in all creatures is a compound action, but the share they have in it themselves is only passive. We are forced to breathe before we know it, and our continuance palpably depends upon the guardianship and perpetual tutelage of nature, whilst every part of her works, ourselves not accepted, is an impenetrable secret to us that eludes all inquiries. Nature furnishes us with all the substance of our food herself, nor does she trust to our wisdom for an appetite to crave it, to chew it she teaches us by instinct, and bribes us to it by pleasure. This seeming to be an action of choice, and ourselves being conscious of the performance, we perhaps may be said to have a part in it, but the moment after, nature resumes her care, and again withdrawn from our knowledge, preserves us in a mysterious manner, without any help or concurrence of ours that we are sensible of. Since then, the management of what we have et and drank remains entirely under the direction of nature, what honor or shame ought we to receive from any part of the product, whether it is to serve as a doubtful means toward generation, or yields to vegetation a less fallible assistance. It is nature that prompts us to propagate as well as to eat, and a savage man multiplies his kind by instinct as other animals do, without more thought or design of preserving his species than a newborn infant has of keeping itself alive in the action of sucking. Horatio, yet nature gave the different instincts to both for those reasons. Cleomenes, without doubt, but what I mean is that the reason of the thing is as much the motive of action in the one as it is in the other, and I verily believe that a wild woman who had never seen or not minded the production of any young animals would have several children before she would guess at the real cause of them. Any more than if she had the colic, she would suspect that it proceeded from some delicious fruit she had eaten, especially if she had feasted upon it for several months, without perceiving any inconvenience due from it. Children, all the world over, are brought forth with pain, more or less, which seems to have no affinity with pleasure, and an untaught creature, however docile and attentive, would want several clear experiments before it would believe that the one could produce or be the cause of the other. Horatio, most people marry in hopes and with the design of having children. Cleomenes, I doubt not, and believe that there are as many that would rather not have children, or at least not so fast as often they come, as there are that wish for them even in the state of matrimony. But out of it, in the amours of thousands that revel in enjoyments, children are reckoned to be the greatest calamity that can befall them, and often what criminal love gave birth to, without thought more criminal pride destroys, with purposed and considerate cruelty. But all this belongs to people in society that are knowing, and well acquainted with the natural consequences of things. What I urged, I spoke of a savage. Horatio, still the end of love between the different sexes in all animals is the preservation of their species. Cleomenes, I have allowed that already, but once more the savage is not prompted to love from that consideration. He propagates before he knows the consequence of it, and I much question whether the most civilized pair in the most chaste of their embraces ever acted from the care of their species as a real principle. A rich man may, with great impatience, wish for a son to inherit his name and his estate. Perhaps he may marry from no other motive, and for no other purpose. But all the satisfaction he seems to receive from the flattering prospect of unhappy posterity can only arise from a pleasing reflection on himself as the cause of those descendants. How much so ever this man's posterity might be thought to owe him for their being, it is certain that the motive he acted from was to oblige himself. Still here is a wishing for posterity, a thought and design of getting children, which no wild couple could have to boast of. Yet they would be vain enough to look upon themselves as the principal cause of all their offspring and descendants, though they should live to see the fifth or sixth generation. Horatio, I can find no vanity in that, and I should think them so myself. Cleomenes, yet as free agents it would be plain that they had contributed nothing to the existence of their prosperity. Horatio, now surely you have overshot the mark, nothing? Cleomenes, know nothing, even to that of their own children, knowingly. If you will allow that men have their appetites from nature, there is but one real cause in the universe to produce that infinite variety of stupendous effects and all the mighty labors that are performed in nature, either within or far beyond the reach of our senses. Parents are the efficiency of their offspring, with no more truth or propriety of speech than the tools of an artificer that were made and contrived by himself are the cause of the most elaborate of his works. The senseless engine that raises water into the copper and the passive mash tub have between them as great a share in the art and action of brewing as the liveliest male and female ever had in the production of an animal. Horatio, you make stocks and stones of us, is it not in our choice to act or not to act? Cleomenes, yes, it is my choice now either to run my head against the wall or to let it alone but I hope it does not puzzle you much to guess which of the two I shall choose. Horatio, but do we not move our bodies as we list and is not every action determined by the will? Cleomenes, what signifies that, whether is a passion that manifestly sways and with a strict hand governs that will? Horatio, still we act with consciousness and are intelligent creatures. Cleomenes, not in the affair I speak of, where, willing or not willing, we are violently urged from within and in a manner compelled not only to assist in but likewise to long for and, in spite of our teeth, be highly pleased with the performance that infinitely surpasses our understanding. The comparison I made is just in every part of it for the most loving and, if you will, the most sagacious couple you can conceive are as ignorant in the mystery of generation nay must remain after having had twenty children together as much uninformed and as little conscious of nature's transactions and what has been wrought within them as inanimate utensils are of the most mystic and most ingenious operations they have been employed in. Horatio, I do not know any man more expert in tracing human pride or more severe in humbling it than yourself, but when the subject comes your way you do not know how to leave it. I wish you would at once go over to the origin of society which, how to derive or bring about at all from the savage family as we left it, is past my skill. It is impossible but those children, when they grow up, would quarrel on innumerable occasions. If men had but three appetites to gratify that are the most obvious, they could never live together in peace without government. For though they all paid a deference to the father, yet if he was a man void of all prudence that could give them no good rules to walk by, I am persuaded that they would live in a perpetual state of war. And the more numerous his offspring grew, the more the old savage would be puzzled between his desire and incapacity of government. As they increased in numbers, they would be forced to extend their limits, and the spot they were born upon would not hold them long. Nobody would be willing to leave his native veil, especially if it was a fruitful one. The more I think upon it, and the more I look into such multitudes, the less I can conceive which way they could ever be formed into a society. Cleomenes, the first thing that could make man associate would be common danger, which unites the greatest enemies, this danger they would certainly be in, from wild beasts, considering that no uninhabited country is without them, and the defenseless condition in which men come into the world. This often must have been a cruel article to prevent the increase of our species. Horatio, the supposition then that this wild man with his progeny should for fifty years live undisturbed is not very probable, and I need not trouble myself about our savages being embarrassed with too numerous an offspring. Cleomenes, you say right, there is no probability that a man in his progeny, all unarmed, should so long escape the ravenous hunger of beasts of prey, that are to live upon what animals they can get, that leave no place unsearched, nor pains untried, to come at food, though with the hazard of their lives. The reason