Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robnn Crusoe wth his Vision of the Angelick World [Volume III, The Stroke Newington Edition] 2021016204, 9781684483303, 9781684483310, 9781684483327, 9781684483334, 9781684483341

Citation preview

Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World

•

Figure 1. ​Map of Crusoe’s Island. Frontispiece to the first edition, 1720. Courtesy of William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA.1

-1— 0— +1—

1. Illustration: The large illustration is an attempt to locate and depict the vari­ous adventures experienced by Crusoe during his time on the island as well as the narrative of t­hose left ­behind on the island as narrated in The Farther Adventures (1719). In the ­middle is a repre­ sen­ta­tion of the bower with the bird sounding out “poor Robin Cruso” in a cartoon ­bubble. At the bottom, Robinson Crusoe and Friday are shown with the En­glish Captain whose ship ­w ill be recaptured and provide the means for leaving the island. The upper right depicts the wicker work h ­ ouse constructed by the En­glish sailors. In the upper part t­ oward the m ­ iddle is the ­battle between the settlers and the cannibals ­a fter they have set fire to the ­houses. At the bottom, ­toward the left, is Friday’s rescue of his f­ather, while also on the left are vari­ous scenes involving the cannibals feasting around their fire and murdering a victim. The feast scene ­toward the upper left has vari­ous body parts lying about the periphery of the dancers, including a leg, some arms, and a round object that is prob­ably a head. The ladder placed against a hill between the scenes depicting the meeting with the En­glish Captain and Cru­ soe’s bower prob­ably indicates the location of the enclosure where Crusoe had his cave. The print is signed, “Clark & Pine sc. 1719,” the same John Clark (fl. 1710–1720) and John Pine (1690–1756) who engraved the frontispiece for The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures. The date of the engraving, as well as the subject m ­ atter, opens the possibility that it may originally have been intended for The Farther Adventures ­either accompanying the map of the globe tracing Crusoe’s travels that was used in that volume or as a substitute illustration.

510-99807_ch01_4P.indd 2

21/02/22 9:43 PM

Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World

•

The Stoke Newington Edition

By Da n i e l D e f o e Wi t h a n I n t ro du c t i o n a n d N o t e s b y M a x i m i l l i a n   E . N ova k I rv i n g   N . R o t h m a n M a n u el S chon hor n

Lewisburg, PA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?–1731, author. | Novak, Maximillian E., editor. | Rothman, Irving N., 1935– editor. | Schonhorn, Manuel, editor. Title: Serious reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his vision of the angelick world / by Daniel Defoe; with an introduction and notes by Maximillian E. Novak, Irving N. Rothman, and Manuel Schonhorn. Description: The Stoke Newington Edition. | Lewisburg, PA : Bucknell University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021016204 | ISBN 9781684483303 (paperback) | ISBN 9781684483310 (cloth) | ISBN 9781684483327 (epub) | ISBN 9781684483334 (mobi) | ISBN 9781684483341 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Crusoe, Robinson (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | LCGFT: Action and adventure fiction. Classification: LCC PR3404 .S47 2022 | DDC 823/.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016204 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World was first published in 1720 by William Taylor. Introduction to this edition and scholarly apparatus copyright © 2022 by Bucknell University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Bucknell University Press, Hildreth-­Mirza Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­bucknelluniversitypress​.­org Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

—-1 —0 —+1

Figure 2. ​Title page of first edition, 1720. Courtesy of William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA.

510-99807_ch01_4P.indd 5

21/02/22 9:43 PM

Contents

Contributors ​ ​ ​ix List of Illustrations ​ ​ xi Acknowl­edgments ​ ​ ​xiii Introduction ​ ​ ​xv Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World ​ ​ 1 Robinson Crusoe’s Preface ​ ​ 3 Publisher’s Introduction ​ ​ 11

1 Of SOLITUDE ​ ​ 15

2 An Essay upon HONESTY ​ ​ 31 3 of the Immorality of Conversation, and The Vulgar Errors of Behaviour ​ ​ 77 4 An Essay on the pre­sent State of  Religion in the World ​ ​ 125 5 Of listning to the Voice of Providence ​ ​ 205 6 Of the Proportion between the Christian and Pagan World ​ ​ 235 A Vision of the Angelick World ​ ​  267

Notifications of Books Printed and Sold ​ ​  335

Bibliographic Descriptions ​ ​ 337 List of Editorial Emendations ​ ​ ​351 Selected Bibliography ​ ​ ​355 About the Editors ​ ​ ​359 Index ​ ​ ​361 vii

Contributors

Kit Kincade, Indiana State University Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles John G. Peters, University of North Texas Irving N. Rothman, University of Houston Manuel Schonhorn, Southern Illinois University

ix

Illustrations

1. Map of Crusoe’s Island. Frontispiece to the first edition, 1720.

ii

2. Facsimile title page. First edition, 1720.

v

3. “Crusoe among the Planets.” Frontispiece to the French translation, 1721. 265

xi

Acknowl­edgments

This edition, as with other volumes of the Robinson Crusoe trilogy, has had the gen­ erous support of the University of Houston Martha Gano Houstoun Foundation in the Department of En­glish and the Small Grant fund of the University of Hous­ ton. This funding has supported the effort of students involved in the collation of separate editions. We are appreciative of the following students who provided proofreading and textual assistance: Meredith Allison, Jordan Bailey, Pritty Bhalla, Nicholas Cen­ egy, Mignette Dorsey, Albert Kidd, Emilie Koenig, Samantha Lay, Bruce Martin, Laura Marzola, Matthew McKinney, and Charles Miles. Matthew  C. Poston received a Provost’s University Research Fellowship (PURF) in Fall 2002 to con­ duct a study of philosophy in Serious Reflections, with his findings being a contri­ bution to the Line Notes. We are also grateful for the research of Dr.  Irene Beesemeyer and for the thorough work of Dr. Anthony W. Lee, who was responsible for a careful reading and correction of all three of the Crusoe volumes.

xiii

Introduction

1 Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World was published by William Taylor around 6 August 1720 with the entry in the Stationer’s Register dated 3 August 1720.1 The volume was announced in The St James’s Eve­ning Post and The Post Boy in their issues of 4–6 August. It went through only one edition and was seldom reprinted. Nevertheless, if it lacks the genius of the e­ arlier volumes, Serious Reflections is not without interest in its own right and as a commentary on the ­earlier vol­ umes. In his biography of Defoe, William Lee began by lamenting the lack of a full autobiography by Defoe and solemnly accepted Defoe’s comment in Serious Reflections, “In a Word, ­t here is not a Circumstance in the imaginary Story, but has its just allusion to a real Story, and Chimes Part for Part, and Step for Step with the inimitable ‘Life of Robinson Crusoe,’ ”2 as evidence that The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures might be read as an emblematic autobiography.3 One of the explanations Lee gives for Defoe’s failure to write a full autobiography is that with “the noble reticence of a true patriot,” he refused to divulge the secrets of his relationship with William III.4 Even the greatest admirer of Defoe has to cringe at such hero worship. Although Serious Reflections possesses some bio­ graphical interest, its chief importance lies in providing the reader with an oppor­ tunity to hear Defoe talk on some of his favorite subjects, including the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe. Whereas it is clear that Defoe was already writing The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe when the first volume was published, the occasion for Serious Reflections is less transparent. The year of its publication, 1720, was one of height­ ened economic activity leading up to the South Sea B ­ ubble and its eventual col­ lapse. Although F. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens have raised doubts about some of the tracts attributed to him by John Robert Moore and ­others for this year, they agree with the attribution of several economic tracts written at this time.5 As xv

xvi I n t r o d u c t i o n

someone who remained a projector throughout his life, Defoe was clearly very much involved with the excitement caused by the many proj­ects being proposed at this time. His Anatomy of Exchange Alley had appeared in 1719, and in his jour­ nal, The Manufacturer (1719–1720), he took the side of the weavers against the East India Com­pany and its importation of calicoes. In The Chimera (1720 [for 1719]), he had glanced skeptically (but with considerable curiosity) at the experiments in paper money being conducted by John Law in France. And in his Commentator (1720), he engaged in a defense of the soundness of the South Sea Com­pany com­ pared to the Mississippi Com­pany in France, which indeed collapsed during the run of this journal. Economic ­matters, then, seemed very much in the air during the composition of Serious Reflections, yet economics is a subject that plays a minor role in this work. In addition, Defoe had published two major fictions: Memoirs of a Cavalier in May 1720 and The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton in June 1720. It is also highly likely that he was responsible for the “Continuation” of The History of the Wars, of His Late Majesty Charles XII of Sweden published in May of the same year. And he was prob­ably already at work on the three ­great works of 1722: Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Col­o­nel Jack. Thus, he was near the height of his powers as a writer of narrative. Why, then, would he decide to write a work, which, though filled with brief narratives, is essentially a series of essays on miscellaneous subjects? It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that some part of the responsibility had to do with the publisher of all three volumes, William Taylor. The first volume had been enormously popu­lar and had doubtless enriched Taylor. Both Crusoe volumes had “Written by Himself ” on the title pages, as did the third volume, apparently alluding to Robinson Crusoe as the author. But the claim that Robinson Crusoe was a real “Mari­ner” and that his account was literally true had been challenged and ridiculed by T. Cox, the publisher of an abridgement of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, and by Charles Gildon, who, in the text of his The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D. . . . . De F . . . ​of London, Hosier (London, 1719), revealed Defoe as the author and sneered at the errors in the text. Taylor took out an advertisement against Cox and his abridged version in The St. James Eve­ning Post of 7 August 1719 and began a suit in Chancery.6 Cox responded by threatening to reveal both that Robinson Crusoe was a fiction and the name of the true author.7 Taylor would rightly have believed his financial investment in Defoe’s work threatened by such revelations. He may have asked Defoe to blunt such criticisms. Defoe responded with a defense of his fiction that took it out of the realm of romance and into that which he called “Allegorick History.” This raises the question of ­whether Defoe would do such a ­t hing for a business associate. Defoe’s close relationship to his publishers and printers was noted in the anony­ mous pamphlet, The ­Battle of the Authors Lately Fought in Covent-­Garden (1720), in which he was depicted as bringing along his numerous “Booksellers and Printers” as his advocates in arguing his case for the first prize before the “Goddess Igno­ rance.”8 But if Defoe was ­going to put together a volume of miscellaneous essays

I n troduction

xvii

to justify the e­ arlier Crusoe volumes, it would be natu­ral for him to turn it into an occasion for expressing some of his cherished ideas on a wide variety of subjects.9 And he would not be the first author who would consider the money-­making pos­ sibilities of a sequel to a blockbuster. In addition to the defense of fiction, he appears to have drawn together some old prose pieces, some comments on Chris­tian­ity, and some materials that ­were eventually to be more fully exploited in such works as The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), A System of Magick (1726), An Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (1727), and A New ­Family Instructor (1728). The most obvious example of this turn to theological argument is “A Vision of the Angelick World,” which is advertised on the title page but paginated separately. It is so obviously the product of Defoe’s readings in theological sources that ­were to inform ­t hese ­later writings that it has the appearance of a work pieced together out of scraps of that research. Most of this material has very l­ittle to do with the Robinson Crusoe who, in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, had to confess his inability to answer Fri­ day’s questions about the existence of evil in the world. But that brings up the vexed question of Crusoe’s character and its relation to Defoe. In writing the line notes, where we are dealing with arguments that seem to be associated with ideas that Defoe expressed elsewhere, we usually relate the comments to Defoe. On some occasions, as when Crusoe speaks of the experience of feeling a weight on his body while lying in his cave, Crusoe is clearly an extension of the character appearing in the ­earlier volumes. When he is dealing with fine points of theology or quoting Thomas Burnet’s ideas on nature, Robinson Crusoe the mari­ner and traveler is entirely beside the point. Defoe’s explanations of the relationship between a fic­ tional character and the author do not make such a decision easy. The early reviewers of the Robinson Crusoe volumes showed how uncommon it was to read a work of fiction that undertook to treat serious themes composed in a realistic manner and in a plain style. Most w ­ ere hostile to both romances and the more realistic “novels” that usually concentrated on aspects of love. Even so brilliant a work as Madame de Lafayette’s Princes de Cleves (first translated into En­glish in 1679) was not fully appreciated. But they praised Robinson Crusoe as a new type “moral romance,” presaging the possibility of a serious type of fiction that was to emerge in the writing of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding.10 In accepting the three volumes of Robinson Crusoe as works of fiction, t­ hese review­ ers appeared to ignore the statement on the title page that insisted ­these works ­were indeed “Written by Himself,” composed by a person named Robinson Crusoe. The fictional memoir, written by a supposed author in his or her own voice, was an established form by 1719–1720, and the reviewers on the Continent disregarded the statement about authorship, accepting it as a work of fiction.11 Defoe might have pursued this course, insisting that the professions of truth that had been prefaced to the e­ arlier volumes w ­ ere not unusual ways of introduc­ ing works of fiction, that the volumes had been extremely well received ­because they told exciting stories in a convincing manner, and that the most impor­tant ­t hings about them ­were the truths they contained about ­human nature. Defoe

xviii I n t r o d u c t i o n

follows this strategy to a degree, and it is central to “The Publisher’s Introduc­ tion,” as well as (to a certain extent) to the comparison of his work to Don Quixote in the “Preface.” Gildon had already revealed Defoe’s authorship in his pamphlet attack, and in E ­ ngland at least, his responsibility for the text was well known. What further harm, then, could be done by confessing his authorship and stating that he was the creator of Crusoe and his adventures? But as previously remarked, Serious Reflections continued to proclaim “Written by Himself ” on the title page. The first line of defense was the proposition that the work was an allegory. Robinson Crusoe is to be seen as an allegorical figure, a repre­sen­ta­tion of the life—or at least part of the life—of an unnamed but famous author, whom anyone with a knowledge of the British literary scene would know to be Daniel Defoe. But Defoe appears to have believed that so long as he retained the name Robinson Crusoe, he had to be accorded a degree of freedom to act as if he ­were someone e­ lse. And in that age in which pseudonymous and anonymous publi­ cations ­were the rule rather than anything unusual, such freedom was usually granted. As Samuel Johnson remarked in one of his Rambler essays, “ ‘A mask,’ says Castiglione, ‘confers a right of acting and speaking with less restraint even when the wearer is known to the ­whole com­pany.’ He that is discovered without his own con­ sent, may claim some indulgence, and cannot be rigorously called to justify t­ hose sallies or frolicks which his disguise is a proof that he wishes to conceal.”12 Although Johnson advised that an author should write in a manner that would include the expectation that his identity would be revealed, he does not dismiss Castiglione’s opinion.13 Amplifying the comments of Richard Steele in Spectator no. 555, Michael Warner argued that the use of the mask or persona, such as “Tatler” and “Spectator,” was one of the basic ele­ments in the notion of the “Public Sphere,” establishing a contractual m ­ iddle ground of anonymity between the writer and the audience.14 Charles Gildon allowed Defoe no such latitude. He made a personal attack on Defoe’s character and his ­career as a writer and polemicist, using Robinson Cru­ soe and Friday to chastise Defoe for his misrepre­sen­ta­tions. Defoe, in turn, took the opportunity to assert a paradoxical existence for his “Mari­ner,” even while changing him from the adventurous survivor and enthusiastic Christian into a philosophic observer of the h ­ uman condition and theological controversialist whose ardor for Chris­tian­ity now assumes an even more militant form. Defoe attempts to accomplish this by sleight of hand using a variety of approaches. The most outrageous, in some ways, is the straight allegorical approach. The vari­ous events in Crusoe’s life are supposed to have a direct parallel with the events of Defoe’s own life. If Defoe was suggesting that fictional characters always share some aspects of personality with their creator, that might be an in­ter­est­ing viewpoint, but what he maintains is that he set out to write an allegorical autobi­ ography and that the events of Crusoe’s life are parallel to ­t hose of the unnamed author. For example, Crusoe beset by the cannibals is actually our unnamed author (understood by the reader to be Defoe), cruelly attacked by his enemies. The notion of a one-­to-­one allegory led several biographers to assume that, in Serious Reflec-

I n troduction

xix

tions, the tale of the man who de­cided to remain s­ ilent in relation to his f­ amily for de­cades had to apply to Defoe’s own relationship with his f­ amily.15 The possibili­ ties for such misunderstandings are endless. Intriguing as it is, then, the allegori­ cal approach has to be dismissed out of hand. Even allowing some allegorical relationship between the writer and his creation does not solve the prob­lem of answering the attacks of Gildon and Cox, since Defoe still admits that The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures is, in some way, a work of fiction. Defoe seems to play with the notions of John Locke in much of this obfusca­ tion. Cannot a fiction create as clear an idea of real­ity as the t­ hing itself? Is not identity to a g­ reat extent merely a memory of who we are? And if the reader has a vivid notion of someone named Robinson Crusoe, who is to say that he is not as real as Daniel Defoe? If as Defoe says famously, “ ’tis as reasonable to represent one kind of Imprisonment by another, as it is to represent any ­Thing that ­really exists, by that which exists not,”16 is it not pos­si­ble that the fictional character, Robinson Crusoe, possesses some obscure form of real­ity? In broaching such arcane possibilities, Defoe appears to argue for the text as containing hidden messages. And the notion of impenetrable languages actually becomes a theme in The Farther Adventures, when Crusoe and his ship encounter a tribe whose guttural sounds refuse to yield any hint of meaning to Western ears. Defoe was ­later to expand upon similar themes in Mere Nature Delineated (1726), a work in which he puzzled over teaching the deaf to speak and learn. In Serious Reflections, Defoe even seems fascinated by the notion of a “secret language” that so engaged the commentators on Ludwig Wittgenstein and involved the use of Robinson Crusoe as an example.17 If the work is a secret allegory, the meaning of which at least one biographer believed he had discovered, perhaps it contains other coded messages that readers have not been able to unravel? This would not be the first time that Defoe would confess that he appeared to be the only person who actually understood what he had written.18 Nevertheless, Defoe is reluctant to surrender the notion that t­ here is a “real” Robinson Crusoe or admit that his story is merely a work of fiction. The opening paragraphs of the preface repeat the words “real,” “true,” and “history” time ­after time. What­ever the thrust of the argument might be, the language in which it is couched goes in the direction of asserting that both Crusoe, the writer, and the adventures he recounts have a real existence or that they are both real and allegori­ cal. Thus, in comparing his work to Don Quixote, he insists that Cervantes’s master­ piece was actually a satire on one of the author’s contemporaries. In sliding from an allegorical interpretation t­oward satire, Defoe was on somewhat firmer critical ground. Certainly a satire such as Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, a work alluded to sev­ eral times in Serious Reflections, was thought to be a satire on par­tic­u­lar individuals, in addition to being a general satire on the vari­ous sects of Puritans and their abuse of power during the Interregnum. Satire sometimes sustains a fairly realistic fiction, despite its continual plunge into didactic attacks on ideologies and individuals.19 Unfortunately, despite moments of satire in volumes 1 and 2 of Robinson Crusoe, no one would find such passages sustained enough to argue that they shift the

xx I n t r o d u c t i o n

essential genre of the work. In its introspection, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures is a combination of fictional spiritual autobiography and adventure novel, while The Farther Adventures, despite its satirical treatment of Chinese civ­ ilization, is essentially a novel of travel and adventures. And both appeal to the strug­gle to survive ­under dangerous circumstances. Like the suggestion that both volumes are allegorical autobiography, the satirical argument fails to sustain care­ ful examination.20 Defoe ends with what is an appeal for the validity of t­hose fictions that contain meaningful ideas. He defines this as “Parable or Allegorick History brought to pass, . . . ​for moral and religious improvement” (sig. A6). He gives as his example “invincible Patience recommended ­under the worst of Misery” (sig. A6), a theme that may or may not have specific religious import. In fact, Defoe’s definition might apply to any of his works of fiction, since the social themes of Moll Flanders, Col­o­nel Jack, and Roxana might be considered as “serious” in their own way as anything in the Robinson Crusoe trilogy. For all of his elaborate indirection, then, in the end Defoe’s defense would apply even to his Captain Singleton, which, except for a quickly rendered religious conversion at the end, is essentially a series of adventures. Single­ ton’s courage and refusal to despair can certainly be worked into a moral, but the reader’s main interest lies in a realistically rendered, exciting series of events.

2 Defoe begins his series of essays with “Of Solitude,” a subject with which Crusoe had made himself intimately familiar through his experiences on the island. It was a theme that clearly fascinated Defoe. If one of the g­ reat themes of the eigh­teenth ­century was sociability, an interest in vari­ous forms of isolation had dominated the seventeenth ­century in both philosophy and religion. Blaise Pascal had maintained, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.21 And Jean de La Bruyère stated, “All men’s misfortunes proceed from their aversion to being alone.”22 In ­England popu­ lar handbooks such as Bishop Edward Wettenhall’s Enter into Thy Closet; or, A Method and Order for Private Devotion (1666) had urged the necessity of being “often alone” and withdrawing into a private room for prayer and meditation twice a day.23 And to a certain extent, the prac­ti­tion­ers of Quietism, who are mentioned somewhat disparagingly in Serious Reflections, attempted to reach an unmediated contact with God through silence and meditation. But Serious Reflections is very much an early eighteenth-­century text. Whole sections are devoted to “Conversa­ tion” or the benefits of sociability. A ­ fter all, once Friday arrives on his island, the restless Crusoe succeeds in achieving a degree of genuine happiness. In all of the Robinson Crusoe volumes, Defoe manages to blend his interest in solitude with ide­ alizations of the social—of the interaction between h ­ uman beings. As had so many of his contemporaries, Defoe had done some reading in Michel de Montaigne, who has an essay on the benefits of social isolation by the same title as that used by Defoe. Defoe also appears to have been familiar with

I n troduction

xxi

the debate between Sir George Mackenzie and John Evelyn on the advantages of retirement compared to the active life.24 But Crusoe’s isolation is far more extreme than that envisaged by any of the above authors, even if Montaigne refers occasionally to the lives of hermits. In announcing that “Life in general is, or o ­ ught to be, but one Universal Act of Solitude” (2), Defoe was speaking for an age in which the concept of the isolated self had already evolved from Descartes’s cogito through John Locke’s “radically subjectivist view of the person,”25 to Bishop George Berkeley’s argument that the mind perceives only ideas. And the individualism, with all its social and economic aspects, that Ian Watt saw as a distinct aspect of Crusoe’s existence was also part of the con­temporary ideological mix.26 To supplement this already complicated amalgam of systems, Defoe used a blend of Rochester’s Satyr upon Mankind and Locke’s Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding to arrive at something resembling the modern self—­isolated in the midst of crowds, moved by the desire for what is pleasant. Solitude, for Defoe, is a psychological state, perhaps more attainable in the m ­ iddle of London’s crowds than on an uninhabited island. Defoe takes the occasion to attack that type of solitude sought by hermits as suggestive of the limitations of the mind to achieve true solitude than as some­ thing admirable. The truly isolated self needs no such external trappings. He instances a diligent and religious Laborer, who devotes himself to his work and his religious meditations. Defoe contrasts such a person to Saint Hilary spending time in the desert among the “Lions and Crocodiles” (14). Whereas the Laborer is able to live well enough in civilized society on his earnings, the desert hermits would be forced to spend a considerable time that might have been passed in reli­ gious meditation in searching for food and w ­ ater. Even aside from the obvious dis­ like of what Defoe considered to be the absurd miracles associated with some of the Catholic saints, ­t here is something peculiarly Protestant about this insistence upon relying upon the self and the conscience as guides t­ oward the moral life. Through Crusoe, Defoe insists that the moral life is to be led in society, not by a monkish withdrawal. Although the example of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures appeared to overthrow Aristotle’s dictum that isolation was impossible for a h ­ uman being, Defoe now reasserts that notion. “Man is a Creature so form’d for Society,” he writes, “that it may not only be said, that it is not good for him to be alone, but ’tis ­really impossible he should be alone” (12). Perhaps Defoe saw that one of the routes leading out of Crusoe’s island would arrive at Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s Solitary Walker with its almost obsessive concern with inner experience. Certainly he wanted to be sure that he would not inspire a new age of hermits allied to the Catho­ lic Church. Part of this pro­cess of undoing any harm (and one of the major themes of Serious Reflections) ­will be his insistence upon the need for sociability.27

3 Defoe followed his discussion of solitude with a series of essays on what he calls “Honesty.” Although Defoe ties this in with Crusoe’s experiences by alluding to

xxii I n t r o d u c t i o n

the W ­ idow who did so much for him when he was in Brazil and to the Portuguese Captain who helped him at that time as well as some three de­cades ­later when he had been rescued from the island, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that this was something Defoe adapted from a draft that he had in the drawer of his desk.28 Defoe had been thinking hard about honesty since his first bankruptcy, when, as he confessed, he had done ­things of which he was deeply ashamed, and he had dis­ cussed the subject in his first book in 1697.29 “Honesty is Equity,” writes Defoe in Serious Reflections, “­every Man is Lord Chancellor to himself” (37). Defoe sees a situation such as that in which a ­family may be destroyed by debt as something that cannot be entirely a ­matter of rigid law. It concerns the entire society. As he expatiates upon his subject, Defoe transforms honesty into the glue that binds society together. He dismisses the idea that found its most prominent spokes­ man in the Third Earl of Shaftesbury—­t hat every­one possessed a moral sense that prompted him/her to act ethically.30 ­A fter stating that he would not discuss “­whether Honesty be a natu­ral or an acquired Virtue” (26), he does exactly that, rejecting the notion of natu­ral goodness and asserting the failure of ­human beings to live up to a standard of morality established by God. The honesty he wants to discuss has to do with ­human relationships. In some sense it is an extension of his many arguments about credit extended to the social sphere, and he brings in exam­ ples involving the ways in which credit works and is sometimes abused.31 ­Human society depends upon trust, and trust depends upon honesty. Honesty of this kind, however, depends upon a system involving the confession of inevitable breaches of honesty accompanied by forgiveness by the offended party. Such a system, unfor­ tunately, is not to be found in any nation’s courts. It has to be discovered in a sense of “Equity” supported by “Reason” (37–38). ­Under the heading “Of the Tryal of Honesty,” he next takes up the theme of “Necessity,” a subject he had treated at some length in the Review, and which was to become a crucial theme in his novels.32 Defoe argues along the lines set forth by Hugo Grotius and other phi­los­o­phers of natu­ral law. In explaining why theft may be justified ­under conditions of extreme necessity, Grotius maintained that such a condition returns ­those in necessity to a stage of society when all ­things ­were held in common. ­Under such circumstances, ­there can be nothing that can be called theft. ­Later theorists, such as Samuel Pufendorf, stressed the requirement of ­those in a state of necessity to make restitution when they could. The subject had broader ramifications in law, however, and some of t­ hose ramifications w ­ ere to have a place in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The two shipwrecks encountered by Crusoe on his way back to the island involve questions of cannibalism u ­ nder situa­ tions of dire necessity. Would it be permissible to draw lots, murder, and devour one of ­those who survived a shipwreck if all must die of starvation other­wise? The natu­ ral law phi­los­o­phers judged that, u ­ nder such circumstances, cannibalism would be justified, and Defoe defends it once more ­under “a Kind of Equity” (40). A somewhat less extreme example occurs in The Farther Adventures in the case of the passengers of the ship that has been adrift. The crew, concerned with their own survival, has neglected to provide for the ­mother, son, and maid, who have

I n troduction

xxiii

come close to ­dying of starvation when Crusoe’s ship arrives. Although the son and maid recover, the ­mother actually dies. Is the crew guilty of murder? Driven by a desire to save their own lives, the crew could plead “Necessity,” and be justi­ fied u ­ nder natu­ral law. In Serious Reflections, Defoe alludes to such cases and con­ cludes, “All that can be said is, that Necessity makes the highest Crimes lawful, and ­Things Evil in themselves in their own Nature are made practicable by it” (41). Such judgments by the writers on natu­ral law w ­ ere put forward as part of a system of law that was supposed to be governed by reason, rather than religious dictums or the laws of par­tic­u­lar socie­ties, and they had ­great influence on Western Eu­ro­pean socie­ties at a time when philosophy and science had placed a high value on govern­ ing their disciplines by rational ideals in method and goals. During a period when the vari­ous ­legal systems of Eu­rope appeared to follow often arbitrary standards, a major goal of enlightened thought, from Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) to Emmerich de Vattel (1714–1767), involved searching for a single, rational standard of law.33 Perhaps the most obvious examples of what seemed irrational punishments w ­ ere ­those involving crimes committed as acts of self-­preservation—­acts that fell ­under the rubric of “Necessity.” As Samuel Pufendorf remarked concerning the ferment of thought on this subject, “The Case of Necessity is a ­thing in ­every Body’s Mouth.”34 The final two sections on the subject of honesty turn to the subjects of the con­ tingencies of promises and to education. In the first Defoe argues that all contracts are provisional and contain a usually unstated clause to the effect that the party who receives goods or money agrees to pay his debt ­u nless unforeseen circum­ stances prevent such repayment. He maintains that the modern notion of being a “Gentleman” (58) depends not on noble blood but on be­hav­ior based on honesty. Defoe was to state this position most forcefully in his Compleat En­glish Gentleman, a work that Defoe left unfinished at his death in 1731,35 but in 1701, at the end of his True-­Born En­glishman, he had already asserted “ ’Tis personal Virtue only makes us G ­ reat.” In the section titled “Of Relative honesty,” he addresses the debt owed to ­children to educate them properly, by which he means educating them according to their “Inclinations and Capacities.” It is a difficult point for Crusoe to argue, since his ­father clearly did not consult his son’s desire to travel, but the char­ acter of Crusoe seems to have been left far ­behind at this point. Although the exam­ ples provided are generally apt, the final section leads to the discussion of “a black Maletta look’d Man” (72). Although Defoe pre­sents him as a person of learning and sensibility, he is full of self-­hatred. He blames his ­father for having had intercourse with and married a black “Cook-­Maid” and then educated his son well, but to “no manner of Purpose.” The speaker thinks that the best position in life that he could attain would be “a learned Valet de Chamber” (73) and that his “frightful Face” (73–74) would always stand in the way of a satisfying ­career in society. He ends his confession in tears, and Defoe praises him as “deserving, modest and judicious.” But despite his sympathy, Defoe pre­sents this case as an example of a bad choice of education. Perhaps both the mulatto and Defoe w ­ ere simply appraising their society in realistic terms. Perhaps in the early eigh­teenth ­century no one would have accepted his learning and scientific knowledge as reasons for employing or

xxiv I n t r o d u c t i o n

encouraging him. Nevertheless, Defoe had ­here an occasion to remark on the fail­ ure of society to look beneath the outward appearance; and he does not do it.36 In fact, the concern with character and countenance forms a large part of the first section of the third chapter, “of the Immorality of conversation, and The Vulgar errors of Behaviour.”37 Defoe argues that a pleasant face is part of good conversation and good com­pany and contrasts it with the countenance of the “Man of Crime,” whose face always shows the evil that is gnawing at his soul. This con­ cern with physiognomy played a part in The Farther Adventures, when Crusoe dwelled on the vari­ous postures and facial expressions of ­those saved from a seem­ ingly inevitable death at sea. H ­ ere it is used to suggest that religious faith plays an impor­tant part in the appearance of such happiness. Defoe even breaks into poetry on this subject, the first of a number of “philosophic” and religious poems scat­ tered throughout Serious Reflections.

4 ­ fter a section devoted to fools and their conversation, Defoe turns to a subject he A had raised at some length in his Essay upon Proj­ects (1697), immoral conversation, his interest having begun in the 1690s when Queen Mary II attempted to reform the licentiousness and rakish language that had entered society with the Restora­ tion. Perhaps he hoped that George I would follow in her footsteps. But now Defoe mainly has in his sights the ­battle over the Trinity that had divided the Dissenters in the famous Salter’s Hall gathering in 1719. He views ­t hose who, on that occa­ sion, refused to sign the document asserting the traditional Christian view of the Trinity as undermining the religious base of society. By way of protecting himself, he adds a note stating, “This was all Written in King William’s Reign and refers to that time” (93), but Arianism and the attack on the Trinity ­were far more the con­ cern of 1720 than of the 1690s. Some parts of his attacks on vice in Serious Reflections may have come from the period of the founding of the Socie­ties for Reformation of Manners and Queen Mary’s reforms, but Defoe was obviously adapting such material to pre­sent concerns. If Defoe of the reign of William III would have been concerned about atheism and deism, it was Defoe of 1720 who viewed both the Bangorian Controversy and the Salter’s Hall Controversy along with the writings of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Whiston and sensed a real threat to what he considered to be traditional Chris­ tian beliefs. Small won­der that he was quoting Saint Augustine (92) and early Christian sources as part of his defense. He had already written all or part of his poem beginning “The ­Great Promethean Artist, Poets say” (100), an argument for the existence of God as a first cause, by 1718, when he placed it in his A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy, but he liked it enough to repeat it ­here and quoted it often enough in ­f uture works.38 If Defoe’s arguments for the existence of God are hardly original, it has to be said that he does let out all the stops on his rhe­toric. The deathbed conversion of that prince of Libertines, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is a constant motif ­here. For all the bravado of the atheists, in their

I n troduction

xxv

heart of hearts they have to know they are wrong; the same is true for the deists who attempt to turn God into “a fine well bred good natur’d Gentleman like Deity” (105). ­These are p ­ eople whom a well-­run, moral society o ­ ught to punish. At the very least, he argues, they should be ostracized from good com­pany. In attacking swearing, Defoe was on old ground—­material he had covered in his Essay upon Proj­ects,39 but in his attack upon lying and telling false stories, Defoe faced some difficulty. Had he not been accused of writing a work of fiction and lying about its authenticity? He takes the occasion to defend his practice of “allu­ sive allegorick History” (121) once more. Comparing his work to the parables of the New Testament, he argues that “it is design’d and effectually turn’d for instruc­ tive and upright Ends” (121). He also manages to compare it to John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro­gress and to make a pitch for his own work, the two volumes of The ­Family Instructor (124), that had been published ­earlier. Chapter 4 appears to take advantage of the Quixotic nature of Crusoe, particu­ larly his destruction of the pagan idol in The Farther Adventures. He poses now as the aged traveler reconsidering his experiences in his travels around the world. In a dialogue with an Old Gentlewoman, Crusoe quotes Rochester on a savage world in which ­humans pass their time in betrayal, violent conflict, and the quest for self-­ preservation. The Old Gentlewoman wants to hear about the prevalence of reli­ gion throughout the world, even Friday’s worship of Benamuckee, but Crusoe w ­ ill have none of it. Except for the period spent in Brazil among the Roman Catholics living ­t here, he could find no evidence of what he would regard as true religion. The followers of Islam in Barbary ­were brutish and fulfilled Rochester’s image of savage man. Unlike Islam, Chris­tian­ity, he argues, always has a “Civilizing Influ­ ence” (134). He continues his world tour to Asia, where he sees a world of “Thieves and Cheats, watching to deceive you, and proud of being thought able to do it” (137). His thoughts then move on to China, which he had depicted in The Farther Adventures as an impoverished land whose achievements had been falsely extolled by ­t hose seeking to find a ­great civilization, dif­fer­ent from and superior to that in the West. This China bashing continues. Confucianism is a mixture (Crusoe calls it a “Rhapsody” [138]) of “Moral Conclusions” and “Ele­ments of Polity, Morality and Superstition” (138). Compared with the religious worship of the Chinese, the gods of the Greeks and Romans ­were refined images of natu­ral forces. And applying West­ ern aesthetics to China’s idols, he finds them ugly and horrific. Similarly, he applies Western ideals of law and politics to China’s system of governing by Mandarins and judges the Chinese to be a passive and obedient p ­ eople ruled by arbitrary laws and summary executions. Their science is pitiful compared to that of Eu­rope, and their military capacities far inferior to t­ hose of Western armies. Throughout this diatribe Crusoe is John Bull in the proverbial China shop trying to destroy the myth of the “sage Chinois,” which was to flourish throughout the eigh­teenth ­century. To ask for subtle distinctions ­here would be to miss the point. In this case, the mask of Crusoe, the traveler, helps Defoe to make his argument more forceful. Defoe has Crusoe follow his travels through Siberia, where he found nothing that he thought resembled religion and where the natives, instead of looking up

xxvi I n t r o d u c t i o n

for inspiration, looked down. At this point, Crusoe is moved to poetry, and he glo­ rifies the ancient Persians whom, he believes, rationally worshipped the sun. He begins, “Hail! Glorious Lamp, the Parent of the Day” (150). This is one of a number of poems reaching the sublime; their aesthetic value ­will be discussed ­later in this introduction. From the standpoint of its subject ­matter, it reflects an attempt on Defoe’s part to create a scale of relative value in m ­ atters of religion, with atheism at the bottom and what he considered his orthodox Protestant version of Chris­ tian­ity at the top. Four years ­later, in his New Voyage Round the World, Defoe approved of and idealized a society of natives in Australia worshipping the sun in this manner.40 The message for the reader apparently is that such worship is more rational to Eu­ro­pean eyes than the complete denial of spirit among the modern atheists on the one hand and the worship of the grotesque idols among the p ­ eoples of the Far East on the other. But Defoe was not willing to permit Roman Catholic Eu­rope to escape without criticism. Recalling his time in Portugal, Crusoe reports on witnessing the barba­ rism of an auto de fe in Portugal. He concludes that nations permitting the exis­ tence of the Inquisition could hardly claim to be Christian. He quotes a traveler on the corruption of religion in Rome, and this, in turn, leads to the examination of a Quietist, the follower of a group active within Roman Catholicism during the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries that advocated a mystical joining with God through meditation and passivity. Although this unidentified writer dismisses Qui­ etism as too much “conceal’d in the Cavities and dark Parts of the Soul,” he agrees with the Quietist on one point, perhaps with some irony, that religion in Italy was “­really invisible” (157). Continuing his survey of religion throughout the world, Crusoe examines the religious beliefs of Poland and Rus­sia, both of which are found unsatisfactory. The Poles persecute Protestants, but ­those Protestants turn out to be the heretical Socin­ ians. The Rus­sians are afflicted with obstinacy and ignorance. Even the Protestant Lutherans of Germany come u ­ nder criticism, and he completes his survey with a view of religion in ­England, which he faults for its lack of genuine religious feel­ ing. Defoe’s criticisms are not without sharp social commentary. He notes that some of the Jews being executed in Portugal had thoughtlessly become too rich, thereby inviting the cupidity of the Church, while ­others had made the error of being too poor and defenseless. In his commentary on Germany, he criticizes the magnificence of the courts of Saxony and Prussia—­a magnificence built by impov­ erishing the p ­ eople. Though it is “poor Robinson Crusoe” (173) who is supposed to be writing this, the remark that “the true Ends of Government; the ­t hing we call Government was certainly established for the Prosperity of the ­People” (164) and not the enriching of the rulers is pure Defoe. Defoe concludes this survey of religion throughout the world on a conciliatory note. As mentioned previously, he was writing at a time when the Bangorian Con­ troversy was having a wrenching effect on the Church of ­England; and the dispute over the Trinity at Salter’s Hall had divided the Dissenters over the doctrine of the Trinity. In addition, the Dissenters w ­ ere attempting, unsuccessfully, to get the Whig

I n troduction

xxvii

ministry and George I to remove the burden of the Test Act from them. ­Under t­ hese circumstances, Defoe advocates a degree of toleration. E ­ ngland seems to be a land that cultivates dif­fer­ent approaches to Chris­tian­ity. “Could they differ with Humil­ ity,” Defoe writes, “they would differ with Charity; but it is not to be, in Religion, what­ever it may be in civil or politick Affairs” (177). Reminding his readers that the validity of such differences ­will be resolved in Heaven and not before, Defoe preaches charity ­toward the beliefs of ­others and predicts that at the Revelation, ­those whose zeal made them adhere violently to relatively minor doctrinal differences would eventually be ashamed of themselves. It is difficult to know what to make of his reminder that persecution always seems to reconcile t­ hose who have fallen out over minor religious points. Such a statement would have made more sense in a text writ­ ten during the 1690s,41 when the danger of James II’s attempts to move ­England in the direction of Roman Catholic beliefs would have been fresh in the memory of his readers, than in 1720, when no equivalent danger was on the horizon.

5 The next section, with the ironic title, “Of the wonderful Excellency of Negative Religion, and Negative Virtue” (183), is partly a homily against religious hy­poc­risy, somewhat in the manner of John Bunyan’s Mr. Badman, partly what may be Defoe’s defense of his inner ethical and religious life, and partly an opportunity for Defoe to write two religious poems on the subject of “Eternity” and “Faith.” The first is devoted to an attack on ­t hose who appear to live as virtuous religious ­people but who are all outward show. Defoe creates a kind of “character,” in the manner of the seventeenth-­century literary form, for such ­people. Their overwhelming pride makes them oblivious to their lack of true belief and morality. He consigns such ­people to likely damnation. In contrast to ­these sinners, whose outward be­hav­ior brings the misguided praise of society, are t­hose who are held in contempt by society but preserve an inner strength of belief that enables them to endure such opprobrium. Such a life “requires a world of Courage and Steadiness of Mind to support” (186), but it is the kind of life that ­will receive a heavenly reward. Defoe, who might well have complained about the contempt that was heaped upon him by the pamphleteers and journalists during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, comments, “But, be this my Portion in this World, with a Heart that does not reproach me with the Guilt” (186). Surely Defoe was thinking of himself, when he was describing the man who retains his inner peace while “damn’d by the Tongues of Men, even for this World and another” (187). It is difficult to say when Defoe wrote his two poems, “Eternity” and “Faith,” or ­whether the chapter was written around them or they ­were composed to give added force to his message. “Eternity” takes its model from John Wilmot, Earl of Roches­ ter’s poem “Upon Nothing,” with its metaphysical investigation of existence. Roch­ ester’s poem concludes with an attack upon the hy­poc­risy of the world and may have had some part in influencing Defoe’s subject ­matter. But unlike Rochester’s skepticism, Defoe’s poem asserts the centrality of an eternal afterlife. Perhaps its

xxviii I n t r o d u c t i o n

most in­ter­est­ing ele­ment is Defoe’s treatment of time, which appears to show the influence of John Locke, but other­w ise it is fairly traditional religious poetry. The subject m ­ atter is a sublime vision of a permanent state superior to time itself. The concept itself is ­grand enough to compensate in part for the lack of original imagery. Written in the same iambic pentameter couplets as “Eternity,” “Faith” tends to be more abstract and rambling. It has one memorably terrible couplet, however, in which faith, in the manner of the worst “Metaphysical” poetry, is compared to Heaven’s High Insurance Office, where we give, The Premium Faith, and then the Grant receive.

­ ere Defoe seems to be playing to some of the crassest aspects of Chris­tian­ity sati­ H rized by Robert Burns ­later in the ­century and by Sinclair Lewis in his portrayals of American religion. For the most part, Defoe depends on biblical allusions to give strength to his arguments, but in so d ­ oing he sets up a comparison with his source that is hardly flattering to his own abilities as a poet. The fifth chapter, “Of listning to the Voice of providence,” concerns the ways of reading the signs of God’s presence in the world. “If then the Events of ­Things are his as well as the ­Causes,” writes Defoe, “it is certainly well worth our Notice, when the Sympathy of Relation between Events and Th ­ ings and their C ­ auses, most eminently appears” (214). Unlike some sections of Serious Reflections, this is indeed a theme that operates through all of the volumes of Robinson Crusoe. As Douglas Patey claims in his book on probability and belief, almost all the writers of the eigh­ teenth c­ entury tended to believe in a God whose presence in the world had to be read through signs.42 Since God was seen as operating mainly through “second ­causes,” or Nature, it was in t­ hose second ­causes that his ­will might be deciphered and understood. The difference between, say, Henry Fielding and Defoe, however, was that Defoe’s world seemed to be haunted with the presence of spirits ready to offer hints that needed to be heeded and put into action, or with significant paral­ lel dates or events that required close examination and study for their significance. The world that Fielding created in his novels avoided such par­tic­u­lar signs as super­ stition and looked to a more general, guiding Providence. But to neglect par­tic­u­ lar signs and parallel dates, Defoe argues, is equivalent to “a kind of practical Atheism” (220). To support his arguments, Defoe tells a variety of stories in which the violation of ordinary probability suggests a super­natural intervention. While Defoe is careful to warn against the kind of absurd attention to omens that makes the character of Foresight, in William Congreve’s Love for Love, so amusing, in his insistence on attending to “all the Hints as from Heaven” (222), Defoe has Cru­ soe approach perilously close to such an extravagant position. Crusoe instances his own story—­his failure to pay attention to the storm that almost destroys him on his trip from London to Hull—­but this example is fraught with ambiguities, and he quickly moves on to other stories. The impor­tant point in this discussion is the dis­ missal of anything resembling luck or chance. In Crusoe’s world, ­every event has its purpose, and ­every ­human being should feel compelled to examine it.

