Why Did Mandeville Say?

Mandeville implied that people were hypocrites for espousing rigorous ideas about virtue and vice while they failed to act according to those beliefs in their private lives.

Why did Mandeville say private vices might be public virtues?

For Mandeville, the things that the moralists of the 18th century considered vices were precisely the passions which contributed material prosperity. ... The formula, “private vices, public virtues” is this “force that wants to create evil and always creates good” as Goethe's Mephistopheles would say.

What did Bernard Mandeville do?

Bernard Mandeville is primarily remembered for his impact on discussions of morality and economic theory in the early eighteenth century. His most noteworthy and notorious work is The Fable of the Bees, which triggered immense public criticism at the time.