(1) It embodies an error in political economy, namely, that it is spending and not saving that gives employment to the poor.

If Mandeville's aim had been less critical, and had he been less delighted with his famous paradox, we may infer from the acuteness of his reasoning on the subject, that he would have anticipated the true doctrine of political economy, as he saw through the fallacy of the mercantile theory.

(2) He employs the term, luxury, with great latitude, as including whatever is not a bare necessary of existence.
According to the fashionable doctrine of his day, all luxury was called an evil and a vice; and in this sense, doubtless, vice is essential to the existence of a great nation.
5.

_The origin of society_.

Mandeville's remarks on this subject are the best he has written, and come nearest to the accredited views of the present day.