I n troduction

xxix

In the sixth chapter, Crusoe returns to the subject of the state of the Chris­ tian religion throughout the world and his argument with the Gentlewoman. This time, however, he is concerned with Chris­tian­ity rather than with the pagan world. Whereas in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures Crusoe had lamented the destruction of the American Indians by the Spaniards, now he sees the hand of Providence in this slaughter. The Crusoe who speaks in this chapter is very much the man who, in The Farther Adventures, exploded the pagan idol in Siberia. Since that event brought down upon his caravan a large part of the Tatar nation, it is difficult to know how seriously one is to take this advocacy of a new crusade to convert the world to Chris­tian­ity “and beat the very Name of Mahomet out of the World” (245). Since Crusoe believes that only Christians ­w ill be reserved for immortal life, he defines this as an act of compassion. He admits that the Christian world is divided in its beliefs, but he feels it is not reason enough for the Christian world to avoid d ­ oing its “Duty” (249) to proselytize and convert. Of course Crusoe does not envision converting t­ hese conquered nations at the point of the sword. What he wants is allowing ­people their choice of religion once they have been exposed to Chris­tian­ity. ­There is to be no persecution, just the sub­ duing of the populace and the destruction of their ­temples. That the Defoe ­behind the mask of Crusoe was more tolerant and that he thought of Crusoe as an “enthu­ siast,” in the con­temporary sense of someone advocating extreme religious posi­ tions, is demonstrated by his discussion of this subject in The Commentator of 17 June 1720. Th ­ ere, the writer proclaimed, by way of arguing for joint Eu­ro­pean action against the Barbary Pirates, “I am no man for Crusadoes, nor am I a man for a general War against the Infidel World by Way of a Mission ad progaganda fid.” The persona of The Commentator was that of a calm, rational citizen, and throughout Defoe tried to imitate the ideal of polite discourse exemplified in The Spectator. Crusoe’s vision is neither polite nor restrained. It is impossible to avoid the feeling that ­behind this enthusiasm for the spread of Chris­tian­ity lies a fairly materialistic colonialist proj­ect that would subdue the world to Eu­ro­pean trade and power. That Crusoe begins to digress at this point on changing sides in politics as well as religion and commences an attack on ­those who t­ hose who fail to see “a Necessity to change Hands or Sides in both” (253) is curious. As if aware that he has strayed from his character’s voice, Defoe has Cru­ soe “justify him in the Face of his Enemies” (255), even though, so far as we know, Crusoe has no antagonists. To distance himself further from this attack on his enemies, Defoe brings in George Wither as the example of another writer who was ill treated by society. Only with some difficulty does Defoe get Crusoe back to what he calls punningly his “Cruisado” (262). In the end, Crusoe confesses that he sees no such dedication to such a good cause in his lifetime. It is sad enough that during the nineteenth ­century Crusoe’s vision of the colonizing of Africa and the East by the Eu­ro­pean nations actually occurred with disastrous results for the natives of t­ hose lands.

xxx I n t r o d u c t i o n

6 The final eighty-­four pages are titled “A Vision of the Angelick World,” and the separate pagination as well as the subject m ­ atter may suggest that this section was originally intended for separate publication. Much of the material seems to look forward to Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), An Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (1727), and A System of Magick (1727 [for 1726]). Although ­t here is a wonderful illustration in an eighteenth-­century French edition of Robinson Crusoe, picturing Crusoe walking through the vast spaces of the universe, it may be pointed out that the Crusoe who was so concerned to give the reader a mass of realistic details in describing the making of clay pots is a far cry from the vision­ ary Crusoe whom Defoe now pre­sents to the reader. And in many ways this visionary Crusoe is perhaps even further from the Crusoe who wants to argue about abstract points of natu­ral theology. Crusoe begins by inquiring into the world of spirits that surrounds h ­ uman beings and the scriptural bases for such beliefs. He now confesses that, while on the island, he had the tendency to imagine that he saw ­t hings that he now believes to be “all Hypochondriack Delusion.” Critically, he now reexamines “how far the Power of Imagination may go” (271). He instances his terror on encountering the ­dying goat in the cave, comparing it to the fear of Belshazzar on seeing the writing on the wall—­t he writing that Daniel interpreted as predicting Belshaz­ zar’s doom. Crusoe admits that experiences such as this and the footprint in the sand left him with a case of the “Vapours” (273) that included a tendency to “Hypochondriack Whimsies” (273). In this re­spect, Crusoe narrates an island incident not in The Strange Surprizing Adventures—­a pain and numbness in his leg as if it ­were some “Creature lying upon me with all his Weight, and turning his Body upon me.” In experiencing this almost classic image of a nightmare, Crusoe lashes out and breaks several pots. He then indulges in an absurd dialogue with ­ atter his parrot, which keeps on repeating, “Hold your Tongue, and, What’s the M with you?” (273). Although Crusoe concludes that the pain in the leg had a physi­ cal cause, he admits that he did not recover from his fears u ­ ntil Friday arrived. Crusoe won­ders ­whether it was the Devil who was tormenting him, and while he rejects the Devil as a main cause, he insists on the existence of both evil and good spirits; and he delineates some of the ways in which ­humans communicate with them, from dreams to something as nebulous as “Involuntary Sadness” (79). What follows is a debate between two clergymen on the value of dreams as a com­ munication with a spirit world. The skeptical clergyman raises the question: Why would God communicate in ways that ­were often impossible to interpret? The answer given is essentially that God moves in mysterious ways. ­After this disquisition of twenty-­four pages of this material in the original edi­ tion, Defoe is ready to launch Crusoe into the universe. He begins with the ques­ tion of w ­ hether the planets are habitable, a subject that arises in a conversation with the same Friend who asks him about waking visions. Defoe uses this interlocutor as a device for transforming Crusoe’s experience into a visionary one, w ­ hether

I n troduction

xxxi

through imagination or the “Power of the Converse of Spirits” (278). Defoe does not insist on the exact method, but his discussion of the imagination provides him with enough of a vehicle. In mentioning the “Variety of Ideas” that are offered to the mind by the imagination, Defoe may have had in mind Locke’s discussion of the association of ideas that the phi­los­o­pher described as a form of madness. But, in fact, what he suggests is something close to the Romantic’s notion of imagina­ tion as a transforming power. On a more mundane note, Crusoe appeals to his “invincible Inclination to travel” (288), but this type of voyaging is entirely dif­fer­ ent. It is the same kind of rhapsodic flight with which Defoe had experimented in his Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy in 1718.43 Perhaps Defoe’s enemies ­were right in suspecting an enthusiastic and visionary ele­ment in his writings.44 What follows is a mixture between a lesson in astronomy and a sermon on the spiritual nature of the universe—or at least what con­temporary scientists knew about the relationship between earth, the planets, and the stars. Th ­ ese pages are reminiscent of the manner and subject m ­ atter of the Boyle Lectures, established in 1695, that attempted to propagandize for a Newtonian view of the universe com­ bined with an argument for the presence of God’s role in that universe. Aspects of Thomas Burnet’s more visionary view of the earth and the universe are also intro­ duced.45 The experience of soaring to where he can see the entire solar system gives Crusoe some perspective on the pettiness of h ­ uman cares and the limitations on h ­ uman perception.46 Crusoe describes the vari­ous planets, their distance from the sun, and how impossible it would be for Saturn and Jupiter to be inhabited. He also sees a world of good and evil spirits traveling to and from the earth on their var­ ied missions and the court of Satan, that “Prince of the Power of the Air” (293). That the Devil has complete control over the pagan nations of the world, however, is apparent through Crusoe’s vision. Six years l­ ater, in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, Defoe was to develop his idea of the relative powerlessness of the Devil compared to the evil that is done by ­human beings. ­Here he gives a fragmentary version of his ­later argument. The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il would be to a ­great extent satiric in nature, and allow for consid­ erable playfulness. In ­these more somber Serious Reflections, Defoe depicts Satan’s methods in the modern world; atheism, though, is a h ­ uman invention, and even Satan is surprised that anyone would believe such a t­ hing.47 Whereas in The Po­liti­ cal History of the Dev­il Defoe was to be critical of some of John Milton’s religious tendencies, suggesting they contained ele­ments of Arianism, ­here Defoe is wholly admiring of Milton’s conception. In line with the argument that Crusoe’s vision has a hint of poetic imagination, Crusoe notes that Milton’s “Imagination was car­ ried up to a greater Height than I am now” (300). Such a remark may contain a certain ele­ment of criticism, since it is followed by Crusoe’s effort to distance himself from the visionary mode and descend to speak­ ing about impulses. Defoe tells a story, prob­ably autobiographical, about a man, at some distance from London, who received an impulse strongly suggesting that he travel back to the city. He follows his impulse and finds himself engaged in a busi­ ness deal that brings him over a thousand pounds. The second autobiographical

xxxii I n t r o d u c t i o n

incident prob­ably involved Defoe’s letter to the judge (Sir Thomas Parker) who was presiding over his case in 1715—­a case that might have ended disastrously for Defoe. It was eventually dismissed, and the agreement reached through the intercession of the judge was the beginning of Defoe’s journalistic work for the ­government during the reign of George I.48 Defoe insists such impulses are “the Whispers of some sub­ sisting Spirit communicated to the Soul” (308). The message arrives without sound, but represents a genuine communication beyond language. ­These stories are narrated in Defoe’s best manner. He tells one of a ­woman who had a presage of a fire destroying her ­house. Although no sign of a fire appears ­after a search, the ­house is engulfed in flames an hour ­later. To the question of why the message could not have been conveyed in a more direct manner, Defoe suggests that we must listen with greater awareness. What follows is the story of a person trying to choose a ship for a voyage to New E ­ ngland and having strong impulses that made him believe he would drown. Following his impulses, he decides to put off traveling for a year and learns that one ship was captured by the Turks and the other was lost at sea. Since this bears a resemblance to some of the experiences in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, particularly near the end, when Cru­ soe is ready to return to ­England from Spain, it is appropriate for Crusoe to advise this traveler to pay attention to his impulses and put off his voyage. ­After consid­ ering the pos­si­ble c­ auses for t­ hese forebodings, including a “Power of Sympathy” in the soul, Crusoe’s solution to the cause of ­these impulses is “a Converse of Spir­ its unembodied, with the Spirit embodied” (314). ­These spirits appear to know ­t hings that h ­ umans do not know and can deliver warnings. In the nineteenth ­century, psychologists like Sigmund Freud would locate this sense of the “uncanny” in the unconscious workings of the mind. Lacking concepts of the unconscious, writers like Defoe posited the existence of beings capable of seeing into ­f uture events with better senses than h ­ uman beings possessed. This explanation leads Defoe to disparage many accounts of the super­natural. He may already have been collecting the numerous reports of apparitions that ­were to go into his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (1727), since he uses the last three words (63) in his discussion and raises the concept of the existence of ghosts, or the return of the spirits of the dead. He tells the story of a man who thought he saw an apparition that commanded him to repent. Defoe tells us it was no apparition but rather a real ­human being who had commanded him. But the man is certain that it was a spirit sent by the Devil, even though the “apparition” results in the man’s repentance. Although Defoe tends to see the power of the Devil as ­under the rigid control of God, he insists on his literal existence. To believe that ­there is no Devil commences a pattern of disbelief that leads inevitably to atheism. Defoe concludes this discussion with the story of a society of atheists led by a university scholar. This leader had arrived at his atheist stance by a skeptical approach to evidence. “­Things r­ eally ­were not,” he maintained, “of which they could not define both how and what they ­were” (321). Evidently the members of this group appear to have misread John Locke. Whereas Locke stressed the limitations of the senses that provide h ­ uman beings with their ideas and knowledge, this group of

I n troduction

xxxiii

atheists concludes that what they cannot define cannot exist. They attempt to spread their ideas to ­others and eventually have enough members to establish “The Atheistical Club.” Defoe focuses upon one rather half-­hearted member of this club who, on the way to one of their meetings, is terrified by a clap of thunder and the flash of lightning into realizing the pos­si­ble implications of what he is ­doing. He rushes home in horror, and this begins a chain of events that result in the conversion of another member, again through feelings of fright about where his beliefs might lead if ­t here is an afterlife. This second member of the club stops at a bookshop where he has a dialogue with another student—­a student steeped in Christian belief. The religious student takes his pulse (holds his “Hand”) and stares at his face as the atheistic student reads him a poem that suggests the horrors that may await the atheist if t­ here actually is a God. The religious student tells him that both his pulse and the horror in his face revealed how terrified he was of Hell. With tears in his eyes, the atheist now admits the existence of a God and a Devil. Persuaded that God wishes him to repent, the atheist changes into a believer. Accompanying the reli­ gious student to the rooms of the first atheist, the two find that the first Gentleman has also repented. Defoe treats this as a true story, though its rendering—­t he use of dialogue, the scene directions, the emotions—is typical of Defoe’s fictional dialogues. Defoe asserts that the ways in which events occurred in his narrative amounted to evi­ dence of the “­great Super-­intendency of Divine Providence in the minutest Affairs of this World” (333), and of the existence of spirits and of their converse with h ­ uman beings. In actuality, Defoe is careful to show apparent natu­ral ­causes for what appears to be super­natural. The lightning is part of a rain storm; the friend who is in the first Gentleman’s rooms disapproves of the Atheistical Club and urges the atheist to repent; the student in the bookstore knows of the disbelief that domi­ nates the Club and plays on the nerves of the atheist. It is only by knowing how to read the signs that God’s “Super-­intendency” of ­t hese events may be grasped. The moving force for t­ hese conversions is terror. Pascal’s Wager plays in the back­ ground, but as with Pascal, Defoe’s notion of the wager is directed to the atheist and put in a form that a gambler or a Libertine might understand. If t­ here is a sys­ tem involving a God, a Heaven, and a Hell, it is a relatively s­ imple act to be on the safe side of t­ hings when the stakes are so high. In fact, neither Pascal nor Defoe felt assured that faith alone might be sufficient for earning a place in Heaven.49 Although “Love” (134) of God is mentioned once, t­ here is l­ ittle question that fear is the major component in this story. We should remember Crusoe’s frightening dream of the angelic form with the spear in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures. Crusoe is terrified by this vision, and his life of religious meditation arises from this experience. It is significant that, a­ fter the terror caused by the discovery of the footprint in the sand, Crusoe notes that his concern with religion dimin­ ishes considerably. The threat of death at the hands of the cannibals is more imme­ diate than the fear of the religious believer. As in Hobbes’s system, fear appears to be the essential force driving ­human action. Within society, with no cannibals to fear, the terror of what may lie on the other side of death becomes a dominant force.

xxxiv I n t r o d u c t i o n

7 During the last years of his life, Defoe wrote didactic treatises on a variety of sub­ jects. Some, such as The Complete En­glish Tradesman (1725–27), The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), Conjugal Lewdness: Or, Matrimonial Whoredom (1727), possess a singleness of subject ­matter that makes them valuable treatises. All of them are distinguished by Defoe’s ability at narrative, and Conjugal Lewdness bor­ rows a fairly coherent tone and style from seventeenth-­century masters of prose such as Jeremy Taylor. Compared to t­ hese works, Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe is diffuse and rambling, more a series of individual essays on a variety of topics than a unified volume. Th ­ ere is nothing wrong with a collection of essays, but to some extent, Defoe’s attempt to give a unity to the volume by claiming the musings to be t­ hose of Robinson Crusoe is more irritating than satisfying. Michel de Montaigne succeeds as an essayist b ­ ecause, in addition to passages of profound understanding of the world and ­human psy­chol­ogy, he provides us with insights into his mind and personality. Had Defoe abandoned the persona of Robinson Crusoe and written a coherent volume with a number of genuinely per­ sonal confessions, he might have produced a volume of significance and artistic integrity. But personal confession was not Defoe’s way even in his autobiographi­ cal account of his life as a writer on po­liti­cal ­matters, An Appeal to Honour and Justice, Tho’ It Be of His Worst Enemies (1715). ­There are a number of narratives in Serious Reflections that are autobiographical, but they have to be extracted from what is purported to be Crusoe’s wanderings. The readers of the ­earlier volumes might have been willing to listen to Crusoe on subjects such as the nature of isolation or even the geo­graph­i­cal survey of Chris­ tian­ity throughout the world. Even having him destroy the myth of the sage Chinois once again has a certain charm. But he had already rendered ­t hese subjects in a fictional form that had attracted a wide audience. Having Crusoe lecture on theo­ logical subjects in Serious Reflections had to be too much for t­hose readers enthralled by the adventures of the ­earlier volumes. The unpopularity of the work, the fact that it was almost never published along with The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures or The Farther Adventures, speaks for itself. As Samuel John­ son remarked on another writer, “Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults; negligences or errors are single and local, but tediousness pervades the ­whole; other faults are censured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself.”50 As a general judgment, this may be applied to Serious Reflections. On the other hand, in some sense Serious Reflections defies Johnson’s formula. It contains some very good sections in which Defoe displays considerable intellectual depth as well as occasional examples of his distinctively lively style, but it is hardly surprising that few readers w ­ ere willing to wade through the entire book to find them. Cru­ soe emerging as a traveler through the universe conversing with the world of spirits surrounding him may have been just odd enough to find some interested readers. But w ­ ere ­t hese the same readers who had been captivated by the ­earlier volumes?

I n troduction

xxxv

In abridging The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Cox had reduced Defoe’s masterpiece to a mere adventure story (and Defoe was right to protest the action as infringing on his rights as an author), desecrating a brilliant narrative and eliminating most of the ethical message that he wanted to impart. But if Defoe thought that the same audience that had taken so much plea­sure from the ­earlier two volumes was ready to read a didactic work on ethics and religion, he was surely mistaken. Defoe usually had a strong sense of what his audience wanted. He was already turning out successful works of fiction that had a minimum of moral reflec­ tion. Perhaps he thought he could draw together the audiences of his highly suc­ cessful ­Family Instructor volumes and his audience for fiction. If so, he badly miscalculated. Serious Reflections ­w ill always remain of g­ reat interest for ­t hose intrigued by Defoe’s ideas, and it should have a wider audience among eighteenth-­ century scholars; but it has to be listed among Defoe’s infrequent failures. Notes 1. ​See Henry Hutchins, Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing 1719–1731 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925), 186. 2. ​William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 3 vols. (London: John Camden Hotten, 1869), 1:2. 3. ​No mention is made at this point of The Farther Adventures, and the full title seems to suggest that Serious Reflections is the product of ruminations “during” Crusoe’s stay on the island. Only when Crusoe begins to discuss the state of religion throughout the world does the image of Crusoe as a world traveler—­the Crusoe of The Farther Adventures—­become rel­ evant in contradiction to the title. 4. ​Lee, Daniel Defoe, 1:3. 5. ​Compare John Robert Moore, A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe, 2nd ed. (Ham­ den, CT: Archon Books, 1971), 169–177; P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998), 190–197. 6. ​A lthough the copyright act of 1710 appeared to establish clear lines of owner­ship to publications, in fact ­t here ­were all kinds of difficulties involved. See Jody Greene, The Trou­ ble with Owner­ship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). Although this book has an excellent chapter on Defoe’s attitude ­toward copyright and freedom of the press (107–149), the chapters on Alexander Pope and John Gay (150–217) are most apposite ­here. 7. ​Henry Hutchins, Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing 1719–1731, 157; and Cox in the Flying Post, 19 October 1719. 8. ​ The ­Battle of the Authors Lately Fought in Covent-­Garden (London, 1720), 8–10. 9. ​Some of ­t hese ideas appeared in his journal The Commentator that ran from 1 January to 16 September 1720. 10. ​See, for example, the favorable review in the journal edited by Jean Le Clerc, Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne, vol. 15 (1721), 440–441. 11. ​This is not to say that they knew the work to be by Defoe. For example, as late as 1769 a French translation attributed the work to Sir Richard Steele, continuing a misattribution that appeared early in the history of the work. 12. ​Samuel Johnson, Rambler no. 208, in Works (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), 5:317–318. 13. ​In Rambler no. 10, Johnson defended anonymity while agreeing that a writer should reflect con­temporary ideas and events. He points to “the answer of a phi­los­o­pher to a man, who, meeting him in the street, desired to see what he carried ­under his cloak; ‘I carry it ­there,’ say he, ‘that you may not see it.’ ” Johnson, Works, 3:52. 14. ​See Michael Warner, “The Mass Public and the Mass Subject,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 380–383.

xxxvi I n t r o d u c t i o n 15. ​See, for example, Thomas Wright, The Life of Daniel Defoe (London: Cassell, 1894). In the “Centenary Edition,” Wright abandoned this theory, but refusing to abandon his allegori­ cal reading, he still insisted on reading Friday as a genuine person. See Wright, The Life of Daniel Defoe (London: Farcombe and Sons, 1931), 25–29, 203. 16. ​See Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, sig. A5v. Subsequent citations to this work are included within parentheses in the text. 17. ​Daniel’s reading of the handwriting on the wall, a message that only he is able to deci­ pher, is a motif in Serious Reflections. For the debate on ­whether ­t here can be a private lan­ guage, see Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 54–112; A. J. Ayer, “Can ­There Be a Private Language?,” in Wittgenstein: The Philosophic Investigations, ed. George Pitcher (London: Macmillan, 1968), 257–266; R. Rhees, “Can ­There Be a Private Language?,” in Pitcher, Wittgenstein, 267–285; and John Cook, “Wittgenstein on Pri­ vacy,” in Pitcher, Wittgenstein, 286–323. 18. ​“ ’ Tis hard for a Man to say all the World is mistaken by himself; but if it be so, who can help it.” An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, in A True Collection of the Writings of the True-­Born En­glishman, 2 vols. (London, 1703–1705), 1:380. For Defoe’s attacks on readers for their failure to understand his meaning, see Maximillian E. Novak, “Defoe’s Shortest Way with the Dissenters: Hoax, Parody, Paradox, Fiction, Irony, and Satire,” Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966): 402–417. 19. ​See Ronald Paulson, Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-­Century ­England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), esp. 3–51. 20. ​Defoe had a broad definition of satire, applying that term to his lengthy poem Jure Divino, which is essentially a forceful argument against absolute monarchy. Even allowing the term “satire” to be applied to any “forceful argument,” neither The Life and Surprizing Adventures nor The Farther Adventures fits in such a category. 21. ​Blaise Pascal, Pensées and the Provincial Letters, trans. W. F. Trotter and Thomas M’Crie (New York: Random House, 1941), 48 (139). 22. ​Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, trans. Henry Van Luan (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 199. 23. ​Bishop Edward Wettenhall, Enter into Thy Closet; or, A Method and Order for Private Devotion, 5th ed. (London, 1684), 4. 24. ​For a discussion of this debate, see Irene Beesemyer, “Crusoe the Isolato: Daniel Defoe Wrestles with Solitude,” 1650–1850: Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 10 (2004): 79–102. 25. ​Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 172. 26. ​Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 60–71. 27. ​Of course it was too late to prevent the idealization of solitude. In his Confessions, Rousseau was to invoke Crusoe’s experience whenever he felt alone, and The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures was a­ dopted by the Romantics as a relevant text for their view of the benefits of solitude. Although Johann Georg von Zimmermann’s Von der Einsamkeit (1756) warned against the dangers of excessive isolation, it also praised its psycho­ logical benefits. 28. ​In his journal The Commentator, written close to the same time as he was writing Serious Reflections, Defoe often enlarged upon economic honesty as the basis for credit, but his treatment was narrower than what appears in Serious Reflections. See, for example, no. 28, 4 April 1720. 29. ​See Defoe, An Essay upon Proj­ects (New York: AMS Press, 1999), 75–89. 30. ​Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. John Robertson, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-­Merrill, 1964), 1:258–280. 31. ​See Commentator, no. 74, 16 September 1720, for his description of Lady Credit and the difficulty of wooing her back once she has been insulted by dishonesty. 32. ​See, for example, Defoe, Review, ed. Arthur Secord, 22 vols. (New York: Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 1938), 3:109. This issue was dated 5 March 1706. For a discussion of Defoe’s treat­

I n troduction

xxxvii

ment of the concept of necessity, particularly in his fiction, see Maximillian Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 65–88. 33. ​See Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man, 65–80. 34. ​Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Laws of Nature and Nations, trans. Basil Kennett (Oxford, 1703), 156 (2:6.1). 35. ​The manuscript, at the British Library, was first edited by Karl Bülbring in 1890. 36. ​In his Commentor, no. 55, 11 July 1720, written at approximately the same time as Serious Reflections, Defoe argued for the equality of ­human beings from the standpoint of their abilities to learn: “Why ­else do we see that the Negroes of Africa, or the Indians of Amer­i­ca, when taken young and instructed, appear as receptible of Learning or Science and of the best Princi­ples; nay, of the most generous and noble Impressions, as any other ­People. It is cer­ tain, that Education makes most of the Differences which we see in the World; I mean, between the well-­taught and the half-­taught Parts of mankind.” 37. ​The seeming allusion to the subtitle appended to Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) was no accident, since Defoe was clearly reading Browne’s work in the 1720s. See, for example, his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, ed. Irving Rothman and R. Michael Bow­ erman (New York: AMS Press, 2003), 145. 38. ​Defoe, Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris (London, 1718), 219. For one example of Defoe’s allusion to this poem, see line notes, 98:5. See also Defoe, A System of Magick (1727 [for 1726]), in The Novels and Miscellaneous Works by Daniel De Foe, ed. Thomas Tegg, 20 vols. (London: Thomas Tegg, 1840), 12:31. 39. ​Defoe, Essay upon Proj­ects, ed. Joyce Kennedy, Michael Seidel, and Maximillian Novak (New York: AMS Press, 1999), 92–96. 40. ​Defoe, New Voyage Round the World, in Romances and Narratives, ed. George Aitken, 14 vols. (London: Dent, 1895), 14:145–156. 41. ​During this de­c ade, the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists split a­ fter a brief period of unity over the question of antinomianism. For an example of the arguments involved, see Samuel Crisp, Christ Exalted and Dr. Crisp Vindicated in Several Points Called Antinomian (London, 1698). 42. ​Douglas Patey, Probability and Literary Form: Philosophic Theory and Literary Practice in the Augustan Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), passim. 43. ​Defoe, Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy (London, 1718), 108–110. 44. ​See, for example, Joseph Browne’s reaction to Defoe’s Consolidator (1705), a po­liti­cal satire in the form of a voyage to the moon. Browne, The Moon Calf, ed. Maximillian Novak, Augustan Reprint Society No. 269 (New York: AMS Press, 1996), 1–32. See also Browne, A Dialogue between Church and No-­Church; or, A Rehearsal of the Review (1706), in State Tracts, 2 vols. (London, 1715), 1:6, 35. 45. ​Burnet takes intellectual flight most imaginatively in his A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls, trans. John Dennis (London, 1723), 321. If Defoe did not have the opportu­ nity to read this work, he certainly knew other works by Burnet in which he performs a similar imaginative flight. In his Sacred Theory of the Earth (3rd ed. [London, 1697], 214, 219), Burnet evoked the vastness of the universe and referred to the earth as this “miserable atom” and argued that “Earths are but the dirt and skum of the Creation.” 46. ​This contrasts with Swift’s Gulliver, who remained earthbound in his delineations of man’s pettiness and myopia. But forms of visionary history w ­ ere common enough during the eigh­teenth ­century, culminating in Constantin-­François Volney’s Les Ruines (1791). 47. ​For a parallel argument, see Defoe’s Commentator, no. 50, 24 June 1720. 48. ​See Letters, ed. George Healey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), 451n4. 49. ​See Lucien Goldmann, Le Dieu Caché (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 315–337. Like Pascal, Defoe was aware that God’s sense of virtue might prove to be very dif­fer­ent from that of Chris­ tians on earth and that the number of the elect might prove to be miniscule. 50. ​Samuel Johnson, “Life of Prior,” in Lives of the En­glish Poets, in Works (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 22:727.

1. Serious] This word may have a specific religious meaning, but ­here it is intended to convey a sense of earnestness and gravity. 2. Reflections] Equivalent ­here to thoughts or meditations, though it may imply some degree of a return to contemplating previous events. 3. Surprising ADVENTURES] This echoes the title of the first volume, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of the first volume, appearing to hold out the ­possibility of continued adventures rather than a book of essays. The word “Surprising” is spelled with an s rather than a z. 4. Written by Himself] Crusoe never drops the notion of a “real” Robinson Crusoe, despite the suggestion in this volume that the name might be a pseudonym and an allusion to another person. 5. Image] The large emblem of a sailing ship, which appeared on all three volumes, was first added to the second edition of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures (1719). Although William Taylor published “at the Ship” and usually used a small emblem of a ship in his pub­ lications, the large ship logo was suggestive of a book of voyages, with the Union Jack flying over the central mast identifying it as British. The Union Flag came into existence in 1606 and represented a mixing of the crosses of Saint George (­England) and Saint Andrew (Scot­ land). The cross of Saint Patrick, representing Ireland, was not added ­until 1801.

Serious1 Reflections2 DURING THE LIFE And Surprising ADVENTURES3 OF ROBINSON CRUSOE: WITH HIS VISION OF THE Angelick WORLD. Written by Himself.4

[Printer’s Device, four-master ship flying a flag with a cross, sailing between a florid border design topped with black swans facing outwards, 7.5 cm wide × 5.5 cm deep.]5

LONDON:

Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship; and Black-­Swan in Pater-­noster-­Row. 1720.

510-99807_ch01_4P.indd 1

—-1 —0 —+1

21/02/22 9:43 PM

 Robinson Crusoe’s Preface

AS the Design1 of e­ very Th ­ ing is said to be first in the Intention, and last in the Execution; so I come now to acknowledge to my Reader, That the pre­sent Work is not merely the Product of the two first Volumes, but the two first Volumes may rather be called the Product of this: The Fable is always made for the Moral,2 not the Moral for the Fable. I have heard, that the envious and ill-­disposed Part of the World3 have rais’d some Objections against the two first Volumes, on Pretence, for want of a better Reason; That (as they say) the Story is feign’d,4 that the Names are borrow’d, and

1. Design] Perhaps a term used more often for architecture, painting, and sculpture than for lit­er­a­ture. Pierre Monier began his study of the arts with a similar statement: “Of all the Products of ­human Wit, whereof the Brain assisted by the Hand is capable, ­t here are none so admirable and excellent, as the Arts which relate to Designing.” The History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Graving; and of ­Those Who Excell’d in them (London, 1699), sig. A3. 2. Fable . . . ​made for the Moral] This argument had its strongest proponent in the critic, René Le Bossu, who maintained that a moral statement lay ­behind all impor­tant works of lit­er­a­ture and that the writers always began with the moral. According to this line of argu­ ment, the fable, with its usually clear moral, was the basis for more complex forms such as the epic. Following this doctrine, Charles Gildon criticized Defoe for the lack of a clear moral: “If he has preserv’d the Fable entire, the Judicious ­w ill not want your clumsy and tedious Reflections to recommend it; for, indeed, by what you say, you seem not to under­ stand the very Nature of a Fable, which is a sort of Writing which has always been esteem’d by the wisest and best of men to be of ­great use to the Instruction of Mankind; but then this use and Instruction should naturally and plainly arise from the Fable itself, in an evident and useful Moral, ­either exprest or understood.” See Treatise of the Epick Poem, trans. W. J. (London, 1695), 8–9; and Gildon, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D. . . . . De F . . . ​, of London Hosier (1719), in Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticis’d, ed. Paul Dot­ tin (London: Dent, 1923), 115 [35]. 3. ill-­disposed Part of the World] The strongest criticism came from Charles Gildon, whose attack on Defoe and on The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures went into two editions. 4. Story is feign’d] Gildon recognized that The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures was a work of fiction and, as a writer familiar with printers and publishers, prob­ably had ­little dif­ ficulty discovering Defoe’s authorship.

3

4

Ser ious R eflections

that it is all a Romance;5 that ­t here never w ­ ere and such Man or Place, or Circum­ stances in any Mans Life; that it is all form’d and embellish’d by Invention to impose upon the World. I Robinson Crusoe being at this Time in perfect and sound Mind and Memory,6 Thanks be to God therefore; do hereby declare, their Objection is an Invention scandalous in Design, and false in Fact;7 and do affirm, that the Story, though Allegorical, is also Historical;8 and that it is the beautiful Repre­sen­ta­tion of a Life of unexampled Misfortunes, and of a Variety not to be met with in the World, sincerely adapted to, and intended for the common Good of Mankind, and designed at first, as it is now farther apply’d, to the most serious Uses pos­si­ble. Farther, that t­ here is a Man alive,9 and well known10 too, the Actions of whose Life are the just Subject11 of ­t hese Volumes,12 and to whom all or most Part of the 5. Romance] Gildon associated it with popu­lar chapter books such as Guy of Warwick, which ­were essentially romances of chivalry, and exclaimed, “Your Hero! Your Mob Hero! Your Pyecorner Hero,” suggesting that Defoe was writing for an audience from the lower o ­ rders. See Gildon, Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 72 [x]. 6. Robinson Crusoe . . . ​Memory] This is the usual ­legal formula for ­w ills and other docu­ ments. It may also suggest that Crusoe, born in 1632 and writing a­ fter 1705, is so near the end of his life that he would have no reason to add another sin by lying. 7. false in Fact] B ­ ehind Defoe’s claim to truth is the sense that his work inculcated what he regarded as some strong moral lessons. René Le Bossu had written that any fable was com­ posed of two parts: “The one is Truth, which serves as a Foundation to it, and the other is Fiction, which Allegorically disguises this Truth, and gives it the Form of a Fable.” Treatise of the Epick Poem, 14. Accurate history was less impor­tant than moral truth for most of the French critics of the seventeenth ­century, and it was French critical princi­ples that tended to dominate criticism during this period. 8. Allegorical . . . ​Historical] Faced with Gildon’s accusations, Defoe attempts what amounts to a defense of “serious” (A2v:21) realistic fiction. From Defoe’s standpoint, as was true ­later for Samuel Richardson, most romances w ­ ere trivial works intended only for amusement. Defoe uses the word “Allegorical” h ­ ere for what we might call “symbolic.” By “Historical,” he means that on some level the events of the first two volumes may be read as true, ­because they contain a vivid rendering of what might have happened. 9. Man alive] The knowledgeable reader might have inserted the name of Daniel Defoe at this point, though the pos­si­ble existence of a real Robinson Crusoe is never entirely denied. 10. well known] During the period from 1701 to 1715, Defoe had been the object of hundreds of attacks, first as the champion of Whig princi­ples and ­later as a writer trying to defend a Tory administration. His True-­Born En­glishman (1701) was one of the best-­k nown poems of the period. His imprisonment for libel and public punishment in 1703 brought with it con­ siderable fame and notoriety, and in 1710, some of his more radical statements about the nature of government w ­ ere quoted in the sensational Sacheverell trial of 1710. Attacks against him dropped off for a few years when he became an undercover agent for the Whig adminis­ tration, but in 1718 he had been exposed in the press as a writer for Nathaniel Mist’s Weekly Journal, a newspaper with a Tory viewpoint that also flirted with Jacobitism. See Maximil­ lian Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 503–504. 11. just Subject] The word “just” in this context is extremely vague, drawing upon a wide range of connotations. In its most neutral sense, it would mean proper in character as a liter­ ary work, but coming in the midst of what has the appearance of a l­ egal document, it also has the meaning of constituted by law. Defoe also draws on the choice of the subject as being morally right. 12. Actions of whose Life . . . ​Volumes] Defoe’s strategy ­here is to claim that the first two vol­ umes of Robinson Crusoe ­were actually a kind of allegorical autobiography. In the modern

R o b i n s o n C ru s o e ’s P r e fa c e

5

Story most directly alludes, this may be depended upon for Truth, and to this I set my Name.13 The famous History of Don Quixot,14 a Work which thousands read with Plea­ sure, to one that knows the Meaning of it, was an emblematic History15 of, and a just Satyr upon the Duke de Medina Sidonia;16 a Person very remarkable at that Time in Spain: To t­ hose who knew the Original, the Figures w ­ ere lively and easily discovered themselves, as they are also ­here, and the Images ­were just; and there­ fore, when a malicious, but foolish Writer,17 in the abundance of his Gall, spoke of the Quixotism18 of R. Crusoe, as he called it, he shewed evidently, that he knew sense that all writings of an author may by regarded as autobiographical, ­t here is some truth in what Defoe is saying. Crusoe, then, would simply be a persona for Defoe; thus all of his adventures have their parallel in Defoe’s life. At the very least, Defoe has to be credited with a degree of ingenuity, though some of his more severe critics have found in this another example of Defoe as a master liar. 13. Truth . . . ​Name] Crusoe continues the appearance of a ­legal formula, though ­there is much deliberate obfuscation used ­here. 14. Don Quixot] The two parts of this novel by Miguel Cervantes (1547–1616) w ­ ere published in 1605 and 1615. It was first translated into En­glish by Thomas Shelton from 1612 to 1620. It had a number of En­glish translators a­ fter that. A fourth edition of the translation of Peter Motteux (1663–1718) with revisions by John Ozell (d. 1743) appeared in the same year as the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe, 1719. Defoe attempts to align his work with the one work of fiction that was unequivocally admired throughout Eu­rope. 15. emblematic History] This is another attempt by Defoe to reject the concept of “Romance” and to find a better term for the kind of fiction he was writing. In this case Defoe goes to the visual arts. Emblems ­were extremely popu­lar during the seventeenth ­century; in addition to the many religious emblem books, the ­later versions of the Iconologia by Cesare Ripa (fl. 1600) may, in a sense, be considered emblematic histories, depicting a central image of the vari­ous passions and aspects of the mind along with illustrative images and explanations. “History” was prob­ably a more popu­lar term for a realistic work of fiction published during the eigh­teenth ­century than any other. Defoe had his History and Remarkable Life of . . . ​Col. Jacque (1722) and Henry Fielding his History of Tom Jones (1749). 16. Duke de Medina Sidonia] Seventh Duke (1550–1615) was famous for his notorious miscar­ riages at sea, including the disastrous defeat of the Amada sent against ­England in 1588. He attempted to evade that assignment on the grounds that he was inclined to sea sickness, but Philip II insisted. Despite other defeats at Cadiz (1596) and Gibraltar (1606), he retained his title as “Admiral of the Sea.” Miguel de Cervantes, as commissary agent for the fleet, fell into debt ­because of the defeat of the Arrmada and may have had strong personal reasons for disliking him. What is certain is that Cervantes attacked him in a sonnet as a pretentious coward. That Don Quixote contains satiric reflections against vari­ous contemporaries, such as Lope de Vega, ­t here can be ­little doubt, and as a military leader completely out of his depth but bearing grandiose titles, Medina Sidonia may have contributed something to the charac­ ter of Don Quixote. But modern critics have rejected Defoe’s sweeping claim. See Fernando Díaz-­Playa, Cervantes: The Life of a Genius, trans. Sue Stoerakos (New York: Scribners, 1970), 79–93; and Leonard Casper, “Ralegh’s Revenge: ­Great Victories in Words,” Re­nais­sance News 13 (1960): 129–133. 17. malicious . . . ​foolish Writer] T. Cox, the publisher of the first abridgement of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures. Defoe’s publisher, William Taylor, had placed a public state­ ment in the St. James Post of 7 August 1719, accusing Cox of infringing upon his rights to his profits. Henry Hutchins notes that Taylor began a suit in Chancery against Cox. See Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925), 125; see also the following note. 18. Quixotism] T. Cox, who published an abridgement of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, replied to William Taylor’s attack upon him in the Flying Post of 29 October 1719

6

Ser ious R eflections

nothing of what he said; and perhaps w ­ ill be a l­ ittle startled, when I s­ hall tell him, that what he meant for a Satyr, was the greatest of Panegyricks. Without letting the Reader into a nearer Explication of the M ­ atter, I proceed to let him know, that the happy Deductions I have employ’d myself to make from all the Circumstances of my Story, w ­ ill abundantly make him amends for his not having the Emblem explained by the Original;19 and that when in my Observa­ tions and Reflexions of any Kind in this Volume, I mention my Solitudes and Retirements, and allude to the Circumstances of the former Story, all ­t hose Parts of the Story are real Facts in my History, what­ever borrow’d Lights they may be represented by:20 Thus the Fright and Fancies which succeeded the Story of the Print of a Man’s Foot, and Surprise of the old Goat, and the ­Thing rolling on my Bed, and my jumping out in a Fright, are all Histories and real Stories; as are like­ wise the Dream of being taken by Messengers, being arrested by Officers, the Manner of being driven on Shore by the Surge of the Sea, the Ship on Fire, the Description of starving; the Story of my Man Friday, and many more most mate­ rial Passages observ’d ­here, and on which any religious Reflections are made, are all historical and true in Fact:21 It is most real, that I had a Parrot, and taught it to call me by my Name, such a Servant a Savage, and afterwards a Christian, and that his Name was called Friday, and that he was ravish’d from me by Force, and died in the Hands that took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all lit­ terally true, and should I enter into Discoveries, many alive can testify them: His other Conduct and Assistance to me also have just References in all their Parts to the Helps I had from that faithful Savage, in my real Solitudes and Disasters. The Story of the Bear in the Tree, and the Fight with the Wolves in the Snow, is likewise M ­ atter of real History; and in a Word, the Adventures of Robinson Cruwith a defense of what he had done. In this piece he referred to “the author of Crusoe’s Don-­ Quixotism” and threatened to expose “some secrets as yet unknown to the world” about Taylor and Defoe. Gildon does not use this term, but he treats Crusoe as a character whose actions and statements seem to be governed by enthusiasm, “Oddness,” and “odd Whimsy,” characteristics often associated with Don Quixote. See Cox, [Letter], reprinted in John Nich­ ols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eigh­teenth ­Century, 9 vols. (London: John Nichols, 1812–1815), 1:182; and Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticis’d, 87, 105. 19. Emblem explained . . . ​Original] In Defoe’s argument ­here, the “Emblem” is the text of the work, the surface fiction, and the concealed “Original” is the event in real life that inspired it. In some sense, Gildon’s creation of a Pirandello-­like confrontation between Defoe and his creation had inspired Defoe to this argument. Gildon had Defoe confront the angry figure of Crusoe and explain to him that his character had been modeled upon that of his creator: “I drew thee from the consideration of my own Mind; I have been all my Life that Rambling, Inconsistent Creature, which I have made thee” (72). 20. borrow’d Lights . . . ​may be represented by] ­Here Defoe attempts to display the fictional surface as mere illusion. Crusoe proceeds to enumerate some of the events of the first two volumes in a somewhat random fashion. 21. historical and true in Fact] On this page, it is difficult to tell ­whether Defoe is talking about himself or a fictional Crusoe who is still defending his story as “literally true” (Sig. A4:17). The repeated use of words such as “true,” “real,” “fact,” are intended to create a rhe­ toric of sincerity and truth, while the author is actually saying that all of the repre­sen­ta­tions he names are fictions.

R o b i n s o n C ru s o e ’s P r e fa c e

7

soe, are one ­whole Scheme of a real Life of eight and twenty Years,22 spent in the most wandring desolate and afflicting Circumstances that ever Man went through, and in which I have liv’d long in a Life of Won­ders in continu’d Storms, fought with the worse kind of Savages and Maneaters, by unaccountable suppris­ ing Incidents; fed by Miracles greater than that of Ravens,23 suffered all Manner of Vio­lences and Oppressions,24 injurious Reproaches, contempt of Men, Attacks of Dev­ils, Corrections from Heaven, and Oppressions on Earth; have had innumer­ able Ups and Downs in ­Matters of Fortune, been in Slavery worse than Turkish,25 escaped by an exquisite Management, as that in the Story of Xury, and the Boat at Sallee, been taken up at Sea in Distress, rais’d again and depress’d again,26 and that oftner perhaps in one Man’s Life than ever was known before; Shipwreck’d often, tho’ more by Land than by Sea: In a Word, t­ here’s not a Circumstance in the imaginary Story, but has its just Allusion to a real Story, and chimes Part for Part, and Step for Step with the inimitable Life of Robinson Crusoe.27 In like Manner, when in t­ hese Reflections, I speak of the Times and Circum­ stances of par­tic­u ­lar Actions done, or Incidents which happened in my Solitude and Island-­Life, an impartial Reader ­w ill be so just to take it as it is; viz. that it is spoken or intended of that Part of the real Story, which the Island-­Life is a just Allusion to; and in this the Story is not only illustrated, but the real Part I think most justly approv’d; For Example, in the latter Part of this Work called the 22. eight and twenty Years] Crusoe’s twenty-­eight years on the island have been read by Michael Seidel as an allegory for a period of po­liti­cal exile from the return of Charles I in 1660 to the removal of James II from the throne by the Glorious Revolution. For Defoe it represented the period from his birth to the time when the penalties against the religious worship of ­England’s Dissenters ­were lifted. See Seidel, “Crusoe in Exile,” PMLA 96 (1981): 363–374. 23. Miracles . . . ​Ravens] An allusion to 1 Kings 17:4–6. God commands the prophet Elijah to go to the brook Cherith near the Jordan, where, as God promises, he is fed by ravens. 24. Vio­lences and Oppressions] ­Those contemporaries reading the suggestions of this pref­ ace as an autobiographical statement by Defoe about his life would think of his imprison­ ment and being made to stand in the pillory for three days at the end of 1703 following the publication of The Shortest Way with the Dissenters in December 1702. 25. Slavery worse than Turkish] An allusion to Crusoe’s captivity at Salé (Sallee) in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, but if Defoe was making an autobiographical statement, he may have been thinking of his work for the Tory government as power slipped from the hands of the relatively moderate Robert Harley to that of Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke and ­t hose with a Jacobite agenda. See Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 441–459. 26. rais’d again and depress’d again] To a certain extent, Defoe pre­sents a similar picture of his life in his autobiographical An Appeal to Honour & Justice (1715), in The Shakespeare Head Edition of the Novels and Selected Writings of Daniel Defoe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1927), 188–238. 27. Crusoe] ­Here Defoe may be seen as refusing to yield to the evidence that Gildon had amassed in attributing the work to Defoe and the threatened revelations promised by Cox. Looked at in another way, throughout his ­career as a writer, Defoe had assumed a number of personas. Between 1701 and 1714, he was “The author of the True-­Born En­glishman,” “The Author of the Review,” and sometimes “Mr.  Review.” He wrote u ­ nder a variety of guises including that of a Quaker. It was common at the time for authors to use “masks” rather than their own names. Thus Defoe may be seen as saying that, for the purposes of t­ hese books, he is to be called Robinson Crusoe.

