The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. The Second Edition, Enlarged with Many Additions. as also An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools. and a Search into The Nature of Society. [An Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue, with Rema…

[vi], 428, [11] pp. Full calf with hand-tooled design, five raised spine bands. A collection of essays, including discussion of the origin of moral virtue, the nature of charity and society, etc. The work comprises a satirical poem entitled The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest, which was first published anonymously in 1705; a prose discussion of the poem, called 'Remarks'; and an essay, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue. In 1723, a second edition (the one offered here) was published with two new essays ('An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools' and 'A Search into the Nature of Society'). In the original portion of the work, Mandeville controversially asserts that self-interest is the lynchpin of a properly functioning society, and that practicing honesty and virtue, while objectively desirable, in practice leads to negative outcomes. His theories influenced Scottish Enlightenment thinkers like Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith, as well as economic constructs like the division of labor, laissez-faire capitalism, etc. Mandeville also wrote A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions, which Garrison-Morton 10703 describes as: "Probably the first psychiatric self-help book. Hunter and Macalpine call Mandeville's work 'the first book on minor mental maladies 'writ by way of Information to Patients' rather than 'to teach other Practitioners'... [Mandeville] gave a graphic account of his own attack of melancholy when he developed the delusion that he had syphilis' (Hunter & Macalpine, p. 296)."