Strange, as it may appear, that views of this kind should be seriously put forth, “it is yet more so that they should come from one whose object always was, however strange the way in which he set about it, to promote good morals, for there is nothing in Mandeville’s writings to warrant the belief that he sought to encourage vice.”[135]
Mandeville, like Swift, in the piece entitled _An Argument against Abolishing Christianity_; or like De Foe, in his _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, which were taken _au sérieux_ almost universally at the time of their appearance, may have used the style of grave irony, so far as the larger portion of his Fable is concerned, for the purpose of making a stronger impression on the public conscience. If such were his purpose, the irony is so profound that it has missed its aim. Yet that his purpose was true and earnest is sufficiently evident in his opinion of the practice of slaughtering for food:--
“I have often thought [writes Mandeville] if it was not for the tyranny which Custom usurps over us, that men of any tolerable good nature could never be reconciled to the killing of so many animals for their daily food, so long as the bountiful Earth so plentifully provides them with varieties of vegetable dainties. I know that Reason excites our compassion but faintly, and therefore I do not wonder how men should so little commiserate such imperfect creatures as cray-fish, oysters, cockles, and, indeed, all fish in general, as they are mute, and their inward formation, as well as outward figure, vastly different from ours: they express themselves unintelligently to us, and therefore ’tis not strange that their grief should not affect our understanding which it cannot reach; for nothing stirs us to pity so effectually as when the symptoms of misery strike immediately upon our senses, and I have seen people moved at the noise a live lobster makes upon the spit who could have killed half a dozen fowls with pleasure.
“But in such perfect animals as Sheep and Oxen, in whom the heart, the brain, and the nerves differ so little from ours, and in whom the separation of the spirits from the blood, the organs of sense, and, consequently, feeling itself, are the same as they are in human creatures, I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood and massacre, is able to see a violent death, and the pangs of it, without concern.