why I made that supposition was to show you, first, the improbability that a wild and altogether untaught man should have the knowledge and discretion which Sir William Temple gives him. Secondly, that children who conversed with their own species, though they were brought up by savages, would be governable, and consequently, that all such, when come to maturity, would be fit for society, how ignorant and unskillful so ever their parents might have been. Horatio, I thank you for it. For it has shown me that the very first generation of the most brutish savages was sufficient to produce sociable creatures, for that to produce a man fit to govern others, much more was required. Cleomenes, I return to my conjecture concerning the first motive that would make savages associate. It is not possible to know anything with certainty of beginnings, where men were destitute of letters. But I think that the nature of the thing makes it highly probable that it must have been their common danger from beasts of prey, as well such sly ones as lay in wait for their children, and the defenseless animals men made use of for themselves, as the more bold that would openly attack grown men and women. What much confirms me in this opinion is the general agreement of all the relations we have, from the most ancient times in different countries, for, in the infancy of all nations, profane history is stuffed with the accounts of the conflicts men had with wild beasts. It took up the chief labours of the heroes of remotest antiquity, and their greatest prowess was shown in killing of dragons and subduing of other monsters. Horatio, do you lay any stress upon sphinxes, basilisks, flying dragons, and bulls that spit fire? Cleomenes, as much as I do modern witches, but I believe that all those fictions had their rise from noxious beasts, the mischiefs they did, and other realities that struck terror into man, and I believe that if no man had ever been seen on a horse's back, we should never have heard of centaurs. The prodigious force and rage that are apparent in some savage animals, and the astonishing power which, from the various poisons of venomous creatures, we are sure must be hid in others. The sudden and unexpected assaults of serpents, the variety of them, the vast bulk of crocodiles, the irregular and uncommon shapes of some fishes, and the wings of others, are all things that are capable of alarming man's fear, and it is incredible what chimeras that passion alone may produce in a terrified mind. The dangers of the day often haunt men at night with addition of terror, and from what they remember in their dreams, it is easy to forge realities. You will consider likewise that the natural ignorance of man, and his hankering after knowledge, will augment the credulity which hope and fear first give birth to, the desire the generality have of applause, and the great esteem that is commonly had for the mervelu, and the witnesses and relators of it. If, I say, you will consider all these, you will easily discover how many creatures came to be talked of, described, and formally painted, that never had any existence. Horatio, I do not wonder at the origin of monstrous figures, or the invention of any fables whatever, but in the reason you gave for the first motive that would make man combine in one interest, I find something very perplexing, which I own and ever thought of before. When I reflect on the condition of man, as you have said it before me, naked and defenseless, and the multitude of ravenous animals that thirst after his blood, and are superior to him in strength, and completely armed by nature, it is inconceivable to me how our species should have subsisted. Cleomenes, what you observe is well worthy our attention. Horatio, it is astonishing what filthy, abominable beasts are lions and tigers. Cleomenes, I think them to be very fine creatures. There is nothing I admire more than a lion. Horatio, we have strange accounts of his generosity and gratitude, but do you believe them? Cleomenes, I do not trouble my head about them. What I admire is his fabric, his structure, and his rage, so justly proportioned to one another. There are order, symmetry, and superlative wisdom to be observed in all the works of nature, but she has not a machine, of which every part more visibly answers the end for which the whole was formed. Horatio, the destruction of other animals. Cleomenes, that is true, but how conspicuous is that end, without mystery or uncertainty. That grapes were made for wine, and man for society, are truths not accomplished in every individual, but there is a real majesty stamped on every single lion, at the sight of which the stoutest animals submit and tremble. When we look upon and examine his massy talons, the size of them, and the labored firmness, with which they are fixed in and fastened to that prodigious paw, his dreadful teeth, the strength of his jaws, and the width of his mouth equally terrible, the use of them is obvious. But when we consider, moreover, the make of his limbs, the toughness of his flesh and tendons, the solidity of his bones, beyond that of other animals, and the whole frame of him, together with his never ceasing anger, speed, and agility, whilst in the desert he ranges king of beasts. When I say we consider all these things, it is stupidity not to see the design of nature, and with what amazing skill the beautiful creature is contrived for offensive war and conquest. Horatio, you are a good painter, but after all, why would you judge of a creature's nature from what it was perverted to, rather than from its original, the state it was first produced in? The lion in paradise was a gentle, loving creature. Hear what Milton says of his behavior before Adam and Eve, quote, as they sate recline on the soft downy bank, damasked with flowers, unquote. About them frisking played all beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase and wood or wilderness, forest or den. Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw dandled the kid, bears, tigers, ounces, pards, gambled before them. What was it the lion fed upon, what sustenance had all these beasts of prey in paradise? Cleomenes, I do not know. Nobody who believes the Bible doubts, but that the whole state of paradise and the intercourse between God and the first man were as much preternatural as the creation out of nothing, and therefore it cannot be supposed that they should be accounted for by human reason, and if they were, Moses would not be answerable for more than he advanced himself. The history he has given us of those times is extremely succinct and ought not to be charged with anything contained in the glosses and paraphrases that have been made upon it by others. Horatio, Milton has said nothing of paradise, but what he could justify from Moses. Cleomenes, it is nowhere to be proved from Moses that the state of innocence lasted so long that goats or any vivaporous animals could have bred and brought forth young ones. Horatio, you mean that there could have been no kid. I should never have made that cavill and so fine a poem. It was not in my thoughts. What I aimed at in repeating those lines was to show you how superfluous and impertinent the lion must have been in paradise, and that those who pretend to find fault with the works of nature might have censored her with justice for lavishing and throwing away so many excellencies upon a great beast to no purpose. What a fine variety of destructive weapons would they say, what prodigious strength of limbs and sinews are here given to a creature. What to do with? To be quiet and dandel a kid. I own that to me this province, the employment assigned to the lion, seems to be as proper and as well chosen as if you would make a nurse of Alexander the Great. Cleomenes, you might make as many flights upon a lion now if you saw him asleep. Nobody would think that a bull had occasion for horns who had never seen him otherwise than quietly grazing among a parcel of cows. But, if one should see him attacked by dogs, by a wolf, or a rival of his own species, he would soon find out that his horns were of great use and service to him. The lion was not made to be always in paradise. Horatio, there I would have you, if the lion was contrived for purposes to be served and executed out of paradise, then it is manifest from the very creation that the fall of man was determined and predestinated. Cleomenes, for known it was, nothing could be hid from omniscience, that is certain, but that it was predestinated so as to have prejudiced or anyways influenced the free will of Adam I utterly deny. But that word predestinated has made so much noise in the world, and the thing itself has been the