This book was, in form, a reply to Bishop Berkeley's _Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher_. In _Alciphron_, a series of dialogues directed against free thinkers in general, Dion is the presiding host and Alciphron and Lysicles are he expositors of objectionable doctrines. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_ is attacked in the Second Dialogue, where Lysicles expounds some Mandevillian views but is theologically 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.
