SOURCE: Jack, M. R. “Religion and Ethics in Mandeville.” In Mandeville Studies: New Explorations in the Art and Thought of Dr. Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), edited by Irwin Primer, pp. 34-42. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975.

In the following essay, Jack examines Mandeville's “naturalistic” view of religion and ethics as having psychological rather than theological bases.

At the beginning of his full-length work on religion entitled Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness, Mandeville defines religion as “an Acknowledgment of an Immortal Power.”¹ He later says that “Men of Sense, and good Logicians” have vainly wasted their time arguing about and discussing the subject since time immemorial, for knowledge of God is something “which no Language can give them the least Idea of.”² God is ineffable, religion is mysterious, and “no Man therefore ought to be too dogmatical in Matters of Faith.”³ Mandeville has thus ruled out the...