cause of so many fatal quarrels, and is so inexplicable that I am resolved never to engage in any dispute concerning it. Horatio, I cannot make you, but what you have extolled so much must have cost the lives of thousands of our species, and it is a wonder to me how men, when they were but few, could possibly defend themselves before they had firearms, or at least bows and arrows, for what number of naked men and women would be a match for one couple of lions. Cleomenes, yet here we are, and none of those animals are suffered to be wild in any civilized nation. Our superior understanding has got the start of them. Horatio, my reason tells me it must be that, but I cannot help observing that when human understanding serves your purpose to solve anything, it is always ready and full grown, but at other times knowledge and reasoning are the work of time, and men are not capable of thinking justly until after many generations. Pray, before men had arms, what could their understanding do against lions, and what hindered wild beasts from devouring mankind as soon as they were born? Cleomenes, Providence. Horatio, Daniel indeed was saved by miracle, but what is that to the rest of mankind? Great numbers we know have, at different times, been torn to pieces by savage beasts. What I want to know is the reason that any of them escaped, and the whole species was not destroyed by them. When men had yet no weapons to defend, nor strong holes to shelter themselves from the fury of those merciless creatures. Cleomenes, I have named it to you already, Providence. Horatio, but which way can you prove this miraculous assistance? Cleomenes, you still talk of miracles, and I speak of Providence, or the all-governing wisdom of God. Horatio, if you can, demonstrate to me how that wisdom interposed between our species and that of lions, in the beginning of the world, without miracle, any more time than it does at present. Eris Mihi Magnus Apollo. For now, I am sure, a wild lion would prey upon a naked man, as soon at least, as he would upon an ox or an horse. Cleomenes, will you not allow me, that all properties, instincts, and what we call the nature of things, animate or inanimate, are the produce, the effects of that wisdom? Horatio, I never thought otherwise. Cleomenes, then it will not be difficult to prove this to you. Lions are never brought forth wild, but in very hot countries, as bears are the product of the cold. But the generality of our species, which loves moderate warmth, are most delighted in the middle regions. Men may, against their wills, be enured to intense cold, or by use and patience, accustom themselves to excessive heat. But a mild air, and weather between both extremes, being more agreeable to human bodies, the greatest part of mankind would naturally settle in temperate climates, and with the same convenience as to everything else, never choose any other. This would very much lessen the danger men would be in from the fiercest and most irresistible wild beasts. Horatio, but would lions and tigers in hot countries keep so close within their bounds, and bears in cold ones, as to never straggle or stray beyond them? Cleomenes, I do not suppose they would, and men as well as cattle, have often been picked up by lions, far from the places where these were welped. No wild beasts are more fatal to our species than often we are to one another, and men pursued by their enemies have fled into climates and countries which they would never have chose. Averus likewise, and curiosity, have, without force or necessity, often exposed men to dangers which they might have avoided, if they had been satisfied with what nature required, and labored for self-preservation in that simple manner which creatures less vain and fantastical content themselves with. In all these cases, I do not question but multitudes of our species have suffered from savage beasts and other noxious animals, and on their account only, I verily believe it would have been impossible for any number of men to have settled or subsisted in either very hot or very cold countries, before the invention of bows and arrows or better arms. But all this does nothing to overthrow my assertion. What I wanted to prove is that all creatures choosing by instinct to that degree of heat or cold which is most natural to them, they would be room enough in the world for man to multiply his species for many ages without running almost any risk of being devoured either by lions or by bears, and that the most savage man would find this out without the help of his reason. This I call the work of providence, by which I mean the unalterable wisdom of the Supreme Being, in the harmonious disposition of the universe, the fountain of that incomprehensible chain of causes on which all events have their undoubted dependence. Horatio, you have made this out better than I had expected, but I am afraid that what you alleged as the first motive toward society is come to nothing by it. Cleomenes, do not fear there are other savage beasts against which men could not guard themselves unarmed without joining and mutual assistance in temperate climates most uncultivated countries abound with wolves. Horatio, I have seen them in Germany. They are of the size of a large mastiff, but I thought their chief prey had been sheep. Cleomenes, anything they can conquer is their prey. They are desperate creatures and will fall upon men, cows, and horses as well as upon sheep when they are very hungry. They have teeth like mastiffs, but besides them they have sharp claws to tear with which dogs have not. The stoutest man is hardly equal to them in strength, but what is worse they often come in troops and whole villages have been attacked by them. They have five, six, and more whelps at a litter and would soon overrun a country where they breed if men did not combine against and make it their business to destroy them. Wild boars likewise are terrible creatures that few large forests and uninhabited places in temperate climates are free from. Horatio, those tusks of theirs are dreadful weapons. Cleomenes, and they are much superior to wolves in bulk and strength. History is full of the mischief they have done in ancient times and of the renown that valiant men have gained by conquering them. Horatio, that is true, but those heroes that fought monsters in former days were well armed, at least the generality of them. But what could a number of naked men before they had any arms at all have to oppose the teeth and claws of ravenous wolves that came in troops? And what impression could the greatest blow a man can strike make upon the thick bristly hide of a wild boar? Cleomenes, as on the one hand I have named everything that man has to fear from wild beasts, so on the other we ought not to forget the things that are in his favor. In the first place, a wild man inured to hardship would far exceed a tame one, in all feats of strength, nimbleness, and activity. In the second, his anger would sooner and more usefully transport and assist him in his savage state than it can do in society, where from his infancy he is so many ways taught and forced in his own defense to cramp and stifle with his fears the noble gift of nature. In wild creatures we see that most of them, when their own life or that of their young ones is at stake, fight with great obstinacy and continue fighting to the last, and do what mischief they can whilst they have breath without regard to their being overmatched or the disadvantages they labor under. It is observed likewise that the more untaught and inconsiderate creatures are, the more entirely they are swayed by the passion that is uppermost. Natural affection would make wild men and women too sacrifice their lives and die for their children, but they would die fighting, and one wolf would not find it an easy matter to carry off a child from his watchful parents if they were both resolute, though they were naked. As to man's being born defenseless, it is not to be conceived that he should long know the strength of his arms without being acquainted with the articulation of his fingers or at least what is owing to it his faculty of grasping and holding fast, and the most untaught savage would make use of clubs and staves before he came to maturity. As the danger men are in from wild beasts would be of the highest consequence, so it would employ their utmost care and industry. They would dig holes and invent other stratagems to distress their enemies and destroy their young ones. As soon as they found out fire, they would make use of that element to guard themselves and annoy their foes. By the help of it, they would soon learn to sharpen wood, which presently would put them upon making