to a profound impulse. We require a religious sanction (Sermons, 1726), however, in order to resist doubt and the questions which arise in our calmer moods. Whilst Shaftesbury bases his optimism on Being or Nature as a whole and assails Christianity on account of its inconceivability and its inhumanity, Butler maintains that the view of nature in which so many rudimentary ambitions must perish and the innocent so frequently suffer instead of the guilty violates the belief in a universal harmony, and that the criticisms charged against Christianity must likewise apply to the natural religion which Shaftesbury professes. (Analogy of Religion, natural and revealed, to the constitution and course of nature, 1737.)
The Frenchman, Bernard de Mandeville (c. 1670-1733), who was born in Holland and lived in London as a practicing physician, likewise opposed Shaftesbury's optimism. In The Fable of the Bees (1705) and in the notes which he afterwards appended to this story he says that private virtues are of no benefit whatever, either from the viewpoint of culture or the general welfare of society. On the contrary, the desire for pleasure, impatience and egoism are motives which inspire effort, culture and social organization. It is the duty of statesmen to strengthen society by a skillful manipulation of the egoistic interests of men. We are naturally disposed, on the other hand, to set ourselves against the public interests when these would suppress egoism and the desire for pleasure. We must therefore choose between morality and culture.—Owing to the fact that this theory apparently supported the doctrine of human depravity and the consequent need of divine revelation, Mandeville fared better at the hands of ecclesiastical polemics than the outspoken pagan, Shaftesbury.