8

Ser ious R eflections

Vision, I begin thus, When I was in my Island Kingdom, I had abundance of strange Notions of my seeing Apparitions, &c. all ­t hese Reflections are just History of a State of forc’d Confinement, which in my real History is represented by a confin’d Retreat in an Island’ and ’tis as reasonable to represent one kind of Imprisonment by another, as it is to represent any Th ­ ing that r­ eally exists, by that 28 which exists not. The Story of my Fright with something on my Bed, was Word for Word a History of what happened, and indeed all t­ hose Th ­ ings received very ­little Alteration, except what necessarily attends removing the Scene from one Place to another. My Observations upon Solitude are the same, and I think I need say no more, than that the same Remark is to be made upon all the References made h ­ ere, to the Transactions of the former Volumes, and the Reader is desired to allow for it as he goes on. Besides all this, h ­ ere is the just and only good End of all Parable or Allegor­ ick History brought to pass, viz. for moral and religious Improvement. H ­ ere is invincible Patience recommended u ­ nder the worst of Misery; indefatigable Application and undaunted Resolution ­u nder the greatest and most discourag­ ing Circumstances;29 I say, ­these are recommended, as the only Way to work through ­t hose Miseries, and their Success appears sufficient to support the most dead-­hearted Creature in the World. Had the common Way of Writing a Mans private History been taken, and I had given you the Conduct or Life of a Man you knew, and whose Misfortunes and Infirmities, perhaps you had sometimes unjustly triumph’d over;30 all I could have said would have yielded no Diversion, and perhaps scarce have obtained a Reading, or at best no Attention; the Teacher, like a greater, having no Honour in his own Country.31 Facts that are form’d to touch the Mind, must be done a g­ reat 28. represent . . . ​exists not] This is Defoe’s clearest defense of fiction. It caught the eye of the French existential phi­los­o­pher Albert Camus, who used it as a motto for his realistic but symbolic repre­sen­ta­tion of the ­human condition in La Peste, in Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Roger Grenier, 9 vols. (Paris: Club d’la Honnête Homme, 1983), 2:25. 29. invincible Patience . . . ​Circumstances] As Le Bossu suggested (see Robinson Crusoe’s preface, notes 2 and 7 of this volume), Defoe spells out the basic moral of the first two vol­ umes. The emphasis on “indefatigable Application and undaunted Resolution” became the theme of innumerable fictions as well as genuine travel accounts, such as the conclusion to George Anson’s and Richard Walter’s Voyage Round the World (1748). The phrase “indefati­ gable Application” is one used frequently by Defoe to describe energy, sometimes to suggest good actions, sometimes bad. Moll Flanders’s Governess worked with “indefatigable Appli­ cation” to help Moll a­ fter she has been arrested, while Defoe’s Devil works with “indefatiga­ ble Application” to seduce good men. See Moll Flanders, ed. G. A. Starr (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2n78; and The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, ed. Irving Rothman and R. Michael Bowerman (New York: AMS Press, 2003), 15. 30. you . . . ​unjustly triumph’d over] Defoe seems to be speaking to his audience as a group who had “sometimes” enjoyed his humiliations. 31. Teacher . . . ​Honour in his own Country] An allusion to Matthew 13:57. “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own ­house,” a remark made by Jesus to the disbelief expressed by ­t hose in the synagogue of Nazareth where he returned to preach. By the time Defoe published Serious Reflections, he would have been aware of the remarkable success enjoyed by the first two volumes on the Continent.

R o b i n s o n C ru s o e ’s P r e fa c e

9

Way off, and by somebody never heard of: Even the Miracles of the Blessed Sav­ iour of the World suffered Scorn and Contempt, when it was reflected, that they ­were done by the Carpenter’s Son;32 one whose ­Family and Original they had a mean Opinion of, and whose B ­ rothers and S­ isters w ­ ere ordinary P ­ eople like themselves. ­There even yet remains a Question, w ­ hether the Instruction of t­hese ­Things ­will take place, when you are supposing the Scene, which is placed so far off, had its Original so near Home. But I am far from being anxious about that, seeing I am well assur’d that if the Obstinacy of our Age should shut their Ears against the just Reflections made in this Volume, upon the Transactions taken Notice of in the former, ­t here ­will come an Age, when the Minds of Men s­ hall be more flexible, when the Prejudices of their ­Fathers33 ­shall have no Place, and when the Rules of Vertue and Religion justly recommended, s­hall be more gratefully accepted than they may be now, that our C ­ hildren may rise up in Judgment against their ­fathers, and one Genera­ tion be edified by the same Teaching, which another Generation had despised.34 Rob. Crusoe.

32. the Carpenter’s Son] Recalling him as the “carpenter’s son,” the members of the syna­ gogue of Nazareth refuse to believe that “wisdom” can possibly come from a person of so ordinary a background. See Matthew 13:55–56. 33. Prejudices of their ­Fathers] Charles Gildon’s attack upon Defoe and the two narrative volumes of Robinson Crusoe was based to a ­great extent on dredging up old attacks upon Defoe. He also accused Defoe of inculcating wicked ideas in Robinson Crusoe, from a blas­ phemous message about God’s justice to an ­imagined attack upon Britain’s status as a com­ mercial, trading nation. Also by way of defending his right to print an abridgement of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, T. Cox, in his letter to the Flying Post, had referred to Defoe as “one of the most prostituted pens in the ­whole world” and had expressed the hope for his conversion to “the ser­v ice of religion and the best of governments,” an allusion to the attacks on Defoe for his association with Nathaniel Mist, whose journal was sometimes tinged with Jacobitism. Defoe was right enough in his prediction of vindication by ­future generations. In the illustrations of Thomas Stothard and Thomas Medland at the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, Crusoe was depicted as a “God-­like” figure. See the reprint of the letter from Cox in Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eigh­teenth ­Century, 1:182; and David Blewett, The Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 1719–1920 (Jerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1995), 58. 34. one Generation . . . ​despised] Both Testaments repeat the theme of God’s punishment against the generation that left Egypt. The best summary is in Psalm 78:8, which speaks of a new generation that “might not be as their ­fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.”

 Publisher’s INTRODUCTION

1

THE publishing this extraordinary Volume ­will appear to be no Presumption, when it ­shall be remembred, with what unexpected Good and Evil ­Will, the former Volumes have been accepted in the World. If the Foundation has been so well laid, the Structure cannot but be expected to bear a Proportion; and while the Parable has been so diverting, the Moral2 must certainly be equally agreeable. The success the two former Parts have met with, has been known by the Envy it has brought upon the Editor, express’d in a thousand hard Words from the Men of Trade; the Effect of that Regret which they entertain’d, at their having no Share in it:3 And I must do the Author4 the Justice to say, that not a Dog has wag’d his Tongue at the Work itself, nor has a Word been said to lessen the Value of it, but  which has been the vis­i­ble Effect of that Envy at the good Fortune of the Bookseller.5 The Riddle is now expounded, and the intelligent Reader may see clearly the End and Design of the ­whole Work; that it is calculated for, and dedicated to the Improvement and Instruction of Mankind in the Ways of Vertue and Piety, by representing the vari­ous Circumstances, to which Mankind is exposed; and encouraging such as fall into ordinary or extraordinary Casualties of Life, how to work thro’

1. Publisher’s Introduction] ­W hether this is by Defoe alone, by a collaboration of Taylor and Defoe, or by Taylor working off the hints from the Preface is impossible to determine. 2. Parable . . . ​Moral] This follows the critical outlines suggested by Le Bossu. See Robinson Crusoe’s preface, note 2 in this edition. 3. no Share in it] Most of the works published by Defoe a­ fter the Robinson Crusoe volumes ­were handled by a group of publishers or conger. 4. Editor . . . ​Author] In this case, the editor, who has drawn the envy of other publishers, is presumed to be William Taylor and the author ­either Defoe or Crusoe. 5. good Fortune of the Bookseller] According to Nichols, “So rapid was the demand for this ingenious production, that several printers w ­ ere employed to print the successively success­ ful editions.” Literary Anecdotes of the Eigh­teenth ­Century, 1:180.

11

12

Ser ious R eflections

Difficulties, with unwearied Diligence and Application, and look up to Providence for Success. The Observations and Reflections, that take up this Volume, crown the Work;6 if the Doctrine has been accepted, the Application must of Necessity please; and the Author shews now, that he has learn’d sufficient Experience, how to make other Men wise and himself happy. The Moral of the Fable, as the Author calls it, is most instructing; and t­ hose who challeng’d him most maliciously, with not making his Pen useful, w ­ ill have Leisure to reflect, that they pass’d their Censure too soon; and like Solomon’s Fool,7 judged of the M ­ atter before they heard it. ­Those whose Avarice prevailing over their Honesty, had invaded the Property of this Book by a corrupt Abridgment,8 have both fail’d in their Hope, and been ashamed of the Fact; shifting off the Guilt as well as they could, tho’ weakly, from one to another: The principal Pyrate is gone to his Place,9 and we say no more of him, De mortuis nil nisi bonum;10 ’tis Satisfaction enough, that the Attempt has prov’d abortive, as the Baseness of the Design might give them Reason to expect it would.

Advertisement THE Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mari­ ner: Who lived eight and twenty Years all alone in an un-­inhabited Island on the Coast of Amer­i­ca, near the Mouth of the G ­ reat River Oroonoque; having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself: With an Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by himself. The Third Edition. The farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, being the Second and last Part of his Life, and strange surprising Accounts of his Travels round three Parts of the Globe. Written by himself. The Second Edition: To which is added a Map of the World, in which is delineated the Voyages of Robinson Crusoe. Both sold by W. Taylor, at the Ship and Black-­Swan in Pater-­noster-­Row. 6. crown the Work] Following Le Bossu’s theory that the fable is made for the moral, the essays of Serious Reflections have to be superior to the narrative volumes. ­ atter before he heareth it, it is 7. Solomon’s Fool: See Proverbs 18:13, “He that answereth a m folly and shame unto him.” Defoe frequently quoted this verse and spoke of “Solomon’s Fools” as a type. See, for example, the Review, ed. Arthur Secord, 9 vols. in 22 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 4:11. 8. corrupt Abridgment] That produced by T. Cox near the beginning of August  1719. See Hutchins, Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing, 150–157. ­ ere is 9. gone to his Place] This comment and the Latin tag suggest that T. Cox was dead. Th evidence that T. Cox returned to Scotland, but according to the Eighteenth-­Century Short Title Cata­logue, works published by a T. Cox continued to appear into the next de­cade. 10. De mortuis nil nisi bonum] Let nothing be said of the dead but what is good. This is a well-­k nown Latin saying. Diogenes Laertius had attributed the sentiment to Chilon of Sparta. See Lives of Eminent Phi­los­o­phers, trans. R.  D. Hicks, Loeb Library, 2 vols. (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 1:71.

Serious OBSERVATIONS

11

Introduction I Must have made very l­ittle Use of my solitary and wandring Years, if a­ fter Such a Scene of Won­ders, as my Life may be justly call’d, I had nothing to say, and had made no Observations which might be useful and instructing, as well as pleasant and diverting to ­those that are to come ­after me.

11. Serious OBSERVATIONS] This heading may suggest that, at some point, it was an alter­ native title rather than “Reflections.”

13

Chapter 1

•

Of SOLITUDE

1

How uncapable to make us happy, and How unqualify’d to a Christian Life.2

I Have frequently look’d back, you may be sure, and that with dif­fer­ent Thoughts, upon the Notions of a long tedious Life of Solitude, which I have represented to the World, and of which you must have formed some Ideas from the Life of a Man in an Island. Sometimes I have won­der’d how it could be supported, especially for the first Years, when the Change was violent and impos’d, and Nature unac­ quainted3 with any t­hing like it. Sometimes I have as much won­der’d, why it should be any Grievance or Affliction; seeing upon the w ­ hole View of the Stage of Life which we act upon in this World, it seems to me, that Life in general is, or ­ought to be, but one universal Act of Solitude:4 But I find it is natu­ral to judge of Happiness, by its suiting or not suiting our own Inclinations. E ­ very Th ­ ing revolves

1. Of SOLITUDE] Prob­ably an echo of Montaigne’s “Of Solitude” (De la Solitude) from the first book of his Essays. 2. Christian Life] Since the Roman Catholic Church believed in the virtue of its many saints who ­were hermits, this has to be seen as a peculiarly Protestant viewpoint. For the view of the life of the hermit as that of the “highest type of happiness obtainable on earth” and a victory over the “flesh and the Devil,” see James Loughlin, “Anchorites,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Charles Herbermann, 15 vols. (New York: Appleton, 1907), 1:462–463. 3. Nature unacquainted . . . ​it] An allusion to Aristotle’s argument that ­humans ­were natu­ rally social, that the ability to live in solitude was not part of h ­ uman nature but rather some­ thing that belonged to e­ ither a god or a beast (“lower animal”). See Politics, ed. H. Rackham, Loeb Library (London: Heinemann, 1959), 12–13. 4. universal Act of Solitude] Between the time that Montaigne, in his essay “Of Solitude,” called on every­one to “make our contentment depend on ourselves” and Defoe’s essay on the same subject, ­t here had occurred what could be called an epistemological revolution in the work of René Descartes (1596–1650) and John Locke (1632–1704), creating a self that was more isolated from an external world than anything suggested by Montaigne. Montaigne urges his readers to pull themselves away from the activities of the court or business. At the time Defoe was writing, phi­los­o­phers ­were more concerned with prob­lems of identity and a uni­ fied self. And George Berkeley (1685–1753) had already argued in 1710 that the mind perceives only ideas rather than objects.

15

16

Ser ious R eflections

in our Minds by innumerable circular Motions, all centring in our selves.5 We judge of Prosperity, and of Affliction, Joy and Sorrow, Poverty, Riches, and all the vari­ous Scenes of Life: I say, we judge of them by our selves: Thither we bring them Home, as Meats touch the Palat, by which we try them; the gay Part of the World, or the heavy Part; it is all one, they only call it pleasant or unpleasant, as they suit our Taste.6 The World, I say, is nothing to us, but as it is more or less to our Relish: All Reflection is carry’d Home, and our Dear-­self 7 is, in one Re­spect, the End of Liv­ ing. Hence Man may be properly said to be alone in the Midst of the Crowds8 and Hurry of Men and Business: All the Reflections which he makes, are to himself; all that is pleasant, he embraces for himself; all that is irksome and grievous, is tasted but by his own Palat. What are the Sorrows of other Men to us? And what their Joy? Something we may be touch’d indeed with, by the Power of Sympathy,9 and a secret Turn of the 5. centring in ourselve] This passage is dominated by an extrapolation of the thought of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester; the lines from “A Very Heroical Epistle in Answer to Ephelia”: In my dear self I center every­t hing: My servants, friends, my mistress, and my King. Although in this poem he was satirizing a person who was completely dominated by an overwhelming egotism, Rochester was influenced by the many seventeenth-­century phi­los­o­ phers, perhaps best represented by François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), who saw ­human beings as dominated by self-­interest. A more straight-­forward view of self-­interest as the dominant ele­ment in ­human be­hav­ior is expressed in his “A Satyr against Reason and Mankind.” Defoe, who admired Rochester’s poetry, had used such views extensively in his lengthy poem, Jure Divino (1706). See Rochester, The Complete Poems, ed. David Vieth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 94–101, 113–115. 6. pleasant or unpleasant . . . ​Taste] In his Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding (1690), Locke had argued that h ­ uman beings are essentially involved in pursuing their own happi­ ness and that they judge of ­t hings according to their individual sense of plea­sure. And in the translation of Montaigne’s Essays by Charles Cotton, ­t here is one essay titled “That the Relish of Goods and Evils, does, in a g­ reat mea­sure, depend upon the Opinion we have of them,” in which, like Defoe, Montaigne argues that ­human beings make moral judgments on the basis of “Taste.” See Locke, Essay, ed. Alexander Fraser (New York: Dover, 1959), 1:340–341 (2:xxi, 43–44); and Montaigne, Essays, trans. Charles Cotton, 4th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1711), 1:359– 388. From this point forward, citations from Montaigne refer to the modern translation by E. J. Trechmann, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1947). Trechmann’s translation is to a g­ reat extent based on Cotton’s translation. 7. Dear-­self] See chapter 1, note 5 in this edition. 8. alone in the Midst of Crowds] For a similar sentiment, see Montaigne, “Of Solitude,” in Essays, 1:237. Montaigne wrote, “Therefore the soul must be brought back, and must retire within itself: that is the true solitude, which may be enjoyed in the midst of cities and king’s courts.” See also chapter 1, note 42 in this edition. 9. Power of Sympathy] ­Here used, somewhat mockingly, as a kind of natu­ral drive ­toward benevolence. Even at this early date, Defoe may have been influenced by Bernard Mandev­ ille, who argued in his 1714 edition of The Fable of the Bees (ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1957], 1:254–259) that the pity that often passed as a virtue was merely a form of sympathy that, by producing discomfort to the self, produced an emotion and action intended to relieve that pain. Describing the feelings of an onlooker who sees a child fall into a fire, Mandev­ille sees ­little true virtue in the sense of pity experienced or the rescue achieved: “The Action is neither good nor bad, and what Benefit soever the Infant received, we only obliged our selves, for to have seen it fall, and not strove to hinder it, would have

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

17

Affections; but all the solid Reflection is directed to our selves. Our Meditations are all Solitude in Perfection;10 our Passions are all exercised in Retirement;11 we love, we hate, we covet, we enjoy, all in Privacy and Solitude: All that we commu­ nicate of ­t hose ­Things to any other, is but for their Assistance in the Pursuit of our Desires; the End is at Home; the Enjoyment, the Contemplation, is all Solitude and Retirement; ’tis for our selves we enjoy, and for our selves we suffer. What then is the Silence of Life? And, How is it afflicting, while a Man has the Voice of his Soul to speak to God, and to himself? That Man can never want Conversation,12 who is Com­pany for himself;13 and he that cannot converse prof­ itably with himself, is not fit for any Conversation at all; and yet ­t here are many good Reasons why a Life of Solitude, as Solitude is now understood by the Age, is not at all suited to the Life of a Christian, or of a wise Man. Without enquiring therefore into the Advantages of Solitude, and how it is to be managed, I desire to be heard concerning what Solitude r­ eally is; for I must confess, I have dif­fer­ent Notions about it, farm from ­t hose which are generally understood in the World, and far from all ­t hose Notions upon which ­t hose ­People in the primitive Times, caused a Pain which Self-­preservation compell’d us to prevent.” Thus pity of this kind is merely a form of identification with another in a way that makes the self feel endangered. Mandev­i lle was attacking Sir Richard Steele and his sentimental view of the “Excellency of ­Human Nature,” and while Defoe disagreed with Mandev­i lle on a number of points, he too disliked the benevolent view of humanity put forth by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, and by Steele. Defoe’s fullest statement of his disagreement with ­t hose propos­ ing that humankind was ruled more by sympathy than self-­interest was to appear in his Mere Nature Delineated (1726). As theories of sympathy became central to eighteenth-­century philosophy, especially in the writings of David Hume and Adam Smith, the phrase “the power of sympathy” became fairly common. It was even the title of an eighteenth-­century novel (1789) by American Wil­ liam Hill Brown. The OED remarks on the connection between this phrase and the “powder of sympathy,” a method of healing wounds by some kind of salve associated with the weapon involved in the action. It was championed by Sir Kenelm Digby and its use dramatized by John Dryden and Sir William Davenant in their version of The Tempest. See Mandev­i lle, The Fable of the Bees (London, 1714), 35, 40; and The Tempest, in The California Edition of the Works of John Dryden, ed. E. N. Hooker, H. T. Swedenberg, Maximillian Novak, et al., 20 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952–2000), 10:93–94, 375–376. 10. Our Meditations are all Solitude in Perfection] The concept of the isolated self was a cen­ tral ele­ment in Eu­ro­pean thought from René Descartes (1596–1650), through John Locke (1632–1704) and George Berkeley (1685–1753), to David Hume (1711–1776). For a discussion of the meditative tradition, the technique called “meletetics,” and its connection to fiction, see J. Paul Hunter, ­After Novels (New York: Norton, 1990), 200–208. 11. Passions are all exercised in Retirement] Compare Montaigne, “Of Solitude,” in Essays, 1:236, where he comments on the vari­ous passions following ­t hose attempting to retire “even into the cloister and the school of philosophy.” 12. Silence of Life . . . ​Conversation] The notion of private meditation was part of a strong tradition in ­England during the seventeenth ­century. Manuals such as Bishop Edward Wetenhall’s Enter into Thy Closet (2nd ed., 1663) went into a dozen editions before the end of the ­century. For meditation and seventeenth-­century poetry, see Louis Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969). 13. cannot converse . . . ​himself] Compare Montaigne, “Of Solitude,” in Essays, 1:245: “Retire into yourself; but first prepare to receive yourself ­t here: it would be madness to trust to your­ self if you cannot govern yourself.”

18

Ser ious R eflections

and since that also, acted, who separated themselves into Desarts and unfre­ quented Places, or confin’d themselves to Cells, Monasteries, and the like,14 retir’d, as they call it, from the World; All which, I think, have nothing of the ­Thing I call Solitude in them, nor do they answer any of the true Ends of Solitude, much less ­t hose Ends which are pretended to be sought ­after, by ­t hose who have talk’d most of ­t hose Retreats from the World. As for Confinement in an Island, if the Scene was plac’d t­here for this very End, it ­were not at all amiss. I must acknowledge, ­t here was Confinement from the Enjoyments of the World, and Restraint from ­human Society: But all that was no Solitude; indeed no Part of it was so, except that which, as in my Story, I apply’d to the Contemplation of sublime ­Things, and that was but a very ­little, as my Readers well know, compar’d to what a Length of Years my forced Retreat15 lasted. It is evident then, that as I see nothing but what is far from being retir’d, in the forced Retreat of an Island, the Thoughts being in no Composure suitable to a retired Condition, no not for a g­ reat While; so I can affirm, that I enjoy much more Solitude in the M ­ iddle of the greatest Collection of Mankind in the World, I mean, at London,16 while I am writing this, than ever I could say I enjoy’d in eight and twenty years Confinement to a desolate Island. I have heard of a Man, that upon some extraordinary Disgust which he took at the unsuitable Conversation of some of his nearest Relations, whose Society he could not avoid, suddenly resolved never to speak any more:17 He kept is Resolu­ 14. Desarts Cells, Monasteries, and the like] Compare Montaigne, “Of Solitude,” in Essays, 1:236, where speaking on the same subject of the inability to leave the passions b ­ ehind, he remarks, “Neither deserts, nor rocky caves, nor hair-­shirts, nor fasting ­w ill rid of them.” 15. my forced Retreat] The theme of a chosen retreat from society was a constant motif of the period in poems such as John Pomfret’s “The Choice” (1700) and in Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea’s “Petition for an Absolute Retreat” (1713). It was also the subject of a debate between Sir George Mackenzie and John Evelyn. Mackenzie published A Moral Essay, Preferring Solitude to Publick Employment in 1665, only to be answered by Evelyn in 1667 with Publick Employment and an Active Life Preferred to Solitude. For a discussion of the pos­si­ble relevance of this debate to The Surprizing Adventures, see Irene Beesemyer, “Crusoe the Iso­ lato: Daniel Defoe Wrestles with Solitude,” 1650–1850: Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 10 (2004): 79–102. John Locke argued that a man freed from prison might choose to stay ­t here for a time ­because of illness or bad weather. Such a choice does not make him less ­free. Crusoe is imprisoned on the island and does not choose his solitude. See Locke, Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding, 1:348 (2.21). 16. Solitude . . . ​London] Compare Montaigne, “Of Solitude,” in Essays, 1:235: “Not but that the wise man can live contented everywhere, and be alone even in a palace crowd.” See also chapter 1, note 42 in this edition. ­There is also an adage that appears to have come into En­glish from Latin: “A ­great City a ­great Solitude (Magna civitas, magna Solitudo),” in Mor­ ris Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in En­glish in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950), 102 (C398). 17. never to speak any more] This statement and the account that followed led Defoe’s biog­ rapher, Thomas Wright (following up on a hint from a former biographer, William Chad­ wick [1859]), to theorize that Defoe was speaking autobiographically and that he too had remained s­ ilent with his ­family for almost three de­cades. However, such unusual be­hav­ior would surely have been remarked upon by Defoe’s son-­in-­law, Henry Baker, who, to the con­ trary, presented an ideal f­ amily life at the Defoe home in Stoke Newington. See Wright, The

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

19

tion most rigorously many years; not all the Tears or Entreaties of his Friends, no not of his Wife and ­Children, could prevail with him to break his Silence. It seems it was their ill Behaviour to him at first, that was the Occasion of it; for they treated him with provoking Language, which frequently put him into undecent Passions, and urged him to rash Replies; and he took this severe Way to punish himself for being provok’d, and to punish them for provoking him: But the Sever­ ity was unjustifiable; it ruin’d his ­Family, and broke up his House: His Wife could not bear it, and a­ fter endeavouring, by all the Ways pos­si­ble, to alter his rigid Silence, went first away from him, and afterwards away from her self, turning melancholly and distracted: His C ­ hildren separated some one Way, and some another Way, and only one ­Daughter who lov’d her ­Father above all the rest, kept with him, tended him, talk’d to him by Signs, and liv’d almost Dumb like her ­Father, near 29 years with him; till being very sick, and in a high Fever, delirious as we call it, or light-­headed, he broke his Silence, not knowing when he did it, and spoke, tho’ wildly at first. He recover’d of the Illness afterwards, and fre­ quently talk’d with his ­Daughter, but not much, and very seldom to any Body ­else. Yet this Man did not live a s­ ilent Life with re­spect to himself; he read continu­ ally; and wrote down many excellent Th ­ ings, which deserv’d to have appear’d in the World, and was often heard to pray to God in his Solitudes very audibly, and with g­ reat Fervency; but the Unjustice which his rash Vow, if it was a Vow, of Silence, was to his F ­ amily, and the length he carry’d it, was so unjustifiable another way, that I cannot say his Instructions could have much Force in them. Had he been a single Man, had he wandred into a strange Country or Place, where the Circumstance of it had been no Scandal, his Vow of Silence might ha’ been as commendable, and as I think, much more than any of the primitive Christians Vows of Solitude18 ­were; whose Retreat into the Wilderness, and giv­ ing themselves up to Prayer and Contemplation, shunning ­human Society, and the like, was so much esteemed by the primitive F ­ athers, and from wherce our religious Houses, and O ­ rders of religious ­People w ­ ere first deriv’d. The Jews said, John the Baptist19 had a Devil, ­because he affected Solitude and Retirement; and they took it from an old Proverb they had in the World at that time: That ­every solitary Person must be an Angel or a Dev­il.20 Life of Daniel Defoe (London: Cassell, 1894), 24–30. With its implication of the way in which an irrational act by a member of a ­family may destroy the cohesiveness of the group, this is the kind of story Defoe used in his three volumes of The ­Family Instructor (1715, 1718, 1727). 18. primitive Christians . . . ​Solitude] The admiration for the life of Christian retirement and even isolation had its foundation in the many desert f­athers admired by the early Catholic Church. The life of St. Anthony (285–350 c.e.) was considered wholly admirable, but in his article on anchorites in The Catholic Encyclopedia, James Loughlin insisted that any attempt at living a withdrawn life of silence and contemplation had to be lived within the approved monastic ­orders, such as that of the Augustinian Order, or receive special permission from a bishop of the Church. Catholic Encyclopedia, 1:462–463. 19. John the Baptist] The activities of St. John the Baptist and Christ in ­going into the wilder­ ness ­were the bases for approval of such actions. See Loughlin, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1:462. 20. solitary . . . ​Dev­il] A variant of Aristotle’s judgment that solitude was not appropriate for ­human beings. See chapter 1, note 3 in this edition.

20

Ser ious R eflections

A Man u ­ nder a Vow of perpetual Silence,21 if but rigorously observ’d, would be even on the Exchange of London,22 as perfectly retired from the World, as a Her­ mit in his Cell;23 or a Solitair in the Desarts of Arabia;24 and if he is able to observe it rigorously, may reap all the Advantages of ­t hose Solitudes, without the unjusti­ fiable Part of such a Life, and without the Austerities of a Life among Brutes. For the Soul of a Man ­under a due and regular Conduct, is as capable of reserving it self, or separating it self from the rest of h ­ uman Society, in the midst of a Throng, as it is when banish’d into a desolate Island.25 The Truth is, that all t­ hose religious Hermit-­like Solitudes,26 which Men value themselves so much upon, are but an Acknowl­edgment of the Defect or Imperfec­ 21. Vow of perpetual Silence] Rufinus of Aquileia in History of the Monks of Egypt tells of a solitary hermit named Theon who took a vow of silence for thirty years. It is ­t hese hermits of the early Christian Church of whom Crusoe is thinking rather than Church monasteries that continued to practice this “discipline” in his time. A section of The Sayings of the ­Fathers (Verba Se­niorum) was devoted to praise of isolation and silence. See Helen Waddell, trans., The Desert F ­ athers (New York: Holt, 1936), 63–64, 89–93. 22. Exchange of London] The Royal Exchange was built in 1669 ­a fter the ­Great Fire of 1666 destroyed the original building. It was a structure of two stories with a m ­ iddle court con­ taining a statue of Charles II. Facing Cornhill on the south and Threadneedle Street on the north, it had almost two hundred shops, some of which w ­ ere devoted to ­women’s and men’s clothing. The shops on the bottom floor often had cellars with vaulted ceilings containing products of vari­ous kinds. It burned down in 1838. In his Essay upon Proj­ects, ed. Joyce Ken­ nedy, Michael Seidel, and Maximillian Novak (New York: AMS Press, 1999), 24, Defoe advo­ cated the building of additional exchanges in London. ­There is an illustration of the structure in Phillip Lea and Robert Morden, A Prospect of London (London, ca. 1690). See also Joseph Addison’s essay in praise of the Royal Exchange, The Spectator, ed. Donald Bond, 5 vols., no. 69 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 1:292–95, esp. 293n2. 23. Hermit in his Cell] The mention of a hermit in connection with the Royal Exchange has to bring to mind Joseph Addison’s “Spectator” and his observations on the commerce car­ ried on in that building. (See chapter 1, note 22 in this edition.) The narrator of The Spectator essays described himself as someone who seldom spoke three sentences at a time and who mainly observed a “profound Silence” when in the world. The Spectator apparently inspired an imitation titled The Hermit, which ran in 1711. Addison also has an essay (no. 575) describing a conversation between a hermit and a youth in which, mocked by the youth on living for a f­ uture life, the hermit ­counters with a remark pointing to the folly of living without regard to the possibility of an afterlife. Addison takes the side of the hermit. See The Spectator, no. 1, 1:2. 24. Solitair in the Desarts of Arabia] For accounts of ­these hermits, see Helen Waddell, trans., The Desert ­Fathers. The noun “solitaire” is first recorded by the OED in 1716, but Defoe also uses the word soon ­a fter (1719) in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, ed. Maximillian Novak, Irving Rothman, and Manuel Schonhorn, Stoke Newington Edition (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2020), 62. 25. midst of a Throng . . . ​Island] See also chapter 1, notes 42 and 62 in this edition, where Montaigne is quoted as speaking of the solitude that may be achieved “in the midst of Cities, and king’s courts.” Of course, Defoe’s “desolate Island” was part of a new image of isolation however much it may owe to Montaigne’s “Of Solitude.” 26. Hermit-­like Solitudes] Crusoe criticizes ­t hose hermits, such as Saint Anthony (ca. 250– 350). Saint Anthony withdrew from society to live as a solitaire on a height near the Nile. His strug­gles against the temptations of the flesh ­were a common subject for paint­ers, such as Hieronymus Bosch, wishing to depict fantastic scenes filled with grotesque figures. The Catholic Church has always recognized religious hermits—­those seeking to pursue their Christian faith through solitary prayer and devotion—as following a legitimate religious

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

21

tion of our Resolutions,27 our Incapacity to bind our selves to needful Restraints, or rigorously to observe the Limitations we have vow’d our selves to observe: Or take it thus, That the Man first resolving that it would be his Felicity to be entirely given up to conversing only with Heaven, and heavenly Th ­ ings, to be separated to Prayer and good Works; but being sensible how ill such a Life w ­ ill agree with Flesh and Blood, ­causes his Soul to commit a Rape upon his Body,28 and to carry it by Force, as it w ­ ere into a Desart, or into a religious Retirement, from whence it cannot return, and where it is impossible for it to have any Converse with Man­ kind, other than with such as are ­under the same Vows, and the same Banish­ ment. The Folly of this is evident many Ways. I s­ hall bring it home to the Case in Hand thus: Christians may without doubt come to enjoy all the desirable Advantages of Solitude, by a strict Retirement, and exact Government of their Thoughts, without any of ­these Formalities, Rigours, and apparent Mortifications, which I think I justly call a Rape upon h ­ uman Nature, and consequently without the Breach of Christian Duties, which they necessarily carry with them, such as rejecting Christian Communion, Sacraments, Ordinances, and the like.29 ­There is no need of a Wilderness to wander among wild Beasts, no necessity of a Cell on the top of a Mountain, or a desolate Island in the Sea; if the Mind be confin’d, if the Soul be truly Master of it self, all is safe; for it is certainly and effec­ tually Master of the Body,30 and what signify Retreats, especially a forc’d Retreat as mine was? The anxiety of my Circumstances ­t here, I can assure you, was such path. ­Here again Crusoe’s objection is distinctly Protestant. For Saint Anthony’s strug­gle to achieve solitude, see Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of Antony (Kalamazoo, MI: Cister­ cian, 2003), esp. 241, where he remarked to a man urging him to stay in society, “Just as fish die if they stay too long on dry land, monks also grow feeble if they stay too long with you and loiter among you.” 27. Imperfection of our Resolutions] Montaigne advised that simply changing one’s place does not r­ eally change the self. “Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear and the lusts do no leave us, though we have changed our country. . . . ​They ­w ill often follow us even into the cloister and the school of philosophy.” Essays, 1:236. 28. Soul . . . ​Rape . . . ​Body] The OED gives as its first definition of rape, “the act of taking anything by force,” without any sexual implications, and cites as one of its examples, Defoe’s Jure Divino ([London, 1706], bk. 9, p.  16): “When Kings their Crowns without Consent obtain, / ’Tis all a mighty Rape, and not a Reign.” But Defoe’s usage ­here is more meta­phoric. In works depicting the traditional Christian dichotomy between the soul and the body, such as Andrew Marvell’s “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body” (Poems and Letters, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1927], 1:20–21), the soul seeks a ­union with heaven and complains of being imprisoned in the body; the body complains of being unnecessarily burdened by the soul. In Defoe’s passage, the soul is seen as overwhelming the body in what is viewed as a wrongful and almost perverted manner. 29. Christian Communion . . . ​like] All of ­these require participation in the activities of a Christian church or community. 30. Soul . . . ​Master of the Body] Defoe’s rejection of the hermit’s life is based on this notion that ­human beings have ­mental and spiritual control over desires and passions. ­There may be a Stoic line of thought h ­ ere. See Antoine Le G ­ rand, Man without Passion, trans. G. R. (Lon­ don, 1675). The original French title better suggests the origins of Le ­Grand’s thought: Le Sage des Stoiques ou L’Homme sans Passions.

22

Ser ious R eflections

for a Time, as w ­ ere very31 suitable to heavenly Meditations, and even when that was got over, the frequent Alarms from the Savages, put the Soul sometimes to such Extremities of Fear and Horrour, that all manner of Temper was lost, and I was no more fit for religious Exercises, than a sick Man is fit for L ­ abour. Divine Contemplations require a Composure of Soul, uninterrupted by any extraordinary Motions or Disorders of the Passions; and this, I say, is much easier to be obtained and enjoy’d in the ordinary Course of Life, than in Monkish32 Cells and forcible Retreats. The Business is to get a retired Soul, a Frame of Mind truly elevated above the World, and then we may be alone whenever we please, in the greatest apparent Hurry of Business or Com­pany: If the Thoughts are ­free, and rightly unengag’d, What imports the Employment the Body is engag’d in? Does not the Soul act by a differing Agency, and is not the Body the Servant, nay, the Slave of the Soul? Has the Body Hands to act, or Feet to walk, or Tongue to speak, but by the Agency of the Understanding, and ­Will, which are the two Deputies of the Soul’s Power?33 Are not all the Affections, and all the Passions which so universally agitate, direct, and possess the Body, are they not all seated in the Soul? What have we to do then more or less, but to get the Soul into a superior Direction and Elevation, ­t here’s no Need to prescribe34 the Body to this or that Situation; the Hands,35 or Feet, or Tongue, can no more disturb the Retirement of the Soul, than a Man having Money in his Pocket can take it out, or pay it, or dispose of it by his Hand, without his own Knowledge. It is the Soul’s being entangled by outward Objects, that interrupts its Contem­ plation of divine Objects, which is the Excuse for t­ hese Solitudes, and makes the removing the Body from t­ hose outward Objects seemingly necessary; but what is ­t here of Religion in all this? For Example, a vicious Inclination remov’d from the Object, is still a vicious Inclination, and contracts the same Guilt, as if the Object 31. as w ­ ere very] A “not” should have been inserted h ­ ere but is absent in the first edition: “as ­were not very suitable.” 32. Monkish] Although this word may be used in a neutral sense, h ­ ere it appears to have a degree of contempt attached to it. 33. Understanding . . . ​­Will . . . ​Power] Defoe might have a number of sources for this discus­ sion, but it is very similar to John Locke’s comments on how the soul may think and act upon the body through thought and w ­ ill: “For the mind having in most cases, as is evident in Experience, a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires; and so all, one ­a fter another; is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, and weigh them with ­others. And from the not using it right comes all the variety of ­mistakes, errors and faults which we run into, in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours ­a fter happiness; whilst we precipitate the determination of our w ­ ills, and engage too son before due Examination. To prevent this we have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire; as e­ very one daily may Experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all lib­ erty; in this seems to consist that which is call’d ­free ­will.” 1:345 (2.21.47). See also John Yolton, Locke and the Compass of ­Human Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1970), 140–141. 34. prescribe] In the sense of limit. See OED. 35. Hands] Locke uses the example of moving the hand as an illustration of the mind and ­w ill in action. See Essay Concerning H ­ uman Understanding, 1: (2:21:48).

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

23

­ ere at Hand; for if, as our Saviour36 says, He that looketh on a W w ­ oman to lust a­ fter her, that is to desire her unlawfully, has committed the Adultery already;37 so it ­will be no inverting our Saviour’s Meaning to say, that he that thinketh of a ­Woman to desire her unlawfully, has committed Adultery with her already, though he has not looked on her, or has not seen her at that Time; and how s­hall this thinking of her be remov’d by transporting the Body? It must be remov’d by the Change in the Soul, 38 by bringing the Mind to be above the Power or Reach of the Allurement, and to an absolute Mastership over the wicked Desire;39 other­wise the vicious Desire remains as the Force remains in the Gunpowder, and ­will exert it self when ever toucht with the Fire. All Motions to Good or Evil are in the Soul: Outward Objects are but second ­Causes;40 and tho’ it is true, separating the Man from the Object, is the Way to make any Act impossible to be committed; yet where the Guilt does not lye in the Act only, but in the Intention or Desire to commit it, that Separation is nothing at all, and effects nothing at all. Th ­ ere may be as much Adultery committed in a Monastery, where a ­Woman never comes, as in any other Place, and perhaps is so: The abstaining from Evil therefore depends not only and wholly upon limiting, or confining the Man’s Actions, but upon the Man’s limiting and confining his Desires; seeing to desire to sin, is to Sin; and the Fact which we would commit if we had Opportunity, is r­ eally committed, and must be answer’d for as such. What then is t­ here of Religion, I say, in forc’d Retirements from the World, and Vows of Silence or Solitude? They are all nothing; ’tis a retired Soul that alone is fit for Contemplation; and it is the Conquest of our Desires41 to Sin, that is the only ­human Preservative against Sin. It was a g­ reat while a­ fter I came into h ­ uman Society, that I felt some Regret at the Loss of the solitary Hours and Retirements I had in the Island; but when I came to reflect upon some ill spent Time, even in my Solitudes, I found Reason to see what I have said above; that a Man may sin alone several Ways, and find

36. our Saviour] The following quotation is part of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. 37. He that looketh . . . ​Adultery already] Referring to the Old Testament commandment against adultery, Jesus (Matthew 5:28) states, “But I say unto you, that whosever looketh on a ­woman to lust ­a fter her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” 38. Change in the Soul] Montaigne also argues that the “disease is rooted in our soul, and the soul cannot escape from herself.” Essays, 1:237. 39. Mastership over . . . ​Desire] Saint Antony battled against the Devil and his demons in a kind of war. He preached the ideal of the ascetic life as the best way of conquering the evil that he believed beset every­one. See Athanasius, The Life of Antony, esp. 131–169. See also David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). 40. second C ­ auses] Defoe was frequently to argue that, for the most part, God operates in the natu­ral world through second ­causes rather than through direct intervention in ­human life. ­Here the entire natu­ral world of “Outward Objects” is dismissed relative to the importance of the “Soul.” Defoe may have been reading his own Christian interpretation into John ­ uman Understanding. Locke’s Essay Concerning H 41. Guilt . . . ​Conquest of our Desires] Defoe equates inclination, intention, and desire in this passage. Compare the Review, supplement for September 1704, 6–7, where Defoe quotes Mat­ thew 5:8 in judging the actions of a correspondent in a ­matter of adultery.

