gically an atheist, politically a
revolutionary, and socially a leveller. In the _Letter to Dion_,
however, Mandeville assumes that Berkeley is charging him with all of
these views, and accuses Berkeley of unfairness and misrepresentation.

Neither _Alciphron_ nor the _Letter to Dion_ caused much of a stir. The
_Letter_ never had a second edition,[1] and is now exceedingly scarce.
The significance of the _Letter_ would be minor if it were confined to
its role in the exchange between Berkeley and Mandeville.[2] Berkeley
had more sinners in mind than Mandeville, and Mandeville more critics
than Berkeley. Berkeley, however, mere than any other critic seems to
have gotten under Mandeville's skin, perhaps because Berkeley alone
made effective use against him of his own weapons of satire and
ridicule.[3]

[1] In its only foreign language translation, the _Letter_,
somewhat abbreviated, is appended to the German translation of
_The Fable of the Bees_ by Otto Bobertag, _Mandevilles
Bienenfabel_, Munich, 1914, pp. 349-398.

[2] Berkeley again criticized Mandeville in _A Discourse
Addressed to Magistrates_, [1736], _Works_, A. C. Fraser ed.,
Oxford, 1871, III. 424.

[3] _A Vindication of the Reverend D---- B--y_, London, 1734,
applies to _Alciphron_ the comment of Shaftesbury that reverend
authors who resort to dialogue form may "perhaps, find means to
laugh gentlemen into their religion, who have unfortunately been
laughed out of it." See Alfred Owen Aldridge, "Shaftesbury and
the Deist Manifesto," _Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society_, New Series, XLI (1951), Part 2, p. 358.

Berkeley came to closest grips with _The Fable of the Bees_ when he
rejected Mandeville's grim picture of human nature, and when he met
Mandeville's eulogy of luxury by the argument that expenditures on
luxuries were no better support of employment than equivalent spending
on charity to the poor or than the more lasting life which would result
from avoidance of luxury.[4]

[4] Francis Hutcheson, a fellow-townsman of Berkeley, had
previously made these points against Mandeville's treatment of
luxury in letters to the _Dublin Journal_ in 1726, (reprinted in
Hutcheson, _Reflections upon Laughter, and Remarks upon the Fable
of the Bees_, Glasgow, 1750, pp. 61-63, and in James Arbuckle,
_Hibernicus' Letters_, London, 1729