Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/447

433 argument. In regard to the first, his position is very nearly that of Hobbes, except that he lays more emphasis upon man's natural capacity to rise out of a state of nature. The means by which the socialization of man was effected, were praise and blame. The second point in his system is indicated in the secondary title of his book. He attempts to show that the vices of mankind are useful forces in society, without which it could not have reached its present prosperous state. He practically abandons his first account of the origin of society and now affirms that the sociableness of man arises, not from a sociable nature, but from "the multiplicity of his desires and the continued opposition he meets with in his endeavors to gratify them." Mandeville was bitterly attacked on the ground that he destroyed the distinction between good and evil. The fact is that his argument touched a weak spot in the easy-going morality of the day, and he professes to be setting up again the Christian conception of virtue. "He is not preaching vice but setting before man an alternative: either prosperity with vice, or poverty with virtue." Mandeville's theory is the logical outcome of Shaftesbury's teleological argument that there is no absolute, but only a relative evil, which is, in reality a necessary part of the world plan. Mandeville takes the further step, and says that if there is no absolute evil there is no absolute good; and Shaftesbury's exaggerated optimism is inverted into a pessimism.