Abstract
BERNARD MANDEVILLE (1670-1733) was a native of Rotterdam who studied at the University of Leyden, practiced medicine in England where he wrote satiric verse, and, during the last decade of his life, acquired the reputation of being a licentious philosopher-a detested name, an opponent lamented, yet ne'er to die.' The Fable of the Bees (1723 and 1729)2 was one of the most widely read and disputed books of its time, and its style, substance, and mode of argument has periodically attracted the attention of students in virtually every branch of the humanities and social sciences. Among the many intellectual lives fashioned for Mandeville by this division of academic labour, that of a theorist of language has seldom been noticed. This omission is understandable, since Mandeville considers the origin and use of language only in digressions meant to support his wider psychological and moral arguments (I: 190-192 and II: 285-291). My purpose in drawing attention to Mandeville's discussion of language is not intended to claim for it a previously unrecognized insight into linguistic processes, but to examine how The Fable
Published Version
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