24

Ser ious R eflections

subject of Repentance for his solitary Crimes, as well as he may in the midst of a populous City.42 The Excellency of any State of Life consists in its Freedom from Crime; and it is evident to our Experience, that some Society may be better adapted to a Rec­ titude of Life, than a compleat Solitude and Retirement: Some have said, that next to no Com­pany,43 good Com­pany is best; but it is my Opinion, that next to good Com­pany, no Com­pany is best; for as it is certain, that no Com­pany is bet­ ter than bad Com­pany, so ’tis as certain, that good Com­pany is much better than no Com­pany. In Solitude a Man converses with himself, and as a wise Man44 said, he is not always sure that he does not converse with his E ­ nemy;45 but he that is in good Com­pany, is sure to be always among his Friends. The Com­pany of religious good Men, is a constant Restraint from Evil, and an Encouragement to a religious Life. You have t­ here the Beauty of Religion exempli­ fied; you never want as well Instruction in, as Example for, all that is good; you have a Contempt of evil Th ­ ings constantly recommended, and the Affections mov’d to delight in what is good by hourly Imitation: If we are alone, we want all ­t hese, and are led right, or led wrong, as the Temper of the Mind, which is some­ times too much the Guide of our Actions, as well as Thoughts, happens to be constituted at that Time. H ­ ere we have no Restraint upon our Thoughts, but from our selves, no Restraint upon our Actions, but from our own Consciences, and nothing to assist us in our Mortifications of our Desires, or in directing our Desires, but our own Reflections, which ­a fter all may often err, often be prepossess’d. 42. populous City] Once again t­here is a similar thought in Montaigne’s “Of Solitude”: “Therefor the soul must be brought back, and must retire within itsself: that, is the true soli­ tude, which may be enjoyed in the midst of cities and King’s courts.” Essays, 1:237 (“Ainsi n’il la faut ramener et retirer en soy; c’est la vraie solitude, et qui se peut joüir au milieu des villes et des cours des Roys.” Les Essais de Michel Montaine, ed. Pierre Villey [Paris: Presses Uni­ versitaires de France, 1965], 240). 43. next to no Com­pany] Tilley, Dictionary, 114 (C570) provides a proverb with a somewhat similar sentiment: “It is better to be alone than in bad (ill) com­pany,” but Crusoe’s version puts a positive value upon solitude and has a genuinely proverbial turn to it. 44. wise Man] Defoe may have been referring directly to the Cynic phi­los­o­pher Diogenes. At any rate, in the manuscript of “Historical Collections” (item 95) at the William Andrews Clark Library, composed around 1682–1683, Defoe alluded to Diogenes as the person respon­ sible for the following remark. 45. converse with his E ­ nemy] In “Historical Collections” (p. 77, item 95), Defoe wrote, “Dio­ genes y/e Cinick Seeing a young man walking All Alone By him-­self Demanded of him what he was Doeing? I am talking (qothe y/e young man) with my Self. Take Heed (saith he) though talk not with thine Enemye.” See also Montaigne “Of Solitude”: “it would be mad­ ness to trust yourself if you cannot govern yourself.” Essays, 1:245. John Evelyn, who was influenced by Montaigne, conducted a debate with Sir George Mackenzie in which he defended the active life remarking, “He ­ought to be a wise and good man indeed that dares trust himself alone: for ambition and malice, lust and superstition, are in solitude as in their kingdom.” Quoted in Brian Vickers, “The Mackenzie-­Evelyn Debate,” in Arbeit Musse Meditation (Zürich: Verlag der Fachvereine, 1985), 271. For Defoe’s pos­si­ble knowledge of both Mackenzie and Evelyn, see Beesemyer, “Crusoe the Isolato,” 79–102.

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

25

If you wou’d retreat from the World then, be sure to retreat to good Com­pany; retreat to good Books,46 and retreat to good Thoughts; t­ hese ­will always assist one another, and always join to assist him that flies to them in his Meditations, direct him to just Reflections, and mutually encourage him against what­ever may attack him, from within him, or without him: Whereas to retreat from the World, as it is call’d, is to retreat from good Men, who are our best Friends: Besides, to retreat, as we call it to an entire perfect Solitude, is to retreat from the publick Worship of God, to forsake the Assemblies; and, in a Word, is unlawful, b ­ ecause it obliges us to abandon ­t hose ­Things, which we are commanded to do.47 Solitude therefore, as I understand by it, a Retreat from ­human Society, on a religious or philosophical Account, Is a meer Cheat; it neither can answer the End it proposes, or qualify us for the Duties for Religion, which we are commanded to perform; and is therefore both irreligious in it self, and inconsistent with a Chris­ tian Life many Ways. Let the Man that would reap the Advantage of Solitude, and that understands the Meaning of the Word, learn to retire into himself:48 Serious Meditation is the Essence of Solitude; all the Retreats into Woods and Desarts are short of this; and though a Man that is perfectly Master of this Retirement, may be a ­little in Danger of Quietism,49 that is to say, of an Affectation of Reserved­ ness; yet it may be a Slander upon him in the main, and he may make himself amends upon the World, by the blessed Calm of his Soul, which they perhaps who appear more chearful may have ­little of. Retiring into Desarts, in the first Days of Religion, and into Abbeys and Mon­ asteries since, what have they been? Or what have they been able to do, t­owards purchasing the Retirement I speak of? They have indeed been Th ­ ings to be reckon’d among Austerities, and Acts of Mortification,50 and so far might be commendable: But I must insist upon it, that a retired Soul is not affected with 46. good Books] See Montaigne’s discussion of books as companions, Essays, 1:243. 47. commanded to do] The Book of Common Prayer set forth in the nineteenth article the notion that “The vis­i­ble Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance, in all ­t hose ­t hings that of necessity are requisite to the same.” The doctrine has its origins from Saint Paul, Hebrews 10:25. Seeking isolation would be a violation of member­ ship in a church and avoidance of the Sacraments. This was not one of the articles of the Anglican Church to which Defoe, as a Dissenter, would have objected. 48. retire into himself] Again an allusion to Montaigne’s “Retire within yourself,” Essays, 1:245. See also Essais, 247: “Retirez voux en vous.” 49. Quietism] The definition supplied “an Affectation of Reservedness” (11:31) does not do justice to the debate over this religious position within the Catholic Church. Quietism involved a mystical attempt to be one with God through a state of quiet meditation. It was intended to bypass the body and enter into direct spiritual communication with God. Although some ­earlier beliefs bore some resemblance to this seventeenth-­century religious movement, its founder was Miguel de Molinos (1640–1696). A modified form of Quietism was practiced by Jeanne-­Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717), who spread her ideas through her writings. Eventually the Catholic Church de­cided to condemn Quietism. The most influential of its disciples was François de la Mothe-­Fénelon (1651–1715), whose Maximes des Saints was condemned by the Pope. 50. Acts of Mortification] In Conjugal Lewdness (London, 1727), 210, Defoe argued that such acts ­were “commendable” for controlling sexual desires.

26

Ser ious R eflections

them, any more than with the Hurries of Com­pany and Society. When the Soul of Man is powerfully engag’d in any par­tic­u ­lar Subject, ’tis like that of St.  Paul, wrapt up,51 ­whether it be into the third Heaven,52 or to any Degree of lower Exal­ tation: Such a Man may well say with the Apostle above, ­Whether I was in the Body, or out of the Body, I cannot tell. It was in such a wrapt up State, that I con­ ceived in what I call my Vision of the Angelical World;53 of which I have her sub­ joined a very l­ ittle Part. Is it rational to believe, that a Mind exalted so far above the State of Th ­ ings with which we ordinarily converse, should not be capable of a Separation from them, which, in a Word,54 is the utmost Extent of Solitude? Let such never afflict themselves, that they cannot retreat from the World: Let them learn to retreat in the World, and they ­shall enjoy a perfect Solitude; as compleat to all Intents and Purposes, as if they w ­ ere to live in the Cupola of St. Paul’s,55 or, as if they w ­ ere to 56 live upon the Top of Cheviot Hill in North­umberland. They that cannot be retir’d in this Manner, must not only retire from the World, but out of the World,57 before they can arrive to any true Solitude. Man is a Creature so form’d for Society, that it may not only be said, that it is not good for him to be alone,58 but ’tis ­really impossible he should be alone:59 We are so con­ tinually in need of one another; nay, in such absolute Necessity of Assistance from one another, that t­ hose who have pretended to give us the Lives and Manner of the Solitaires, as they call them, who separated themselves from Mankind, and wander’d in the Desarts of Arabia and Lybia, are frequently put to the Trou­ble of bringing the Angels down from Heaven to do one Drudgery or another for them; forming imaginary Miracles, to make the Life of a true Solitair pos­si­ble; some­ 51. St. Paul . . . ​wrapt up] For Saint Paul’s conversion experience, see 2 Corinthians 12:2–3. 52. third Heaven] The OED treats this as a Christian concept of a state of bliss related to but not the same as the seventh heaven of Judaism. 53. Vision of the Angelical World] This is evidence that Defoe planned this as a separate work before placing it at the end of Serious Reflections. 54. Mind . . . ​Word] Although Defoe had some good ­things to say about austerities, this argument that the mind is better capable of religious contemplation when the necessities of life are fulfilled is the mainline Protestant position. 55. Cupola of St. Paul’s] The cupola or dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, the cre­ ation of Sir Christophe Wren (1632–1723), was completed in 1710. Since it was well over three hundred feet from the ground level, the dome might well be cited as a place of height and isolation. At the time of the publication of Serious Reflections, however, the interior was being painted by Sir John Thornhill and may not have been quite so quiet as Defoe i­ magined. Defoe was a g­ reat admirer of Wren and his building. See Harold Hutchinson, Sir Christopher Wren (New York: Stein and Day, 1976), 129–135. See also Defoe, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of G ­ reat Britain, intro. G. D. H. Cole, 2 vols. (London: Peter Davies, 1927), 1:334–337. 56. Cheviot Hill in North­umberland] Defoe gives an account of climbing to the highest of the Cheviot Hills and viewing the country sixty miles around in his Tour, 2:765–767. 57. out of the World] Defoe may be suggesting that only in death can one achieve absolute solitude. 58. not good for him to be alone] An allusion to the creation of Eve as a mate for Adam in Genesis 2: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.” 59. impossible . . . ​alone] ­These are the ideas of Aristotle. See chapter 1, note 19 in this edition.

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

27

times they have no Bread, sometimes no W ­ ater, for a long Time together; and then a Miracle is brought upon the Stage, to make them live so long without Food; at other Times they have Angels come to be their Cooks, and bring the Roast-­ meat; to be their Physicians, to bring them Physick, and the like: If Saint Hillary 60 comes in his Wandrings to the River Nile, an h ­ umble Crocodile61 is brought to carry him over upon his Back; tho’ they do not tell us, ­whether the Crocodile ask’d him to r­ ide, or he ask’d the Crocodile, or by what Means they came to be so familiar with one another: And what is all this to the Retirement of the Soul,62 with which it converses in Heaven in the midst of infinite Crowds of Men, and to whom the nearest of other Objects is nothing at all, any more than the Objects of Mountains and Desarts, Lions and Leopards, and the like, ­were to ­those that banish’d themselves to Arabia? Besides, in a State of Life, where Circumstances are easy, and Provision for the Necessaries of Life, which the best Saint cannot support the Want of, is quietly and plentifully made; has not the Mind infinitely more Room to withdraw from the World, than when at best it must wander for its daily Food, tho’ it ­were but the Product of the Field. Let no Man plead he wants Retirement, that he loves Solitude, but cannot enjoy it, ­because of the Embarrassment63 of the World; ’tis all a Delusion; if he loves it, if he defines it, he may have it when, where, and as often as he pleases; let his Hur­ ries, his ­Labours, or his Afflictions, be what they ­will: It is not the Want of an Opportunity for Solitude, but the Want of a Capacity of being solitary64 that is the Case in all the Circumstances of Life. I knew a poor, but good Man; who tho’ he was a Labourer, was a Man of Sense and Religion; who being hard at Work with some other Men, removing a ­great 60. Saint Hilary] Saint Hilarion (271–371 c.e.) lived as a hermit in the deserts of Egypt and what was then Palestine. The story of the crocodile is actually about the abbot Helenus. See the next note. 61. Crocodile] In his contribution to Atlas Maritimus & Commercialis (London, 1728), 262, Defoe attached this account to both Saint Helena and Saint Hilarion, blaming “Popish Legend-­makers” for such absurd distortions in the history of Chris­tian­ity. It is actually an event recorded of the abbot Helenus. Saint Pachome was also credited with using crocodiles to cross rivers “as one calls a cab.” See Beasts and Saints, trans. Helen Waddell (London: Constable, 1934), xiii, 17, 20. 62. Retirement of the Soul] The state described h ­ ere bears some resemblance to that sought by the prac­ti­tion­ers of Quietism. See the note above to 11:30. But it is also consonant with Montaigne’s notion that “the soul must . . . ​retire within itself” (“Of Solitude,” in Essays, 1:237). 63. Embarrassment] In the sense of an impediment, obstacle, or encumbrance. See OED. 64. Capacity of being solitary] In his chapter “The Capacity to Be Alone” (Solitude [New York: Ballantine Books, 1989], 16–28), the psychoanalyst Anthony Storr argues, with partial reference to Donald Winnicot, that ­children need to develop a capacity for being by them­ selves and carry that ability into adulthood. A similar sentiment was made by Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696), who remarked that the chief prob­lem with modern humanity was the inability to endure solitude. See “Of Mankind,” in Characters, trans. Henri Van Laun (Lon­ don: Oxford University Press, 1953), 199 (section 99).

28

Ser ious R eflections

Quantity of Earth to raise a Bank against the Side of a Pond, was one Day so out of himself, and wrapt up in a perfect Application of his Mind, to a very serious Subject, that the poor Man drove himself and his Wheelbarrow into the Pond, and could not recover himself, till Help came to him. This Man was certainly capable of a perfect Solitude, and perhaps ­really enjoy’d it; for as I have often heard him say, he liv’d alone in the World: (1.) Had no ­Family to embarrass his Affections. (2.) His low Circumstances placed him below the Observation of the upper Degrees of Mankind. (3.) And his reserv’d Meditations plac’d him above the wicked Part, who w ­ ere ­t hose in a Sphere equal to himself; among whom, as he said, and is most true, it was very hard to find a sober65 Man, much less a good Man; so that he liv’d r­ eally alone in the World; apply’d himself to l­abour for his Subsistance, had no other Business with Mankind, but for Necessaries of Life, and convers’d in Heaven, as effectually, and, I believe, ­every Way, as divinely as St. Hilary did in the Desarts of Lybia, among the Lions66 and Crocodiles. If this Retirement, which they call Solitude, consisted only of separating the Person from the World, that is to day, from ­human Society, it ­were itself a very mean ­Thing, and would ­every Way as well be supplied, by removing from a Place where a Man is known, to a Place where he is not known, and ­there accustom himself to a retir’d Life, making no new Acquaintance, and only making the Use of Mankind which I have already spoken of; namely for Con­ve­nience, and Supply of necessary Food; and I think of the Two, that such a Man, or a Man so retir’d, may have more Opportunity to be an entire Recluse, and may enjoy more real Solitude, than a Man in a Desart. For Example, In the Solitude I speak of, a Man has no more to do for the Necessaries of Life, than to receive them from the Hands of ­t hose that are to furnish them, and pay them for so ­doing; whereas, in the Solitude of Desarts, and wandring Lives, from whence all our Monkish Devotion springs, they had ­every Day their Food, such as it was, to seek, or the Load of it to carry; and except where as it is said, they put Providence to the Operation of a Miracle,67 to furnish it,68 they had frequently 65. sober] Perhaps used in the dual sense of serious and being ­free from the influence of alco­ holic beverages. Complaints about drunkenness among workers ­were common among con­ temporaries. Defoe attacked this lack of sobriety in his True-­Born En­glishmen. 66. St.  Hilary . . . ​Lions] Commenting on the difficulty of selecting stories of saints and beasts, Helen Waddell complained that “the truth is that the ­Middle Ages are so rich in this kind of story that without some arbitrary princi­ple of se­lection one is hampered by too much liberty.” She notes that lions w ­ ere common figures in ­t hese stories of saints. They dig a grave for Paul the hermit, and they are associated with Saint Gerasimus and Saint Jerome. See Waddell, Beasts and Saints, xi–­x ii, 30–35. 67. Providence . . . ​Miracle] Although Defoe believed that God was capable of intervening in daily life, he held that, for the most part, the natu­ral world operated through second ­causes. Protestants normally confine themselves to discussing the miracles recorded in the Bible and by the three or four centuries ­a fter the death of Christ, whereas the Roman Catholic Church believes that miracles may occur at any time. 68. to furnish it] In Saint Jerome’s Life of Saint Paul, the First Hermit, ­t here are a variety of ways in which the saintly hermits are fed, from a satyr offering Saint Antony dates (45) to a crow bringing Antony and Paul a loaf of bread (48). In Athanasius’s Life of Antony, Saint

C h a p t e r 1 /O f S o l i t u d e

29

Difficulties enough to sustain Life; and if we may believe History, many of them ­were starv’d to Death for meer Hunger, or Thirst; and as often the latter as the former. ­Those that had Recourse to t­ hese Solitudes, merely as a Mortification of their Bodies,69 as I observ’d before, and delivering themselves from the Temptations which Society exposed them to, had more Room for the Pretence indeed, than ­t hose who alledge they did it to give up themselves to Prayer and Meditation. The first might have some Reason in Nature for the Fact, as Mens Tempers and ­Constitutions might lead; some having an inordinate Appetite to Crime, some addicted by Nature to one ill Habit, some to another; tho’ the Christian Religion does not guide us to t­ hose Methods of putting a Force upon our Bodies to subdue the Vio­lence of inordinate Appetite. The blessed Apostle St. Paul, seems to have been in this Circumstance, when being assaulted with what is call’d in the Text, a Thorn in the Flesh;70 be it what it w ­ ill that is meant ­t here, it is not to my Purpose; but he pray’d to the Lord thrice; that was the first Method the Apostle took; and thereby set a pious Example to all t­ hose who are assaulted by any Temptation. He did not immediately fly to Austerities and bodily Mortifications, separating him­ self from Mankind, or flying into the Desart to give himself up to Fasting, and a Retreat from the World, which is the Object of all private Snare. But he applied himself by serious Prayer to him, who had taught us to pray, Lead us not into Temptation;71 and the Answer likewise is instructing in the Case; he was not driven out as Nebuchadnezzar into the Desart;72 he was not commanded to retire into the Wilderness, that he might be ­free from the Temptation; nothing less: But the Answer was, my Grace is Sufficient for thee,73 sufficient without the Help of artificail Mortification. So that even in the Case of t­ hese forcible Mortifications they are not requir’d, much less directed for Helps to Meditation; for if Meditation could not be practis’d beneficially, and to all the Intents and Purposes for which it was

Antony prays to save some of his companions who are d ­ ying of thirst in the desert and a spring of w ­ ater immediately ­bubbles out. See Waddell, Beasts and Saints, 45, 48; and Athana­ sius, Life of Antony, 173. 69. Mortification of their Bodies] Throughout his Life of Antony, Athanasius upholds the ascetic discipline practiced regularly by Saint Antony as part of the ideal Christian life. Brakke argues that in Athanasius’s thought “the Christian life became an ascetic life.” Athanasius, 144, 145–161. 70. St. Paul . . . ​Thorn in the Flesh] See 2 Corinthians 12:7–10. Defoe holds up Paul’s reaction to temptation—­prayer and humility—as the proper reaction to temptation as opposed to taking up the life of a hermit. 71. Lead us not into Temptation] Matthew 6:13. A part of “The Lord’s Prayer,” which extends from 6:9–13. 72. Nebuchadnezzar into the Desart] See Daniel 4:32. A “voice from heaven” punishes the ­great monarch with madness ­a fter he had boasted of his power, saying “thy dwelling ­shall be with the beasts of the field.” 73. my Grace is sufficient for thee] 2 Corinthians 12:7.

30

Ser ious R eflections

ordain’d a Duty, without flying from the Face of h ­ uman Society, the Life of Man would be very unhappy. But doubtless the Contrary is evident, and all the Parts of a compleat Solitude are to be as effectually enjoy’d, if we please, and sufficient Grace assisting, even in the most populous Cities, among the Hurries of Conversation, and Gallantry of a Court, or the Noise and Business of a Camp, as in the Desarts of Arabia and Lybia, or in the desolate Life of an uninhabited Island.74

74. most populous Cities . . . ​Island] Defoe continues his variation of Montaigne’s refrain about the ability to maintain a sense of isolation while living within society. See chapter 1, notes 8 and 42 in this edition.

Chapter 2

•

An Essay upon HONESTY

WHEN I first came home to my own Country, and began to sit down and look back upon the past Circumstances of my wandring State, as you ­will in Charity suppose I could not but do very often; the very Prosperity I enjoy’d led me most naturally to reflect upon the par­tic­u­lar Steps by which I arriv’d to it. The Condi­ tion I was in was very happy, speaking of h ­ uman Felicity; the former Captivity1 I had suffer’d made my Liberty sweeter to me; and to find my self jump’d into easy Circumstances at once, from a Condition below the common Rate of Life,2 made it still sweeter. One Time, as I was upon my Enquiries into the happy Concurrence of the ­Causes3 which had brought the Event of my Prosperity to pass, as an Effect, it occurr’d to my Thoughts, how much of it all depended, u ­ nder the Disposition of Providence, upon the Princi­ple of Honesty, which I met with, in almost all the ­People whom it was my Lot to be concern’d with in my private and par­tic­u ­lar Affairs; and I that had met with such extraordinary Instances of the Knavery and Villainy of Mens Natures in other Circumstances, could not but be something taken up with the Miracles of Honesty that I had met with among the several ­People I had had to do with, I mean ­t hose whom I had more particularly to do with in the Articles of my Liberty, Estate, or Effects, which fell into their Hands.

1. former Captivity] Prob­ably a reference to his stay on the island, since he referred at one point to the ocean meta­phor­ically as the “Bars and Bolts” that kept him in captivity, but also a pos­si­ ble reference to his enslavement in Sallee (Salé), which constituted a literal imprisonment. 2. below the common Rate of Life] Although Crusoe experiences considerable plea­sure in his life on the island, he never ceased to evaluate the primitive standard of living on the island as being below that of con­temporary life in E ­ ngland. In short, his indulgence in a form of Prim­ itivism was always ambiguous. 3. Concurrence of the C ­ auses] Defoe used this phrase in his History and Real­ity of Apparitions, ed. Kit Kincaide (New York: AMS Press, 2007), 223, where, as ­here, he associates it with Providence.

31

32

Ser ious R eflections

I began with my most trusty and faithful ­Widow, the ’s Wife, with whom I first went to the Coast of Africa,4 and to whom I entrused 200 l. being the Gain I had made in my first Adventures to Guinea,5 as in the first Volume, Page 21 appears.6 She was left a ­Widow, and in but indifferent Circumstances; but when I sent to her so far off as the Brasils, where I was in such a Condition as she might have reasonably believed I should never have been able to come my self; and if I had, might be in no Condition to recover it of her; and having my self nothing to shew ­under her Hand for the Trust; yet she was so just, that she sent the full Value of what I wrote for, being one hundred Pound; and to shew, as far as in her lay, her sincere honest Concern for my Good, put in among many necessary Th ­ ings which I did not write for, I say, put in two Bibles,7 besides other good Books, for my Reading and Instruction, as she said afterwards, in Popish and Heathen Coun­ tries, where I might chance to fall. Honesty not only leads to discharge e­ very Debt and ­every Trust to our Neighbour, so far as is justly to be demanded, but an hon­ est Man acknowledges himself Debtor to all Mankind,8 for so much Good to be done for them, w ­ hether for Soul or Body, as Providence puts an Opportunity into his Hands to do: In Order to discharge this Debt, he studies continually for Opportunity to do all the Acts of Kindess and Beneficence, that is pos­si­ble for

4. Coast of Africa] In alluding to this voyage, Defoe also points to a passage in which he had twice praised the Captain for his “Honesty.” The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 21. 5. Guinea] Not merely the area of Africa crossed by the tenth degree of north latitude t­ oday called Guinea but also Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. 6. Page 21] Crusoe refers to a page in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures that involves his helping the “Captain’s Wife,” ­a fter his return from the island—­p. 231 in the Stoke New­ ington Edition, Bucknell. His entrusting money to this ­woman occurs on p. 21, and her hon­ est return of £100 of the money when he is in Brazil on p. 37. 7. two Bibles] In The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures (37), the Captain’s ­Widow deliv­ ers the money to a London merchant, who had been contacted by the Portuguese Captain to act as an agent for the transaction. She makes a pre­sent to the Portuguese Captain “for his Humanity and Charity to me” (37), but no mention is made of t­ hese Bibles and other books. Charles Gildon had criticized Defoe for having Crusoe find a number of En­glish Bibles on the Portuguese ship that washes up on the island ­a fter Crusoe and the crew had tried to escape from this sinking ship in one of the boats. This additional information might have been inserted to explain this discovery: Crusoe might possibly have taken them on the ship himself. See Gildon, Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 15 (Dottin, 95). 8. Debtor to all Mankind] This argument for the benevolence of “honest” ­human beings has to be viewed in terms of con­temporary debates over ethics and charity. In July 1719 t­ here had been an incident in which a clergyman named Hendley had been arrested for attempting to preach a sermon on charity. What followed was a debate over Charity Schools in which notions of a sympathetic impulse to charitable deeds ­were being challenged by writers such as Bernard Mandev­i lle, who, in 1723, argued that the idea of educating poor c­ hildren through Charity Schools was against the self-­interest of society and the state. At almost the same time, Joseph Butler (1692–1752) was preaching his “Fifteen Sermons,” in which he main­ tained that benevolence was a basic aspect of the h ­ uman mind. See Mandev­i lle, Fable of the Bees, 1:253–322; and Butler, Works, ed. W. E. Gladstone, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), 2:24, 223, 226. For a complex reading of benevolence and self-­interest at this time, see Pierre Force, Self-­Interest before Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

33

him to do; and tho’ very few consider it, a Man is not a compleatly honest Man, that does not do this. Upon this Consideration, I question much, ­whether a covetous, narrow, stingy Man, as we call him, one who gives himself up to himself, as born for himself only, and who declines the Advantages and Opportunities of d ­ oing Good,9 I mean, extreamly so: I say, I much question, ­whether such a Man can be an honest Man; nay, I am satisfy’d he cannot be an honest Man; for tho’ he may pay e­ very Man his own, and be just, as he thinks it, to a Farthing;10 yet this is Part of the Justice, which in the common Phrase is the greatest Unjustice. This is one Mean­ ing of that Saying, Summum jus, summa injuria.11 To pay e­ very Man their own, is the common Law of Honesty; but to do Good to all Mankind, as far as you are able, is the Chancery Law12 of Honesty; and tho’ in common Law or Justice, as I call it, Mankind can have no Claim upon us, if we do but just pay our Debt; yet in Heaven’s Chancery 13 they w ­ ill have Relief against us; for they have a Demand in Equity of all the Good to be done them, that it is in our Power to do, and this Chancery Court, or Court of Equity, is held in ­every Man’s Breast; ’tis a true Court of Conscience,14 and e­ very Man’s Conscience is a Lord Chancellour15 to him; if he has not perform’d, if he has not paid this Debt, Con­ science ­w ill decree him to pay it, on the Penalty of declaring him a dishonest Man, even in his own Opinion; and if he still refuses to comply, ­will proceed by all the ­legal Steps of a Court of Conscience Pro­cess, till at last it ­will issue out a Writ of

9. ­doing Good] On the duty—­indeed a command of natu­ral law—to do good, see Samuel Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1698), 134. 10. Farthing] An En­glish coin, no longer in circulation, equivalent to a quarter of a penny. 11. Summum jus, summa injuria] A Latin tag meaning that the rigorous enforcement of the law is the highest form of oppression, or as Crusoe says in the line above, “the greatest Unjustice.” 12. Chancery Law] The Court of Chancery was established to ­handle cases on the basis of equity or “Conscience,” allowing for mercy. In his New Law-­Dictionary, Giles Jacob divided Chancery into an “Ordinary Court,” which operated according to the Common Law, and the “Extraordinary Court,” which “proceeds by the Rules of Equity and Conscience, and moder­ ates the Rigour of the Common Law, considering the Intention, rather than the Words of the Law.” See Jacob, New Law-­Dictionary, 4th ed. (London: D. Midwinter, et al., 1739), sig. Hh2v. See also “Chancery,” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable, 1810), 4:330. 13. Heaven’s Chancery] Defoe had numerous experiences in Chancery suits, losing almost all of them. ­There is some poignancy, then, in this utopian image of a Court of Chancery based on a sense of conscience that ­w ill be truly operative. He was to write, in his Compleat En­glish Tradesman (London, 1725–1727; repr., New York: August Kelly, 1969), 2:259, of e­ very trades­ man having conscience as a court of Chancery in his breast. ­ ere, ­t here was a “Court of Con­ 14. Court of Conscience] Although Defoe is being allegorical h science” in London, ruled over by two aldermen and “four discreet Commoners.” It was supposed to hear cases “where the Debt or Damage was u ­ nder 40 s.” See Jacob, New Law-­ Dictionary, sig. Ddd2. 15. Lord Chancellour] The Lord High Chancellor of ­Great Britain or Lord Keeper of the ­Great Seal occupied the highest ­legal position in the nation and presided over the Court of Chancery. He is described as the “keeper of the king’s conscience,” and therefore fits well into this discussion of conscience. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 4:328.

34

Ser ious R eflections

Rebellion16 against him, and proclaim him a Rebel to Nature and his own Conscience. But this is by the Way, and is occasioned by the Observations I have made of many ­People, who think they are mighty honest if they pay their Debts, and owe no Man any ­Thing, as they call it;17 at the same Time, like true Misers, who lay up all for themselves, they think nothing of the Debt of Charity and Beneficence, which they owe to all Mankind. Rich Men are their Maker’s Free-­holders;18 they enjoy freely the Estate he has given them the Possession of, with all the Rents, Profits, and Emoluments, but charg’d with a ­free Farm Rent to the younger ­Children of the ­Family, namely the Poor;19 or if you ­will, you may call them, God’s Copy-­holders,20 paying a Quit-­ Rent21 to the Lord of the Manor; which Quit-­Rent he has assigned for the Use of the rest of Mankind, to be paid in a constant Discharge of all good Offices, friendly, kind, and generous Actions; and he that ­w ill not pay his Rent, cannot be an honest Man, any more than he that would not pay his other just Debts. The Scripture concurs exactly with this Notion of mine; the Miser is call’d by the Prophet Isaiah, a vile Person, one that works Iniquity, and practices Hy­poc­risy, and utters Error before the Lord, Isaiah xxxii.6.22 How does this appear? The very next Words explain it. He makes empty the Soul of the Hungry, and he w ­ ill cause the Drink of the Thirsty to fail. But lest this should seem a strain’d Text, let us read on, both before and ­after, Verse 5. The Vile Person ­shall no more be call’d Liberal, nor the Churl said to be Bountiful. ­Here the Opposite to a Liberal Man is call’d a Vile Person, and the Opposite to a Bountiful Man is call’d a Churl; and in the Verse following,23 the same Vile Person, as opposed to the Liberal Man, is call’d a Wicked Man; and the Liberal Man is set up a Pattern for us all, in Opposition to the vile, churlish, covetous Wretch. Vers. 7, 8. The Instruments also of the Churl 16. Writ of Rebellion] Jacob defines this as “A Writ out of the Chancery, or Exchequer, against a Person in Contempt, for not appearing in ­t hose Courts.” Jacob refers the reader to a “Com­ mission of Rebellion,” which expands on the arrest power of t­hose who fail to appear in court when summoned. See New Law-­Dictionary, sig. 9P2 and Qq2. 17. as they call it] In Defoe’s fiction, this tag is almost always the introduction to what is often, as h ­ ere, an ironic discourse on the way language often disguises real meaning. The lecture that follows has to do with obligation and charity. No one is without a debt to his fellow ­human beings. 18. Free-­holders] Usually the holder of a long lease, sometimes for the life of the party, ninety-­ nine years. See New Law-­Dictionary, sig. 4R–4Rv. 19. ­free Farm Rent . . . ​Poor] Defoe seems to be appealing to the notions in Deuteronomy 24:14–22, that allowed the poor to have a portion of any harvest. 20. Copy-­holders] Unlike freeholders, copyholders held their property or office “at the W ­ ill of the Lord.” New Law-­Dictionary, sig. Yy2v–­Zz. 21. Quit-­Rent] Jacob defines this as “a certain small Rent, payable by the Tenants of Manors, in Token of Subjection, and by which the Tenant goes quiet and f­ ree.” 22. Isaiah xxxii.6] Defoe begins by paraphrasing somewhat and ends by quoting in full. The two verses are: “The vile person ­shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be boun­ tiful. For the vile person ­w ill speak villany, and his heart ­w ill work iniquity, to practice hy­poc­risy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he ­w ill cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.” 23. Verse following] Isaiah 32:7–8. Defoe quotes this passage exactly.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

35

are evil: He deviseth wicked Devices to destroy the Poor with lying Words, even when the Needy speaketh right. But the Liberal deviseth liberal Th ­ ings, and by liberal Th ­ ings s­ hall he stand. In a Word, I think my Opinion justify’d by this Text, that a Churl, a morose, sowre Disposition, a covetous, avaricious, selfish principl’d Man, cannot be an honest Man; he does not pay the common Debt of Mankind to one another, nor the Fee-­Farm,24 or Quit-­Rent of his Estate to God, who is his ­Great Landlord, or Lord of the Manor, and who has charg’d the Debt upon him. I know the Miser ­will laugh at this Notion; but I speak my own Opinion, let it go as far as Reason ­will carry it. I come back to the Examples I was giving in my private Case. As the W ­ idow was honest to me, so was my good Portugese Captain; and it is this Man’s original Honesty, that makes me speak of the honest Man’s Debt to Mankind. It was Hon­ esty, a generous Honesty, that led the poor Man to take me up at Sea; which if he had neglected, my Boy Xury and I had perished together: It was no Debt to me in par­tic­u­lar, but a Debt to Mankind, that he paid in that Action; and yet he could not have been an honest Man without it. You w ­ ill say, if he had gone away and left me, he had been barbarous and inhuman, and deserv’d to be left to perish himself in the like Distress: But, I say, this is not all the Case: Custom and the Nature of the Th ­ ing leads us to say, it would have been hard-­hearted and inhuman; But Conscience ­w ill tell any Man, that it was a Debt, and he could not but be condemn’d by the Court of Conscience25 in his own Breast, if he had omitted it; nay, in the Sight of Heaven he had tacitly kill’d us, and had been as guilty of our Death as a Murtherer; for he that refuses to save a Life thrown into his Hands, takes it away;26 and if t­ here is a just Retribution in a f­ uture State, if Blood is at all 24. Fee-­Farm] A farm let out at a rent of “at least a fourth Part of the Value.” If the rent is not paid for a period of two years, the owner or his heirs may “bring an action to recover the Lands.” New Law-­Dictionary, sig. 4Hv. 25. Court of Conscience] Defoe argues for conscience as a kind of moral imperative. Con­ science was particularly impor­tant among the Dissenters, who argued that their consciences could not allow them to conform to the Church of E ­ ngland. The early Nonconformist William Ames argued that “Consciene bindeth a man so straitly that the command of no creature can ­free a man from it” (Conscience [London, 1743], 6). Samuel Annesley, who was the preacher of Saint Giles, Cripplegate and the likely preacher whom Defoe’s parents followed, specialized in “cases of conscience.” Conscience had once again become of interest in the years before the publication of Serious Reflections, since the Bangorian Controversy, 1716–1722, had as  one of its components a debate over individual conscience. See Maximillian Novak, “Defoe, the Occult and the Deistic Offensive during the Reign of George II,” in Deism, Masonry, and the Englightenment, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 93–108. 26. Life . . . ​takes it away] In his book on Conscience, 130, William Ames argued, “­Every man of what condition soever, (but in the first place, he to whom of duty it may belong) is bound to expose his life to any probable danger, that so he may hinder another mans certaine death.” Defoe’s discussion has to do with conscience and religion and not with the ­legal sys­ tem; yet such thinking has had some influence on that sphere. Although this is not appar­ ently part of Common Law, ­t here has been much recent discussion of this notion. It has led to the passage of Good Samaritan Laws in some places, insisting that we have a ­legal as well as a moral obligation to come to the aid of our fellow ­human beings.

36

Ser ious R eflections

requir’d27 ­t here, the Blood of ­every Man, ­Woman, or Child, whom we could have saved, and did not, s­ hall be reckon’d to us at that Day, as spilt by our own Hands; for leaving Life in a Posture in which it must inevitably perish, is without Ques­ tion causing it to perish, and w ­ ill be call’d so then, by what­ever gilded dress’d-up Words we may express and conceal it now. But I go farther, for my good Portuguese went farther with me; he not only paid the Debt he ow’d to Heaven, in saving our Lives, but he went farther: He took nothing of what I had, tho’ in the common Right of the Sea, it was all his Due for Salvage,28 as the Sailors call it: But he gave me the Value of ­every ­Thing, bought my Boat, which he might have turn’d adrift, my Boy Xury, who was not my Slave by any Right,29 or if he had, became f­ree from that Time; and the Life of Xury, which he had sav’d, as a Servant, was his own; yet he bought ­every ­Thing of me, for the full Value, and took nothing of me, no not for my Passage. ­Here was the Liberal Man devising liberal Th ­ ings,30 and the Sequel31 made 32 good the promissory Text; for by ­these liberal ­Things, the honest liberal Man might be truly said to stand;33 When I came to reward him at my coming to Lisbon, to sell my Plantation at Brasil: Then he being poor34 and reduc’d, and not 27. Blood . . . ​required ­t here] An echo of Genesis 42:22. 28. Right of the Sea . . . ​Salvage] Jacob’s New-­Law Dictionary (sig. 8Lv) defines salvage as “an Allowance made for the Saving of Ships or Goods from Danger of Seas, Enemies, e­ tc.” Falconer’s Marine Dictionary (255) places the amount at “a third part of the value of any ­t hing recovered.” Crusoe seems to believe that the Portuguese Captain could have claimed com­ plete owner­ship of the boat and of Xury. This appears to be closer to the natu­ral law on con­ quest rather than the laws of salvage. See Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 4th  ed. (London, 1729), 618 (6:3:7). Defoe may be thinking of that article of the “Laws of Oleron,” dating back to the time of Richard I, that states: “If any Man happens to find any ­Thing in the Sea, or in the Sand on the Shore, in Floods or in Rivers, if it be precious Stones, Fishes, or any Trea­sure of the Sea, which never belong’d to any Man in Point of Property, it belongs to the first Finder.” But most of t­ hese laws are attentive to the property rights of the shipowner. See [Giles Jacob], Lex Mercatoria, 2nd ed. (London, 1729), 379. 29. Xury . . . ​not my Slave . . . ​R ight] Crusoe apparently rejects the idea that Xury was his slave by right of force. Crusoe, at that time himself a slave, had seized the boat of his master. He might have claimed right over Xury by force of arms, since he had made use of one of the guns in the boat. But Crusoe promises Xury that he ­w ill make him, “a ­great Man” (Strange Surprizing Adventures, 19) and violates his oath. 30. Liberal Man devising liberal ­Things] See Isaiah 32:8: “But the liberal man deviseth liberal ­things; and by liberal ­things ­shall he stand.” This is stated in a passage warning of a time when the “vile person” ­w ill be revealed for his “hy­poc­risy” and the righ­teous ­w ill triumph. 31. Sequel] The passages of Isaiah following the passage in the note above as well as the events in Crusoe’s life. 32. promissory Text] This section of Isaiah prophesizes a time when, ­a fter a period of disas­ ter, “the work of righ­teousness ­shall be peace; and the effect of righ­teousness quietness and assurance for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). The word “promissory” is used ­here in the sense of the promise of reward for virtuous action contained in this passage. 33. stand] See chapter 2, note 30 in this edition. Defoe interprets the passage from Isaiah as suggesting that generosity is rooted in the character of the “liberal” person. 34. he being poor] See The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 234. The Portuguese Captain complains “of his Misfortunes,” that having suffered losses through a shipwreck he had been forced to use some of Crusoe’s money to buy a share in a ship. His “being poor,” however, is only relative to his former prosperity.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

37

able to pay even what he ow’d me, I gave him a Reward sufficient to make his Circumstances easy all his Life a­ fter. The Bounty of this Man to me, when first he took me up out of the Sea, was the highest and most compleat Act of Honesty; A generous Honesty, laying hold of an Opportunity to do Good to an Object offer’d by the Providence of Heaven, and thereby acknowledging the Debt he had to pay to his Maker, in the Persons of his most distress’d Creatures. And ­here also let me remind my Readers of what perhaps they seldom much regard; it is not only a Gift from Heaven to us, to be put in a Condition of ­doing Good; but ’tis a Gift, and a Favour from Heaven, to have an Opportunity of ­doing the Good35 we are in a Condition to do; and we ­ought to close with the Opportu­ nity, as a par­tic­u ­lar Gift from above, and be as thankful for it; I say, as thankful for the Occasion of ­doing Good, as for the Ability. I might mention ­here the Honesty of my Fellow-­Planter in the Brasils, and of the two Merchants and their Sons, by whose Integrity I had my Share in the Plan­ tation preserved, and taken Care of; as also the Honesty of the publick Trea­surer for the Church t­ here, and the like: But I am carry’d off in my Thoughts, to enlarge upon this notable Princi­ple, from the two Examples I have already mentioned, viz. the Guiney Captian’s W ­ idow, and the Portugese; and this in par­tic­u­lar, ­because, since I came to ­England to reside, I have met with Abundance of Dis­ putes about Honesty, especially in Cases where honest Men come to be unhappy Men, when they fall into such Circumstances as they cannot be honest, or rather, cannot shew the Princi­ple of Honesty, which is ­really at the Bottom of all their Actions, and which, but for ­t hose Circumstances which entirely disable them,36 would certainly shew it self in ­every Branch of their Lives: Such Men I have too often seen branded for Knaves37 by t­ hose who, if they come into the same Condi­ tion, would perhaps do the same Th ­ ings, or worse than they may have done. Both my W ­ idow and my Portuguese Captain, fell into low Circumstances, so that they could not make good to me my Money that was in their Hands; and yet 35. Opportunity of ­doing the Good] The argument for ­doing good goes back to the Old Testa­ ment urgings “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18) and to treat the poor with generosity (Deuteronomy 15:4, 11; 24:19–21). ­Here Crusoe argues that it is God who is responsible for providing the occasion for ­doing good deeds. The princi­ple of Hesed, or lov­ ing kindness, was supposed to be part of the very character of the believer. 36. Circumstances . . . ​disable them] In his Review (3:109), Defoe argued that necessity is an irresistible force that conquers e­ very aspect of moral judgment. He saw in the princi­ple of action, even immoral action, something superior to passive ac­cep­tance. See Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 65–88. 37. branded for Knaves] This draws upon some of the sentiments of “A Satyre against Reason and Mankind,” by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, that sees a society ruled by the strong who understand the forces of self-­interest under­lying the social façade and the weak who succumb to circumstances. In such a world, “Honesty’s against all common sense”: Nor can weak Truth your Reputation save; The Knaves ­w ill all agree to call you Knave. Wrong’d s­ hall be him, insulted ­o’re, opprest, Who dares be less a Villain than the rest. (ll. 164–167) See Works, ed. Harold Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 61.

