The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it taste better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The fallacy of that book is, that Mandeville defines neither vices nor benefits. He reckons among vices everything that gives pleasure. He takes the narrowest system of morality, monastick morality, which holds pleasure itself to be a vice, such as eating salt with our fish, because it makes it taste better; and he reckons wealth as a publick benefit, which is by no means always true. Pleasure of itself is not a vice." in the context of "Samuel Johnson in conversation, April 15, 1778, reported in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1791) p. 948" to mean that wisdom is timeless.