 In fact, what are generosity, clemency, humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, to the human species in general?In the 19th century, Leslie Stephen, writing for the "Dictionary of National Biography" reported that "Mandeville gave great offense by this book, in which a cynical system of morality was made attractive by ingenious paradoxes.... His doctrine that prosperity was increased by expenditure rather than by saving fell in with many current economic fallacies not yet extinct.