The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits

learn more patiently to submit to those inconveniences which no government on Earth can remedy, once they see the impossibility of enjoying any great share of the first [benefits] without also sharing in the latter.

This, I say, ought naturally to be expected from publishing these notions, if people could be made better by anything that could be said to them; but since mankind has remained the same for so many ages, despite the many instructive and elaborate writings that have attempted their improvement, I am not so vain as to hope for better success from such an insignificant trifle.

Having admitted the small advantage this little whim is likely to produce, I think myself obliged to show that it cannot be harmful to anyone; for what is published, if it does no good, ought at least to do no harm. To this end, I have provided some explanatory notes, to which the reader will find himself referred in those passages that seem most likely to face objections.

The censorious critics who never saw The Grumbling Hive will tell me that, regardless of what I say about the fable, since it takes up less than a tenth of the book, it was only devised to introduce the remarks; that instead of clearing up doubtful or obscure passages, I have only chosen those that I wanted to expand upon; and that far from striving to lessen the errors committed, I have made bad worse and shown myself to be a blatant champion for vice, to the