THE ORIGIN OF "THE INVISIBLE HAND" CONCEPT

Adam Smith coined the phrase "the invisible hand" to describe the miracles of the Free Market Fairy and I read that he may have gotten that idea from the Greek Stoics.  It seems now that Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (1732) gave Smith the general idea. 

Mandeville starts off his great work with a poetic parable about how a wonderful bee hive is organized and wealthy because, not despite,the moral failings of the bees:

A Spacious Hive well stockt with Bees,
That liv’d in Luxury and Ease;
And yet as fam’d for Laws and Arms,
As yielding large and early Swarms;
Was counted the great Nursery
Of Sciences and Industry.
No Bees had better Government,
More Fickleness, or less Content:
They were not Slaves to Tyranny,
Nor rul’d by wild Democracy;
[2]But Kings, that could not wrong, because
Their Power was circumscrib’d by Laws.
[snip}

T h u s every Part was full of Vice,

Yet the whole Mass a Paradise;

Flatter’d in Peace, and fear’d in Wars,
They were th’ Esteem of Foreigners,
And lavish of their Wealth and Lives,
The Balance of all other Hives.
Such were the Blessings of that State;
Their Crimes conspir’d to make them a Great:
(F.) And Virtue, who from Politicks
Had learn’d a Thousand Cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since,
(G.) The worst of all the Multitude

Did something for the Common Good.