38

Ser ious R eflections

both of them shew’d to me, that they had not only a Princi­ple of Justice, but of generous Honesty too, when the Opportunity was put into their Hands to do so. This put me upon enquiring and debating with my self, what this subtle and imperceptible Th ­ ing, call’d Honesty, is, and how it might be described; setting down my Thoughts, at several Times, as Objects presented; that Posterity, if they think them worth while, may find them both useful and diverting. And First, I thought it not improper to lay down the Conditions upon which I am to enter upon that Description; that I may not be mistaken, but be allow’d to explain what I mean by Honesty, before I undertake to enter upon any Discourses or Observa­ tions about it. And to come directly to it, for I would make as few Preambles as pos­si­ble, I ­shall crave the Liberty in all the following Discourse, to take the Term Honesty, as I think all En­glish Expressions o ­ ught to be taken, namely Honesterly,38 in the com­ mon Acceptation of the Word, the general vulgar Sense of it, without any Cir­ cumlocutions or Double Entendres whatsoever; for I desire to speak plainly and sincerely. Indeed, as I have no Talent at hard Words,39 so I have no g­ reat Venera­ tion for Etymologies, especially in En­glish:40 But since I am treating of Honesty, I desire to do it, as I say above, honestly, according to the genuine Signification of the ­Thing. Neither ­shall I examine, w ­ hether Honesty be a natu­ral or an acquired Virtue, ­whether a Habit, or a Quality, ­whether inherent or accidental; all the philosophi­ cal Part of it I chuse to omit. Neither ­shall I examine it, as it extends to Spirituals,41 and looks t­owards Religion; if we enquire about Honesty t­ owards God, I readily allow all Men are born Knaves, Villains, Thieves, and Murtherers, and nothing but the restrain­ ing Power of Providence42 witholds us all from shewing our selves such, on all Occasions. No Man can be just to his Maker; if he could, all our Creeds and Confessions, Litanies and Suplications, ­were ridicu­lous Contradictions and Impertinences; inconsistent with themselves, and with the w ­ hole Tenor of ­human Life. 38. Honesterly] This is e­ ither an example of Defoe making up a word, since t­ here appears not to have been a word such as honester or honesterly, or a typo. It is odd that Crusoe, in this rhetorical flourish of insisting that he was using the word “honesty” in its “common Accep­ tation of the Word.” It was printed as “Honesterly” in the first edition, as if he ­were coining a new word. The OED rec­ords that in ­Middle En­glish the word was sometimes spelled “hon­ estelich,” but barring some odd dialect survival, it would be best to treat this as a typo. 39. hard Words] Difficult terms. Early dictionaries ­were sometimes ­limited to “hard words.” 40. Veneration for Etymologies . . . ​En­glish] In his Essay upon Proj­ects (89–92), unlike con­ temporaries such as Jonathan Swift, Defoe had proclaimed a partial ac­cep­tance of “Usage” and the inevitability of change in the En­glish language; hence the rejection of an excessive re­spect for word origins. “Veneration” might be too strong a term for Defoe’s occasional interest in the origins of words, but he does analyze the word “Romance” in his New ­Family Instructor (London, 1727), 56. 41. Spirituals] ­Matters of religion. See OED. 42. born Knaves . . . ​Providence] Defoe accepts the Christian notion of original sin as domi­ nating all ­human beings and their actions.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

39

In all the ensuing Discourse therefore, I am to be understood of Honesty, as it regards Mankind among themselves, as it looks from one Man to another, in ­those necessary Parts of Man’s Life, his Conversation and Negotiation, Trusts, Friendships, and all the Incidents of h ­ uman Affairs. The Plainness I profess, both in Style and Method, seems to me to have some suit­ able Analogy to the Subject, Honesty; and therefore, is absolutely necessary to be stricly follow’d. And I must own, I am the better reconcil’d, on this very Account, to  a natu­ral Infirmity of homely plain Writing; in that I think the Plainness of Expression,43 which I am condemn’d to, ­will give no Disadvantage to my Subject, since Honesty shews the most beautiful, and the more like Honesty, when Artifice is dismiss’d, and she is honestly seen by her own Light only; likewise the same Sincer­ ity is required in the Reader;44 and he that reads this Essay without Honesty, ­will never understand it right: She must, I say, be view’d by her own Light. If Prejudice, Partiality, or private Opinions stand in the Way, the Man’s a reading Knave,45 he is not honest to the Subject; and upon such an one all the ­Labour is lost; this Work is of no Use to him, and by my Consent, the Bookseller should give him his Money again. If any Man, from his private ill Nature, takes Exceptions at me, poor, wild, wicked, Robinson Crusoe, for prating of such Subjects as this is, and ­shall call ­either my Sins, or Misfortunes to Remembrance, in Prejudice of what he reads; supposing me thereby unqualify’d to defend so noble a Subject as this of Honesty, or at least to ­handle it honestly: I take the Freedom to tell such, that ­those very wild wicked D ­ oings and ­Mistakes of mine, render me the properest Man alive to give Warning to ­others, as the Man that has been sick is half a Physician.46 Besides, the Confession which I all along make of my early Errors, and which Providence, you see, found me Leisure enough to repent of, and I hope, gave me Assistance to do it effectually; assists to qualify me for the pre­sent Undertaking, as well to rec­ ommend that Rectitude of Soul, which I call Honesty to ­others, as to warn ­t hose 43. Plainness of Expression] ­There is nothing more common and more artful in rhe­toric than an announcement of plainness. But in his Compleat En­glish Tradesman, 1:26, Defoe announced that his ideal would be to write in a manner as if one w ­ ere speaking to five hun­ dred p ­ eople and be understood by e­ very one of them in exactly the same way. This, he argued, “would certainly be a most perfect stile.” 44. Sincerity . . . ​in the Reader] Defoe seems to posit a contract between the author and the reader that places the burden on the reader for any misinterpretation of the text. He made this defense when he argued that some of the readers of his The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1703) ­were responsible for misreading his text and that the impor­tant point was his stated intention in writ­ ing it. Similarly, in his preface to Moll Flanders, he blamed any reader who might misjudge the intent of the text of being “guilty of manifest Injustice.” In appealing to the “sincerity” of the reader, Defoe used a word that, for contemporaries, was becoming charged with emotion. See Leon Guilhamet, The Sincere Ideal (Montreal: McGill-­Queens University Press, 1974). 45. a reading Knave] The notion that the reader could bring to a text a kind of tabula ra­sa had to have been doubtful to Defoe and his contemporaries. 46. Man . . . ​Physician] We have not found this exact proverb. Somewhat similar to this is the proverb “­Every man is a fool or a physician at forty to himself.” Although this may be gener­ alized to mean a wise man or a fool, the implication might be applied to the way one treats one’s health. A Hand-­book of Proverbs, ed. Henry Bohn (London: H.G. Bohn, 1855), 350. See also Tilley, Dictionary (411 [M 125]).

40

Ser ious R eflections

who are subject to ­mistake it, ­either in themselves or ­others: Heaven it self receives ­t hose who sincerely repent, into the same State of Ac­cep­tance, as if they had not sinn’d at all, and so should we also. They who repent, and their ill Lives amend, Stand next to ­those who never did offend.47

Nor do I think a Man ­ought to be afraid or asham’d to own and acknowledge his Follies and M ­ istakes, but rather to think it a Debt which Honesty obliges him to pay: Besides, our Infirmities and Errors, to which all Men are equally subject, when recovered from, leave such Impressions ­behind them, on ­those who sin­ cerely repent of them, that they are always the forwardest to accuse and reproach themselves: No Man need advise them, or lead them; and this gives the greatest Discovery of the Honesty of the Man’s Heart, and Sincerity of Princi­ples. Some ­People tell us, they think they need not make any open Acknowl­edgment of their Follies; and ’tis a Cruelty to exact it of them; that they could rather dye that sub­ mit to it; that their Spirits are too ­great for it; that they are more afraid to come to such publick Confessions and Recognitions, than they would be to meet a Can­ non Bullet, or to face an ­Enemy: But this is a poor mistaken Piece of false Bravery; all Shame is Cowardise, as an eminent Poet48 tells us, That all Courage is Fear, the bravest Spirit is the best qualify’d for a Penitent; ’tis a strange ­Thing that we should not be asham’d to offend, but should be asham’d to repent; not afraid to sin, but afraid to confess. This very Thought extorted the following Lines from a Friend of mine, with whom I discoursed upon this Head. Among the worst of Cowards let him be nam’d, Who having sinn’d’s afraid to be asham’d; And to mistaken Courage he’s betray’d, Who having sinn’d’s asham’d to be afraid.49 47. They . . . ​did offend] This couplet uses some of the same language that Defoe employed in his More Reformation, A Satyr; He that has all his own M ­ istakes confesst, Stands next to him who never has transgresst, .......................................... Therefore of them that Vices reprehend ’Tis not requir’d that they should ne’er offend. See Poems on Affairs of State, ed. Frank Ellis et al., 6:555, ll. 99–106. 48. an eminent Poet] John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Defoe paraphrases lines from Roches­ ter’s “A Satyre against Reason and Mankind” that maintain all courage to be a form of fear: Look to the bottom of this vast design, Wherein Mans Wisdome, Power and Glory join; The Good he acts, the Ill he does endure, Tis all from Feare, to make himself secure. Meerly for safety ­a fter fame we thirst; For all Men would be Cowards if they durst. See Rochester, Works, 61. 49. Among . . . ​afraid] ­These lines, with some variation, are from Defoe’s own Reformation of Manners. See Poems on Affairs of State, 6:426, ll. 623–626.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

41

But to leave the Point of Courage and Cowardise in our repenting of our Offences, I bring it back to the very Point I am upon; namely that of Honesty. A Man cannot be truly an honest Man, without acknowledging the ­Mistakes he has made; particularly, without acknowledging the Wrong done to his Neighbour; and why pray is Justice less required in his Acknowl­edgment to his Maker? He then that ­w ill be honest, must dare to confess he has been a Knave;50 for as above, speaking of our Behaviour to God, we have been all Knaves, and all dishonest; and if we come to speak strictly, perhaps it would hold in our Behaviour to one another also; for, Where’s the Man that is not chargeable by some or other of his Neighbours, or by himself, with ­doing Wrong, with some Oppression or Injury, ­either of the Tongue, or of the Hands.51 I might enlarge ­here upon the Honesty of the Tongue, a ­Thing some ­People who call themselves very honest Men, keep a very slender Guard upon, I mean, as to Evil-­speaking; and of all Evil-­speaking, that worst Kind of it, the speaking hard and unjust Th ­ ings of one another. This is certainly intended by the Command of God, which is so express and emphatick, Thou shalt not bear false Witness against thy Neighbour;52 at least that Part which is what we call Slander, raising an injurious and false Charge upon the Character and Conduct of our Neighbour, and spreading it for Truth. But this is not all; that Honesty I am speaking of re­spects all Detraction, all outrageous Assaults of the Tongue; Reproach is as ­really a Part of Dishonesty, as Slander; and tho’ not so aggravated in Degree, yet ’tis the same in Kind.53 ­There is a Kind of Murther that may be committed with the Tongue, that is in its Nature as cruel as that of the Hand: This can never be the Practice of an honest Man; Nay, he that practices it cannot be an honest Man. But perhaps I may come to this again, but I must go back to explain my self upon the Subject a ­little farther in the General, and then you s­ hall hear more of me, as to the Particulars.

Of Honesty in General. I Have always observ’d, that however few the real honest Men are, yet ­every Man thinks himself, and proclaims himself an honest Man. Honesty, like Heaven, has all Mens good Word, and all Men pretend to a Share of it: So general is the Claim, that like a Jest which is spoil’d by the Repetition, ’tis grown of no value for a Man to swear by his Faith, which is in its original Meaning, by his Honesty, and ­ought to be understood so.

50. Knave] This word has distinct overtones of Rochester’s “A Satyre against Reason and Mankind.” See also chapter 2, note 141 in this edition. 51. Tongue, or of the Hands] Equivalent to: word or deed, speech or action. 52. Thou . . . ​Neighbour] Exodus 20:16. 53. Detraction . . . ​same in Kind] ­Here Defoe links all gossip and public blaming with slander or “false witness.”

42

Ser ious R eflections

Like Heaven too, ’tis ­little understood by ­t hose who pretend most to it, ’tis too often squar’d according to Mens private Interest, tho’ at the same Time the Lati­ tude which some Men give themselves, is inconsistent with its Nature. Honesty is a general Probity of Mind, an Aptitude to Act justly and honour­ ably in all Cases, religious and civil, and to all Persons superiour or inferiour; neither is Ability or Disability to act so, any Part of the ­Thing it self in this Sense. It may be distinguish’d into Justice and Equity, or if you w ­ ill, into Debt and Honour; for both make up but one Honesty. Exact Justice is a Debt to all our Fellow-­Creatures; and honourable, generous Justice is deriv’d from that golden Rule, Quod tibi fieri non vis alteri ne feceris;54 and all this put together, makes up Honesty: Honour indeed is a higher Word for it, but ’tis the same ­Thing, and —­Differs from Justice only in the Name, For Honest and Honour are the same.55

This Honesty is of so qualifying a Nature, that ’tis the most Denominative of all pos­si­ble Virtues:56 An Honest Man is the best Title can be given in the World; all other Titles are empty and ridicu­lous without it, and no Title can be ­really scandalous if this remain. ’Tis the capital Letter,57 by which a Man’s Character ­will be known, when private Qualities and Accomplishments are Worm-­eaten by Time; without it a Man can neither be a Christian or a Gentleman: A Man may be a poor honest Man, an unfortunate honest Man; but a Christian Knave, or a Gen­ tleman Knave, is a Contradiction: A Man forfeits his Character and his F ­ amily by Knavery; and his Escutcheon o ­ ught to have a par­tic­u ­lar Blot,58 like that of Bas­ tardy.59 When a Gentleman loses his Honesty, he ceases to be a Gentleman, com­ mences Rake from that Minute, and o ­ ught to be us’d like one. 54. Quod . . . ​feceris] Do not do to o ­ thers what you would not want done to yourself. This is sometimes called the “silver rule” as opposed to the more positive golden rule. Similar senti­ ments appear in two books of the Apocrypha, Tobit 4:15 and Sirah 31:15. Defoe uses this same quotation in The Compleat En­glish Tradesman 1:202 and 2:42. 55. Differs . . . ​same] This couplet is prob­ably by Defoe. The second line appears in Defoe’s poem “The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley, By Way of Elegy,” in A True Collection of the Writings of the True-­Born En­glishman (London, 1703), 113. This work along with A Second Volume of the Writings of the True-­Born En­glishman (London, 1712) w ­ ill be henceforth cited as [Works]. The line is in italics, which may mean that Defoe is quoting himself or another poet. 56. Denominative . . . ​Virtues] That virtue that distinguishes ­human beings. Similarly, Defoe had e­ arlier written a “Hymn to Truth,” arguing for that virtue as the “Denominating Quality” of humanity. See Review, 2:4. 57. capital Letter] Not in Tilley as a proverb. Presumably the image is that of a book “worm-­ eaten by Time,” with only the large capital letter vis­i­ble. Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe had a large capital letter at the opening paragraph of each chapter. 58. Escutcheon . . . ​Blot] Tilley, Dictionary, 55 (B470) lists “blot in the escutcheon” as prover­ bial, citing Ray’s collection of proverbs published in 1678. 59. Bastardy] Illegitimacy was recorded on an armorial crest, though in the case of the ille­ gitimate offspring of members of the aristocracy, it was sometimes considered a mark of high ancestry. See OED ­under bend-­sinister.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

43

Honesty has such a general Character in the Minds of Men, that the worst of Men, who neither practice or pretend to any Part of it, w ­ ill yet value it in o ­ thers; no Man ever cou’d be so out of Love with it, as to desire his Posterity should be without it; nay, such is the Veneration all Men have for it, that the general Blessing of a F ­ ather to his Son, is Pray, God make thee an honest Man.60 Indeed so general is the Value of it, and so well known, that it seems ­needless to say any ­Th ing in behalf of it. So far as it is found upon Earth, so much of the first Rectitude of Nature, and of the Image of God, seems to be restor’d to Mankind. The greatest Mischief which to me seems to attend this Virtue, like the Thorn about the Rose, which pricks the Fin­ger of ­t hose who meddle with it, is Pride:61 ’Tis a hard ­Thing for a Man to be very honest, and not be proud of it; and tho’ he who is ­really honest, has, as we say, something to be proud of, yet I take his Hon­ esty to be in a ­great deal of Danger, who values himself too much upon it. True honest Honesty, if I may be allow’d such an Expression, has the least Relation to Pride of any View in the World; ’tis all ­simple, plain, genuine, and sincere; and if I hear a Man boast of his Honesty, I cannot help having some Fears for him, at least, that ’tis sickly and languishing. Honesty is a l­ittle tender Plant, not known to all who have Skill in S­ imples,62 Thick sow’d, as they say, and Thin come up;63 ’tis nice of Growth,64 it seldom thrives in a very fat Soil; and yet a very poor Ground too is apt to starve it, ­unless it has taken very good Root; when it once takes to a Piece of Ground, it ­will never be quite destroy’d; it may be choak’d with the Weeds of Prosperity, and some­ times ’tis so scorcht up with the Droughts of Poverty and Necessity,65 that it seems as if it w ­ ere quite dead and gone; but it always revives upon the least mild Weather; and if some Showers of Plenty fall, it makes full Reparation for the Loss the Gardener had in his Crop. ­There is an ugly Weed, call’d Cunning, which is very pernicious to it, and which particularly injures it, by hiding it from our Discovery, and making it hard to find: This is so like Honesty, that many a Man has been deceiv’d with it, and 60. Pray God . . . ​honest Man] See Tilley, Dictionary, 415 (M190); and what may be a play upon this blessing: “God make you an honester man than your ­father,” 261 (G 205). 61. Pride] One of the seven deadly sins listed by Pope Gregory the G ­ reat (540–604). Defoe appears to treat it more as a failing of virtuous ­people than as a terrible sin. 62. Skill in ­Simples] ­Simples ­were plants (see OED). The word was sometimes applied to a single plant that might be used for medicinal purposes, but h ­ ere the image is that of a speci­ men so rare as to be unknown even to the expert. 63. Thick sow’d . . . ​up] Tilley, Dictionary (621 [S692]) provides the proverb, “Thick sown and (but) thin comes up.” As with the image of the unfamiliar plant, this proverb is applied to something ­little known and rare. 64. nice of Growth] Of the many meanings for nice suggested by the OED, the closest would be 4.c, “tender, delicate, fragile.” 65. Poverty and Necessity] This extended allegory of honesty as a delicate plant and then a product to be sold in the marketplace is similar to some of ­those that Defoe used in his Review. For a similar discussion of the relationship between honesty and necessity, see Review 3:109. See also above, the note to 25:1–2.

44

Ser ious R eflections

have taken one for t’other in the Market: Nay, I have heard of some, who have planted this wild Honesty, as we may call it, in their own Ground, have made Use of it in their Friendships and Dealings, and thought it had been the true Plant, but they always lost Credit by it: And that was not the worst neither; for they had the Loss who dealt with them, and who chaffer’d66 for a Counterfeit Commodity; and we find many deceived so still, which is the Occasion t­ here is such an Outcry about false Friends, and about Sharping and Tricking in Mens ordinary Dealings in the World. This true Honesty too has some l­ittle Difference in it, according to the Soil or Climate in which it grows, and your Simplers have had some Disputes about the Sorts of it: Nay, t­here have been ­great Heats67 about the several Kinds of this Plant, which grows in dif­fer­ent Countries, and some call that Honesty, which ­others say, is not; as particularly they say, ­There is a Sort of Honesty in my Country,68 Yorkshire69 Honesty, which differs very much from that which is found in t­hese southern Parts about London: Then t­here is a Sort of Scots Honesty,70 which they say is a meaner Sort than that of Yorkshire: And in New ­England,71 I have heard they have a kind of Honesty, which is worse than the Scotish, and ­little better than the wild Honesty, call’d Cunning, which I mention’d before. On the other hand, they tell us, that in some Parts of Asia, at Smyrna,72 and at Constantinople,73 the Turks have a better Sort of Honesty74 than any of us. I am sorry, our Turkey Com­pany75 have not imported some of it, that we might 66. chaffer’d] Bargained or haggled for a price. See OED. 67. Heats] Fierce disputes. See OED. 68. my Country] Region, district, or area. See OED. 69. Yorkshire] The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures begins, “I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York.” 70. Scots Honesty] Despite Defoe’s many visits to Scotland in behalf of the government, Cru­ soe might seem to have as l­ittle knowledge of Scotland as he is about to say he has of the Ottoman Empire. However, in The Farther Adventures, Crusoe does encounter some Scot­ tish Merchants in his journey through Siberia and joins with them in the attack on the idol. 71. New ­England] Defoe had some business dealings with merchants in Boston, some of which may have been unfortunate. Other­w ise, it is difficult to understand this assessment At one time, he apparently had a friendly correspondence with Cotton Mather. See Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 277–278. 72. Smyrna] Modern Izmir in Turkey. Edward Bohun, in his Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (Lon­ don, 1688), sig.Uu8v, remarked that the city was “very much frequented by the En­glish and Dutch Merchants, to whom alone the pre­sent greatness and Wealth of this Place is owing.” 73. Constantinople] Modern Istanbul. 74. Turks . . . ​Honesty] Defoe had embroidered on the character of Mahomet in his Continuation of the Letters of a Turkish Spy (1718), showing him to be far more honest than the Eu­ro­ pe­a ns upon whom he spies. And Defoe was also fond of quoting a story about Amurath, the leader of the Turks, who won a victory over the Christian Hungarians, when he called upon Christ to witness the perfidy of his enemies in breaking a treaty that they had promised to obey. See Defoe, “Historical Colleccions,” item 119, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library manuscript, D314M3/H673/1682. See also Defoe’s The Conduct of Christians Made the Sport of Infidels (London, 1718). 75. our Turkey Com­pany] The Com­pany of En­glish merchants trading to the Levant also known as the Levant Com­pany. The Com­pany may have been in Defoe’s mind at this time. John Robert Moore ascribed The Case Fairly Stated between the Turky Com­pany and the Ital-

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

45

try ­whether it would thrive ­here or no. ’Tis a ­little odd to me, it should grow to such a Perfection in Turkey, ­because it has always been observ’d to thrive best, where it is sow’d with a Sort of Grain call’d Religion: Indeed they never thrive in ­t hese Parts of the World, so well apart, as they do together. And for this Reason, I must own, I have found that Scots Honesty,76 as above, to be of a very good Kind. How ’tis in Turkey, I know not; for in all my Travels, I never set my Foot in the ­Grand Seignior’s Dominions.77 But to wave Allegories, Disputes about what is, or is not Honesty, are danger­ ous to Honesty it self; for no Case can be doubtful, which does not border upon the Frontiers of Dishonesty; and he that resolves not to be drowned, had best never come near the Brink of the W ­ ater.78 That Man who w ­ ill do nothing but what is barely honest, is in g­ reat Danger. ’Tis certainly just for me to do ­every ­Thing the Law justifies; but if I should only square my Actions by what is literally lawful, I must throw ­every Debtor, tho’ he be poor, in Prison, and never release him till he has paid the uttermost Farthing: I must hang ­every Malefactor without Mercy, I must exact the Penalty of ­every Bond,79 and the Forfeiture of e­ very Indenture:80 In short, I must be uneasy to all Mankind, and make them so to me; and in a Word, be a very Knave too, as well as a Tyrant; for Cruelty is not Honesty. Therefore, the soverign Judge of e­ very Man’s Honesty81 has laid us down a general Rule, to which all the Particulars are resolved, Quod tibi fieri non vis,

ian Merchants (London, 1720) to Defoe. See A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 171 (item 429). For a brief history of the com­ pany, see William Scott, The Constitution and Finance of En­glish, Scottish, and Irish Joint-­ Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 2:85–89, 3:199, 464. 76. Scots Honesty] See chapter 2, note 70 in this edition. 77. G ­ rand Seignior’s Dominions] At this time, the Ottoman Empire was huge, extending into Eu­rope and North Africa. In The Farther Adventures, Crusoe does contemplate return­ ing to E ­ ngland from the east by a route that would have taken him to areas controlled by the Turks, but he decides on a return through China and Siberia. 78. Brink of the ­water] The purport of this paragraph is that if ­t here is the slightest hint of dishonesty in any action, it must be avoided. This warning may be summarized by the prov­ erb in Ecclesiasticus 3:26: “And the man that loves danger ­shall perish through it.” 79. Bond] Giles Jacob (A New Law Dictionary, 4th ed. [London, 1739], sig. Aa2v) defines a bond as “a Deed in Writing obligatory, whereby one doth bind oneself to another, to pay a Sum of money, or do some other Act; so as to make a Release, surrender an Estate, . . . ​to stand to an Award, . . . ​perform a W ­ ill, ­etc.” If Jacob insists on the power of the law to enforce a bond, Defoe argues that, from an ethical standpoint, not ­every legally binding bond ­ought to be enforced. 80. Indenture] “Is a Writing containing some Contract, Agreement or Conveyance between two or more Persons, being indented in the Top answerable to another Part, which hath the same Contents. . . . ​A Deed of Bargain.” Jacob, New Law Dictionary, sig. 4F. 81. sovereign Judge . . . ​Honesty] Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore all ­things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. See Matthew 7:12. This is the “golden rule” as opposed to the negatively phrased “silver rule.”

46

Ser ious R eflections

alteri ne feceris.82 This is a Part of that Honesty I am treating of, and which indeed is the more essential of the two; this is the Test of Behaviour, and the ­grand Arti­ cle to have Recourse to, when Laws are s­ ilent. I have heard some Men argue, that they are not bound to any such Consider­ ations of the Indigence of Persons, as lead to Concessions of, or Compositions with them for Debts; that ’tis all ex gratia,83 or the Effects of Policy, b ­ ecause Cir­ cumstances lead them to judge it better to take what they can get, than lose the Whole. Speaking of the Letter of the Law, I allow that they may be in the right. On the other hand, a Man who gives a Bond for a Debt, pleads, he is answer­ able for no more than the Law ­w ill force him to; that is, he may defend a Suit, stand out to the last Extremity, and at last keep out of the Way, so as not to have Judgment or Execution serv’d on him; he may secure his Estate from the Execu­ tion, as well as his Person, and so never pay the Debt at all; and yet in the Eye of the Law be an honest Man; and this Part of ­legal literal Honesty is supported only by the other, namely, the cruel Part; for ­really such a man, speaking in the Sense of common Justice, is a Knave; he o ­ ught to act according to the true Intent and 84 Meaning of his Obligation, and in the Right of a Debtor to a Creditor, which is to pay him his Money when it became due, not stand out to the last, ­because he cannot be forc’d to it sooner. The Laws of the Country indeed allow such Actions as the Laws of Conscience can by no Means allow, as in this Cafe of the Creditor suing for his Debt, and the Debtor not paying it till he is forced by Law. The Argument made Use of to vindi­ cate the Morality of such a Practice, stands thus: If a Man trusts me with his Money or Goods, upon my common Credit, or upon my Word, he then takes me for his Money, and depends both upon my Abil­ ity and my Honesty; but if he comes and demands my Bond, he quits his Depen­ dence upon my Honesty, and takes the Law for his Security; so that the Language of such an Action is, He ­w ill have a Bond, that it may be in his Power, to make me pay him, ­whether I ­w ill or no; and as for my Honesty, ­he’ll have nothing to do with it: What Relief then I can have against this Bond, by the same Law, to which the Person refers himself, is as ­legal an Action on my Side, as the other Man’s suing for his own, is on his. And thus the Letter of the Law ­w ill ruine the Honesty of both Debitor and Creditor, and yet both s­ hall be justify’d too. But if I may give my Opinion in this Case, neither of ­t hese are the honest Man I am speaking of; for Honesty does not consist of Negatives; and ’tis not sufficient 82. Quod . . . ​feceris] See also chapter 2, note 54 in this edition. In quoting this again ­after refer­ ring to the “golden rule,” it appears as if Defoe did not make any distinction between them. Indeed the “silver rule” was more common, ­going back to the pre-­Socratic phi­los­o­phers. 83. ex gratia] Voluntary or without ­legal obligation. See OED. 84. true intent . . . ​Obligation] Defoe wrote extensively on bankruptcy from An Essay upon Proj­ects (1697) to The Compleat En­glish Tradesman (1726–1727). As in the former, Defoe attempts ­here to see the prob­lem from the view of both the lender and the borrower.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

47

to do my Neighbour no personal Injury in the strict Sense and Letter of the Law; but I am bound, where Cases and Circumstances make other Mea­sures reason­ able, to have such Regard to t­ hese Cases and Circumstances, as Reason requires. Thus to begin with the Creditor to the Debtor, Reason requires, that where a Man is reduc’d to Extremities,85 he should not be destroy’d for Debt; and what’s unreasonable cannot be honest. Debt is no capital Crime, nor ever was; and starving Men in Prison,86 a Punish­ ment worse than the Gallows, seems to be a ­Thing so severe, as it ­ought not to be in the Power of a Creditor to inflict it: The Laws of God never tolerated such a Method of treating Debtors, as we have since thought proper, I ­won’t say honest, to put in Practice: But since the Politicks of the Nation have left the Debtor so much at Mercy by the Letter of the Law, ’tis honest with Re­spect to the Law, to proceed so; yet Com­ passion is in this Case thought reasonable, Why shou’dst thou take his Bed from ­under him?87 says the Text; which implies, ’tis unnatural and unreasonable. I have heard some Men insist upon it, that if a Man be sued wrongfully at Law, he o ­ ught rather to submit to the Injury, than to oppose the Wrong, by the same Law; and yet I never found t­ hose Gentlemen so passive in ­Matters of Law, but they would sue a Debtor at Law, if they could not other­wise obtain their Right. I confess, I cannot blame them for the last, but I blame them for pretending to the first: I am not arguing against recovering a just Debt by a just Law, where the Person is able, but unwilling to be honest: But I think, pursuing the Debtor to all Extremities, to the turning his Wife and ­Children into the Street, express’d in the Scripture by, Taking his Bed from ­under him; and by keeping the Debtor in Prison, when r­ eally he is not able to pay it; t­here is something of Cruelty in it, and the honest Man, I am speaking of, can never do it. But some may object, if I must serve all Mankind, as I would be serv’d in like Case, then I must relieve ­every Beggar, and release ­every poor Debtor; for if I was a Beggar, I would be reliev’d; and if I was in Prison, I would be releas’d; and so I must give away all I have. This is inverting the Argument; for the Meaning is in the Negative still, Do not to another any Th ­ ing, or put no Hardship upon another, which you would not allow to be just, if you w ­ ere in their Case. Honesty is Equity, ­every Man is Lord Chancellor to himself; and if he would consult that Princi­ple within him, would find Reason as fair an Advocate for his Neighbour, as for himself: But I proceed. 85. reduc’d to Extremities] In his Essay upon Proj­ects, Defoe proposed a “Court of Enquiries,” 82–89, that would rule over bankruptcies and avoid the horror of debtor’s prison. 86. starving Men in Prison] For a full and vivid account of the horrors of debtor’s prison, see Moses Pitt, The Cry of the Oppressed (London, 1691). 87. Why shou’dst . . . ​him?] Proverbs 22:27. The full entry reads, “If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from ­under thee.” Defoe argued this point forcefully as early as 1697 in his Essay upon Proj­ects, ed. Joyce Kennedy, Michael Seidel, and Maximillian Novak (New York: AMS Press, 1999), 75–76, and ­here as in Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal (16 June 1722, in William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 3 vols. [London: Hotten, 1869], 2:18–19), he instanced ­those driven to suicide by their desperation. He used his journal, the Review, as a platform to plead for the better treatment of debtors.

48

Ser ious R eflections

Of the Tryal of Honesty. Necessity makes an honest Man a Knave; and if the World was to be the Judge, according to the common receiv’d Notion, ­there would not be an honest poor Man left alive. A rich Man is an honest Man,88 no Thanks to him; for he would be a double Knave to cheat Mankind, when he had no Need of it: He has no Occasion to press upon his Integrity, nor so much as to touch upon the Borders of Dishonesty. Tell me of a Man, that is a very honest Man; for he pays ­every Body punctually, runs into no body’s Debt, does no Man any Wrong; very well, What Circumstances is he in? Why, he has a good Estate, a fine yearly Income, and no Business to do. The Devil must have full Possession of this Man, if he should be a Knave; for no Man commits Evil for the Sake of it; even the Devil himself has some farther Design in Sinning,89 than barely the wicked Part of it. No Man is so hardened in Crimes, as to commit them for the meer Plea­sure of the Fact; t­here is always some Vice gratify’d; Ambition, Pride, or Avarice, make rich Men Knaves, and Necessity, the Poor: But to go on with this rich honest Man; his Neighbour a thriving Merchant, and whose Honesty had as untainted a Character, as he can pretend to, has a rich Ship cast away, or a ­Factor Abroad90 broke in his Debt,91 and his Bills come back protested,92 and he fails, is fain to abscond, and make a Composition:93 Our rich 88. rich Man . . . ​honest Man] Defoe made the same argument in his Review for 15 Septem­ ber 1711. Speaking of a prosperous tradesman, Defoe stated, “the Man is not Rich ­because he is Honest, but he is Honest ­because he is Rich.” 89. Dev­il . . . ​design in Sinning] In Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), the Devil is often surprised at the evil acts conceived and acted upon by ­human beings. 90. ­Factor abroad] “One who acts for another, an agent, or representative.” The OED classi­ fies this as “now rare.” Defoe had a f­ actor in Amer­i­ca who gave him all kinds of prob­lems as he sent a ship to deal in tobacco and lumber. See James Sutherland, “Some Early Trou­bles of Daniel Defoe,” Review of En­glish Studies 9 (1933): 277–280. 91. broke in his Debt] Defoe’s Moll Flanders finds herself in financial trou­ble when her Banker Husband discovers himself involved with a second party who becomes bankrupt. 92. Bills come back protested] Bills of exchange functioned as part of the con­temporary sys­ tem of credit, operating something like a modern check without the bank as a mediator, although sometimes they ­were drawn upon a goldsmith. A protested bill of exchange is one in which t­ here was a difficulty in payment. In many cases, the individual party guaranteed payment on the basis of his credit. Although bills ­were usually paid within twenty-­four hours, if some difficulty arose, a protest was supposed to be filed within fourteen days. The OED 9a defines a bill of exchange as follows: “A written order by the writer or ‘drawer’ to a ‘drawee’ (the person to whom it is addressed) to pay a certain sum on a given date to the ‘drawer’ or to a third person named in the bill, known as the payee.” The system might be manipulated in vari­ous ways; Defoe was found guilty of trying to take advantage of a bill from a John Hoyle who had died leaving the bill in circulation. See Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 102. For a full discussion of bills of exchange and vari­ous kinds of pro­ tested bills, see Giles Jacob, Lex Mercatoria; or, The Merchant’s Companion (London, 1718), 22–25, 97–105. 93. Composition] A settlement of debts by mutual agreement. See OED. Defoe dramatized the manner in which a tradesman is forced to acknowledge his bankruptcy or need to “break” in letters 13 and 14 of his Compleat En­glish Tradesman. This included his honest acknowl­edgment to his creditors of all of his remaining resources.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

49

honest Man flies out upon him presently, he is a Knave, a Rogue, and ­don’t pay ­People what he owes them; and we should have a Law, That he that runs into Debt farther than he is able to pay, should be hang’d; and the like. If the poor Man is laid Hold by some Creditor, and put in Prison; ay, t­ here let him lye, he deserves it; ’twill be an Example to keep o ­ thers from the like; and now when all is done, this broken Merchant may be as honest a Man as the other. You say, you are an honest Man, How do you know it? Did you ever want Bread, and had your Neighbour’s Loaf94 in your Keeping, and would starve rather than eat it? Was you ever arrested, and being not able by your self or Friends, to make Peace with your Plaintiff, and at the same Time having another Man’s Money in your Cash Chest, committed to your Keeping, suffer’d your self to be carry’d to Jayl, rather than break Bulk,95 and break in upon your Trust. God him­ self has declar’d, That the Power of Extremity is irresistible, and that so, as to our Integrity, that he has bid us not despise the Thief96 that steals in such a Case; not that the Man is less a Thief, or the Fact less dishonest: But the Text is most remark­ ably worded for Instruction, in this Point; D ­ on’t you despise the Man; But remem­ ber, if you ­were driven to the same Exigence, you would be the same Man, and do the same ­Thing, tho’ now you fancy your Princi­ple so good; therefore, what­ever his Crime may be as to God, ­don’t reproach him with it ­here; but you that think you stand, take heed, least you fall.97 I am of the Opinion, that I could state a Circumstance, in which ­t here is not one Man in the World would be honest: Necessity is above the Power of ­human Nature;98 and for Providence to suffer a Man to fall into that Necessity, is to suffer him to sin; b ­ ecause Nature is not furnish’d with Power to defend it self, nor is Grace itself able to fortify the Mind against it.

94. your Neighbour’s Loaf] Several proverbs deal with taking a “shive” from another man’s loaf with the implication that it w ­ ill not be missed. Defoe used this same image in his Review (8 February 1709), arguing that when in distress, the “honestest Man in the World w ­ ill eat his Neighbours Loaf if it be in his Cupboard, rather than perish.” See also Tilley, Dictionary, 600 [item S360] and 650 [item T34]. 95. break Bulk] As “break-­bulk,” a maritime and mercantile image involving the taking out part of a cargo for one’s own purposes. It usually applied to the captain of a ship and was equivalent to a form of embezzlement. See OED. 96. not despise the Thief] Proverbs 6:30: “Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.” 97. take heed . . . ​fall] 1 Corinthians 10:12: The full passage is: “Wherefore let him that thin­ keth he standeth take heed lest he fall.” 98. Necessity . . . ​­human Nature] For a full commentary on this concept and a lengthy dis­ cussion of necessity in texts on natu­ral law and religion, see Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man, 65–88. Writers on natu­ral law argued that a true state of necessity, starvation for exam­ ple, returned the individual to a time when all property was held in common. Hence taking food when in a state of starvation could not be theft, since the laws of property would be dissolved. Since the world is governed by Providence, the persons finding themselves in such a state cannot be sinning if they steal food. But e­ very commentator insisted on restitution when it became pos­si­ble. Defoe’s Col­o­nel Jack, at a time when he had become prosperous, makes sure to make restoration to t­ hose he had robbed.

50

Ser ious R eflections

What ­shall we say to five Men in a Boat99 at Sea, without Provision, calling a Council together, and resolving to kill one of themselves for the o ­ thers to feed on, and eat him? With what Face could the four look up, and crave a Blessing on that Meat? With what Heart give Thanks a­ fter it? And yet this has been done by honest Men; and I believe, the honestest Man in the World might be forc’d to it; yet ­here is no Manner of Pretence, but Necessity, to palliate the Crime. If it be argued ’twas the Loss of one Man to save the Four, ’tis answered, But what Authority to make him die to save their Lives? How came the Man to owe them such a Debt? ’Twas Robbery and Murder; ’twas robbing Life, which was his Property, to preserve mine; ’tis Murder, by taking away the Life of an innocent Man; and at best ’twas ­doing Evil that Good may come,100 which is expressly forbidden. But ­there is a Kind of Equity pleaded in this Cafe; generally when Men are brought to such a Pass, they cast Lots who ­shall be the Man, and the voluntary Consent of the Party makes it lawful (God himself being suppos’d to determine who s­ hall be the Man) which I deny; for it is in no Man’s Power legally to consent to such a Lot; no Man has a Right to give away his own Life;101 he may forfeit it to the Law, and loose it; but that’s a Crime against himself, as well as against the Law; and the four Men might by our Law have been try’d and hang’d for Murder. All that can be said is, That Necessity makes the highest Crimes lawful, and ­Things Evil in their own Nature are made practicable by it. From ­these Extremes of Neces­ sity, we come to lighter Degrees of it; and so let us bring our honest Man to some Exigencies.102 He would not wrong any Man of a Farthing; he could not sleep if he should be in any body’s Debt; and he cannot be an honest Man that can. That we may see now, w ­ hether this Man’s Honesty lyes any deeper than his Neighbour’s, turn the Scale of his Fortune103 a ­little: His ­Father left him a good Estate, but h ­ ere comes some Relations, and they trump up a Title to his Lands, 99. five Men in a Boat] Among thinkers on natu­ral law, this example of permissible canni­ balism was one of the test cases of necessity as an irresistible force. In Pufendorf’s Of the Law of Nature and Nations (London, 1703), 158 (bk. 2, chaps. 6, 3), the story is told of seven En­glishmen in this situation. Although Pufendorf quotes Gaspar Ziegler’s annotations of Hugo Grotius as an argument that ­these men ­were “guilty of a g­ reat Sin,” Pufendorf sides with the judge who dismissed the case. He argues, “ ’tis too harsh and rigorous a Censure to suggest that ­t hose Men conspire against the Life of another, who agree to take the Chance of ­dying [as] one of them, for preserving the Lives of all the rest.” 100. Evil that Good may come] Saint Paul denies that such a doctrine (“Let us do evil, that good may come?”) may be imputed to the followers of Christ and rejects it forcefully. See Romans 3:8–9. 101. Right to give away his . . . ​life] Defoe argues ­here for a “Right” of self-­defense. This notion, derived most famously from Thomas Hobbes, assumes the role of a positive obliga­ tion in Defoe’s poem, Jure Divino (bk. 3:10), where he argued that “Self Preservation is the ­ nder such circumstances, Defoe argues, the only Law / That does Involuntary Duty Draw.” U entire pro­cess by which a person may participate in drawing lots to decide who w ­ ill be sacri­ ficed cannot be lawful. But he offers this as a kind of paradox, since he immediate maintains that “Necessity makes the highest Crimes lawful.” 102. honest Man to . . . ​Exigencies] Defoe may have had the Book of Job as a model for testing the honesty of his “honest Man.” It is misprinted in the first edition as Exicngcies. 103. the Scale of his Fortune] In presenting this tale of a man ruined through involve­ ment with the courts, Defoe touches on a theme that became central to the concerns of

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

51

and serve Ejectments104 upon his Tenants; and so the Man gets into Trou­ble, Hurry of Business,105 and the Law: The extravagant Charges of the Law sink him of all his ready Money, and his Rents being stopp’d, the first Breach he makes upon his Honesty (that is, by his former Rules) he goes to a Friend to borrow Money, tells him this M ­ atter ­w ill be over he hopes quickly, and he s­ hall have his Rents to receive, and then he w ­ ill pay him again; and r­ eally he intends to do so: But ­here comes a Disappointment, the Tryal comes on, and he is cast,106 and his Title to the Estate proves defective; his ­Father was cheated, and he not only loses the Estate, but is call’d upon for the Arrears of the Rent he has receiv’d; and in short, the Man is undone, and has not a Penny to buy Bread, or help himself; and besides this, cannot pay the Money he borrowed. Now, turn to his Neighbour, the Merchant,107 whom he had so loudly call’d Knave, for Breaking in his Trade, he by this Time has made up with his Creditors, and got Abroad again; and he meets him in the Street in his dejected Circum­ stances, Well, says the Merchant, and Why ­don’t you pay my Cousin, your old Neighbour, the Money you borrowed of him? Truly, says he, ­because I have lost all my Estate, and c­ an’t pay, nay I have nothing to live on. Well, but, returns the Mer­ chant, Wan’t you a Knave to borrow Money, and now c­ an’t pay it? Why truly, says the Gentleman, When I borrowed it, I ­really design’d to be honest, and did not question but I should have my Estate again, and then I had been able also, and would have paid him to a Penny, but it has proved other­wise; and tho’ I would pay him, if I had it, yet I am not able. Well, but, says the Merchant again, Did you not call me Knave, tho’ I lost my Estate Abroad, by unavoidable Disasters, as you have lost yours at Home? Did you not upbraid me, ­because I could not pay? I would have paid ­every Body, if I could, as well as you. Why truly, says the Gentleman, I was a Fool, I did not consider what it was to be brought to Necessity, I ask you ­Pardon. Now, let’s carry on this Story: The Merchant compounds with his Creditors,108 and paying ­every one a just Proportion, as far as ’twill go, gets himeslf discharg’d; and being bred to Business, and industrious, falls into Trade again, and raises himself to good Circumstances; and at last, a lucky Voyage, or some Hit of Trade, sets him above the World again: The Man remembering his former Debts, and retaining his Princi­ple of Honesty, calls his old Creditors together; and tho’ he was formerly discharg’d from them all, voluntarily pays them the Remainder of f­ uture British novels from Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews to William Godwin’s Caleb Williams. 104. Ejectments] Although this is a common enough word, it was actually a technical term (“Ejectione firmae”) for an action in law by which a person was forced off his property before his lease was up. See Jacob, New Law Dictionary, Sig. Rrr2v-­Sss2v. 105. Hurry of Business] The need to act quickly with insufficient time. See OED. 106. is cast] He loses his ­legal suit. See OED. 107. his Neighbour, the Merchant] This contrast between the landed “honest Man” and the “Merchant,” while focused on necessity, suggests something of Defoe’s bias ­toward the com­ mercial part of British society, in its ability to recover more easily from financial losses than ­t hose dependent upon the revenues from landed estates. 108. compounds . . . ​Creditors] See chapter 2, note 93 in this edition.