spears and other weapons that would cut. When men are angry enough with creatures to strike them, and these are running away or flying from them, they are apt to throw at what they cannot reach. This, as soon as they had spears, would naturally lead them to the invention of darts and javelins. Here perhaps they may stop a while, but the same chain of thinking would in time produce bows and arrows. The elasticity of sticks and boughs of trees is very obvious, and to make strings of the guts of animals, I dare say, is more ancient than the use of hemp. Experience teaches us that men may have all these and many more weapons, and be very expert in the use of them before any manner of government, except that of parents over their children, is to be seen among them. It is likewise very well known that savages furnished with no better arms, when they are strong enough in number, will venture to attack and even hunt after the fiercest wild beasts, lions and tigers, not accepted. Another thing is to be considered, that likewise favors our species and relates to the nature of the creatures, of which, in temperate climates, man has reason to stand in bodily fear of. Horatio, wolves and wild boars? Cleomenes, yes, that great numbers of our species have been devoured by the first, is uncontested, but they most naturally go in quest of sheep and poultry, and, as long as they can get carrion or anything to fill their bellies with, they seldom hunt after men or other large animals, which is the reason that in the summer our species, as to personal insults, have not much to fear from them. It is certain likewise that savage swine will hunt after men, and many of their maws have been crammed with human flesh, but they naturally feed on acorns, chestnuts, beech mast and other vegetables, and they are only carnivorous upon occasion, and through necessity, when they can get nothing else, in great frosts, when the country is bare and everything is covered with snow. It is evident, then, that human creatures are not in any great and immediate danger from either of these species of beasts, but in hard winters, which happen but seldom in temperate climates. But as they are our perpetual enemies, by spoiling and devouring everything that may serve for the sustenance of men, it is highly necessary that we should not only be always upon our guard against them, but likewise never cease to assist one another in routing and destroying them. Section 43 of The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Horatio, I plainly see that mankind might subsist and survive to multiply and get the mastery over all other creatures that should oppose them, and as this could never have been brought about, unless men had assisted one another against savage beasts, it is possible that the necessity men were in of joining and uniting together was the first step towards society. Thus far I am willing to allow you have proved your main point, but to ascribe all this to Providence, otherwise then that nothing is done without the divine permission, seems inconsistent with the ideas we have of a perfectly good and merciful being. It is possible that all poisonous animals may have something in them that is beneficial to men, and I will not dispute with you whether the most venomous of all the serpents which Lucan has made mention of did not contain some antidote or other fine medicine still undiscovered. But when I look upon the vast variety of ravenous and bloodthirsty creatures that are not only superior to us in strength but likewise visibly armed by nature as it were on purpose for our destruction, when I say I look upon these I can find out no use for them nor what they could be designed for unless it be to punish us, but I can much less conceive that the divine wisdom should have made them the means without which men could not have been civilized. How many thousands of our species must have been devoured in the conflicts with them? Cleomenes, ten troops of wolves with fifty in each would make a terrible havoc in a long winter among a million of our species with their hands tied behind them, but among half that number one pestilence has been known to slaughter more than so many wolves could have eaten in the same time, notwithstanding the great resistance that was made against it. By approved of medicines and able physicians, it is owing to the principle of pride we are born with and the high value we all for the sake of one have for our species, that men imagine the whole universe to be principally made for their use, and this error makes them commit a thousand extravagancies and have pitiful and most unworthy notions of God in his works. It is not greater cruelty or more unnatural in a wolf to eat a piece of a man than it is in man to eat part of a lamb or a chicken. What or how many purposes wild beasts were made for is not for us to determine, but that they were made, we know, and that some of them must have been very calamitous to every infant nation and settlement of men is almost as certain. This you was fully persuaded of, and thought moreover that they must have been such an obstacle to the very subsistence of our species as was insurmountable. In answer to this difficulty which you started, I showed you from the different instincts and peculiar tendencies of animals that in nature a manifest provision was made for our species, by which notwithstanding the rage and power of the fiercest beasts, we should make a shift, naked and defenseless, to escape their fury, so as to be able to maintain ourselves and multiply our kind, till by our numbers and arms acquired by our own industry we could put to flight or destroy all savage beasts without exception, whatever spot of the globe we might have a mind to cultivate and settle on. The necessary blessings we receive from the sun are obvious to a child, and it is demonstrable that without it, none of the living creatures that are now upon the earth could subsist. But if it were of no other use, being eight hundred thousand times bigger than the earth at least, one thousandth part of it would do our business as well, if it was but nearer to us in proportion. From this consideration alone I am persuaded that the sun was made to enlighten and cherish other bodies, besides this planet of ours. Fire and water were designed for innumerable purposes, and among the uses that are made of them, some are immensely different from others. But whilst we receive the benefit of these, and our only intent on ourselves, it is highly probable that there are thousands of things, and perhaps our own machines among them, that in the vast system of the universe, are now serving some very wise ends, which we shall never know. According to that plan of this globe, I mean the scheme of government, in relation to the living creatures that inhabit the earth, the destruction of animals is as necessary as the generation of them. Horatio, I have learned that from the fable of the bees, and I believe what I have read there to be very true, that if anyone's species was to be exempt from death, it would in time crush all the rest of pieces, though the first were sheep, and the latter all lions. But that the supreme being should have introduced society at the expense of so many lives of our species, I cannot believe when it might have been done much better in a milder way. Cleomenes, we are speaking of what probably was done, and not of what might have been done. There is no question, but the same power that made whales might have made us 70 feet high, and given us strength in proportion. But since the plan of this globe requires, and you think it necessary yourself, that in every species some should die almost as fast as others are born, why should you take away any of the means of dying? Horatio, are there not diseases enough, physicians and apothecaries, as well as wars by sea and land, that may take off more than the redundancy of our species? Cleomenes, they may it is true, but in fact they are not always sufficient to do this. And in populous nations we see that war, wild beasts, hanging, drowning, and an hundred casualties together with sickness and all its attendants, are hardly a match for one invisible faculty of ours, which is the instinct men have to preserve their species. Everything is easy to the deity, but to speak after in human manner it is evident that informing this earth and everything that is in it, no less wisdom or solicitude was required in contriving the various ways and means to get rid of and destroy animals, then seems to have been employed in producing them, and it is as demonstrable that our bodies were made on purpose not to last beyond such a period, as it is that some houses are built with a