PART II

.

Opinionum enim Commenta delet dies; Naturae judicia confirmat.

Cicero de Nat. Deor. Lib. 2.

PREFACE.

Considering the manifold clamours, that have been raised from several quarters, against the Fable of the Bees, even after I had published the vindication of it, many of my readers will wonder to see me come out with a second part, before I have taken any further notice of what has been said against the first. Whatever is published, I take it for granted, is submitted to the judgment of all the world that see it; but it is very unreasonable, that authors should not be upon the same footing with their critics. The treatment I have received, and the liberties some gentlemen have taken with me, being well known, the public must be convinced before now, that, in point of civility, I owe my adversaries nothing: and if those, who have taken upon them to school and reprimand me, had an undoubted right to censure what they thought fit, without asking my leave, and to say of me what they pleased, I ought to have an equal privilege to examine their censures, and, without consulting them, to judge in my turn, whether they are worth answering or not. The public must be the umpire between us. From the Appendix that has been added to the first part, ever since the third edition, it is manifest, that I have been far from endeavouring to stifle, either the arguments or the invectives that were made against me; and, not to have left the reader uninformed of any thing extant of either sort, I once thought to have taken this opportunity of presenting him with a list of the adversaries that have appeared in print against me: but as they are in nothing so considerable as they are in their numbers, I was afraid it would have looked like ostentation, unless I would have answered them all, which I shall never attempt. The reason, therefore, of my obstinate silence has been all along, that hitherto I have not been accused of any thing that is criminal or immoral, for which every middling capacity could not have framed a very good answer, from some part or other, either of the vindication or the book itself.

However, I have wrote, and had by me near two years, a defence of the Fable of the Bees, in which I have stated and endeavoured to solve all the objections that might reasonably be made against it, as to the doctrine contained in it, and the detriment it might be of to others: for this is the only thing about which I ever had any concern. Being conscious, that I have wrote with no ill design, I should be sorry to lie under the imputation of it: but as to the goodness or badness of the performance itself, the thought was never worth my care; and therefore those critics, that found fault with my bad reasoning, and said of the book, that it is ill wrote, that there is nothing new in it, that it is incoherent stuff, that the language is barbarous, the humour low, and the style mean and pitiful; those critics, I say, are all very welcome to say what they please: In the main, I believe they are in the right; but if they are not, I shall never give myself the trouble to contradict them; for I never think an author more foolishly employed, than when he is vindicating his own abilities. As I wrote it for my diversion, so I had my ends; if those who read it have not had theirs, I am sorry for it, though I think myself not at all answerable for the disappointment. It was not wrote by subscription, nor have I ever warranted, any where, what use or goodness it would be of: on the contrary, in the very preface, I have called it an inconsiderable trifle; and since that, I have publicly owned that it was a rhapsody. If people will buy books without looking into them, or knowing what they are, I cannot see whom they have to blame but themselves, when they do not answer expectations. Besides, it is no new thing for people to dislike books after they have bought them: this will happen sometimes, even when men of considerable figure had given them the strongest assurances, before hand, that they would be pleased with them.

A considerable part of the defence I mentioned, has been seen by several of my friends, who have been in expectation of it for some time. I have stayed neither for types nor paper, and yet I have several reasons, why I do not yet publish it; which, having touched nobody's money, nor made any promise concerning it, I beg leave to keep to myself. Most of my adversaries, whenever it comes out, will think it soon enough; and nobody suffers by the delay but myself.

Since I was first attacked, it has long been a matter of wonder and perplexity to me to find out, why and how men should conceive, that I had wrote with an intent to debauch the nation, and promote all manner of vice: and it was a great while before I could derive the charge from any thing, but wilful mistake and premeditated malice. But since I have seen, that men could be serious in apprehending the increase of rogues and robberies, from the frequent representations of the Beggar's Opera, I am persuaded, that there really are such wrongheads in the world, as will fancy vices to be encouraged, when they see them exposed. To the same perverseness of judgment it must have been owing, that some of my adversaries were highly incensed with me, for having owned, in the Vindication, that hitherto I had not been able to conquer my vanity, as well as I could have wished. From their censure it is manifest, that they must have imagined, that to complain of a frailty, was the same as to brag of it. But if these angry gentlemen had been less blinded with passion, or seen with better eyes, they would easily have perceived, unless they were too well pleased with their pride, that to have made the same confession themselves, they wanted nothing but sincerity. Whoever boasts of his vanity, and at the same time shows his arrogance, is unpardonable. But when we hear a man complain of an infirmity, and his want of power entirely to cure it, whilst he suffers no symptoms of it to appear, that we could justly upbraid him with, we are so far from being offended, that we are pleased with the ingenuity, and applaud his candour; and when such an author takes no greater liberties with his readers, than what is usual in the same manner of writing, and owns that to be the result of vanity, which others tell a thousand lies about, his confession is a compliment, and the frankness of it ought not to be looked upon otherwise, than as a civility to the public, a condescension he was not obliged to make. It is not in feeling the passions, or in being affected with the frailties of nature, that vice consists; but in indulging and obeying the call of them, contrary to the dictates of reason. Whoever pays great deference to his readers, respectfully submitting himself to their judgment, and tells them at the same time, that he is entirely destitute of pride; whoever, I say, does this, spoils his compliment whilst he is making of it: for it is no better than bragging, that it costs him nothing. Persons of taste, and the least delicacy, can be but little affected with a man's modesty, of whom they are sure, that he is wholly void of pride within: the absence of the one makes the virtue of the other cease; at least the merit of it is not greater than that of chastity in an eunuch, or humility in a beggar. What glory would it be to the memory of Cato, that he refused to touch the water that was brought him, if it was not supposed that he was very thirsty when he did it?

The reader will find, that in this second