Bernard Mandeville - Life

Life

Mandeville was born on 15 November 1670, at Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where his father was a prominent physician. On leaving the Erasmus school at Rotterdam he showed his ability by an Oratio scholastica de medicina (1685), and at Leiden University in 1689 he produced the thesis De brutorum operationibus, in which he advocated the Cartesian theory of automatism among animals. In 1691 he took his medical degree, pronouncing an inaugural disputation, De chylosi vitiata. He moved to England to learn the language, and succeeded so remarkably that many refused to believe he was a foreigner. His father had been banished from Rotterdam in 1693 for involvement in the Costerman tax riots on October 5, 1690; Bernard himself may well have been involved.

As a physician Mandeville was well respected and his literary works were successful as well. His conversational abilities won him the friendship of Lord Macclesfield (chief justice 1710-1718), who introduced him to Joseph Addison, described by Mandeville as "a parson in a tye-wig." He died of influenza on 21 January 1733 at Hackney, aged 62.

There is a surviving image of Mandeville but many details of his life still have to be researched. Although the name Mandeville suggests a French origin, his ancestors had lived in the Netherlands since at least the 16th century. There is no known connection between him and the 14th century Sir John Mandeville.

Read more about this topic:  Bernard Mandeville

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannnot endure it.... Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.
    George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)