design not to stand longer than such a term of years, but it is death itself to which our aversion by nature is universal. As to the manner of dying, men differ in their opinions, and I never heard of one yet that was generally liked of. Horatio, but nobody chooses a cruel one, what an unspeakable and infinitely excruciating torment must it be, to be torn to pieces, and yet alive by a savage beast. Cleomenes, not greater I can assure you, than are daily occasioned by the gout in the stomach and the stone in the bladder. Horatio, which way can you give me this assurance? How can you prove it? Cleomenes, from our fabric itself, the frame of human bodies that cannot admit of any torment infinitely excruciating. The degrees of pain as well as of pleasure in this life are limited, and exactly proportion to everyone's strength, whatever exceeds that, takes away the senses, and whoever has once fainted away with the extremity of any torture knows the full extent of what here he can suffer, if he remembers what he felt. The real mischief which wild beasts have done to our species, and the calamities they have brought upon it, are not to be compared to the cruel usage and the multiplicity of mortal injuries which men have received from one another. Set before your eyes a robust warrior that having lost a limb in battle is afterwards trampled upon by twenty horses, and tell me, pray, whether you think that lying thus helpless with most of his ribs broke and a fractured skull in the agony of death for several hours, he suffers less than if a lion had dispatched him? Horatio, they are both very bad. Cleomenes, in the choice of things we are more often directed by the caprice of fashions and the custom of the age than we are by solid reason or our own understanding. There is no greater comfort in dying of a dropsy and in being eaten by worms than there is in being drowned at sea and becoming the prey of fishes. But in our narrow way of thinking there is something that subverts and corrupts our judgment. How else could persons of known elegancy in their taste prefer rotting and stinking in a loathsome sepulcher to their being burnt in the open air to inoffensive ashes? Horatio, I freely own that I have an aversion to everything that is shocking and unnatural. Cleomenes, what you call shocking I do not know, but nothing is more common to nature or more agreeable to her ordinary course than that creature should live upon one another. The whole system of animated beings on the earth seems to be built upon this, and there is not one species that we know of that has not another that feeds upon it either alive or dead, and most kind of fish are forced to live upon fish. That this in the last mentioned was not an omission or neglect is evident from the large provision nature has made for it far exceeding anything she has done for other animals. Horatio, you mean the prodigious quantity of row they spawn? Cleomenes, yes, and that the eggs contained in them receive not their fecundity until after they are excluded, by which means the female may be filled with as many of them as her belly can hold, and the eggs themselves may be more closely crowded together than would be consistent with the admission of any substance from the male. Without this, one fish could not bring forth yearly such a prodigious shoal. Horatio, but might not the aura seminalis of the male be subtle enough to penetrate the whole cluster of eggs and influence every one of them without taking up any room, as it does in fowls and other oviparous animals. Cleomenes, the ostrich accepted in the first place. In the second, there are no other oviparous animals in which the eggs are so closely compacted together as they are in fish, but suppose the prolific power should pervade the whole mass of them, if all the eggs which some of the females are crammed with were to be impregnated whilst they are within the fish, it is impossible but the aura seminalis, the prolific spirit of the male, though it took up no room itself, would, as it does in all other creatures, dilate, and more or less distend every egg, and the least expansion of so many individuals would swell the whole row to a bulk that would require a much greater space than the cavity that now contains them, is not here a contrivance beyond imagination fine, to provide for the continuance of a species, though every individual of it should be born with an instinct to destroy it. Horatio, what you speak of is only true at sea, in a considerable part of Europe at least, for in freshwater most kinds of fish do not feed on their own species, and yet they spawn in the same manner and are as full of row as all the rest, among them the only great destroyer with us is the pike. Cleomenes, and he is a very ravenous one, we see in ponds that where pikes are suffered to be no other fish shall ever increase in number, but in rivers and waters near any land there are amphibious fowls and many sorts of them that live mostly upon fish, of these waterfowls in many places are prodigious quantities, besides these there are otters, beavers, and many other creatures that live upon fish, in brooks and shallow waters the hern and bittern will have their share, what is taken off by them perhaps is but little, but the young fry and the spawn that one pair of swans are able to consume in one year would very well serve to stock a considerable river, so they are but et, it does not matter what eats them, either their own species or another. What I would prove is that nature produces no extraordinary numbers of any species, but she has contrived means answerable to destroy them. The variety of insects in the several parts of the world would be incredible to anyone that has not examined into this matter, and the different beauties to be observed in them is infinite, but neither the beauty nor the variety of them are more surprising than the industry of nature in the multiplicity of her contrivances to kill them, and if the care and vigilance of all other animals in destroying them were to cease at once, in two years time the greatest part of the earth, which is ours now, would be theirs, and in many countries insects would be the only inhabitants. Horatio, I have heard that whales live upon nothing else, that must make a fine consumption. Cleomenes, that is the general opinion I suppose, because they never find any fish in them, and because there are vast multitudes of insects in those seas hovering on the surface of the water. This creature likewise helps to corroborate my assertion that in the numbers produced of every species the greatest regard is had to the consumption of them. This prodigious animal being too big to be swallowed, nature in it has quite altered the economy observed in all other fish, for they are vivaporous, engender like other vivaporous animals, and have never above two or three young ones at a time. For the continuance of every species among such an infinite variety of creatures as this globe yields, it was highly necessary that the provision for their destruction should not be less ample than that which was made for the generation of them, and therefore the solicitude of nature in procuring death and the consumption of animals is visibly superior to the care she takes to seed and preserve them. Horatio, prove that, pray. Cleomenes, millions of her creatures are starved every year, and doomed to perish for want of sustenance, but whenever any die there is always plenty of mouths to devour them. But then again she gives all she has. Nothing is so fine or elaborate as that she grudges it for food, nor is anything more extensive or impartial than her bounty. She thinks nothing too good for the meanest of her broods, and all creatures are equally welcome to everything they can find to eat. How curious is the workmanship in the structure of a common fly, how inimitable are the celerity of its wings, and the quickness of all his motion in hot weather. Should a Pythagorean, that was likewise a good master in mechanics, by the help of a microscope, pry into every minute part of this changeable creature, and duly consider the elegancy of its machinery, would he not think it great pity that thousands or millions of animated beings so nicely wrought and admirably finished should every day be devoured by little birds and spiders, of which we stand in so little need? Nay, do not you think yourself that things would have been managed full as well, if the quantity of flies had been less, and there had been no spiders at all? Horatio, I remember the fable of the acorn and pumpkin too well to answer you, I do not trouble my head about it. Cleomenes, yet you found fault with the means, which I supposed Providence had made use of to