52

Ser ious R eflections

their Debts. The Gentleman being bred to no Business, and his Fortune desperate, goes Abroad, and gets into the Army, and behaving himself well, is made an Officer;109 and still rising by his Merit, becomes a ­great Man, but in his new Con­ dition trou­bles not his Head with his former Debts110 in his native Country, but ­settles in the Court and Favour of the Prince, ­under whom he has made his For­ tunes, and ­t here sets up for the same honest Man he did before. I think I need not ask which of t­ hese two are the honest Man, any more than which was the honest Penitent, the Pharisee or the Publican.111 Honesty, like Friendship, is try’d in Affliction;112 and he that cries out loudest against ­t hose who in the Time of this Tryal are forc’d to give Ground, would per­ haps yield as far in the like Shock of Misfortune. To be honest when Peace and Plenty flows upon our Hands, is owing to the Blessing of our Parents; but to be honest, when Circumstances grow narrow, Rela­ tions turbulent and quarrelsome, when Poverty stares at us, and the World threat­ ens; this Blessing is from Heaven, and can only be supported from thence. God Almighty is very ­little beholding to them, who ­will serve him just as long as he feeds them. ’Twas a strong Argument the Devil used in that Dialogue between Sathan113 and his Maker about Job. Yes he is a mighty good Man, and a mighty just Man, and well he may, while you give him ­every ­Thing he wants: I wou’d serve you my self, and be as true to you as Job, if you wou’d be as kind and as bountiful to me, as you are to him: But now, do but lay your Fin­ger on him; do but stop your Hand a ­little, and cut him short; strip him a ­little, and make him like one of ­those poor Fellows that now bow to him, and you w ­ ill quickly see your good Man be like other Men; nay, the Passion he w ­ ill be in at his Losses, ­will make him curse you to your Face.114 ’Tis true, the Devil was mistaken in the Man, but the Argument had a

109. Army . . . ​Officer] In both Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier and his Col­o­nel Jack, the pro­ tagonists go abroad and become officers. 110. trou­bles not . . . ​w ith . . . ​Debts] Of course t­ here is no reason why the Gentleman should not return to ­England to pay his debts, but the con­temporary image of ­t hose in the military, especially during peacetime, was generally that of ­people given to plea­sure and a certain relaxation of ordinary responsibilities. Thus his choice of a military ­career seems to preclude the same kind of ethical be­hav­ior that drives the Merchant. See, for example, Steele’s essay in The Spectator, 2:96–97. 111. Pharisee or the Publican] See Luke 18:9–14. Both the Pharisee and the Publican go to the ­Temple to pray, but whereas the Pharisee considers himself superior to ­t hose about him, it is the Publican who acknowledges his sins and unworthiness and is justified before God. 112. Honesty . . . ​Affliction] This sounds proverbial, but we have not found an exact match in Tilley or in biblical concordances. Defoe was prob­ably thinking of the book of Job in which Job’s three friends lament with him over his condition but give a false interpretation of Job’s relationship to God, leading Job to remark, “I am as one mocked of his neighbour, who cal­ leth upon God, and he answereth him: the just upright man is laughed to scorn” (12:4). 113. Dev­i l . . . ​Sathan] As did Milton in Paradise Lost, Defoe, ­here and in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), combined the vari­ous forces of evil—­t he serpent in the Garden of Eden and Satan in the Book of Job and Zechariah—­into a single representative of evil. 114. Yes . . . ​Face] Defoe puts Job 1:9–11 into a colloquial and novelistic En­glish, adding details and emphasizing Satan’s sarcastic appraisal of Job’s virtues.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

53

g­ reat deal of Probability in it, and the Moral may be drawn, both from the Argu­ ment and from the Consequences. I. That ’tis an easy ­Thing to maintain the Character of Honesty and Uprightness, when a Man has no Business to be employ’d in, and no Want to press him. II. That when Exigences and Distresses pinch a Man, then is the Time to prove the Honesty of his Princi­ple. The prosperous honest Man can only by boasting tell the World his he is hon­ est, but the distress’d and ruin’d honest Man hears other ­People tell him he is honest. In this Case therefore, since Allowance must be made for ­human Infirmities, we are to distinguish between an Accident and a Practice.115 I am not pleading to encourage any Man to make no Scruple of trespassing upon his Honesty in Time of Necessity: But I cannot condemn e­ very Man for a Knave, who by unusual Pres­ sures, Straits, Difficulties, or other Temptation, has been left to slip, and do an ill Action, as we call it, which perhaps this Person would never have stoop’d to, if the Exigence had not been too ­great for his Resolution. The Scripture says of David, He was a Man ­after God’s own Heart;116 and yet we have several Th ­ ings recorded of him, which, according the modern Way of censuring ­People in this Age,117 would have given him the Character of a very ill Man:118 But I conceive, the Testi­ mony of David’s Uprightness, given us so authentickly from the Scripture, is given from this very Rule, That the Inclination of his Heart, and the general Bent of his Practice, was to serve and obey his G ­ reat Sovereign Benefactor, however, ­human Frailty, back’d with Extremities of Circumstances, or power­f ul Temp­ tations, might betray him, to commit Actions which he would not other­w ise have done. The Falling into a Crime, w ­ ill not denominate a Man dishonest; for 115. Accident and a Practice] Defoe argues that if the general tenor of a person’s life is virtu­ ous, that is all that can be expected given “­human Infirmities.” 116. David . . . ​Heart] Acts 13:22. “And when he had removed [Saul], he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man ­a fter mine own heart, which ­shall fulfil all my ­w ill.” 117. censuring P ­ eople in this Age] Prob­ably a reference to the kind of “Blacklist” of individ­ ual sinners against public morality published by the Society for Reformation of Manners, which was founded in the ­middle of the 1690s and was most active during that and the fol­ lowing de­cade. While the Society continued some of its activities, it had become much qui­ eter by 1720. This may mean that sections of this essay w ­ ere written at an ­earlier period. Such a conclusion may also be suggested by what is, in part, a defense of Defoe’s own honesty. For while he was to write extensively on bankruptcy in his Compleat En­glish Tradesman (1725–1727), t­ here is an edge to his arguments in this work that may indicate that parts of this essay w ­ ere written during a period closer to the bankruptcies he experienced in 1692 and 1704. 118. Character of . . . ​i ll Man] David (2 Samuel 11–12:24) fell in love with the married ­woman, Bathsheba, and plotted to send her husband to his death in b ­ attle so he would be f­ree to marry her. He was upbraided for this by the prophet Nathan and confessed his moral failing. God subsequently punished David by the death of the child whom Bathsheba had conceived, but Bathsheba eventually gave birth to David’s son, Solomon, who succeeded him to the throne.

54

Ser ious R eflections

humanum est errare.119 The Character of a Man ­ought to be taken from the gen­ eral Tenour of his Behaviour, and from his allowed Practice. David took the Shew-­ Bread120 from the Priests, which it was not lawful for him to eat. David knew, that God, who commanded the Shew-­Bread should not be eaten, had however com­ manded him by the Law of Nature, not to be starv’d;121 and therefore, press’d by his Hunger, he ventures upon the Commandment. And the Scripture is very remarkable in expressing it, David when he was an hungry:122 And the Occasion for which our Blessed Lord123 himself quoted this Text, is very remarkable. viz. to prove, that Th ­ ings other­w ise unlawful, may be made lawful by Necessity, Matth. xii. 4. Another Time, David in his Passion resolves the Destruction of Nabal124 and all his ­Family, which, without Doubt, was a ­great Sin; and the Princi­ple which he went upon, to wit, Revenge for his churlish and saucy Answer to him, was still a greater Sin; but the Temptation back’d by the Strength of his Passion, had the bet­ ter of him at that Time: And this upright honest Man had murder’d Nabal and all his House, if God had not prevented him.

119. humanum est errare] To err is ­human. Tilley, Dictionary (190 [E179]) includes it as a proverb in both its Latin and its En­glish form. Defoe used this phrase as the title for an unpublished work that is preserved in manuscript at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (D314M3.H918). See Maximillian Novak, “Humanum est errare,” Clark Library Newsletter, no. 4 (Spring 1983), 1–3. See also “A Vision of the Angelick World,” note 120 in this edition, where he uses a variant of this saying. 120. David . . . ​Shew–­Bread] This shew bread was used as an offering to God (Leviticus 24:5–7), and by demanding this bread from the priest Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:3–6), David violates the laws of God. But the example was often used by writers on the subject of necessity to demonstrate that necessity canceled both ­human and divine laws. David was fleeing from the power of Saul at this time. 121. Law of Nature . . . ​starv’d] Defoe would usually speak of God working through second ­causes. David’s hunger, a part of God’s nature that demands self-­preservation, overrules the precepts of the priests. 122. when he was an hungry] The King James Bible has “when he was an hungred.” See Mat­ thew 12:3. Defoe may have looked up the reference while relying upon his memory for the text. 123. our Blessed Lord] Jesus leads his disciples through a field of corn on the Sabbath and permits them to “pluck the ears of corn,” l­abor forbidden on the Sabbath. When the Phari­ sees accused him of breaking divine law, Jesus states, “Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungered, and they ­were with him; How he entered into the ­house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, but only for the priests” (Matthew 12:3–4). The gloss in the Geneva Bible (1576) states, “Necessitie maketh that lawful, which is prohibited for a certaine re­spect, in ­t hings appertaining to ceremonies.” 124. Destruction of Nabal] See 1 Samuel 25:1–38. David and his men have been acting as a kind of guard for Nabal and his shepherds, but when David sends his men to collect some provisions, Nabal refuses to provide any help and insults them. Only the quick action of Nabal’s wife, Abigail, prevents David from slaughtering Nabal and every­one ­under his roof. Defoe interprets David’s action as a “Temptation” created by the “Strength of his Passion,” placing the burden of guilt on David rather than on Nabal’s refusal to relieve him and his men. Matthew Poole, whose Annotations on the Bible, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1700), 1:sig. Bbb4, was sometimes quoted by Defoe, simply states that David’s rage at this sleight was what might be expected of a “military” man.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

55

Many Instances of like Nature the Scripture has left upon Rec­ord, giving Tes­ timony to the Character of good Men, from the general Practice and Bent of their Hearts, without leaving any Reproach upon them for par­tic­u­lar Failings, tho’ ­t hose Sins have been extraordinary provoking, and in their Circumstances scan­ dalous enough. If any Man would be so weak as from hence to draw Encouragement to allow himself in easy Trespasses upon his Honesty, on the Pretence of Necessities, let him go on with me to the further End of this Observation, and find room for it if he can. If ever the honest Man I speak of, by whatsoever Exigence or Weakness, thus slips from the Princi­ple of his Integrity, he never fails to express his own Dislike of it; he acknowledges up-­a ll Occasions, both to God and to Man, his having been overcome, and been prevail’d upon to do, what he does not approve of; he is too much asham’d of his own Infirmity, to pretend to vindicate the Action, and he certainly is restor’d to the first Regulation of his Princi­ples, as soon as the Temp­ tation is over. No Man is fonder to accuse him than he is to accuse himself, and he has always upon him the sincere Marks of a Penitent.125 ’Tis plain from hence, that the Princi­ple of the Man’s Integrity is not destroy’d, however, he may have fallen, tho’ seven times126 a Day; and I must while I live reckon him for an honest Man. Nor am I ­going about to suppose, that the Extremities and Exigencies which have press’d Men of the best Princi­ples, to do what at another time they would not do, make t­ hose Actions become less Sinful, e­ ither in their own Nature or Circum­ stances. The Guilt of a Crime with re­spect to its being a Crime, viz. an Offence against God, is not removed by the Circumstances of Necessity.127 It is without Doubt a Sin for me to steal another Man’s Food, tho’ it was to supply Starving Nature; for how do I know w ­ hether he whose Food I steal may not be in as much Danger of Starving for want of it, as I; and if not, ’tis taking to my own Use what I have no Right to, and taking it by Force or Fraud; and the Question is not as to the Right or Wrong, ­whether I have a Necessity to eat this Man’s Bread or no; but ­whether it be his or my own?128 If it be his, and not my own, I cannot do it without

125. Marks of a Penitent] For a similar argument about honesty, see Defoe, The Compleat En­glish Tradesman, 2 vols. (1725–1727; repr., New York: August Kelly, 1969), 1:79–80, 2:191–210. 126. fallen . . . ​seven times] An allusion to Proverbs 24:16: “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked ­shall fall into mischief.” 127. not removed . . . ​Necessity] In Defoe’s Col­o­nel Jack (ed. Samuel Monk [London: Oxford University Press, 1965], 63–64, 67, 84–85), the protagonist feels deeply guilty when he finds himself stealing from a poor w ­ oman and tells how he was able to make restitution when he was no longer in a state of necessity. Such insistence upon restitution was usually part of discussions of necessity in books on natu­ral law. See Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 160–162 (bk. 2, chap. 6, sec. 5–6). 128. his or my own] Pufendorf raises objections to the ­simple theory that a person in neces­ sity may claim that this condition places him or her in a state of nature before the laws of property ­were established, when all ­t hings ­were in common. See Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 162–164 (bk. 2, chap. 6, sec. 7).

56

Ser ious R eflections

a manifest Contempt of God’s Law, and breaking the Eighth Article129 of it, Thou shalt not Steal. Thus as to God, the Crime is evident, let the Necessity be what it ­w ill. But when we are considering ­human Nature subjected by the Consequences of Adam’s Transgression,130 to Frailty and Infirmity; and regarding ­things from Man to Man, the Exigencies and Extremities of streightned Circumstances seem to me to be most prevailing Arguments, why the Denomination of a Man’s gen­ eral Character ­ought not, by his fellow Mortals (subject to the same Infirmities) to be gathered from his M ­ istakes, his Errors or Failings, no not from his being guilty of any extraordinary Sin, but from the Manner and Method of his Behaviour. Does he go on to commit Frauds, and make a Practice of his Sin? Is it a Distress? Is it a Storm of Affliction, and Poverty has driven him upon the Lee Shore of Temptation?131 Or is the Sin the Port he steer’d for? A Ship may by Stress of Weather be driven upon Sands and dangerous Places, and the Skill of the Pi­lot not be blameable; but he that runs against the Wind,132 and without any Necessity, upon a Shelve133 which he sees before him, must do it on purpose to destroy the Vessel, and ruine the Voyage. In short, if no Man can be call’d honest, but he who is never overcome, to fall into any Breach of this Rectitude of Life; none but he who is sufficiently fortified against all Possibility of being tempted by prospects, or driven by Distress, to make any Trespass upon his Integrity; Woe be unto me that Write, and to most that Read, where s­ hall we find the honest Man? The Scripture is particularly expressive of this in the The Righ­teous Man falleth seven times a Day, and riseth again.134 Why, this is very strange, if a Man come, to commit seven Crimes in a Day, that is, many, for the Meaning is Indefinite, can this be an honest Man?: What says the World of him? Hang him, he is a Knave, a Rascal, a Dishonest Fellow; this is the Judgment of Men: But in the Judgment of Scripture this may be a Righ­teous Man.

129. Eighth Article] The eighth commandment. 130. Adam’s Transgression] The result of Adam’s taking the apple from Eve and tasting it was seen as a fall from perfection to a permanent tendency to what was called “original sin.” The source for this theory is usually traced to Saint Paul (Romans 5:12): “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned.” 131. Lee Shore of Temptation] According to the OED, the lee shore may be that part of the shore upon which the wind blows, thus posing the danger of a shipwreck; or it may be the part of the shore that is sheltered. Since temptation involved danger, Crusoe, the mari­ner, seems to mean the former. This image suggests that the businessman, beset by trou­bles, is suddenly tempted into ­doing something dangerously unethical as the way out of his difficul­ ties. Defoe is distinguishing between good and evil (or careless) intentions. 132. runs against the Wind] The OED quotes Defoe’s Col­o­nel Jack on the usual phrase—­a ship ­running before the wind. To run against the wind would be to move perversely in a certain direction. 133. Shelve] A shelf or reef. See OED. 134. Scripture . . . ​again] Proverbs 24:16. Defoe is repeating himself. He had used the same quotation before. See chapter 2, note 126 in this edition.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

57

The main Design of this Head, and the proper Application of it is, to tell us we ­ought not be too hasty to Brand our B ­ rother for his Sins, his Infirmities or Mis­ fortunes, since he that is Dishonest in your Eyes, by a casual or other Crime which he Commits, may rise from that Disaster by a sincere Repentance, and be to mor­ row an honester Man than thy self in the Eyes of his Maker. But ­here I am assaulted with another censorious honest Man; ­here you talk of falling to Day, and rising again to Morrow; Sinning and Repenting; why h ­ ere is a Fellow has cheated me of 500 l.135 and he comes canting to me of his Repentance, tells me he hopes God has forgiven him; and it would be hard for me to call to Remembrance what God has wip’d out; he is heartily sorry for the Fault, and the like, and begs my P ­ ardon, that is, begs my Estate indeed: For what’s all this to my Money, let him pay me and I’ll forgive him too; God may forgive him the Sin, but that’s nothing to my Debt. Why truly, in Answer to this in Part, you are in the Right if the Man be able to make you any Satisfaction, and does not do it; for I question not, but ­every Tres­ pass of this Nature requires Restitution, as well as Repentance; Restitution as far as the pos­si­ble Power of the Party extends; and if the last be not found, the first is not likely to be sincere. But if the Man, ­either is not able to make you any Restitution at all, or does make you Restitution to the utmost of his Capacity, and then comes and says as before; then the Poor Man is in the Right, and you in the Wrong; for I make no Question likewise to affirm, and could prove it by unanswerable Arguments, He may be an Honest Man who cannot pay his Debts, but he cannot be an Honest Man who can, and does not.136 Innumerable Accidents reduce Men from Plentiful Fortunes to mean and low Circumstances; some procur’d by their own Vices and Intemperance, some by Infirmities, Ignorance, and meer want of Judgment to manage their Affairs: Some by the Frauds and Cheats of other Men, some by meer Casualty and unavoidable Accidents, wherein the Sovereignty of Providence shews us, that the Race is not to the Swift, or the B ­ attle to the Strong, or Riches to Men of Understanding.137 First, Some by Vices and Intemperance are reduc’d to Poverty and Distress: Our Honest Man cannot fall in the Misfortunes of this Class, ­because ­there the very Poverty is a Sin, being produc’d from a sinful Cause. As its far from being allow’d, as an Excuse to a Murtherer, to say he was in Drink, b ­ ecause it is excusing a Crime

135. 500 l.] According to one calculation attempting to convert such a sum to its modern equivalent, this would be equal to £58,053.75. See www​.­nationalarchives​.­gov​.­u k​/­currency​ -­conv. 136. He . . . ​not] Defoe offers this proposition as a kind of axiom. Although italics sometimes indicate a quotation, ­here they seem to be used for emphasis. 137. Race is not to the Swift . . . ​Understanding] Ecclesiastes 9:11: “I returned, and saw ­under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the ­battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Defoe is ­either misremembering or deliberately shortening this biblical passage for emphasis.

58

Ser ious R eflections

with a Crime:138 So for a Man to ruin his Fortunes, as the Prodigal in the Gospel,139 with riotous Living, all the Effects are wicked and dishonest, as they partake of the Dishonesty of the Cause from whence they proceed: For he cannot be an hon­ est Man, who wants wherewith to pay his Debts, a­ fter having spent what should have discharg’d them, in Luxury and Debauches.140 Secondly, Some by Ignorance and want of Judgment to manage their Affairs, are brought to Poverty and Distress; ­t hese may be honest Men, notwithstanding their Weakness, for I ­won’t undertake that none of our honest Men ­shall be Fools: ’Tis true the good Man, is the wise Man, as to the main Part of Wisdom, which is included in his Piety, but many a Religious Man who would not do any Wrong wilfully to his Neighbour, is oblig’d at last to injure both his own ­Family, and other ­People’s, for want of Discretion to guide him in his Affairs, and to judge for himself: and therefore I dare not Tax all our Fools with being Knaves,141 nor w ­ ill I say but such a Man may be Honest. Some w ­ ill say, but such a Man should not venture into Business, which he is not able to manage, and therefore ’twas the Vice of his Understanding, and like the Case in the first Article, is excusing a Fault with a Fault.142 I cannot allow this, for if I am askt why a Fool ventures into Trade, I answer, ­because he is a Fool, not b ­ ecause he is a Knave. If Fools could their own Ignorance discern, ­They’d be no longer Fools, b­ ecause ­they’d learn.143

138. Excuse to a Murtherer . . . ​Crime] By this judgment, Defoe is simply echoing the laws of ­England. In his Commentaries on the Laws of ­England, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (Oxford, 1768–1769), 4:26 (bk. 4, chap. 2), Sir William Blackstone cites Sir Edward Coke on the idea that murder committed u ­ nder the influence of alcohol “does aggravate” the crime. He adds that this excuse “­w ill not suffer any man thus to privilege one crime by another.” In his The Great Law of Subordination Consider’d (London, 1724), Defoe has his narrator argue that drunkenness, so far from mitigating the guilt of a crime, is an aggravation of it. 139. Prodigal in the Gospel] The parable of the Prodigal Son is to be found in Luke 15:11–32. 140. Luxury and Debauches] In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the ­brother complains to his ­father that whereas he has done every­t hing in a right fashion without any cele­bration being made for him, his ­brother has wasted his fortune and yet is welcomed home with cele­bration and feasting. The f­ather simply rejoices that his son has returned. ­Here Defoe appears to agree somewhat with the right-­acting ­brother to the extent that he thinks prodigals should keep out of business. 141. Fools . . . ​K naves] The division of the world into fools and knaves is a distant allusion to one of Defoe’s favorite poets, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. See “A Satyre against Reason and Mankind,” in Works, 57–63. It was also a commonplace during the Restoration and early eigh­teenth ­century. Defoe had used this division so often in his writings that he may have felt it was self-­referential. 142. the first Article . . . ​fault] See chapter 2, note 138 in this edition, on why drunkenness cannot be used as an excuse for murder. 143. If Fools . . . ​learn] Defoe is quoting himself ­here from his Reformation of Manners (1702), in Poems on Affairs of State, ed. Frank Ellis et al., 7 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963–1975), 6:442 (ll. 1098–1099). The last three words w ­ ere omitted when it was reprinted in [Works], 1:101.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

59

If you would convince a Man that he wants Discretion,144 you must give him Discretion to be convinc’d: ‘Till then he cannot know he has it not, b ­ ecause he has it not. No Man is answerable, e­ ither to God or Man, for that which he never was Master of: The most proper Expression that ever I met with in this Nature, was of a certain Ideot or Natu­ral, which a Gentleman of my Acquaintance kept in his ­Family, who being on his Death-­Bed, was observ’d to be very pensive, and much conern’d about d ­ ying; the Gentleman sent a Minister to him, who as well as he could to his Understanding, discoursed with him about Death and Judgment to come; the poor Creature who was hardly ever able to give a rational Answer to a Question before, a­ fter hearing him very attentively, broke out into Tears with this Expression, That he hoped God would not require any ­Thing of him, that he had not given him Judgment to understand. What­ever it may be as to the Soul, I am posi­ tive in the Case of ­human Affairs, no Man is answerable to Man for any more than his Discretion; Events are not in our Power, a Man may be nicely Honest in Life, tho’ he may be weak enough in Judgment. Thirdly, Some are ruin’d, and are yet merely passive, being e­ ither defrauded and cheated by Knaves, or plundered and rifled by Thieves, or by immediate Casualties, as Fire, Enemies, Storms, Floods, and the like; t­ hese are ­Things which neither touch the Man’s Honesty, nor his Discretion. Thus Job was by God’s Per­ mission and the Agency of the Devil, reduc’d in a Moment from a plentiful Estate to be as naked as he came out of his ­Mother’s Womb:145 I would fain ask ­those who say, no Man can be an honest Man if he does not pay his Debts, who paid Job’s Debts if he own’d any,146 and where was his Dishonesty, if he did not pay them? I still readily grant that he cannot be an honest Man who does not pay his Debts if he can; but if other­w ise, then the Words ­ought to be altered, and they should say, he cannot be an honest Man who borrows any Money, or buys any ­Thing upon his Credit, and this cannot be true. But since I have led myself into the Argument, I cannot but make a small Digression concerning ­People who fail in Trade: I conceive the greatest Error of such is their Terror about Breaking,147 by which they are tempted while their Credit is good, tho’ their Bottom be naught, to push farther in; expecting, or at

144. no Man . . . ​Discretion] In the same section in which Blackstone dismisses voluntary drunkenness as an excuse for murder, some allowance is made for vari­ous forms of ­mental incapacity. 145. Job . . . ​­Mother’s Womb] Defoe rehearses the beginning of the Book of Job, in which Satan argues that Job would not be such a “perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil” (Job 1:8) ­were he to experience real suffering. ­A fter ruin fell upon him and his f­amily, Job cried out, “Naked came I out of my m ­ other’s womb, and naked s­ hall I return thither” (Job 1:21). 146. own’d any] In the sense of acknowledged, which the OED classifies as obsolete or as owed. 147. Breaking] Declaring bankruptcy and coming to terms with ­those to whom money is owed. The opening sections of the first volume of The Compleat En­glish Tradesman (1725– 1727) are concerned with “Breaking.”

60

Ser ious R eflections

least hoping, by the Profits of some happy Voyage, or some lucky Hit,148 as they call it, to retrieve their Circumstances, and stand their Ground. I must confess, I cannot vindicate the Honesty of this; for he, who knowing his Circumstances to be once naught, and his Bottom149 worn out; ­ought not in Jus­ tice to enter into any Man’s Debt; for Then he Trades on their Risque, not on his own, and yet Trades for his own Profits, not theirs; this is not fair, b ­ ecause he deceives the Creditor, who ventures his Estate on that Bottom which he supposes to be good, and the other knows is not. Nay, tho’ he r­ eally pays this Creditor, he is not honest; for in Conscience, his former Creditors had a Right to all his Effects, in Proportion to their Debts; and if he r­ eally pays one all, and the rest but a Share, ’tis a Wrong to the ­whole.150 I would therefore advise all Tradesmen, who find their Circumstances declin­ ing, as soon, at least, as they first discern themselves to be uncapable of paying their Debts, if not, while yet they can pay e­ very one all, make a full Stop, and call all P ­ eople together; if ­t here is enough to pay them all, let them have it, if not, let them have their just Shares of it; by this Means you ­will certainly have God’s Blessing, and the Character of an honest Man, left to begin again with; and Credi­ tors are often prevail’d with, in Consideration of such a generous Honesty, to throw back something to put such a Man in a Posture to live again; or by further voluntary Credit151 and Friendship, to uphold him. This is much better also with re­spect to Interest, as well as Honesty, than to run on to all Extremities, till the Burthen falls too heavy, ­either for Debtor or Creditor to bear: This would prevent many of the Extremties, which, I say, puts the Honesty of a Man to so extraordi­ nary a Tryal. An honest Princi­ple would certainly dictate to the Man, if it ­were consulted with, that when he knows he is not able to pay, it is not lawful for him to borrow. Taking Credit is a Promise of Payment; a Promise of Payment is tacitly under­ stood, and he cannot be honest who promises what he knows he cannot perform, as I s­ hall note more at large on another Head. But if the Man be paid, yet it was not an honest Act; ’twas deceiving the Man, and making him run a greater Risque than he knew of, and such a Risque as he would not have run, had he known your Circumstances and Bottom, as you do; so that h ­ ere is Deceit upon Deceit. This I know is a disputed Point, and a ­Thing which a ­great many practise, who pass for very honest Men in the World; but I like it not the better for that; I am very positive, that he who takes my Goods on the Foot of his Credit, when if he 148. lucky Hit] A stroke of good luck. The “as they call it ” that follows suggests Defoe’s belief that nothing in the universe is governed by chance or luck, and the ironic remark of Thomas Burnet, quoted in the OED (“lucky hit”) on the unlikely argument about the world being created by chance, reflects Defoe’s view. 149. Bottom] The foundation of a business; its essential soundness. 150. Wrong to the w ­ hole] In his Essay upon Proj­ects, 75–89, Defoe gave a balanced view of bankruptcy from the standpoint of both the debtor and the creditor. 151. Credit] Elsewhere, particularly in his Review, Defoe took a somewhat more lenient view of credit, arguing that it enabled the businessman to extend the limits of his trading. See especially Review, 6:129–132.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

61

should dye the next Day, he knows his Estate ­w ill not pay me five Shillings in the Pound;152 tho’ he should not dye, but does pay me at the Time appointed, is as much guilty of a Fraud,153 as if he actually robb’d my House. Credit is a receiv’d Opinion of a Man’s Honesty and Ability, his Willingness to pay, and his having wherewith to pay; and he who wants ­either of ­t hese, his Credit is lame. Men ­won’t sell their Goods to a litigious quarrelsome Man, tho’ he be never so rich, nor to a needy Man, tho’ he be never so honest. Now, if all the World believe I am honest and able, and I know I am not the last, I cannot be the first, if I take their Goods upon Credit; ’tis vain to pretend, Men Trade upon the general Risque of Men’s Appearance, and the Credit of common Fame, and all Men have an equal ­Hazard. I say no: Men may venture their Estates in the Hands of a flourishing Bankrupt, and he by Virtue of his yet unshaken Credit is trusted; but he cannot be honest that takes this Credit, b ­ ecause he knows his Circumstances are quite other­wise than they are suppos’d to be, that the Man is deceiv’d, and he is privy to the Deceit. This Digression is not so remote from the purpose, as I expected, when I began it; the Honesty that I am speaking of, chiefly re­spects ­Matters of Commerce, of which Credit and Payment of Debt are the most considerable Branches. ­There is another Article in Trade, which many very honest Men have made familiar to themselves, which yet I think, is in no Case to be defended; and that is relating to Counterfeit Money. Custom, before the old Money was suppress’d154 in ­England, had prevail’d so far upon Honesty, that I have seen some Men put all their Brass Money155 among their runing Cash, to be told over in ­every Sum they paid, in Order to have somebody or other take it; I have heard many P ­ eople own they made no Scruple of it, but I could never find them give one good Reason to justify the Honesty of it. First, They say it comes for Money, and it ­ought to go so: To which I Answer, that is just as good a Reason as this: A has cheated me, and therefore I may Cheat B. If I have received a Sum of Money for good, and knowing not that any of it is other­w ise, offer it in Payment to another: This is Just and Honest; but, if on this other Man’s telling it over, he returns me a Piece of Brass or Counterfeit Money which I change again, and afterwards knowing this to be such, offer the same Piece to another: I know no worse Fraud in its Degree in the World, and I doubt not to prove it so beyond Contradiction. 152. guilty of a Fraud] In his Compleat En­glish Tradesman (2:part 2:108–111), Defoe acknowl­ edged that, from a moral standpoint, “It must be confess’d, Trade is almost universally founded upon Crime,” since most commerce is concerned with luxury goods, or what he calls “the exorbitancies of Life.” 153. five Shillings in the Pound] Th ­ ere ­were twenty shillings to each pound. This means that the bankrupt pays only a quarter of what he originally borrowed. 154. old Money . . . ​suppress’d] The recoinage occurred during the reign of William III, in 1696. The bill for retiring the old coins passed at the beginning of the year, but debate over details continued ­until October. See Patrick Kelly, ed., John Locke on Money, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 1:32–35. 155. Brass Money] Coins made to look like silver coins by plating or other means.

62

Ser ious R eflections

If the first Person did not take this Piece of Money, it was b ­ ecause being both watchful and skilful, he could discover it; and if I offer it to another ’tis with an Expectation, that he being e­ ither less watchful or less skillful, s­ hall overlook it, and so I s­ hall make an Advantage of my Neighbour’s Ignorance, or want of Care. I’ll put some parallel Cases to this, to illustrate it: Suppose a blind Man comes into a Shop to buy Goods of me, and giving me a Guinea156 to change, I s­ hall give him the Remainder in bad Money; would not e­ very Body say ’twas a barbarous ­Thing? Why the other is all one, for if the Person be ignorant of Money, he is blind as to the Point in Hand; and nothing can be more unfair than to take the Advantage. Suppose again a young Boy, or a Servant newly entred in Trade, is sent to buy Goods, and by his Master’s Order, he asks for such a Commodity; and you pre­ suming upon the Rawness of the Messenger, deliver a Sort of meaner Quality, and take the full Price of him; would you grudge to be used scurvily157 for such a Trick? Why, no less or better is Offering Brass for Silver, presuming only the want of Care or Skill in the Receiver, s­ hall pass it unobserv’d. Ay, but says a learned Tradesman who would be thought honester than ordi­ nary, I always change it again, if it be brought back: Yes Sir, so does a Pick-­Pocket give you your Handkerchief again when you have fasten’d on him, and threaten’d him with the Mob.158 The ­Matter in short is this; if the Man whom you have cheated, can cheat no Body ­else, then no Thanks to you; when he comes to you, and charges the Fraud upon you, you’ll make Satisfaction, ­because if you ­won’t, the Law w ­ ill compel you to it. But if the Fraud may be carried on, as you are manifestly willing, consenting, and instrumental in it that it should; behold the Consequence, your first sin against Honesty is multiplied in all the Hands thro’ whom this Piece of bad Money knowingly so passes, till at last it happens to go single to a poor Man that ­can’t put it off, and the Wrong and Injury may issue where it was wanted to buy Bread for a starving F ­ amily. All the Excuses I could ever meet with could never satisfy me, that it can con­ sist with Honesty, to put Brass or Copper away for Gold or Silver, any more than it would, to give a blind Messenger Sand instead of Sugar, or brown Bread159 instead of white. 156. Guinea] A ­ fter December 1717, the guinea was stabilized at twenty-­one shillings, but at the time of the recoinage (1696–1699), the value of the gold guinea was put at twenty-­two shillings and then reduced to twenty-­one shillings six pence. See Kelly, ed., Locke on Money, 1:38–39. 157. scurvily] Contemptibly. See OED. Defoe asks his tradesman how he would feel if such a trick ­were played upon him. 158. Pick-­Pocket . . . ​Mob] In Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the narrator speaks of the “Rage of the Street,” which despite its horrors is usually preferable to the pickpocket to being sent to New­ gate prison. See Moll Flanders, ed. G. A. Starr (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 212. 159. brown Bread] In our age, brown bread might mean a more expensive and healthy food, but in Defoe’s time it usually meant bread consumed by the poorer part of the population, containing impurities or grains such as rye in addition to the wheat flour.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

63

Of HONESTY in Promises. A Man is known by his Word, and an Ox by his Horns,160 says an old En­glish Prov­ erb. If I understand the true Meaning of it, ’tis, that the Honesty of a Man is known by his punctual observing his Word, as naturally and plainly as any Crea­ ture is known by the most obvious Distinction. ’Tis the peculiar Quality of an honest Man, the distinguishing Mark to know him by. His Word or Promise is as sacred to him in all his Affairs in the World, as the strongest Obligation which can be laid on him; nor is it a Th ­ ing form’d by him from settled Resolutions, or Mea­sures of Policy taken up of course to raise or fix his Reputation; but ’tis the native Produce of his honest Princi­ple: ’Tis the Consequence, and his Honesty is the Cause; he ceases to be Honest, when he ceases to preserve this solemn Regard to his Word. If he gives his Word, any Man may depend upon it, for the Safety of his Life or Estate; he scorns to prevaricate or shift himself off from the punctual Observance of it, tho’ it be to his Loss. I ­can’t abate an honest Man an Inch in the punctual Observance of a Promise made upon Parole,161 if it be in the Man’s pos­si­ble Power to perform it, ­because ­t here seems to be something too base to consist with Honesty in the very Nature of a Man that can go back from his Word. The Reverence our Ancestors paid to their Promises, or Word past, I am of the Opinion, gave that remarkable Brand of Infamy and Scandal upon the Affront of giving the Lie; a Gentleman, which is, in short, the modern Term for an honest Man, or, a Man of Honour, cannot receive a greater Reproach, than to be told, he lies; that is, that he forfeits his Word, breaks his Veracity; for the Minute he does that, he ungentlemans himself,162 disgraces the Blood of his ­Family, degenerates from his Ancestors, and commences Rake, Scoundrel, and any ­Thing. Some ­People, who have run their Points of Honour to the Extreams, are of the Opinion, that this Affront of the Lie ­ought not to be given to any ­Thing they call a Gentleman, or that calls himself so, till he has so far exposed himself to all other Degrees of Infamy, as to bear Kicking, or Caning, and the like; that a­ fter this, when he breaks his Word, he may be told, he lies, or any Th ­ ing e­ lse; but till then, the very Th ­ ing it self is so intolerable an Abuse, that the Person who ventures to trespass so foully on the Rules of good Manners, deserves not the Honour of fair Play for his Life: But as some Beasts of Prey are refused the fair Law of the Field,163 160. A Man . . . ​Horns] Tilley, Dictionary (518 [O107]) has “An ox is taken by the horns and a man by the tongue.” Although Defoe speaks of this as “an old En­glish Proverb,” Tilley rec­ ords variants of this proverb from French and Italian. 161. Parole] The OED has “word of honor.” 162. ungentlemans himself] Defoe concluded his True-­Born En­glishman with the ringing statement: “’Tis Personal Virtue only makes us ­Great.” It was an egalitarian theme that Defoe took from his reading in Richard Brathwaite’s En­glish Gentleman (1630). 163. fair Law of the Field] Whereas the killing of the stag was surrounded with elaborate ceremonies, the killing of “vermin,” such as martins, was without any par­tic­u ­lar rules. See Richard Blome, The Gentleman’s Recreation (London, 1686), pt. 2:84–85, 103. Defoe had his

64

Ser ious R eflections

and are knock’d down in e­ very Hedge; so ­t hese, like Bullies and meer Rakes, may be pistol’d in the Dark, and stabb’d at the Corner of an Alley; that is to say, any Mea­sure may be used with them, to dismiss them from the Society of Mankind, as Fellows not sufferable in the Common-­wealth of good Manners. I do not argue for ­t hese Extremes; but I instance in this, to testify the Venera­ tion all good Men have for the Word or Promise of an honest Man, and the Esteem which the Integrity of the Mind express’d by a zealous Regard to the Words of the Mouth, have obtain’d in the World. The French, when they express themselves in Vindication of their Honour, always bring it about by this, Je suis homme de Parole,164 I am an honest Man, or a Man of my Word; that is, I am a Man that may be trusted upon my Parole;165 for I never break my Word. Such was the Value put upon the Promises of Men in former Time, that a Promise of Payment of Money was recoverable in our Courts by Law, till the Inconveniencies prov’d so many, that an Act was made on Purpose to restrain it to a Sum ­under ten Pounds:166 But to this Day, if a Man promises Marriage167 to a ­Woman, especially if she has granted him any Favours upon that Condition, the Laws of the Land, which therein have Regard to the Laws of Honour, w ­ ill oblige him to make it good, and allow it to be a sufficient Plea to forbid his marrying with any body e­ lse. ­There are innumerable Instances of the Veneration all Nations pay to the expressive Article of ­ human Veracity. In the War, you meet with frequent 168 Instances of Prisoners dismiss’d by a generous ­Enemy, upon their Parole, e­ ither to pay their Ransom, or to procure such or such Conditions, or come back and surrender themselves Prisoners; and he that should forfeit this Parole, wou’d be posted169 in the ­Enemy’s Army, and hiss’d out of his own. High Church speaker of his The Shortest Way with the Dissenters state, “Some Beasts are for Sport, and the Huntsmen give them advantages of Ground; but some are knockt on Head by all pos­si­ble ways of Vio­lence and Surprize.” In The Shakespeare Head Edition of the Writings of Daniel Defoe, 14 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1927), 14:126. 164. Je suis homme de Parole] Defoe’s French is not always e­ ither reliable or grammatical, but his rendering ­here is correct. 165. trusted upon my Parole] The OED comments on the notion of prisoners of war being allowed freedom of movement within an ­enemy country once they have given their word. 166. Act . . . ​ten Pounds] Prob­ably a reference to 29 Car. II, chap. 3: “No Contract for the Sale of Goods, for 10 l. or upwards, ­shall be good, ­unless the Buyer receive . . . ​some Note thereof be made in Witing.” Jacob, New Law Dictionary, sig. Yy. 167. Man promises Marriage] For the accuracy of Defoe’s argument on this subject, see Jacob, New Law Dictionary, sig. 6F–6Fv. In vari­ous places, Defoe treats the promise of mar­ riage as equivalent to marriage itself. He argues that once the promise is made “the man and ­Woman ­were actually Marryed; and he can never go off from it, nor Marry any other ­Woman; but he must break all the Constituions of the Marriage Contract, the Sanction of th Law excepted.” See the Review, supplement, November 1704, 1:20. 168. Prisoners] In Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier and Col­o­nel Jack, his protagonists are taken prisoner and given considerable freedom on their words of honor. In the case of Col­o­nel Jack, who is struggling to act like a gentleman, this be­hav­ior is a sign of his status. 169. posted] To have one’s name listed and thereby exposed “to ignominy, obloquy, or ridi­ cule by this means.” See OED.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

65

I know nothing a wise Man would not chuse to do, rather than by breaking his Word, give the World such an undeniable Testimony of his being a Knave: This is that good Name which Solomon says is better than Life, and is a precious Ointment,170 and which, when a Man has once lost, he has nothing left worth keeping. A Man may even hang himself out of the Way;171 for no Man that looks like a Man, ­w ill keep his Com­pany. When a Man has once come to breaking his Word, no Man, that has any Value for his Reputation, cares to be seen in his Com­pany; but all good Men shun him, as if he w ­ ere infected with the Plague. ­There are Men indeed, who ­w ill be exceeding punctual to their Words and Promises, who yet cannot be call’d honest Men, b ­ ecause they have other Vices and Excursions that render them other Ways wicked: Th ­ ese give their Testimony to the Beauty of Honesty, by chusing it as the best Mask 172 to put a Gloss upon173 their Actions, and conceal the other Deformities of their Lives; and so Honesty, like Religion, is made Use of to disguise the Hypocrite, and raise a Reputation upon the Shadow, by the Advantage it takes of the real Esteem the World has of the Substance: I say of this Counterfeit-­Honesty, as is said of Religion in like Cases. If Honesty was not the most excellent Attainment, ‘twould not be made Use of as the most specious Pretence; nor is t­ here a more exquisite Way for a Man to play the Hypocrite, than to pretend an extraordinary Zeal to the Per­for­mance of his Promises; ­because, when the Opinion of any Man’s Honesty that Way, has 170. good Name . . . ​Ointment] Ecclesiastes 7:1: “A good name is better than precious oint­ ment.” Although the remainder of this statement is in italics, which is often indicative of a quotation, it is rather an extrapolation from the first part. See also Proverbs 22:1: “A good name is rather to be chosen than ­great riches.” 171. hang . . . ​out of the Way] hang at once or right away. The OED places “hanged out of the way” with “put out of the way” as meaning “killed.” The difficulty with this definition is that the one is a euphemism for being killed, while the other would seem to signify the redundant “hanged dead.” Although such an idiom is pos­si­ble, some of the uses of this phrase seem to suggest being hanged right away, at once, or perhaps in an extraordinary manner without trial. As used by William Browne of Tavistock in a poem, “Lidford Journey” (sometimes Lydford), beginning “I ofte have heard of Lidford Lawe,” its meaning is clear. Browne describes the hor­ rible conditions of the prison and states that the prisoners would rather be hanged right away, before having a trial, than live u ­ nder such misery. The ele­ment of time is clear in Browne’s poem. He also wrote of “How in the Morne they hang & drawe, / And sit in iudgment ­after.” Some of the opening lines became proverbial, but w ­ hether it had this larger resonance for Defoe is difficult to say. Defoe used this phrase in the first number of his Commentator, 1 Janu­ ary 1720, stating that being advised that t­ here ­were simply too many newspapers and that if he could not think of undertaking some other profession, he might as well “take to the Road, and venture fairly being hanged out of the way.” See William Browne of Tavistock, The Whole Works, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, 2 vols. (London: Roxburghe Library, 1868–1869), 2:352–355. For another instance in which “hanged out of the way” is clearly “at once,” see John Wesley, “Of Hell,” Sermons on Several Occasions, 2 vols. (New York: B. Waugh and T. Mason, 1836), 2:152 (Sermon 78). 172. Mask] Mask was a favorite word for the period and for Defoe to indicate deception or living life in a masquerade. Thus Maskwell, in Congreve’s The Double Dealer (Complete Plays, ed. Herbert Davis [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967], 150 [II, i, ll.450–464]) engages in a mocking soliloquy on honesty, concluding that deception is the only way for knaves to thrive in a world of fools. 173. to put a Gloss upon] Used h ­ ere in the sense of a superficial or surface shine. See OED.

