Bernard Mandeville's sharp-sighted analysis of the society of his time in the bee fable, especially his view of the nature of ethics—private vices, public benefits—and the essay on the schools for the poor triggered a lively discussion even among his contemporaries. Like many philosophers of the early bourgeois era, Mandeville was convinced that all philosophizing about social conditions had to begin with the study of human nature as it really is, not as it should be.