make men associate, I mean the common danger they were in from wild beasts, though you own the probability of its having been the first motive of their uniting. Horatio, I cannot believe that Providence should have no greater regard to our species than it has to flies and the spawn of fish, or that nature has ever sported with the fate of human creatures, as she does with the lives of insects, and been as wantonly lavish of the first as she seems to be of the latter, I wonder how you can reconcile this to religion, you that are such a stickler for Christianity. Cleomenes, religion has nothing to do with it, but we are so full of our own species and the Excellency of it that we have no leisure seriously to consider the system of this earth, I mean the plan on which the economy of it is built, in relation to the living creatures that are in and upon it. Horatio, I do not speak as to our species, but in respect to the deity. Has religion nothing to do with it, that you make God the author of so much cruelty and malice? Cleomenes, it is impossible, you should speak otherwise, then in relation to our species, when you make use of those expressions, which can only signify to us the intentions things were done with, or the sentiments human creatures have of them, and nothing can be called cruel or malicious in regard to him who did it, unless his thoughts and designs were such in doing it. All actions in nature, abstractly considered, are equally indifferent, and whatever it may be to individual creatures, to die is not a greater evil to this earth or the whole universe than it is to be born. Horatio, this is making the first cause of things not an intelligent being. Cleomenes, why so? Can you not conceive an intelligent and even a most wise being that is not only exempt from, but likewise incapable of entertaining any malice or cruelty? Horatio, such a being could not commit or order things that are malicious and cruel. Cleomenes, neither does God, but this will carry us into a dispute about the origin of evil, and from thence we must inevitably fall on free will and predestination, which, as I have told you before, is an inexplicable mystery I will never meddle with. But I never said nor thought anything irreverent to the deity. On the contrary, the idea I have of the supreme being is as transcendentally great as my capacity is able to form one of what is incomprehensible, and I could as soon believe that he could cease to exist, as that he should be the author of any real evil. But I should be glad to hear the method after which you think society might have been much better introduced. Pray, acquaint me with that milder way you speak of. Horatio, you have thoroughly convinced me that the natural love which it is pretended we have for our species is not greater than what many other animals have for theirs. But if nature had actually given us an affection for one another as sincere and conspicuous as that which parents are seen to have for their children whilst they are helpless, men would have joined together by choice, and nothing could have hindered them from associating, whether their numbers had been great or small, and themselves either ignorant or knowing. Cleomenes, omentes hominum caicas, opectora caica. Horatio, you may exclaim as much as you please. I am persuaded that this would have united men and firmer bonds of friendship than any common danger from wild beasts could have tied them with. But what fault can you find with it, and what mischief could have befallen us from mutual affection? Cleomenes, it would have been inconsistent with the scheme. The plan after which it is evident providence has been pleased to order and dispose of things in the universe. If such an affection had been planted in man by instinct, there never could have been any fatal quarrels among them, nor mortal hatreds. Men could never have been cruel to one another. In short, there could have been no wars of any duration, and no considerable numbers of our species could ever have been killed by one another's malice. Horatio, you are making a rare state physician in prescribing war, cruelty, and malice for the welfare and maintenance of civil society. Cleomenes, pray do not misrepresent me. I have done no such thing, but if you believe the world is governed by providence at all, you must believe likewise that the deity makes use of means to bring about, perform, and execute his will and pleasure. As for example, to have war kindled, there must be first misunderstandings and quarrels between the subjects of different nations, and dissensions among the respective princes, rulers, or governors of them. It is evident that the mind of man is the general mint where the means of this sort must be coined. From whence I conclude that if providence had ordered matters after that mild way, which you think would have been the best, little of human blood could have been spilt, if any at all? Horatio, where would have been the inconvenience of that? Cleomenes, you could not have had that variety of living creatures there is now. Nay, there would not have been room for man himself and his sustenance. Our species alone would have overstocked to the earth if there had been no wars, and the common course of providence had not been more interrupted than it has been. Might I not justly say, then, that this is quite contrary and destructive to the scheme on which it is plain the earth was built? This is a consideration which you will never give its due weight. I have once already put you in mind of it, that you yourself have allowed the destruction of animals to be as necessary as the generation of them. There is as much wisdom to be seen in the contrivances, how numbers of living creatures might always be taken off and destroyed, to make room for those that continually succeed them as there is in making all the different sorts of them every one preserve their own species. What do you think is the reason that there is but one way for us to come into the world? Horatio, because that one is sufficient. Cleomenes, then from a parody of reason we ought to think that there are several ways to go out of the world because one would not have been sufficient. Now, if for the support and maintenance of that variety of creatures which are here that they should die is a postulatum as necessary as it is that they should be born, and you cut off or obstruct the means of dying and actually stop up one of the great gates through which we see multitudes go to death, do you not oppose the scheme? Nay, do you mar it less than if you hinder generation? If there had never been a war and no other means of dying besides the ordinary ones, this globe could not have born, or at least not maintained, the tenth part of the people that would have been in it. By war I do not mean only such as one nation has had against another, but civil as well as foreign quarrels, general massacres, private murders, poison, sword, and all hostile force, by which men, notwithstanding their pretense of love to their species, have endeavored to take away one another's lives throughout the world, from the time that Cain slew Abel to this day. Horatio, I do not believe that a quarter of all these mischiefs are upon record, but what may be known from history would make a prodigious number of men, much greater, I dare say, than ever was on earth at one time. But what would you infer from this? They would not have been immortal, and if they had not died in war, they must soon after have been slain by diseases. When a man of three scores killed by a bullet in the field, it is odds that he would not have lived four years longer, though he had stayed at home. Cleomenes, there are scores of three score perhaps in all armies, but men generally go to war when they are young, and when four or five thousand are lost in battle, he will find the greatest number to have been under five and thirty. Consider now that many men do not marry till after that age, who get ten or a dozen children. Horatio, if all that die by the hands of another were to get a dozen children before they die, stroke. Cleomenes, there is no occasion for that. I suppose nothing that is either extravagant or impossible, but that all such, as have been willfully destroyed by means of their species, should have lived, and taken their chance with the rest, that everything should have befallen them that has befallen those that have not been killed that way, and the same likewise to their posterity, and that all of them should have been subject to all the casualties as well as diseases, doctors, apothecaries and other accidents that take away man's life and shorten his days. War and violence from one another only accepted. Horatio, but if