66

Ser ious R eflections

spread in the Thoughts of Men, t­ here is nothing so g­ reat, but they ­will trust him with, nor so hard, but they ­w ill do it for him. All Men reverence an honest Man; the Knaves stand in Awe of him, Fools adore him, and wise Men love him; and thus is Virtue its own Reward.174 Honest Men are in more Danger from this one Hypocrite, than from 20 open Knaves; for t­ hese have a Mark plac’d upon them by their general Character, as a Buoy upon a Rock to warn Strangers from venturing upon it: But the Hypocrites are like a Pit cover’d over, like Shoals ­under ­Water, and Danger conceal’d which cannot be seen. I must confess, I have found ­t hese the most dangerous, and have too deeply suffer’d by throwing my self on their Protestations of Honesty: The Esteem I always entertain’d of the most beautiful Gift God has bestow’d, or Man could receive, has made me the easier to be deceiv’d with the Resemblance of it. So much as I, or any one e­ lse, by the Vitiousness of our own Nature,175 or the prevailing Force of Accidents, Snares, and Temptations, have deviated from this shining Princi­ple, so far we have been foolish, as well as wicked; so much we have to repent of t­ owards our Maker, and be asham’d of ­towards our Neighbour. For my Part, I am never backward to own, let who w ­ ill be the Reader of t­ hese Sheets, that to the Dishonour of my Maker, and the just Scandal of my own Hon­ esty, I have not paid that due Regard to the Rectitude of this Princi­ple, which my own Knoweldge has own’d to be its due; let ­t hose who have been juster to them­ selves, and to the Giver of it, rejoice in the Happiness, rather than triumph over the Infirmity. But let them be sure, they have been juster on their own Parts; let them be posi­ tive, that their own Integrity is untainted, and would abide all the Tryals and Racks, that a ruin’d Fortune,176 strong Temptations, and deep Distresses, could bring it into: Let them not boast till ­these Dangers are past, and they put their Armour off; and if they can do it then, I w ­ ill freely acknowledge, they have less need of Repen­ tance than I. Not that I pretend, as I noted before, and ­shall often repeat, that ­these Circum­ stances render my Failing, or any Man’s ­else, the less a Sin, but they make the Rea­ son, Why we that have fallen, should rather be pity’d than reproach’d by t­ hose who think they stand; ­because, when the same Assaults are made upon the Chastity of their Honour, it may be e­ very jot as likely to be prostituted as their Neighbours. And such is the Folly of Scandal, as well as the Blindness of Malice, that it sel­ dom fixes Reproach upon the right Foot: I have seen so much of it, with re­spect to 174. Virtue . . . ​own Reward] This appears to have been a common enough En­glish proverb (Tilley, Dictionary, 699 [V81]), but its origins are in the writings of the Stoics. In his essay “On the Happy Life,” Seneca remarks, “Do you ask what it is that I seek in virtue? Only herself. For she offers nothing better—­she herself is her own reward.” See Moral Essays, trans. John Basore, Loeb Library, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 2:123 (9:4). 175. Vitiousness . . . ​Nature] Original sin. See chapter 2, note 75 in this edition. 176. ruin’d Fortune] Although the connection between Crusoe and Defoe has been announced somewhat obliquely at the beginning of this volume, ­t hese arguments about the temptations of the desperate tradesman applies almost exclusively to Defoe.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

67

other P ­ eople, as well as my self, that it gives me a very scoundrel Opinion177 of all ­t hose ­People whom I find foward to load their Neighbours with Reproach. Noth­ ing is more frequent in this Case, than to run away with a Piece of a Man’s Char­ acter, in which they err, and do him Wrong; and leave that Part of him untouch’d which is ­really black, and would bear it; this makes me sometimes, when with the humblest and most abasing Thoughts of my self, I look up, and betwixt God and my own Soul, cry out, What a Wretch am I! 178 at the same time smile at the hair-­ brain’d E ­ nemy, whose Tongue tipt with Malice, runs ahead of his Understanding, and missing the Crimes for which I deserve more than he can inflict, reproaches me with ­t hose I never committed. Methinks I am ready to call him back, like the Huntsman, when the Dogs run upon the Foil,179 and say, hold, hold, you are wrong; take him ­here, and you have him. I question not but ’tis the same with other ­People; for when Malice is in the Heart, Reproach generally goes a Mile before Consideration,180 and where is the Honesty of the Man all this while? This is trampling upon my Pride, sed majori fastu;181 but with greater Pride; ’tis exposing my Dishonesty, but with the highest Knavery; ’tis a Method no honest Man w ­ ill take, and when taken, no honest Man regards; wherefore, let none of ­t hese Sons of Slander take Satisfaction in the fre­ quent Acknowl­edgments I am always ready to make of my own failing, for that Humility with which I always find Cause to look into my own Heart, where I see ­others worse, and more guilty of Crimes than they can lay to my Charge, yet makes me look back upon their Weakness with the last Contempt, who fix their 177. scoundrel Opinion] The OED lists this adjectival use of scoundrel as now rare, but for Defoe and his contemporaries, it was a common way of saying that something or someone was mean or unprincipled. 178. What a Wretch am I] A formulaic confession of personal weakness in Christian prayers. It echoes Paul’s “O wretched man that I am.” See Romans 7:24. 179. run upon the Foil] Sometimes a hunted animal doubles back or crosses his own track, confusing the dogs and leading them on a false track. The huntsman then has to put them on the right track. See OED. 180. Malice . . . ​Consideration] This sounds proverbial, but Tilley, Dictionary (406 [M52]) only has “Malice is Mindful” as an approximation. The appeal against malice may have echoes in Ephesians 4:31–32 and Titus 3:2–3. 181. sed majori fastu] The translation offered, “but with greater Pride,” is accurate, though the context is much larger. It involves a Cynic trampling on Alexander’s foot cloth, saying, “Calco fastum Alexandri,” or “now I tread on Alexander’s pride.” A listener then replied, “But with a greater pride of your own.” Defoe used this anecdote in his youthful manu­ script, “Historical Collections” (p.  59, item 47), but ascribed it to the Cynic, Diogenes trampling on Plato’s rich hangings. Plato made the rejoinder to Diogenes’s attack on his pride by accusing him of “A pride farr greater. For thou Despiseth Riches ­Because thou Canst not get them.” Defoe turns the story into one of envy rather than pride. It was quoted by Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Mark 10:32–45, when, the disciples, James and John, asked for a special place in Heaven on his right and left sides. When the ten other disciples expressed their dis­plea­sure at James and John, Jesus upbraided them for pride and ambition. See Matthew Henry, [Commentary], in Comprehensive Commentary on the Holy Bible, ed. William Jenks, 5 vols. (Brattleboro: Fessenden and The Brattle­ boro Typographic Co., 1835–1838), 4:362.

68

Ser ious R eflections

impotent Charges where ­t here is not Room to take hold, and run away with the Air, and Shadow of Crimes never committed. I have instanc’d this, not at all on my own Account, for ’tis not worth while; for if I am injur’d, what’s that to troubling the World with, when I am forgotten; but while I am examining the nicest Article in the World, Honesty, I cannot but lay down t­ hese three Heads from the preceding Observations. 1. He who is forward to reproach the Infirmities of other Mens Honesty, is very near a Breach of his own. 2. He that hastily reproaches another without sufficient Ground, cannot be an honest Man. 3. Where ­there may be sufficient Ground of Reproach, yet an honest Man is always tender of his Neighbour’s Character from the Sense of his own Frailty. But I return to Honesty, as it affects a Man’s pledging his Word, which is the Counter-­part of his Princi­ple, and this ­because as I said, I should chiefly regard this Honesty, as it concerns h ­ uman Affairs Conversation, and Negotiation. And ­here I meet with a Tradesman come just in from dunning one of his Neighbours: Well, I have been at a Place for Money, says he, but I can get none; ­t here’s such a one, he passes for an honest Man, but I am sure he is a ­great Rogue to me, for he has promised me my Money a long Time, but puts me off still from Time to Time; he makes no more of breaking his Word, than of drinking a Glass of Beer. I am sure he has told me forty Lies already; this is one of your honest Men, if all such honest Men w ­ ere hang’d we should have a better Trade; and thus he runs on. If all such honest Men ­were hang’d, they that ­were left might have a better Trde, but how many of them would t­ here be? Now tho’ I ­shall no Way vindicate Mens hasty Promises absolutely to perform what is doubtful in the Event, yet I cannot agree, that ­every Man who having promis’d a Payment, does not perform it, to his Time, is a Knave or a Lyar; if it ­were so, the Lord have Mercy upon three Parts of the City. Wherefore, to state this M ­ atter clearly, it must be taken a l­ittle to Pieces, and the Articles spoken to apart. First, Without Question, when a Man makes a Promise of Payment to another on a set Day, knowing in his own Thoughts that it is not probable he should be capable to comply with it, or ­really designing not to comply with it, or not endeav­ ouring to comply with it: ’Tis a Deceit put upon the Party, ’tis a premeditated formal Lye, the Man that made it is a Stranger to Honesty, he is a Knave, and ­every ­Thing that is base and bad. But Secondly, Promises ­ought to be understood both by the Person to whom, and the Person by whom, they are made as liable to t­hose Contingencies that all ­human Affaris and Persons are liable to, as Death, Accidents, Disappointments, and Disorder: Thus, if a Man, who ­ought to pay me to Day, tells me, Sir, I cannot comply with you to Day, but if you call for it next Week, you s­ hall have it.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

69

If I may put this Answer into plainer En­glish; and I suppose the Man to be an honest Man; I cannot understand his Meaning other­wise than thus: “Sir, I acknowledge your Money is due; I have not Cash enough by me to pay you to Day; but I have several r­ unning Bills, and several Persons who have prom­ ised me Money, which I doubt not I ­shall receive against such a Time; and if you call then, I make no Question, but I s­ hall be able to do it; and if it is pos­si­ble for me to pay you, I ­w ill do it at that Time, without Fail.” I confess, it ­were as well to express themselves thus at large, in all the Appoint­ ments ­People make for Payment; and would the Persons who make them consider it, they would do so: But Custom has prevail’d in our general Way of Speaking, whereby all Th ­ ings that are subject to the common known Contingents of Life, or vis­i­ble in the Circumstances of the Case, are understood without being expressed. For Example: I make an Appointment of meeting a Man positively at such a Town, such a certain Day or Hour; if I ­were talking to a Turk or a Pagan182 that knows nothing, or believes nothing, of Supreme Providence; I would say, If the Lord of Heaven and Earth that governs all my Actions, please to preserve and permit me: But when I am talking to a Christian, it should seem to be so universally supposed, that e­ very Appointment is subjected, and submits to the Government of Providence, that the Repetition would be ­needless; and that when a Man promises positively to meet, ’tis with a general Subintelligitur,183 a Reserve as natu­ral as Nature it self, to the Divine Permission: All Men know, that u ­ nless I am alive, I cannot come t­ here; or, if I am taken sick, both which may easily happen, I ­shall disappoint him: And therefore, if he shou’d urge me again to come without Fail, and I should reply, I ­won’t fail, if I am alive and well, the Man ­ought to take it for an Affront, and ask me, if I take him for a Fool, to think, if I am taken sick, I should come with my Bed at my Back;184 or if Death should interveen, he had Occasion to speak with my Ghost. In this Sense, a Tradesman who promises Payment of Money at a set Time; first ’tis supposed he has it not now in his Hands, b ­ ecause he puts off the Person demanding to a further Day, and promises to comply with it then: This Promise185 therefore, can be understood no other­w ise, than that he expects to receive Money 182. Turk or a Pagan] In his Continuation of the Letters of a Turkish Spy (1718), Defoe had treated the religious sensibilities of his follower of Islam with considerable re­spect for his religious beliefs. The oath that he gives, relying upon God’s ­w ill, would seem to apply well enough. But it is difficult to see how such an oath would be effective for the Pagan lacking any belief in a “Supreme Providence.” 183. Subintelligitur] “An unexpressed or implied addition to a statement.” See OED. 184. Bed at my Back] The sick bed brought along as evidence of illness. 185. Promise] Giles Jacob maintains that a broken promise is a valid cause for a l­egal action (New Law Dictionary, sig. 7R–7Rv), but Defoe is discussing ethical rather than l­egal m ­ atters. ­Under the distinctions made by J.  L. Austin (“A Plea for Excuses,” Philosophical Papers [Oxford 1961], 175–204), Defoe is offering a “justification” for the Tradesman rather than a mere “excuse.”

70

Ser ious R eflections

by that Time: Now, if this Man, by the like Disappointments from other Men, or any other involuntary Casualty, is ­really and bona fide186 unable to comply with the Time of promised Payment; I cannot see, but this may befal an honest Man, and he neither designing to fail when he promised, nor being able to prevent the Accident that oblig’d him to do it, nor any way voluntary in the Breach, is not in my Opinion guilty of a Lie, or Breach of his Honour, tho’ he did not make ­t hose verbal Reserves in the Promises he had given. If ­every Man, who cannot comply with promised Payments, should be thus branded with Lying and Dishonesty, then let him, who is without the Sin, cast the Stone,187 for no body ­else ­ought to do it. ’Tis true, ­t here is a Difference between an Accident, and a Practice; that is in short, ­t here is a Difference between him who meets with a g­ reat many Occasions thus to break his Word, and he that meets with but a few: But if it be a Crime, he that commits it once, is no more an honest Man, than he that commits it forty Times; and if it be not a Crime, he that does it forty Times, is as honest as he that has Occasion to do it but once. But let no Man take Encouragement from hence, to be prodigal of his Word, and slack in his Per­for­mance; for this nice Path is so near the Edge of the Pit of Knavery, that the least Slip lets you fall in. ­These Promises must have Abundance of Circumstances to bring the honest Man out of the Scandal. As, 1st. The Disappointments which occasioned this Breach of his Word, must have been unforeseen, and unexpected, other­w ise the Expectation of performing his Promise, was ill grounded, and then his Honesty is answerable for the very making the Promise, as well as the breaking it. 2d. No Endeavours must be wanting to comply with the Promise; other­wise ’tis wrong to say, I am disappointed, and ­can’t make good my Word; the Man ­ought to say, Sir, I have disappointed my self by my Negligence or Wilfulness, and have oblig’d my self to break my Word; or, in En­glish, Sir, I am a Knave; for tho’ I made you a Promise which I might have performed, I took no Care about it, not valuing the Forfeiture of my Word. If then the Case is so nice, tho’ in the Strictness of Speaking, such a Disap­ pointment may oblige an honest Man to break his Word; yet e­ very honest Man, who would preserve that Character to himself, o ­ ught to be the more wary, and industriously avoid making such absolute unconditional Promises, b ­ ecause we are to avoid the Circumstances of Offence. But as to the Nature of the ­Thing, ’tis plain to me, that a Man may in such Cases be obliged to break his Word unwillingly; and nothing can be a Fraud or dishonest Action in that Case, which is not e­ ither voluntary in it self, or the Occa­ sion voluntarily procur’d.

186. bona fide] Good faith. 187. without the Sin . . . ​Stone] See John 8:7.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

71

Of Relative Honesty.188 AS Honesty is s­ imple and plain, without Gloss and Pretence, so ’tis universal: He that may uphold an untainted Reputation in one Par­tic­u ­lar, may be justly branded with Infamy in another. A Man may be punctual in his Dealings, and a Knave in his Relations; honest in his Ware-­house, and a Knave at his Fire-­side: He may be a Saint in his Com­pany, a Devil in his F ­ amily;189 true to his Word, and false to his Friendship: But whosoever he be, he is no honest Man. An honest Man is all of a Piece, the w ­ hole Contexture of his Life, his general Conduct is genuine, and squar’d according to the Rules of Honesty; he never runs into Extremes and Excesses on one Hand or other. I confess, I find this Th ­ ing, which they call Relative Honesty, very l­ ittle thought of in the World; and that which is still worse, ’tis very l­ ittle understood: I’ll bring it down to but a few Examples; some of which frequently happen among us, and ­will therefore be the more familiarly receiv’d. ­There are relative Obligations entail’d on us in our ­Family Circumstances, which are just Debts, and must be paid; and which, in a Word, a Man can no more be honest, if he does not make Conscience of Discharging, than he can in the Case of the most unquestionable Debts between Man and Man. The Debts from ­Children to Parents,190 and from Wives to their Husbands,191 are in a Manner relatively chang’d, and the Obligation transferr’d into the Order of religious Duties. God the Guide and Commander of all Subordination, has as it ­were, taken that Part into his own Hand; ’tis rather call’d a Duty to him, than a relative Duty only: But if Men take this for a Discharge to them, of all relative Obligations to Wives and to ­Children,192 or that God had less required one than the other, they must act upon very wrong Princi­ples.

188. Relative Honesty] The heading of this section points not to situations in which honesty may be compromised but rather to our be­hav­ior t­ oward our relatives and t­ hose in our f­ amily. In works such as The ­Family Instructor and Religious Courtship, Defoe included servants in his concept of an extended ­family. Defoe may have been playing on words, since he had pre­ viously discussed situations of necessity in which honesty had to be compromised. See OED for the several con­temporary meanings of the word relative. 189. a Devil in his F ­ amily] The second volume of Defoe’s ­Family Instructor (1718) depicted several tradesmen who treated their families badly. 190. Debts from C ­ hildren to Parents] In classifying t­hese as “religious Duties,” Defoe is alluding to the fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12) “Honour thy ­father and thy ­mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” 191. Wives to their Husbands] For the subordination of wives to their husbands, see Genesis 3:16 and Ephesians 5:22. 192. relative Obligations to Wives and to ­Children] Defoe argues for a system of mutual obli­ gations. This contrasts with the arguments of Thomas Hobbes, who had maintained that the ­father had the position of an absolute ruler within the ­family. By 1720, this would have been considered old fashioned. In William Congreve’s comedy of 1696, Love for Love, Hobbes’s position was satirized as being the attitude of an e­ arlier generation. The f­ ather, Sir Sampson Legend, argues this high patriarchal line in relation to his two sons, Valentine and Ben. See II, i, ll. 172–185.

72

Ser ious R eflections

Nature indeed dictates in general a Man’s providing Subsistence for his F ­ amily, and he is declared to be so far from a Christian, that he is worse than an Infidel that neglects it: But ­t here are other Parts of our Obligations, which Honesty calls upon us to perform. A Wife and ­Children are Creditors to the ­Father of the ­Family; and he cannot be an honest Man that does not discharge his Debt to them, any more than he could, if he did not repay Money borrowed, to a Stranger and not to lead my Reader on to intricate and disputed Particulars; I instance principally in t­hose that no body can dispute: As First, EDUCATION:193 By this I mean, not only put­ ting C ­ hildren to School, which some Parents think, is all they have to do with or for their ­Children; and indeed with some, is all that they know how to do, or are fit to do: I say, I do not mean this only, but several other additional Cares, as (1.) Directing what School, what Parts of Learning, is proper for them, what Improve­ ments they are to be taught. (2.) Studying the Genius and Capacities of their ­Children,194 in what they teach them: Some C ­ hildren ­will voluntarily learn one ­Thing, and can never be forc’d to learn another; and for Want of which observing the Genius of ­Children, we have so many learned Blockheads in the World, who are mere Scholars, Pedants, and no more. (3.) But the main Part of this Debt, which Relative Honesty calls upon us to pay to our ­Children, is the Debt of Instruction,195 the Debt of Government,196 the Debt of Example: He that neglects to pay any of ­t hese to his ­Family, is a relative Knave; let him value himself upon his Honesty, in paying his other Debts, as much as he w ­ ill. ’Tis a strange Notion Men have of Honesty, and of their being honest Men, as if it related to nothing but Tradesmen, or Men who borrow and lend; or that the Title was obtain’d by an ordinary Observance of Right and Wrong between Man 193. EDUCATION] Defoe was to turn his mind to this subject in his New F ­ amily Instructor (1727), Augusta Triumphans (1728), and two works left unfinished at his death: The Compleat En­glish Gentleman and Of Royall Educacion. 194. Genius and Capacities . . . ​­Children] In 1712, his Pre­sent State of the Parties, Defoe lamented the decline of the capabilities of ­t hose studying to be Dissenting clergymen within his time, idealizing the ­great preachers of his youth. He wrote of the failure of parents to consult the abilities of ­t hose intended to become ministers: “­Here is not a Word of Enquiry made into the Genius, the Capacity, or the Inclination of the Child or ­Children . . . ’tis no doubt, the proper Duty of Parents, and . . . ​of the Ministers, also . . . ​to study the Capacities, the Temper, the Inclination, and the Common Gifts of their ­Children, in their designing them for Employment in the World.” Defoe is particularly hard on t­ hose who would make a child with a stammer or a “speech defect” into a minister. See The Pre­sent State of the Parties (London, 1712), 298–299. 195. Debt of Instruction] In his Compleat En­glish Gentleman, Defoe presented an older son who had inherited the ­family property but without having received the most basic form of education. The fault is laid with his parents who followed the false adage that the lord of an estate does not need an education. He undergoes a rapid course of instruction that enables him to overcome his ignorance and to be less embarrassed in com­pany. But in this passage, Defoe has in mind not merely general knowledge but also religious instruction such as the young slave boy, Toby, seeks in the second volume of The ­Family Instructor. 196. Debt of Government] OED 2b lists this as, “The manner in which one’s action is gov­ erned,” and then, in the “moral sense,” as conduct and be­hav­ior. It is described as obsolete and citations stop before Defoe’s time.

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

73

and Man. ’Tis a ­great ­Mistake, the Name of an honest Man is neither so easily gain’d, or so soon lost, as ­t hese Men imagine. David was a very honest Man, not­ withstanding his Passion and Revenge in the Case of Nabal,197 his Murther in the Case of Uriah,198 or his Adultery in the Case of Bathsheba.199 The Intent and main Design of his Life was upright; and whenever he fell by the Power of that Tempta­ tion that overcame him, he r­ ose again by Repentance. Let no vain Men flatter themselves with the Pride of their Honesty, in mere ­Matters of Debtor and Creditor, tho’ that’s also absolutely necessary and essential to an honest Man. But trace this honest Man home to his F ­ amily: Is he a Tyrant or a Churl to his Wife? Is he a Stranger to the Conduct and Behaviour of his C ­ hildren? Is he an Eli to their Vices?200 Are they uninstructed, uncorrected, unexhorted, ungoverned, or ill governed? That Man’s a Knave, a relative Knave; he neither does his Duty to God, or pays the Debt of a Husband, or of a Parent to his Wife or his ­Family. Secondly, ­After the Debt of EDUCATION, ­t here is the Debt of INDUCTION201 due from us to our C ­ hildren. The Debt from a Parent is far from ending when the ­Children come from School, as the Brutes who turn their Young off from them when they are just able to pick for themselves:202 It is our Business, doubtless, to introduce them into the World, and to do it in such a manner, as suits the Cir­ cumstances we are in, as to their Supply, and the Inclinations and Capacities of our ­Children:203 This is a Debt, the Want of paying which, makes many C ­ hildren 197. Case of Nabal] See chapter 2, note 124 in this edition. 198. Case of Uriah] 2 Samuel 11:15–17. David deliberately has Uriah placed in the front lines, where, as ­matters turn out, he is indeed killed. 199. Case of Bathsheba] 2 Samuel 11:2–4. ­A fter the death of Uriah, David marries Bathsheba, and she bears him a son. But in the following chapter (12:1–24), Nathan upbraids David for his sins. The son conceived during the adulterous affair dies, God’s direct punishment of David for his sins, but Bathsheba then gives birth to Solomon, who ­w ill rule wisely. 200. an Eli to their Vices] A priest in 1 Samuel 1:9–17, he upbraids, Hannah, mistaking her fervid praying for drunkenness. He trains the young Samuel to be a priest, but fails in train­ ing his own sons to be righ­teous priests. They devoured the meat offered as sacrifices to God. For this failure to regulate his sons’ be­hav­ior, God announces, “I ­w ill judge his ­house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; b ­ ecause his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.” See 1 Samuel 3:13. 201. Debt of INDUCTION] Defoe defines this ­later in this paragraph (ll. 30–31) as “the neces­ sary Introduction into the World.” The OED defines the word as “initiation,” and quotes from Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier, concerning his military c­ areer, “I have never yet seen any ser­v ice, and must have my induction some time or other.” 202. Brutes . . . ​t hemselves] The OED does not give a separate section to “pick for,” but a number of the meanings supplied for pick apply to food. The image is that of the animal young being barely able to select food that would enable them to survive before being sent off on their own. 203. consulting the Inclinations . . . ​­Children] Insofar as this might be still thought to be Crusoe speaking, it would seem to suggest a failure of his ­father to consider carefully Cru­ soe’s desire to go to sea or his b ­ rothers’ desire for adventure. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (in The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James Axtell [Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1968], 173–174, 268), Locke urged paying attention to the “Seasons of Inclination,” in teaching a child, and like Defoe, he argued that the education received by ­t hose planning to go into trade was often useless.

74

Ser ious R eflections

too justly reproach their Parents with neglecting them in their Youth, and not giving them the necessary Introduction into the World, as might have qualify’d them to strug­gle and shift for themselves. Not to do this, is to ruine our C ­ hildren negatively on one Hand, as d ­ oing it without Judgment, and without Regard to our F ­ amily Circumstances, and our ­Childrens Capacities, is a positive ruining them on the other. I could very usefully run out this Part into a long Discourse on the Necessity t­ here is of consulting the Inclinations and Capacities of our ­Children, in our placing them out in the World. How many a martial Spirit do we find damn’d to Trade, while we spoil many a good Porter, and convert the able Limbs and Bones of a Blockhead into the Figure of a long Robe,204 or a Gown205 and Cassock?206 How many awkward clumsy Fellows do we breed to Surgery, or to Musick, whose Fin­gers and Joints, Nature originally design’d, and plainly shew’d it us by their Size, ­were better suited for the Blacksmith’s Sledge, or the Carpenter’s Axe, the Waterman’s Oar, or the Carman’s Whip? Whence comes it to pass, that we have so many young Men brought to the Bar, and to the Pulpit, with stammering Tongues; Hesitations, and Impediments in their Speech, unmusical Voices, and no common Utterance; while on the other Hand, Nature’s Cripples, Bow-­legg’d, Battleham’d,207 and half-­made Creatures, are bred Tumblers and Dancing-­Masters.208 I name ­t hese, b ­ ecause they occur most in our common Observation, and are all miserable Examples, where the ­Children curse the Knavery of their ­Fathers, in not paying the Debt they ow’d to them as Parents, in putting them to Employ­ ments that had been suitable to their Capacities, and suitable to what Nature had cut them out for. I came into a publick House once in London, where t­here was a black Maletta look’d Man209 sitting, talking very warmly among some Gentlemen, who I observ’d 204. long Robe] A member of the ­legal profession, specifically a ­lawyer or a barrister. 205. Gown] Prob­ably ­here intended for a member of the university rather than for a member of the clergy. 206. Cassock] Members of the clergy. The cassock was worn by Anglican clergymen ­under their gowns. 207. Battleham’d] Without euphemism and in context, this might be translated into modern En­glish as fat assed. It is given this way in A Dictionary of American En­glish, ed. William Craigie and James Hulbert, 4 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938–1944), 1:164, with a citation from 1727. The OED gives ­battle as a verb having to do with fattening animals and ham as the area from the buttocks to the back of the knee but does not give this par­tic­u­ lar citation. Another possibility is that it refers to someone who is lame in the manner of someone disabled in ­battle. In ­either sense, it would suggest someone without any ability to move athletically or gracefully. 208. Dancing-­Masters] Dancing masters taught not only dancing but also graceful deport­ ment and manners. During the Restoration, young ­women ­were often educated at schools run by dancing masters. See Gallantry a-­la-­Mode, introduction by Maximillian Novak and David Rodes (Gainesville: Scholars Facsimiles, 1980), 17–119. 209. Maletta-­look’d Man] One who looked like a mulatto. The OED lists a wide variation of spellings for the officially accepted “mulatto” but not this one. In The Life and Strange Surprizing Advenetures, Crusoe uses “Moletto-­like” in stating that his complexion was not as

C h a p t e r 2 /A n E s s ay u p o n H O N E S T Y

75

­ ere listening very attentively to what he said; and I sat myself down, and did the w like; ’twas with ­great Plea­sure I heard him discourse very handsomly on several weighty Subjects; I found he was a very good Scholar, had been very handsomely bred, and that Learning and Study was his Delight; and more than that, some of the best of Science was at that Time his Employment: At length I took the Free­ dom to ask him, If he was born in ­England? He reply’d with a g­ reat deal of good Humour in the Manner, but with an Excess of Resentment at his F ­ ather, and with Tears in his Eyes, Yes, yes, Sir, I am a true-­born En­glish Man,210 to my ­Father’s Shame be it spoken; who being an En­glish Man himself, could find in his Heart to join himself to a Negro ­Woman, tho’ he must needs know, the C ­ hildren he should beget, would curse the Memory of such an Action, and abhor his very Name for the sake of it. Yes, yes, says he, repeating it again, I am an En­glish Man, and born in lawful Wedlock; happy had it been for me, tho’ my F ­ ather had gone to the Dev­il211 for Whoredom, had he lain with a Cook-­Maid, or produced me from the meanest Beggar ­Woman in the Street. My F ­ ather might do the Duty of Nature to his black Wife; but, God knows, he did no Justice to his C ­ hildren. If it had not been for this damn’d black Face of mine, says he then smiling,212 I had been bred to the Law, or brought up in the Study of Divinity: But my ­Father gave me Learning to no manner of Purpose; for dark (“Moletto-­like”) as might have been expected from someone living so close to the equator. 210. true-­born En­glish Man] The title of Defoe’s most famous poem and one in which he ridi­ culed the notion of racial purity. In his Atlas Maritimus, Defoe argued that the Spanish should have followed the French practice in Canada of marrying with the natives. He blamed Spanish pride on this failure to populate their colonies. 211. happy . . . ​­Father . . . ​Devil] Tilley has a full explanation from Latimer’s sermons: “­There is a common saying among the worldlings, Happy is that child whose f­ather goeth to the dev­il. . . . ​Many a ­father goeth to the devil for his child’s sake; in that he . . . ​scraped for his child, and forgat to relieve his poor miserable neighbour.” Defoe’s Mulatto is using the prov­ erb ironically, since he blames his f­ ather for his actions. As the results of his f­ ather’s actions, he is not “happy.” The proverb, itself, is ironic since the ­father who sins in order to benefit his offspring is condemned. See Tilley, Dictionary (96–97 [C305]). Although Defoe quoted this proverb a number of times, he clearly understood it in its traditional sense—in terms of the ­father gathering wealth in a manner that was ­either sinful or neglectful of providing charity to the poor. The happy ­Children, by the Proverb blest, That all our F ­ athers ill-­got Wealth possest; By True Descent, and old inherent Merit, The Curse and Trea­sure should alike inherit. (IX: 303–306) Defoe then provided the proverb in a note. Thus, the mulatto speaker has to be seen as twisting a familiar saying to sustain a doubtful argument. 212. damn’d black Face . . . ​smiling] Since this man eventually ends in tears, the smile has to be regarded as involving a degree of self-­hatred. The question is: If his ­father had sufficient money to send him to one of the ­great universities or to be trained as a ­lawyer at one of the Inns of Court, would prejudice have prevented his being accepted? One Black, Francis Wil­ liams, sponsored by the Duke of Montagu, apparently entered Cambridge in the early part of the eigh­teenth ­century and received a bachelor’s degree (Edward Scobie, Black Britannia: A History of Blacks in Britain [Chicago: Johnson, 1972], 27). By the end of the c­ entury, Blacks such as Ignatius Sancho and Olaudah Equiano achieved considerable prominence in Britain. One of the themes of Roxann Wheeler’s The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in

76

Ser ious R eflections

he knew I should never be able to rise by it to any Th ­ ing, but a learned Valet de 213 Chamber. What he put me to School for, I cannot imagine: He spoil’d a good Tarpawlin,214 when he strove to make me a Gentleman: When he had resolv’d to marry a Slave,215 and lye with a Slave, he should have begot Slaves, and let us have been bred as we ­were born: But he has twice ruin’d me; first with getting me a frightful Face, and then ­going to paint a Gentleman upon me. It was a most affecting Discourse indeed, and as such I rec­ord it; and I found it ended in Tears, from the Person who was in himself the most deserving, modest, and judicious Man, that I ever met with, u ­ nder a Negro Countenance in my Life. ­After this Story, I perswaded myself I need say no more to this Case; the Edu­ cation of our ­Children, their Instruction, and the Introducing them into the World, is a Part of Honesty, a Debt216 we owe to them; and he cannot be an honest Man that does not to the utmost of his Ability and Judgment, endeavour to pay it. All the other relative Obligations, which ­Family Circumstances call for the Discharge of, allow the same Method of arguing for, and are Debts in their Pro­ portion, and must be paid upon the same Princi­ple of Integrity. I have neither room, nor is ­t here any Occasion to enlarge upon them.

Eighteenth-­Century British Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000) was that color was not given very much weight in judging ­peoples of other races. 213. Valet de Chamber] A personal man servant. It was a gallicism, properly Valet de chambre, and according to the OED was used as early as the seventeenth c­ entury. Chambre was often anglicized into something like chamber. Blacks in E ­ ngland w ­ ere often servants, espe­ cially young Black boys, as featured in William Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Pro­gress and other engravings. See David Dabydeen, “Hogarth-­t he Savage and the Civilised,” History ­Today 31 (September 1981): 49–51. 214. Tarpawlin] By the pro­cess of synecdoche a sailor. At the time, the word described a piece of canvas daubed with tar to make it waterproof and used to protect parts of a ship. Since tarpaulins w ­ ere black, the speaker may be alluding to this as well. 215. marry a Slave] If his m ­ other was legally married to his ­father and residing in ­England, would she have been a slave? This assessment and the use of the word “Slave” has to be regarded as coming from this par­tic­u ­lar, distraught person. At this point in history, it was unclear ­whether slavery was permitted in ­England. The ­legal opinion of Lord Chief Justice John Holt in 1706 held that “as soon as a negro comes into ­England, he becomes ­f ree.” Deci­ sions made during the 1730s reversed this judgment, but the so-­called Mansfield decision in 1772 returned to the Holt decision. See Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench, ed. William Salkeld, 6th  ed. (London, 1795), 666. For an account of f­ree Blacks in Britain, including ­those who inherited property, see James Walwin, Black and White: The Negro in En­glish Society (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 46–79, 110–122. 216. Education . . . ​a Debt] This is a theme throughout John Locke’s discussions of education. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, he wrote, “The Well Educating of their C ­ hildren is so much the Duty and concern of Parents, and the Welfare and Prosperity of the Nation so much depends upon it, that I would have ­every one lay it seriously to Heart; and . . . ​set his Helping hand to promote ­every where that Way of training up Youth, with regard to their several Conditions, which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce vertuous, useful, and able men in their distinct Callings.” John Locke, The Educational Writings, ed. James Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 112.

Chapter 3

•

OF THE Immorality of CONVERSATION, AND The Vulgar ERRORS of Behaviour 1

Conversation is the brightest and most beautiful Part of Life; ’tis an Emblem of the Enjoyment of a f­uture State; for suitable Society is a heavenly Life:2 ’tis that Part of Life by which Mankind are not only distinguish’d from the inanimate World, but by which they are distinguish’d from one another. Perhaps I may be more particularly sensible of the Benefit and of the Plea­sure of it, having been so effectually mortify’d with the Want of it:3 But as I take it to be one of the Pecu­ liars4 of the rational Life, that Man is a conversible Creature;5 so ’tis his most compleat Blessing in Life, to be blessed with suitable Persons about him to con­ verse with. Bringing it down from Generals to Particulars, nothing can recommend 1. Conversation] Defoe’s idealization of conversation and com­pany was in keeping with the ideas of his time. In The Spectator, Sir Richard Steele devoted numerous essays to this sub­ ject, and one of the proj­ects of that journal was to reject the rough edges of Restoration ­England and replace it with an ideal type of sociability. See, for example, no. 143 (2:64–68); no. 280 (2:590–593); and no. 386 (3:448–451). 2. suitable Society . . . ​heavenly Life] By italicizing this statement, Defoe may have been indi­ cating that he was quoting someone. He says the same t­ hing throughout his Conjugal Lewdness, in which he argues that “Suitability is the only solid Foundation on which the Conjugal Felicity is grounded.” And again, “Suitable Society is a heavenly Life.” 212, 227. 3. mortify’d with the Want of it] Crusoe is ­here speaking in his voice as the isolated island dweller. 4. Peculiars] The OED classifies this as now archaic and rare, but it was common enough in the eigh­teenth ­century. It is defined as “A trait or quality exclusive to or characteristic of an individual or a ­t hing; a distinguishing feature, a peculiarity.” 5. Man . . . ​conversible Creature] ­Under conversable, the OED has as its second meaning, “Of, pertaining to or proper to social intercourse, or converse.” In returning to ­England from Scotland, Defoe wrote to Harley, “I am allarm’d at my Comeing into the Conversible part of the world Again with an account of your Ldpps Indisposition.” He clearly regarded ­England and particularly London as the place of social communication that constituted what he and many of his contemporaries considered the civilized world. In treating Peter the ­ hether a being deprived Wild Boy in his Mere Nature Delineated (1726), Defoe speculated on w of society and the ability to communicate could be considered h ­ uman. See chapter 3, note 1 and chapter 4, note 9 in this edition.

77

78

Ser ious R eflections

a Man more, nothing renders him more agreeable, nothing can be a better Char­ acter to give of one Man to another, next to that of his being an honest and reli­ gious Man, than to say of him that he is very good Com­pany. How delightful is it to see a Man’s Face always cover’d with Smiles, and his Soul shining continually in the Goodness of his Temper; to see an Air of Humour and Pleasantness sit ever upon his Brow, and to find him on all Occasions the same, ever agreeable to ­others and to himself; a steady Calm of Mind, a clear Head, and serene Thoughts always acting the Mastership upon him: Such a Man has something angelick in his very Countenance; the Life of such a Man is one entire Scene of Composure; ’tis an Anticipation of the ­f uture State, which we well represent by an eternal Peace. To such a Man to be angry, is only to be just to himself, and to act as he o ­ ught to do; to be troubled or sad, is only to act his Reason; for as to being in a Passion, he knows nothing of it; Passion is a Storm in the Mind, and this never happens to him; for all Exccesses, ­either of Grief or of Resentment, are Foreigners, and have no Habitation with him: He is the only Man that can observe that Scripture heav­ enly Dictate, Be angry and sin not;6 and if ever he is very angry, ’tis with himself, for giving Way to be angry with any one ­else. This is the truly agreeable Person, and the only one that can be call’d so in the World; his Com­pany is a Charm, and is rather won­der’d at than imitated: ’tis almost a Vertue to envy such a man; and one is apt innocently to grieve at him, when we see what is so desirable in him, and cannot e­ ither find it, or make it in our selves. But take this with you in the Character of this happy Man, namely, that he is always a good Man, a religious Man: ’tis a gross Error to imagine, that a Soul blacken’d with Vice, loaded with Crime, degenerated into Immorality and Folly, can be that Man, can have this calm, serene Soul, t­ hose clear Thoughts, t­ hose con­ stant Smiles upon his Brow, and the steady Agreeableness and Pleasantry in his Temper, that I am speaking of; t­here must be Intervals of Darkness upon such a Mind; Storms in the Conscience7 ­will always lodge Clouds upon the Countenance;8 and where the Weather is hazey within, it can never be Sun-­shine without; the 6. Be angry and sin not] Ephesians 4:26. Paul concludes this advice by saying, “let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” In the second volume of his ­Family Instructor, Defoe concen­ trated on t­ hose who could not control their anger and quoted this same passage. Defoe advo­ cates a balance: righ­teous indignation is good, but it must be controlled. 7. Storms in the Conscience] Th ­ ere is a proverbial base to this comparison between this inner psychological weather and the outside weather of clouds and sunshine. Tilley, Dictionary (370 [L92a]) cites “To laugh and cry at once (like rain in sunshine),” citing Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (I.iii.84): “O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by-­a nd-by a cloud takes all away.” 8. Clouds upon the Countenance] During the Restoration characters such as Congreve’s Maskwell in The Double Dealer boasted of their ability to wear a figurative “mask” over their ­faces to disguise their feelings. Defoe adheres to the newer (or revived) notion that it was  impossible to disguise the passions and that emotions might be easily read in facial expressions.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f C o n v e r s at i o n

79

Smiles of a disturb’d Mind are all but feign’d and forg’d; ­there may be a good Dis­ position, but it ­will be too often and too evidently interrupted by the Recoils of the Mind,9 to leave the Temper untouch’d, and the Humour f­ree and unconcern’d; when the Drum beats an Alarm10 within, it is impossible but the Disturbance w ­ ill be discover’d without. Mark the Man of Crime; sit close to him in Com­pany, at the End of the most exuberant Excursion of his Mirth; you ­w ill never fail to hear his reflecting Faculty whisper a Sigh to him; h ­ e’ll shake it off, you w ­ ill see him check it and go on; per­ haps he sings it off, but at the End of ­every Song, nay perhaps of e­ very Stanza, it returns; a kind of involuntary Sadness breaks upon all his Joy; he perceives it, rouzes, despises it, and goes on; but in the M ­ iddle of a long Laugh, in drops a Sigh;11 it w ­ ill be, it can be no other­w ise; and I never convers’d closely with a Man of Levity in my Life, but I could perceive it most plainly; ’tis a Kind of Respiration, natu­ral to a stifl’d Conviction;12 a Hesitation that is the Consequence of a capti­ vated Vertue; a l­ittle Insurrection in the Soul against the Tyranny of profligate Princi­ples. But in the good Man the Calm is compleat; ’tis all Nature, no Counterfeit; he is always in Humour, ­because he is always compos’d. He’s calm without, ­because he’s clear within.13

A stated Composure of Mind can ­really proceed from nothing but a Fund of Vertue; and this is the Reason why ’tis my Opinion, that the common Saying, That Content of Mind is Happiness,14 is a vulgar ­Mistake, ­unless it be granted, that 9. Recoils of the Mind] Among the vari­ous definitions of recoil in the OED, many of which are suggestive of a violent movement, as for example, the recoil of a gun, the closest to Defoe’s meaning ­here would seems to be 5c: “Of a person, ­etc.: to shrink or flinch mentally or emo­ tionally from something; to feel repulsion, fear, or horror at (the thought of) something.” 10. Drum beats an Alarm] Drums ­were used to signal vari­ous ways to behave in military actions. This is still current as the drumbeat or call to action. Alarm, by itself, is understood to be a call to arms. See OED. Defoe evokes the image of an inner warfare in the psyche that is so violent that it has to erupt on the surface. 11. sings it off . . . ​Sigh] Again Defoe is playing with and enlarging a proverbial statement. Til­ ley, Dictionary (608 [S481]) has “Many a one Sings that is full sorry.” Moll Flanders, a­ fter bankruptcy forces her into the sanctuary of the Mint, speaks of the inhabitants pretending to be cheerful but actually avoiding the misery that is always with them by drink and sex: “Sighs would interrupt their Songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their Browns in spight of the forc’d Smiles they put on.” Moll Flanders, 65. 12. Respiration . . . ​stifl’d Conviction] Defoe argues for a kind of symbolic action by which the bodily functions indicate an internal prob­lem. The very manner of breathing indicates a person who has attempted to repress a sense of having sinned or acted wrongly. Although the context is dif­fer­ent, Defoe argues with the existential phi­los­o­pher Jean-­Paul Sartre against the Freudian notion of truly repressing a disturbing thought or action. ­ ere from his Hymn to Peace 13. He’s calm . . . ​clear within] Defoe is quoting himself again, h (London, 1706), 27, where it appears as, “I’m Calm without, ­because I’m Clear within.” 14. Content of Mind . . . ​Happiness] Tilley, Dictionary (117 [C624]) gives “Content is happi­ ness,” but does not provide a large number of examples. He also gives (118 [C625]) “Content is the philospher’s stone, that turns all it touches into gold.” In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (1727), ed. Kit Kincade, The Stoke Newington Edition of the Writings of Daniel Defoe (New York: AMS, 2008), 134. Defoe renewed this discussion about the equivalence

80

Ser ious R eflections

this Content is first founded on such a Basis, as the Mind o ­ ught to be contented 15 with; for other­w ise a Lunatick in Bedlam is a compleatly happy Man;16 he sings in his Hutch,17 and dances in his Chain, and is as contented as any Man living: The Possession or Power, which that Vapour or Delirium has upon his Brain, makes him fancy himself a Prince,18 a Monarch, a Statesman, or just what he pleases to be; as a certain Dutchess,19 is said to have believ’d her self to be an Empress, has her Footmen drawn up, with Javelins,20 and dress’d in antick Habits,21 that she may see them thro’ a Win­dow, and believe them to be her Guards; is serv’d upon the Knee; call’d her Majesty, Imperial Majesty, and the like; and with this Splendor, her distemper’d Mind is deluded, forming Ideas of ­Things which are not, and at the same Time her Eyes are shut to the eternal Cap­ tivity of her Circumstances; in which she is made a Property to other Persons, her Estate manag’d by Guardianship, and she a poor demented Creature to the last Degree, an Object of ­human Compassion, and compleatly miserable.

of content or “Calm” and happiness. A Deist argues that “Peace of Mind is a Felicity.” But the narrator insists on the need for a firm moral foundation, noting that even the Quietists, the followers of Molinos, insist on the “Calm of a clear Heart.” The debate over the nature of happiness staged ­here is essentially that between the Epicureans and the Stoics. Epicurus argued for content as equivalent to happiness, defining it as a freedom from anx­i­eties. Stoics, from the time of Zeno, insisted, as did Socrates and Plato, that happiness consisted in virtue. Defoe was clearly on the side of the Stoics. See Thomas Stanley, The History of Philosophy, 3rd ed. (London, 1701), 323–325, 625–633. 15. Lunatick in Bedlam] Saint Mary of Bethlehem or Bedlam, London’s hospital for the insane, was founded in 1247. It was rebuilt in Moorfields in 1670. 16. compleatly happy Man] Although Defoe proceeds to give an example of a ­woman who lived in a state of delusion as ending up “miserable,” he leaves the impression h ­ ere that insan­ ity might be a form of happiness. In much the same manner, he argued in his Commentator (13 June 1720) that a person burdened by many trou­bles might be “happier without Reason than with it.” But in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 134, he was to main­ tain that however happy the “Lunatick in Bedlam” might appear superficially, on the inside, his mind and feelings are in turmoil. 17. Hutch] ­Here it is used in the sense of a cell where the mad might be imprisoned, perhaps with some overtone of an enclosure for an animal. Hogarth depicted such cells for the insane in the final engraving of his The Rake’s Pro­gress (1735). In The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures Crusoe describes his cave as a “Hutch” three times, meaning thereby a primitive dwelling. On one occasion, he speaks affectionately of returning to his “old Hutch.” See the OED 2b. 18. Delirium . . . ​Prince] Defoe may have been recalling section 9 of Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub (ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith [Oxford: Clarendon, 1920], 162–180), with its scenes involving ­people suffering from a variety of delusions and the narrator’s advice on how useful they might be to the state. In his Consolidator (1705), Defoe had shown a thor­ ough familiarity with this work. 19. a certain Dutchess] Almost certainly Elizabeth Cavendish, Second Duchess of Alber­ marle (1654–1734), who apparently suffered from delusions of grandeur. In 1692, she was wooed and wedded by Ralph Montagu, ­later First Duke of Montagu, who pretended to be the emperor of China. Her story was well known and even displayed on the stage in a number of con­temporary comedies. See Bernard Falk, The Way of the Montagues (London: Hutchinson, [1947]), 137–139. I am grateful to Alex Seltzer and Leonhard Horowski for this information. 20. Javelins] Pikes. See OED. 21. antick Habits] Grotesque, bizarre, fantastically incongruous uniforms. See OED.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

81

The only Contentment which entitles Mankind to any Felicity, is that which is founded upon Vertue and just Princi­ples; for Contentment is nothing more or less than what we call Peace;22 and what Peace, where Crime possesses the Mind, which is attended, as a natu­ral Consequence, with Torment and Disquiet? What Peace where the Harmony of the Soul is broken by constant Regret, and Self-­ Reproaches? What Peace in a Mind ­under constant Apprehensions and Terrors of something yet attending to render them miserable; and all this is inseparable from a Life of Crime. For where ­there’s Guilt, ­there always ­will be Fear.23

Peace of Mind makes a Halcyon24 upon the Countenance, it guilds the Face with a chearful Aspect, such as nothing ­else can procure; and which indeed as above, it is impossible effectually to counterfeit. Bow Mighty Reason,25 to thy Maker’s Name, For GOD and PEACE, are just the same; Heaven is the Emanation of his Face, And want of Peace, makes Hell in ­every Place.26 Tell us, ye Men of Notion,27 tell us why, You Seek for Bliss and wild Prosperity, In Storms and Tempests, Feuds and War, Is Happiness to be expected t­ here? Tell us what Sort of Happiness, Can Men in want of Peace possess? Blest Charm of Peace, how sweet are all ­those Hours We spend in thy Society? 22. Contentment . . . ​Peace] See chapter 1, note 14 in this edition, where he discusses content as happiness. At about the same time that he was writing Serious Reflections, Defoe, in the Commentator for 13 June  1720, attacked the confusion created by the economic turbulence sur­ rounding the rise of the South Sea Stock, and argued that “Peace is the Felicity of the World.” 23. For where . . . ​Fear] This line is from The Mock Mourners, in Poems on Affairs of State, ed. Ellis et al., 6:385, l. 233. Defoe quoted it and variants of the idea in his poem, The Spanish Descent and The Dyet of Poland. This relationship between guilt and fear is well demonstrated (including an illustration) in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 77–79. 24. Bow Mighty Reason] ­These forty lines are taken from Defoe’s Hymn to Peace (1706), 11–14. The italics may be used to indicate that he was quoting, since it is in ordinary type in the original. This poem imitates the often irregular form of hymns or what was sometimes thought of at the time as the irregular Pindaric ode. The latter form was thought to be appro­ priate for expressions of emotion, and its irregularity was supposed to be a reflection of such feeling. The lines vary between tetrameter and pentameter. 25. Halcyon] An appearance of calm and peacefulness. See OED. 26. Hell in ­every Place] The sentiment may be an echo of the words of John Milton’s Satan, who says that hell is a state of mind carried within the individual mind. See Paradise Lost, bk.1: l. 255. Defoe had used a similar idea in the last line of his The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley by Way of Elegy, [Works], 1:118. 27. Men of Notion] Perhaps poets and paint­ers, rather than phi­los­o­phers. Notion in this sense means imagination. See OED.

