ught to renounce.
(p. 18)[9]

[8] _Fable of the Bees_, I. 48-49.

[9] All page references placed in the main text of this
introduction are to the _Letter to Dion_.

"Tho' I have shewn the Way to Worldly Greatness, I have, without
Hesitation, preferr'd the Road that leads to Virtue." (p. 31)

Kaye concedes: that Mandeville's rigorism "was merely verbal and
superficial, and that he would much regret it if the world were run
according to rigoristic morality;" that "emotionally" and "practically,
if not always theoretically," Mandeville chooses the "utilitarian" side
of the dilemma between virtue and prosperity; and that "Mandeville's
philosophy, indeed, forms a complete whole without the extraneous
rigorism."[10] Kaye nevertheless insists that Mandeville's rigorism was
sincere, and that it is necessary so to accept it to understand him. It
seems to me, on the contrary, that if Mandeville's rigorism were
sincere, the whole satirical structure of his argument, its provocative
tone, its obvious fun-making gusto, would be incomprehensible, and
there would be manifest inconsistency between his satirical purposes
and his procedures as a writer.

[10] _Fable of the Bees_, II. 411. I, lxi, I, lvi.

Kaye argues that rigorism was not so unusual as of itself to justify
doubt as to its genuineness in the case of Mandeville; rigorism was "a
contemporary point of view both popular and respected, a view-point not
yet extinct." To show that rigorism was "the respectable orthodox
position for both Catholics and Protestants," Kaya cites as rigorists,
in addition to Bayle, St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Daniel Dyke (the
author of _Mystery of Selfe-Deceiving_, 1642), Thomas Fuller
(1608-1661), William Law, and three Continental moralists, Esprit and
Pascal, Jansenists, and J. F. Bernard, a French Calvinist.[11]

[11] _Ibid._, I. li, I. lv, I. cxxi.

Christian rigorism by Mandeville's time had had a long history. From and
including St. Augustine on, it had undergone many types of doctrinal
dilution and moderation even on the part of some of its most ardent
exponents. In Mandeville, and in Kaye, it is presented only in its barest
and starkest form. Kaye, however, required by his thesis to show that
Mandeville's doctrine was "in accord with a great body of contemporary
theory,"[12] while accepting it as "the code of rigorism" treats it as
if it were identical with any moral system calling fo