the earth had been too full of inhabitants, might not Providence have sent pestilences and diseases oftener? More children might have died when they were young, or more women might have proved barren. Cleomenes, I do not know whether your mild way would have been more generally pleasing, but you entertain notions of the deity that are unworthy of him. Men might certainly have been born with the instinct you speak of, but if this had been the Creator's pleasure, there must have been another economy, and things on earth from the beginning would have been ordered in a manner quite different from what they are now. But to make a scheme first, and afterwards to mend it when it proves defective, is the business of finite wisdom. It belongs to human prudence alone to mend faults, to correct and redress what was done amiss before, and to alter the measures which experience teaches men were ill-concerted. But the knowledge of God was consummate from eternity. Infinite wisdom is not liable to errors or mistakes, therefore all his works are universally good, and everything is made exactly as he would have it. The firmness and liability of his laws and councils are everlasting, and therefore his resolutions are as unalterable as his decrees are eternal. It is not a quarter of an hour ago that you named wars among the necessary means to carry off the redundancy of our species. How come you now to think them useless? I can demonstrate to you that nature in the production of our species has amply provided against the losses of our sex, occasioned by wars by repairing them visibly where they are sustained, in as palpable a manner as she has provided for the great destruction that is made of fish by their devouring one another. Horatio, how is that, pray? Cleomenes, by sending more males into the world than females, you will easily allow me that our sex bears the brunt of all the toils and hazards that are undergone by sea and land, and that by this means a far greater number of men must be destroyed than there is of women. Now if we see, as certainly we do, that of the infants yearly born, the number of males is always considerably superior to that of the females, is it not manifest that nature has made a provision for great multitudes, which, if they were not destroyed, would be not only superfluous, but of pernicious consequence in great nations. Horatio, that superiority in the number of males born is wonderful indeed. I remember the account that has been published concerning it as it was taken from the bills of births and burials in the city and suburbs. Cleomenes, for four score years, in which the number of females born was constantly much inferior to that of the males, sometimes by many hundreds, and that this provision of nature, to supply the havoc that is made of men by wars and navigation, is still greater than could be imagined from that difference only, will soon appear if we consider that women, in the first place, are liable to all diseases within a trifle that are incident to men, and that, in the second, they are subject to many disorders and calamities on account of their sex, which great numbers die of, and which men are wholly exempt from. Horatio, this could not well be the effect of chance, but it spoils the consequence which you drew from my affectionate scheme, in case there had been no wars, for your fear that our species would have increased beyond all bounds was entirely built upon the supposition that those who have died in war should not have wanted women if they had lived, which, from this superiority in the number of males, it is evident they should and must have wanted. Cleomenes, what you observe is true, but my chief aim was to show you how disagreeable the alteration you required would have been every way to the rest of the scheme, by which it is manifest things are governed at present. Four, if the provision had been made on the other side, and nature, in the production of our species, had continually taken care to repair the loss of women that die of calamities not incident to men, then certainly there would have been women for all the men that have been destroyed by their own species, if they had lived, and the earth without war, as I have said, would have been overstocked, or if nature had ever been the same as she is now, that is, if more males had been born than females, and more females had died of diseases than males, the world would constantly have had a great superfluity of men if there never had been any wars, and this disproportion between their numbers and that of the women would have caused innumerable mischiefs that are now prevented by no other natural causes than the small value men set upon their species and their dissensions with one another. Horatio, I can see no other mischief this would produce, then that the number of males which die without having ever tried matrimony would be greater than it is now, and whether that would be a real evil or not is a very disputable point. Cleomenes, do you not think that this perpetual scarcity of women and superfluity of men would make great uneasiness in all societies, how well so ever people might love one another, and that the value, the price of women, would be so enhanced by it that none but men in tolerable good circumstances would be able to purchase them? This alone would make us another world, and mankind could never have known that most necessary and now inexhaustible spring from which all nations, where slaves are not allowed of, are constantly supplied with willing hands for all the drudgery of hard and dirty labor, I mean the children of the poor, the greatest and most extensive of all temporal blessings that accrue from society on which all the comforts of life in the civilized state have their unavoidable dependence. There are many other things from which it is plain that such a real love of man for his species would have been altogether inconsistent with the present scheme. The world must have been destitute of all that industry that is owing to envy and emulation. No society could have been easy with being a flourishing people at the expense of their neighbors, or enduring to be counted a formidable nation. All men would have been levelers, government would have been unnecessary, and there could have been no great bustle in the world. Look into the men of greatest renown, and the most celebrated achievements of antiquity, and everything that has been cried up and admired in past ages by the fashionable part of mankind. If the same labors were to be performed over again, which qualification, which help of nature do you think would be the most proper means to have them executed, that instinct of real affection you required, without ambition or the love of glory, or a staunch principle of pride and selfishness acting under pretense to and assuming the resemblance of that affection? Consider I beseech you that no men governed by this instinct would require services of any of their species, which they would not be ready to perform for others, and you will easily see that its being universal would quite alter the scene of society from what it is now. Such an instinct might be very suitable to another scheme different from this, in another world, where instead of fickleness and a restless desire after changes and novelty, there was observed an universal steadiness, continually preferred by a serene spirit of contentment among other creatures of different appetites from ours, that had frugality without avarice and generosity without pride, and whose solicitude after happiness in a future state was as active and apparent in life as our pursuits are after the enjoyments of this present. But, as to the world we live in, examine into the various ways of earthly greatness and all the engines that are made use of to attain the felicity of carnal men, and you will find that the instinct you speak of must have destroyed the principles and prevented the very existence of that pomp and glory to which human societies have been, and are still raised by worldly wisdom. Horatio, I give up my affectionate scheme. You have convinced me that there could not have been that stir and variety, nor upon the whole, that beauty in the world, which there have been, if all men had been naturally humble, good, and virtuous. I believe that wars of all sorts, as well as diseases, are natural means to hinder mankind from increasing too fast. But that wild beast should likewise have been designed to thin our species, I cannot conceive, for they can only serve this end when men are but few, and their numbers should be increased instead of lessened. And afterwards, if they were made for that purpose, when men are strong enough, they would not answer it. Cleomenes, I never said that wild beast was designed to thin our species. I have shown that many things were made to serve a variety of different purposes, that in the scheme of this earth, many things must have been considered that man has nothing to do with, and that it is ridiculous to think that the universe was made for our sake. I have said likewise, that as all our knowledge comes, a posteriori, it is imprudent to reason otherwise than from facts, that there are wild beasts, and that there are savage men is certain, and that where there are but few of the latter, the first must always be very troublesome, and often fatal to them, is as certain. And when I reflect on the passions all men are born with, and their incapacity whilst they are untaught, I can find no cause or motive which is so likely to unite them together, and make them espouse the same interest, as that common danger they must always be in, from wild beasts, in uncultivated countries, whilst they live in small families that all shift for themselves, without government or dependence upon one another. This first step to society, I believe to be an effect which that same cause, the common danger so often mentioned, will never fail to produce upon our species in such circumstances. What other, and how many purposes wild beasts might have been designed for besides, I do not pretend to determine, as I have told you before. Horatio, but whatever other purposes wild beasts were designed for, it still follows from your opinion that the uniting of savages in common defense must have been one, which to me seems clashing with our idea of the divine goodness. So will everything seem to do, which we call natural evil, if you ascribe human passions to the deity, and measure infinite wisdom by the standard of our most shallow capacity. You have been at this twice already, I thought I had answered it. I would not make God the author of evil any more than yourself, but I am likewise persuaded that nothing could come by chance in respect to the supreme being. And therefore, unless you imagine the world not to be governed by providence, you must believe that wars and all the calamities we can suffer from man or beast, as well as plagues and all other diseases, are under a wise direction that is unfathomable. As there can be no effect without a cause, so nothing can be said to happen by chance, but in respect to him who is ignorant of the cause of it. I can make this evident to you in an obvious and familiar example. To a man who knows nothing of the tennis court, the skips and rebounds of the ball seem to be all fortuitous, as he is not able to guess at the several different directions it will receive before it comes to the ground. So, as soon as it has hit the last place to which it was plainly directed at first, it is chance to him where it will fall, whereas the experienced player, knowing perfectly well the journey the ball will make, goes directly to the place, if he is not there already, where it will certainly come within his reach. Nothing seems to be more the effect of chance than a cast of the dice, yet they obey the laws of gravity and motion in general as much as anything else, and from the impressions that are given them, it is impossible they should fall otherwise than they do, but the various directions which they shall receive in the whole course of the throw being entirely unknown, and the rapidity with which they change their situation being such that our slow apprehension cannot trace them, what the cast will be is a mystery to human understanding at fair play, but if the same variety of directions was given to two cubes of ten feet each, which a pair of dice receive as well from one another as the box, the casters' fingers that cover it, and the table they are flung upon from the time they are taken up until they lie still, the same effect would follow. And if the quantity of motion, the force that is imparted to the box and dice was exactly known, and the motion itself was so much retarded in the performance that what is done in three or four seconds should take up an hour's time, it would be easy to find out the reason of every throw, and men might learn with certainty to foretell which side of the cube would be uppermost. It is evident, then, that the words fortuitous and casual have no other meaning than what depends upon our want of knowledge, foresight, and penetration, the reflection on which will show us, by what an infinity of degrees all human capacity falls short of that universal intuitus, with which the supreme being beholds at once everything without exception, whether to us it be visible or invisible, past, present, or to come. Horatio, I yield, you have solved every difficulty I have been able to raise, and I must confess that your supposition concerning the first motive that would make savages associate is neither clashing with good sense, nor any idea we ought to have of the divine attributes. But, on the contrary, in answering my objections you have demonstrated the probability of your conjecture, and rendered the wisdom and power of providence in the scheme of this earth both as to the contrivance and the execution of it more conspicuous and palpable to me than anything I ever heard or read had done before. Cleomenes, I am glad you are satisfied, though far from arrogating to myself so much merit as your civility would compliment me with. Horatio, it is very clear to me now that as it is appointed for all men to die so it is necessary there should be means to compass this end, that from the number of those means or causes of death it is impossible to exclude either the malice of men or the rage of wild beasts and all noxious animals, and that if they had been actually designed by nature and contrived for that purpose we should have no more reason to justly complain of them than we have to find fault with death itself, or that frightful train of diseases which are daily and hourly the manifest occasion of it. Cleomenes, they are all equally included in the curse which after the fall was deservedly pronounced against the whole earth, and if they be real evils they are to be looked upon as the consequence of sin and a con- dine punishment which the transgression of our first parents has drawn and entailed upon all their posterity. I am fully persuaded that all the nations in the world and every individual of our species civilized or savage had their origin from Seth, Sham, and Jaffet, and as experience has taught us that the greatest empires have their periods and the best governed states and kingdoms may come to ruin, so it is certain that the politest people being scattered and distressed may soon degenerate, and some of them by accidents and misfortunes from knowing and well taught ancestors be reduced at last to savages of the first and lowest class. Horatio, if what you are fully persuaded of be true, the other is self-evident from the savages that are still subsisting. Cleomenes, you once seemed to insinuate that all the danger men were in from wild beasts would entirely cease as soon as they were civilized, and lived in large and well-ordered societies, but by this you may see that our species will never be wholly exempt from that danger, because mankind will always be liable to be reduced to savages. Four, as this calamity has actually befallen vast multitudes that were the undoubted descendants of Noah, so the greatest prince upon earth that has children cannot be sure that the same disaster will never happen to any of his posterity. Wild beasts may be entirely extirpated in some countries that are duly cultivated, but they will multiply in others that are wholly neglected, and great numbers of them range now, and are masters in many places where they had been rooted and kept out before. I shall always believe that every species of living creatures, in and upon this globe, without exception, continues to be, as it was at first, under the care of that same providence that thought fit to produce it. You have had a great deal of patience, but I would not tire it. This first step towards society, now we have mastered it, is a good resting place, and so we will leave off for today. Horatio, with all my heart, I have made you talk a great deal, but I long to hear the rest, as soon as you are at leisure. Cleomenes, I am obliged to dine at Windsor tomorrow. If you are not otherwise engaged, I can carry you where the honor of your company will be highly esteemed. My coach shall be ready at nine. You know you are in my way. Horatio, a fine opportunity, indeed, of three or four hours, chat. Cleomenes, I shall be all alone without you. Horatio, I am your man, and shall expect you. Cleomenes, adieu. End of section 43