82

Ser ious R eflections Afflictions lose their Acid Powers, And turn to Joys when join’d to thee. The darkest Article of Life with Peace, Is but the Gate of Happiness; Death in its blackest Shapes can never fright, Thou can’st see Day, beyond his Night; The Smile of Peace, can calm the Frown of Fate. And, Spight of Death, can Life anticipate: Nay, Hell itself, could it admit of Peace, Would change its Nature, and its Name would cease. The Bright Transforming Blessing would destroy The Life of Death, and damn the Place to Joy; The Metamorphosis would be so strange, ’Twould fright the Dev­ils, and make them bless the Change Or ­else the Brightness would be so intense, They’d shun the Light, and flye from thence. Let Heaven, that unknown Happiness, Be what it ­will, ’tis best describ’d by Peace. No Storms without, or Storms within; No Fear, no Danger t­ here, ­because no Sin: ’tis bright essential Happiness, ­Because He dwells within, whose Name is PEACE.28 Who would not sacrifice for thee, All that Men call Felicity! Since Happiness, is but an empty Name, A Vapour without Heat or Flame; But what from thy Original derives, And Dyes with thee by whom it Lives.29

But I return to the Subject of Conversation, from which this Digression is made only to shew that the Fund of agreeable Conversation is, and can only be founded in Virtue; this alone is the ­Thing that keeps a Man always in Humour, and always agreeable. They ­mistake much, who think Religion, or a strict Morality, discomposes the Temper, sowres the Mind,30 and unfits a Man for Conversation. ’tis irrational to 28. Name is PEACE] Possibly an echo of the messianic passage in Isaiah 9:6 announcing the coming of the “Prince of Peace.” 29. Dyes with . . . ​Lives] Prob­ably an echo of Rochester’s poem “Upon Nothing,” which ­concludes with a list of contradictions that “Flow swiftly into thee and in thee end.” See Works, 46. 30. Religion . . . ​sowres the Mind] Defoe along with a number of his contemporaries, most notably Richard Steele, was intent on maintaining that being a Christian was not incompat­ ible with being a gentleman—­a gentleman as the complex of ideas and the code of manners surrounding that idea existed during the period. In his attack on the stage in 1697, Jeremy

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

83

think, a Man c­ an’t be bright, u ­ nless he is wicked;31 It may as well be said, a Man cannot be merry till he is mad, not agreeable till he is offensive, not in Humour till he is out of himself. ‘ ’tis clear to me, no Man can be truly merry, but he that is truly virtuous: Wit is as consistent with Religion, as Religion is with good Manners;32 nor is ­there any ­Thing in the Limitations of Virtue and Religion; I mean, the just Restraints which Religion and Virtue lay upon us in Conversation; that should abate the Plea­sure of it, on the contrary they encrease it: For Example: Restraints from vicious and indecent Discourses: Th ­ ere’s as ­little Manners in ­t hose ­Things, as ­t here is Mirth in them; nor indeed does Religion or Virtue rob Conversation of one Grain of true Mirth: On the contrary, the religious Man is the only Man fully qualify’d for Mirth and good Humour; with this Advantage, that when the vitious and the virtuous Man appear gay and merry, but differ, as they must do, in the Subject of their Mirth, you may always observe the virtuous Man’s Mirth is superior to the other; more suitable to him, as a Man, as a Gentle­ man, as a wise Man, and as a good Man; and generally speaking, the other w ­ ill acknoweldge it; at least, afterward, when his Thoughts cool, and as his Reflections come in. Collier had also seemed to question the concept of the gentleman as he had emerged in Res­ toration comedy. Not a few defenders of the stage accused Collier of a certain crudeness of manner. A few years l­ ater, in 1701, Steele published his Christian Hero: An Argument Proving That No Princi­ples but ­Those of Religion Are Sufficient to Make a ­Great Man, the intent of which was to reconcile the concepts of Chris­tian­ity and the code of a gentleman. Although both Steele and Defoe approved of Collier’s notion of reforming the stage, neither was entirely enthusiastic (Steele particularly) about Collier’s wish to shut it down entirely By 1720, Defoe, as the anonymous author of The Commentator, was arguing that the stage had been successfully reformed. And Steele added to his early reputation by writing plays. In his Review of 29 June 1706, Defoe wrote that religion, especially Protestant Chris­tian­ity, “teaches Men to be Men; or as I would be understood Men of Honour, Men of Compassion, Men of Temper, men of Humanity, and instructs them in ­every ­t hing that’s suited to ­human Society; and therefore ­t hese ­People, who fancy Religion unhinges Men’s Gallantry, are exceedingly mistaken. Th ­ ere is nothing qualifies a man to be a Man of Honour, so much as Religion; the Christian, and the Gentleman are Terms so synonymous, that ’tis very hard to be one with­ out the other.” 31. bright, ­unless . . . ​w icked] It was a commonplace of the time that wit and morality ­were incompatible. Hence young ­women ­were warned against having any contact with witty men ­because they would be immoral and hence dangerous. In his Satyr against Wit (London, 1700), 5, Sir Richard Blackmore commented: Wit does of Virtue sure Destruction make: Who can produce a Wit and not a Rake? Wise Magistrates lewd Wit do therefore hate The Bane of Virtue’s Treason to the State. But during the Restoration and in the early eigh­teenth ­century, wit, which combined cleverness and imagination, was highly prized, and it was not ­until the ­middle of the eigh­ teenth ­century that sensibility replaced it entirely as the major virtue among men. 32. Wit . . . ​good Manners] See the tenth issue of The Spectator, 12 March 1711, in which Addi­ son promises “I s­hall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality.” He remarks on Socrates to the effect that he “brought Philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among Men” and continues, “­shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of the Closest and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-­Tables, and in Coffee-­Houses.”

84

Ser ious R eflections

But what ­shall we do to correct the Vices of Conversation? How ­shall we shew Men the Picture of their own Behaviour? Th ­ ere is not a greater Undertaking in the World, or an Attempt of more Consequence to the Good of Mankind than this; but ’tis as difficult also, as it is useful; and at best I ­shall make but a ­little Pro­ gress in it in this Work; let ­others mend it.

Of unfitting our selves for Conversation. Before I enter upon the Th ­ ing which I call the Immorality of Conversation, let me say a ­little about the many weak and foolish Ways, by which Men strive, as it w ­ ere, to unfit themselves for Conversation. ­Human Infirmities furnish us with several ­Things that help to make us unconversible; we need not study to encrease the Dis­ advantages we lye u ­ nder on that Score: Vice and Intemperance, not as a Crime only, that I should speak of by itself, but even as a Distemper, unfit us for Conversa­ tion; they help to make us cynical, morose, surly, and rude. Vicious ­People boast of their polite Carriage and their nice Behaviour, how gay, how good humour’d,33 how agreeable? for a While it may be so: But trace them as Men of Vice, follow them till they come to Years, and observe, while you live, you never see the Humour last, but they grow fiery, morose, positive, and petulant. An ancient Drunkard is a ­Thing indeed not often seen; ­because the Vice has one good Faculty with it, viz. That it seldom hands them on to old Age; But an ancient and good humour’d Drunkard, I think I never knew. It seems strange, that Men should affect unfitting themselves for Society, and study to make themselves unconversible, whereas their being truly Sociable, as Men, is the ­Thing which would most recommend them, and that to the best of Men, and best answers to the highest Felicity of Life. Let no Man value himself upon being morose and cynical, sour and unconversible, ’tis the Reverse of a good Man; a truly religious Man follows the Rule of the Apostle,34 be Affable, be Courteous, be H ­ umble; in Meekness,35 esteeming e­very Man better than our selves; whereas Conversation now is the Reverse of the Christian Rule; ’tis interrupted with Conceitedness and Affectation, a Pride, esteeming our selves36 better than ­every Man; and that which is worse still, this happens generally, when indeed the 33. good humour’d] The OED defines this as “having a cheerful, amiable, and unruffled dis­ position,” dating this usage from 1662, but in the eigh­teenth ­century, good humor became one of the g­ reat ideals. In some ways it was embodied in the tolerance and even temper of Addison and Steele’s Spectator. Even in the novels of Jane Austen, the word “amiable” is used to summarize this quality in ­people, and as the creator of fictional narrators, Henry Fielding specialized in conveying this feeling. See Stuart Tave, The Amiable Humorist (Chicago: Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1960). 34. Apostle] Saint Paul. 35. be Affable . . . ​in meekness] This is not so much a quote as a common expansion of the injunction in 1 Peter 3:8, “be pitiful, be courteous,” and Peter’s advice (1 Peter 3:15) to answer all who ask about his hope “with meekness and fear.” See also Ephesians 4:2. 36. esteeming . . . ​selves] Paul (Philippians 2:3) preached: “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.”

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

85

Justice of the Case is against us; for where is the Man who thus overruling37 him­ self, is not evidently inferiour in Merit to all about him? Nay, and frequently ­t hose who put most Value upon themselves, have the least Merit to support it. Self-­ Conceit is the Bane of ­human Society, and generally speaking is the Peculiar of ­t hose who have the least to recommend them; ’tis the Ruin of Conversation, and the Destruction of all Improvement; for how should any Man receive any Advan­ tage from the Conversation of ­others, who believes himself qualified to teach them, and not to have Occasion to learn any Th ­ ing from them? Nay, as the Fool38 is generally the Man that is conceited most of his own Wit, so that very Conceit is the Ruin of him; it confirms him a Fool all the Days of his Life, for he that thinks himself a wise Man, is a Fool, and knows it not; nay, ’tis impossible he should continue to be a Fool, if he was but once convinc’d of his Folly. If Fools could their own Ignorance discern, They’d be no longer Fools; ­because ­t hey’d learn.39

It ­will be objected ­here indeed, that Folly and Conceit may be hurtful to Conver­ sation, may rob Men of the Advantage of it, unfit one Side for Conversing, and make it unprofitable, as well as unpleasant to the other; But that this is nothing to the Immorality of Conversation; that Ignorance and Conceit may be an Infirmity, but is not always a Crime; that the Mischief of Mens being Fools is generally their own, but the Mischief of their being Knaves40 is to other ­People, and this is very true. But certainly, egregious Folly merits one Paragraph of Rebuke; perhaps it may touch the Senses of some weak Brethren one time or other, and the ­Labour may not be lost. I never saw a more ­simple, or yet a more furious irreconcileable Quarrel, than once between two of the most empty conceited ­People41 that ever I knew in the 37. overruling] The OED does not give a meaning for “overrule” that would make exact sense of Defoe’s usage. Defoe refers to “Justice” and a “Case,” providing a ­legal context. In the OED, definition 3 refers to prevailing over or dominating, and 5 has “to persuade to a dif­fer­ent opinion, win over; prevail over in spite of an opposing opinion.” Thus the foolish person is likely to convince himself of his superior merit despite the evidence that should persuade him of his inferiority. He overrules the evidence. 38. Fool] Defoe’s longest disquisition on fools appears in section 4 of his Mere Nature Delineated; or, A Body without a Soul (London, 1726), but Roxana’s warning to ­women against marrying fools in her attack upon her first husband is prob­ably his most famous. 39. If Fools . . . ​learn] In quoting himself h ­ ere from Reformation of Manners, Defoe is also repeating himself. See chapter 2, note 143 in this edition. 40. knaves] For the dichotomy between fools and knaves, see chapter 2, note 144 in this edition. 41. two . . . ​conceited ­People] Duels ­were not uncommon in Defoe’s time, but this account bears some resemblance to the famous duel between the James Douglas, Fourth Duke of Hamilton, and Charles Mohun, Fourth Baron Mohun, on 5 November 1712. The encounter left Hamilton dead on the spot and Mohun dead of his wounds ten days ­later. Mohun’s sec­ ond, Col­o­nel George Maccartney, fled to the Continent. The duel was remarkable for the vio­lence of the encounter, the DNB (13:552–554) stating from a con­temporary source that the two fought “like enraged lions.” Defoe wrote about it in his Review [9]:67 and perhaps in a pamphlet ascribed to him by John Robert Moore: A Strict Enquiry into the Circumstances of a Late Duel (London, 1713).

86

Ser ious R eflections

World; and it was upon one calling the other Fool, which on both Sides was unhappily very true; they fought upon the Spot, but w ­ ere parted by the Com­pany; they challeng’d, and could not meet, their Friends getting Notice of it; in short, it ruin’d them both; they made new Appointments, and at last deceiv’d their Friends, and fought again; they ­were both wounded, and one died, the other fled the Country, and never return’d. The first own’d he was a Fool, which was indeed some Diminu­ tion of his Folly. I say, he knew himself to be a Fool, but could not bear the other should tell him so, who was more a Fool than himself. The other boldly asserted his own Capacities to be infinitely greater than they ­were, and despised the first to the last Degree, who indeed, if he had not more Wit, had more Modesty than the other; but both like Fools fought about Nothing, for such indeed the Question about their Wit might very well have been call’d. But, it is true, ­after all, the Want of a conversible Temper, if from a Want or Defect of Sense may be an Infirmity, not an Immorality; that is to say, the Cause is not so in itself, but it may be so in its Consequences, that way also. For the Conversation of Fools is Vanity in the Abstract.42 I might h ­ ere indeed find Subject for a large Tract, upon the infinite Diversity of Fools, and by consequence the won­ drous Beauty of their Conversation: I have on this Occasion reckon’d up a List of about Seven and Thirty several Sorts of Fools,43 besides Solomon’s Fool,44 whom I take to be the wicked Fool only; t­hese I have diversified by their Tempers and Humours, and in the infinite Variety of their Follies of several Sorts, in e­ very one of which they rob themselves, and all that keep them Com­pany of the Felicity of Conversation, t­ here being nothing in them but Emptiness, or a Fulness of what is Ridicu­lous, and only qualified to be laught at, or found Fault with. I have likewise describ’d some of their Conversation, their vain Repetitions, their Catch-­Words, their Laughings and Gestures, and adapted them to make the World merry. I have Thoughts of r­ unning it on into foreign Characters,45 and 42. For the Conversation . . . ​Abstract] The italics may indicate that this is a quotation or that Defoe wished to emphasize this point. It is not entirely clear if the phrase “in the Abstract” is intended to mean the essence of vanity, the epitome of vanity, or both. See OED. Defoe is prob­ably alluding distantly to Ecclesiastes 1:2, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vani­ ties of vanities; all is vanity.” 43. List of . . . ​Fools] See Defoe’s Mere Nature Delineated, 89–112, for such a list and a discus­ sion of the vari­ous types. 44. Solomon’s Fool] Defoe mentions “Solomon’s Fools” in his Review (for example, 8:11; 8:72) as t­ hose who hate instruction and judge without having any basis for judgment. Th ­ ere are a number of comments on fools in the Book of Proverbs, ascribed to Solomon in the opening verse. Th ­ ese include Proverbs 12:15, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth to counsel is wise”; Proverbs 18:2, “A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself”; Proverbs 7:22, “fools hate knowledge”; and one of Defoe’s favorites, Proverbs 27:22: “Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet ­w ill not his foolishness depart from him.” 45. foreign Characters] See Mere Nature Delineated, 100–116, for a view of the folly of con­ temporary Eu­rope. Identifying par­tic­u ­lar (negative) characteristics of the ­peoples of Eu­rope and Asia was typical of poetic satires, from the Restoration and into the eigh­teenth ­century, including ­t hose by Rochester and Defoe.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

87

describe French, Spanish, Portuguese Fools, and Fools of Rus­sia, China, and the East Indies: But as this is something remote from the Design in Hand, which is more serious, and done on a much better View, and likewise of an unmea­sur­able Length, like the weighty Subject it is upon (for Folly is a large Field46) so I refer it to another Opportunity. The Truth is, that Part of Conversation which I am now to speak of, or which I mean by what I have said upon this Subject, is the weighty and serious Part, and is not the meer common Talk, or a Conversation which Fools are capable of; ’tis exercised in a solid and well temper’d Frame, and when regulated as it ­ought to be, by Virtue, and good Morals, is quallified to make Mankind happy in the Enjoyment of the best ­Things, and of the best Com­pany, and therefore, the Evils that creep into, and corrupt this Part of our Conversation, are of the more fatal Quality, and worth our exposing, that ­People may see and shun them, and that Conversation may be restored among us to what it should be.

I. Of the Immorality of Conversation in General. SOME may object against the Term the Immorality of Conversation, and think the Word improper to the Subject; but to save any Critick the dearly beloved ­Labour of cavilling in Favour of ill Manners and unbecoming Behaviour, I s­ hall explain myself before I go any farther. I call Conversation immoral, where the Discourse is indecent, where ’tis irreli­ gious or profane, where ’tis immodest or scandalous, or where ’tis slanderous and abusive. In t­ hese and such Cases, loqui est agere,47 thus talking lewdly, or talking profanely, is an immodest Action. Such is the Power of Words that Mankind is able to act, as much Evil by their Tongues, as by their Hands; the Ideas that are formed in the Mind from what we hear,48 are most peircing and permanent; and the Force of Example in this Case, is not more power­ful than the Force of Argument. Some of the worst Sins are not to be committed but by the Tongue, as the Sin of Blasphemy, speaking Treason against the Majesty of God, Cursings and 46. for Folly is a large Field] Set in italics, this might be assumed to be a quotation or a prov­ erb. It reflects the sentiments of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2, but it is neither t­ here nor Proverbs that has much to say about folly and fools. Of course, Erasmus devoted an entire volume to the subject in his Praise of Folly. ­There was an En­glish translation of this work by 1549. Defoe may have had no direct knowledge of Erasmus’s work, but he was certainly familiar with the tradition of paradox to which it gave birth. 47. loqui est agere] To speak is to act. This concept became particularly impor­tant during ­trials for treason during the 1690s. Chief Justice Holt argued that treason might be discov­ ered not only in actions but also in spoken words against the government. See John, Lord Campbell, The Lives of the Chief Justices of ­England 5 vols. (Northport, New York: Edward Thomson, 1894), 3:165. 48. Ideas . . . ​what we hear] In Mere Nature Delineated, Defoe considered the ability of the deaf to think and function a kind of miracle precisely ­because of this.

88

Ser ious R eflections

Imprecations among Men, Lies, Slanders, and a vast Variety of petty Excursions, which are grown modish by Custom,49 and seem too small to be reproved. We are ­here in ­England, ­after many Years Degeneracy, arrived to a Time, wherein Vice is in general discountenanc’d by Authority; God in Mercy to the Age has inspir’d our Government with a Resolution to discourage it: The King50 now, his Wars are over,51 and his foreign Enemies allow him some Rest,52 ­will, we hope, declare War against this Domestick E ­ nemy. The late Queen Mary,53 of heavenly Memory, for her Piety and blessed Example,54 appear’d in her Time gallantly in the Cause of Virtue: Magistrates ­were encourag’d to punish Vice,55 new Laws56 made to restrain it, and Justice seem’d to be at Work to reclaim it: But what can Kings, or Queens, or Parliaments 49. modish by Custom] In one of his earliest works, An Essay upon Proj­ects, 92–96, Defoe devoted a section to the evil of swearing and portrayed it as something that had become customary in ordinary En­glish conversation. 50. King] George I, though it may have referred originally to William III. Defoe’s readers in 1720 would have applied his words to pre­sent events, and whenever he may have written this passage, his willingness to allow it to stand suggests that he allowed a reading as if it applied to current events. 51. his Wars are over] Since Serious Reflections was published on 6 August 1720, prob­ably a reference to the end of the ­Great Northern War in a series of treaties between 1719 and early 1720. Since this war mainly concerned George’s connection with Hanover and its disputes with Sweden and Rus­sia, Defoe may have been specifying ­t hese as “his Wars.” During 1718, ­England was also at war with Spain. For the peace treaties concluding the G ­ reat Northern War, see Ragnhild Hatton, George I, Elector and King (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 240–243. On the other hand, this passage might have originally referred to Wil­ liam III a­ fter the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 had ended the war with France. William was notable for encouraging moral reform in ­England. 52. some Rest] George I and his government continued to worry about the growing power of Rus­sia ­under Peter the ­Great. By the treaty of Nystad in August 1721, Peter was able to force Sweden to recognize Rus­sia’s gains in the Baltic. If applied to William III, it would have meant that, with the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, William could hope that Louis XIV might abandon his unremitting war against Holland. A new war was to start in 1702. 53. late Queen Mary] Queen Mary died on 28 December 1694. She was only thirty-­two years old. 54. Piety and blessed Example] Adolphus Ward’s article in the DNB (12:1239–1250) notes her “puritanising tendency” inspired by what he called her “fervent pietistic way of looking at the experiences of life.” As part of her religious reforms, she instituted a series of sermons on Sunday. Apparently she was also influential in having John Tillotson appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and in other Church appointments. In his William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Tony Claydon treats Mary’s efforts at reform both as a genuine emanation of her piety but also as part of a po­liti­cal strategy. See especially 90–121. 55. punish Vice] Ward (DNB 12:1248) comments on Mary’s enforcing the laws against vice and immorality. She encouraged the tendencies that led to the founding of the Society for Reformation of Manners during the 1690s. 56. new Laws] Defoe is referring to attempts by the government to control swearing. In 1694 an “Act for the more effectual suppressing Profane Cursing and Swearing” (6 and 7 William III Cap. XI) and in 1697 an “Act for suppressing blasphemy and Profaneness” (10 William III, ca. 32) ­were passed. In his Essay upon Proj­ects (1697), 92–96, Defoe devoted a long section to attacking the practice of cursing, giving a dialogue to illustrate the absurdity of such speech. His objection, he stated, had less to do with religion than with manners: “I am of the opin­ ion, that ­there is nothing so Impertinent, so Insignificant, so Sensless and Foolish, as our vulgar way of Discouse, when mix’d with Oaths and Curses; and I wou’d only recommend a

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

89

do? Laws and Proclamations are weak and useless ­Things, ­unless some secret Influence can affect the Practices of ­t hose whom no Laws can reach. To make Laws against Words, would be as fruitless as to make a shelter against the Lightning;57 ­t here are so many Inlets to the Breach, that the Informers would be as numerous58 as the Criminals, and the Trespass as frequent as the Minutes we live in. Conversation has received a general Taint, and the Disease is become a Charm; the Way to cure it, is not by forcible Restraints on Particulars, but by some general Influence on the publick Practice; when a Distemper becomes pleasant to a Patient, he is the harder to be cur’d; he has a sort of Aversion to the Remedy ­because he has none to the Disease. Our modern P ­ eople have such a Passion for the Mode,59 that if it be but the Fashion to be Lewd, they ­will scandalize their Honour, debauch their Bodies, and damn their Souls to be Gentile;60 if the Beaux61 talk Blasphemy, the rest w ­ ill set up for Athiests, and deny their Maker, to l­ittle Consideration to our Gentlemen, who have Sense and Wit enough, and wou’d be asham’d to speak Nonsense in other ­t hings, but value themselves upon their Parts” (92–93). 57. shelter against the Lightning] U ­ ntil the invention of the lightning rod, ­after 1750, t­ here was no adequate protection against lightning. Crusoe would be a good commentator on this m ­ atter, since he was concerned that lightning might ignite the gun powder that he had in his cave and cause an explosion. He moved a large part of his supply to the grotto near his Country House by way of protecting himself. Although by 1720 some experimenters thought they had heard and seen something like lightning and thunder in electricity, theories varied from t­hose of John Mayow (1641–1679), who maintained that they w ­ ere equivalent to gunpowder explod­ ing—­a combination of nitrogen and sulfur particles in the air igniting, to ­those who believed that magnetism was involved. In a letter to the Royal Society dated 16 July 1708 reporting a storm with violent lightning, Orlando Bridgman noted that “tho’ t­ here have been a ­great many pretty Conjectures by learned Men to explain the Effects of Lightning, yet ­every remarkable new Accident of that kind furnishes fresh Difficulties.” Philosophical Transactions, The Royal Society of London, 70 vols. (London, 1710; repr., New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965), 26:139. 58. Informers . . . ​numerous] During the reigns of Charles II and James II, ­there ­were numer­ ous informers who earned a living by reporting on illegal meetings of Dissenters. Similarly, during the reign of William and Mary and then William III, informers reported ­those violat­ ing the acts that attempted to regulate morality. The “Black Lists” published by the Society for Reformation of Manners attempted to expose ­those violators. But such lists ­were mainly aimed at the lower ­orders and criminals. Hence a copy of a list at Harvard University Library for 1698 is a broadside with the names of 752 persons and with initials a­ fter each name, such as W for whore, B for bawd, DP for disorderly person, DH for disorderly ­house, and PP for pickpocket. In his Poor Man’s Plea, in Relation to . . . ​Reformation of Manners, and Suppressing Immorality in the Nation (London, 1698), Defoe has his speaker complain that such lists are never used to attack the rich and power­ful. Defoe’s own poems on this subject, such as Reformation of Manners, attempted to remedy this situation. For viewing a copy of a Black List, see http://­w ww​ .­eebo​.­chadwyck​.­com​/­search. For unhappiness with some of the actions of the reformers during the reign of William III, see Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution, 120. 59. the Mode] As in Dryden’s comedy, Marriage A-­la-­Mode, the prevailing fashion in a world of changing fashions. 60. Gentile] Genteel or seeming to live according to a manner associated with a superior group of ­people. Genteel was reintroduced into ­England from France at the end of the six­ teenth c­ entury, and Defoe’s spelling reflects the usual En­glish spelling during the seven­ teenth ­century. See OED. 61. the Beaux] The OED in its definition of a beau stresses the excessive attention to clothes and manners associated with the word, but during the end of the Restoration and eigh­teenth

90

Ser ious R eflections

be counted witty in the Defence of it; when our Tradesmen62 would be thought wise, and make themselves appear nice and learned in their Conversation, noth­ ing ­will satisfy them but to criticise upon ­Things sacred; run up to discuss the Inscrutables63 of Religion; search the Arcana64 even of Heaven itself: The Divin­ ity of the Son of God,65 the hypostatick Union,66 the rational Description of the State Everlasting, nay, the Demonstrations of undemonstrable Th ­ ings,67 are the common Subject of their fancied affected Capacities. Hence come Heresies and Delusions, Men affecting to search into what is impossible they should clearly discover, learn to doubt, b ­ ecause they cannot describe, and deny the Existence ­because they cannot explain the Manner of what c­ entury the word applied to almost any young gentleman who followed con­temporary fash­ ions. The notion of t­hese fash­ion­able gentlemen as being composed of l­ittle beyond their clothes was given its classic form in Swift’s Tale of a Tub. 62. our Tradesmen] Defoe thought that too many tradesmen ­were seduced into following new fashions in their styles of living as well as their beliefs. He expressed his dismay about such be­hav­ior in his Compleat En­glish Tradesman, 1:106–107. 63. Inscrutables] ­Those aspects of existence and belief that are not subject to proof or about which ­t here is insufficient knowledge. The OED provides only one use of this word as a noun before giving an example from Defoe’s The Storm (1704): “The Winds are some of ­those Inscrutables of Nature, in which humane Search has not been able to come up with any dem­ onstration.” Defoe used this word in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 61, in dismissing the utility of trying to understand the role of the Devil in God’s governance of the world: “But to leave arguing upon Inscrutables, let us then come to the Narration of Facts.” 64. Arcana] Mysteries. See OED. Defoe used this word frequently. He opened his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 1, with the statement, “Of all the Arcana of the Invisible World, I know no One Th ­ ing about which more has been said and less understood, than this of Apparitions.” 65. Divinity of the Son of God] The Salter’s Hall Conference of 1719 (see chapter 3, note 141 and chapter 4, note 27 in this edition) was about the Trinity and not about the divinity of Jesus, but the split among the Dissenters gave impetus to the development of Unitarianism, which denied the divinity of Jesus. In 1702, Thomas Emlyn, who described himself as a “Uni­ tarian,” was imprisoned for his religious views. 66. hypostatick Union] E ­ ither the ­union of the divine and the ­human natures in the person of Christ (hypostasis), or the consubstantial u ­ nion of the three divine persons known as the Trinity. This concept of the divine and the ­human was introduced by Saint Cyril of Alexan­ dria and was a­ dopted by the Church at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. See The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 4th ed., 20 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable, 1810), 9:47. 67. Demonstration of undemonstrable ­Things] As the following paragraph makes clear, Defoe was still concerned with the controversy over the Trinity that took place at Salter’s Hall in 1719 and that divided the Dissenters between ­t hose who subscribed to a document stating their belief in the Trinity and ­t hose who refused to sign. Many of t­ hose who refused to subscribe did so out of a dislike of being coerced, but t­ here was also a large group who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity as a relatively late addition to Chris­tian­ity. Defoe felt it was a ­matter of faith and indemonstrable, but held to his belief in the Trinity. In the Review, supplement, November 1704, 1:5–6, he replied to a somewhat skeptical query about the exis­ ­ atter” by maintaining that t­ hose “who ­w ill have nothing in their tence of “Beings besides M Religion, but what is capable of Demonstration, must have but a mean share of Religion.” He wrote a long poem on accepting the mystery of the Trinity in his New ­Family Instructor (1727). For a discussion of Defoe’s attitudes, see Maximillian Novak, “The Deist Offensive during the Reign of George I,” in Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge, ed. Leo Lemay (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 93–108.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

91

they enquire ­after; as if a thorow impossibility of their acting by their Sense upon Objects beyond its Reach, was an Evidence against their Being. Thus ­because the Trinity cannot appear to their Reasoning,68 they oppose their Reasoning to its Real­ity; they ­w ill divest the Son of God of his Divinity, and of the hypostatick Union of the Godhead in the Person of Christ, b ­ ecause they cannot distinguish between the Actions done by him in his Mediatorial Capacity, in Virtue of his Office, and ­those Actions, which he did in Virtue of his Omnipotence and Godhead. This is not an Immorality and Error in Conversation only, or not so much, so as I think it is a Judgment upon it, a Blast from Heaven upon the Arrogance of the Tongue; when proud Men give themselves a Loose to talk Blasphemously to be thought witty, their Maker gives them up to suggest damnable Errors69 till they begin to believe them, and to broach their own wicked Hints, till they by Custom learn to espouse and defend them, as ­Children tell feigned Stories70 till they believe them to be true. If our Town Fopperies ­were vis­i­ble only in the ­little Excursions of Dress and Behaviour, it would be Satisfaction enough for a wise Man, e­ ither to pity or laugh at them; but when Wit is set on work, and Invention rack’d to find out Methods, how they may be more than superlatively wicked,71 when all the Endowments of the Mind and Helps of Art, with the Accomplish­ ments of Education are rang’d in Battel against Heaven, and joyn’d in Confeder­ acy to make Mankind more wicked, than ever the Devil had the Impudence to desire72 of them; This calls out aloud for the Help of all the Powers of Govern­ ment, and all the Strength of Wit and Virtue to detect and expose it. 68. Trinity . . . ​Reasoning] This opposition between faith and reason may have been inspired by William Whiston (1667–1752). As an eminent writer on scientific ­matters, Whiston suc­ ceeded Isaac Newton as Lucasian Professor at Cambridge University, but he was deprived of his position on 20 October 1710 a­ fter he de­cided that the concept of the Trinity was errone­ ous. Whiston put forward his argument in Primitive Chris­tian­ity Revived (1711). Newton too had strong anti-­trinitarian convictions, but he kept his opinions private; Whiston shouted his to the world. No one appears to have doubted Whiston’s religious sincerity. See DNB, 12:10–14. It may also be pointed out that Saint Augustine, whom he invokes within a few paragraphs (90:24) of this text, begins his On the Trinity (trans. Arthur Haddan [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1873], 1) with an attack on “­those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason.” 69. damnable Errors] For Defoe’s attacks upon ­those whom he regarded as deniers of the trinity and deists, such as William Whiston, John Toland, Thomas Emlyn, and Samuel Clarke, see Paula Backscheider, Defoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 401–403. 70. ­Children . . . ​feign’d Stories] Defoe used similar phrasing in his Essay on the History of Real­ity of Apparitions, 280. Discussing t­ hose who make apparitions up out of nothing more than “Vapors and Cloud,” he attempts to explain why ­people would want to “spread them as Realities.” One reason might involve falling “into that old School-­boy’s Error, of telling the Tale over so often, ’till they believe it to be Truth.” 71. superlatively wicked] In the highest degree. See OED. Defoe uses this phrase in his Po­liti­ cal History of the Dev­il, 230, when, describing the notion of making a contract with the Devil as nonsense, he nevertheless finds it “superlatively wicked.” 72. more wicked . . . ​desire] The idea that mankind was far “more wicked” than the Devil ever expected is one of Defoe’s satiric themes in The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726).

92

Ser ious R eflections

Indeed I had some Thoughts to leave upon Rec­ord a melancholly kind of Gene­ alogy, of this horrid Perfection of Vice, which so increases in our Age, I mean as it re­spects this Nation, in which ’tis too ancient indeed to trace it back to its Origi­ nal; yet since its vis­i­ble Increase has been within the reach of our own Memory, and ’tis as I may say, the ­adopted Child of our Age, we may judge of the Extent of its Influence, and may take a short View of it in Miniature. None indeed can judge of the Extent of its Influence, but such as have conversed with all Sorts of ­People, from the Court to the Plough-­tail,73 where you may too sadly see the Effect of it, in the general debauching both the Princi­ples and Practice of all Sorts and Degrees of this Nation: But it w ­ ill be an ungrateful Task, ’twould lead me to the Characters of Persons, and to write Satyrs upon the Times,74 as well ­t hose past, as ­t hese pre­sent, which indeed is not my Business in this Work; and therefore I throw by some keen Observations which I had made upon this Subject, my Busi­ ness ­here, or at least my Design being rather to instruct the Age, than to reproach it; and as for the Dead, they are gone to their Place. St. Augustin75 observes, de Civitate dei,76 that the Ancients justified their Lib­ erty in all Excesses of Vice, which they practised in ­t hose Times from the Patterns of their Gods,77 that the Stories of the Rapes and Incest of Jupiter, the Lewdness of Venus and Mars, and the like, made ­those Crimes appear less heinous, since ­People had them frequent in the Histories of the Deities they worshipped; and that they must of Necessity be lawful, seeing they ­were practised by ­t hose famous Persons, who they had placed above the Skyes and thought fit to adore.78 73. Court to the Plough-­tail] From the highest order of society to the lowest, from the court­ ier to the common farm laborer. Literally, the plough-­tails are the h ­ andles of the plough. See OED. 74. Satyrs upon the Times] Crusoe suggests h ­ ere that this kind of writing would be futile, but Defoe was a specialist in this kind of satire, especially in his early poetry, in which the figure of “Satyr” is invoked to tell the truth about the age. 75. St. Augustin] In invoking the name of Saint Augustine (354–430) a­ fter his attack upon modern heresies, Defoe was calling upon a writer who had written in defense of the Trinity and who inspired some of the more severe believers in original sin and predestination, among them John Calvin and his followers, and the Jansenists. As a thinker within Chris­ tian­ity, he has been thought by some to be second only to Saint Paul. 76. de Civitate dei] Completed in 426, Of the City of God against the Pagans is usually consid­ ered a spiritual answer to the impending decline of the Roman Empire. Alaric had success­ fully sacked Rome in 410, with wide results for the entire culture of the empire. In invoking this work ­a fter his discussion of “the general debauching both the Princi­ples and Practice of all Sorts and Degrees of this Nation” (90:12–14), Defoe may be describing what he considers to be an equivalent moral decline of Britain. 77. Patterns of their Gods] See The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library [Random House], 1950), 71 (2:27). Augustine complained of the acting out of the sto­ ries of the Gods at Roman festivals: “­t hese scandalous actions which they ­either shamefully and wickedly committed, or more shamefully and wickedly feigned, all this the ­whole city learned in public both by the words and gestures of the actors. They saw that the gods delighted in the commission of ­t hese ­t hings, and therefore believed that they wished them not only to be exhibited to them, but to be imitated by themselves.” 78. famous Persons . . . ​fit to adore] The theory that the ancient Gods ­were actually heroic ­humans who had been transformed into deities was called euhemerism. Defoe may have had this idea most directly from Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World. At any rate, he

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

93

If modern Times have received unhappy Impressions from vicious Courts;79 and Princes, have not taken the needful Caution not to guide to Evil by their Example; instead of turning this into Satyr upon ­t hose that are past, I choose to give it another Turn, which our Kings and P ­ eople too in Time to come may make good Use of, and I hope w ­ ill not be offended at supposing that they ­will do so. 1. To Kings or Sovereigns in ­f uture Reigns; for I am not in this intending the pre­sent Reign;80 it may without Offence be said, that they have a glorious Advantage put into their Hands, to Honour their Maker, and advantage their ­People, to the immortal Glory of their own Memory, by prompting Virtue and discouraging Vice by their happy Examples; by removing the vicious Habits of Conversation from the Court-­Modes, and making Vice unfashion­ able as it is unseemly; why may not the Royal Example go as far to reform a Nation, as it has formerly done to debauch and ruin it? But as this re­spects the (a) Heads of the P ­ eople, I desire to speak it with the Deference of a Subject, and close this Discourse with only saying, that I pray and wish it may be so. 2. To the ­People with more Freedom I apply it thus; Let past Examples be what they ­w ill, the pre­sent Reign encourages no Crime, why then should our modern Conversation receive this Taint? why should we be Voluntiers in the Dev­il’s Ser­v ice?81 while the Power we are u ­ nder gives us neither Precept or Example; if we are Guilty, ’tis by meer Choice, the Crime is all our own, and we are Patterns to our selves. (a)  This was all Written in King William’s Reign82 and refers to that Time. used it extensively in his poem Jure Divino. See Frank Manuel, The Eigh­teenth ­C entury ­Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). For another pos­si­ble ­con­temporary source, see Theo­philus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1672), 2:pt. 3, 68. 79. vicious Courts] Defoe singled out the Court of Charles II for its luxury in his True-­Born En­glishman ([Works], 1:9–10), but as translator of the foreign news, he had to be fully aware of some of the excesses of the Regency in con­temporary France. And the mistresses of George I did not pre­sent an ideal moral spectacle for the British. The ­career of Defoe’s Roxana, who spends a g­ reat deal of time in France as well as in E ­ ngland, reflects some of this critique. But the split time level, which allows her time spent in E ­ ngland to be in both the Restoration and the time of George I, suggests that Defoe was trying to have his satire while denying it too. 80. not . . . ​intending the pre­sent Reign] ­Here as in a number of other places, Defoe is trying to protect himself against any charge of attacking George I or his court. 81. Voluntiers in the Dev­i l’s Ser­v ice] Defoe once more picks up on the theme of some ­people being more evil than the Devil might have expected (see chapter 3, note 72 in this edition). ­These are volunteers in contrast to ­t hose coerced or persuade by the Devil. The OED quotes from Richard Baxter’s The Saint’s Everlasting Rest (1650) the similar phrase, “Voluntiers in the Ser­v ice of the Devil.” And in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 233–234, Defoe described a number of such “Voluntiers” both in ancient times and in the pre­sent. 82. Written in King William’s Reign] Defoe may indeed have written this in praise of King William and in support of the “reformation of manners” of the time (see chapter 3, note 151 in this edition). But in providing this footnote, he was clearly attempting to deflect any charge that he was attacking the pre­sent court.

94

Ser ious R eflections

2. Of reforming the Errors of Conversation. BUT I leave this Part as less grateful, and perhaps not more significant than what I have yet to say upon this Subject; ’tis not so absolutely material to inquire how his Conversation came first to be corrupted, as how it ­shall be reform’d or recov­ ered. The Question before us is, by what Method to retrieve this miserable Defec­ tion, and to bring back the Nation to some tolerable Degree of good Manners, that Morality at least may regain its Authority, and Virtue, and Sobriety be valued again as it o ­ ught to be; this, I say, is a difficult ­Thing to direct. —­Facilis descensus averni: Sed revocare gradum, Hoc opus hic ­labor est. Virg. Æneid. vi. En­glish’d thus: ’Tis easy into Hell to Fall, But to get back from thence is all.83

The Method might be easier prescrib’d than practised; tho’ it cannot be perfectly prescrib’d neither, something may however be said by way of Observation, perhaps other Well-­wishers, may hereafter throw their Mites into this Trea­sury,84 and some zealous Reformers may at last make the Attempt upon t­ hese Foundations. 1. A strict Execution of the Laws against Vice; we have already, and are ­every Day making very good Laws to reform the P ­ eople:85 But the Benefit of Laws 83. Facilis . . . ​a ll] Defoe omits a line from the sibyl’s address to Aeneis and has a number of errors. The full text is: . . . ​facilis descensus Averno: noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Di­tis; sed reucare gradum superasque euadere ad auras hoc opus, hic ­labor est. “easy is the descent to Avernus: night and day the doors of gloomy Dis stands open; but to recall thy steps and pass out to the upper air, this is the task, this the toil!” See Virgil, [Works], trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 2 vols., Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), 1:514–515 (ll. 126–129). Why he chose to use such a doggerel translation of Virgil is difficult to say, especially since Dryden’s elegant translation was easily available, but he had used it before, in his Review for 15 January 1706 (3:25). 84. Throw their Mites . . . ​Trea­sury] An allusion to Mark 12: 41–44. The context of the biblical passage is an attack on the wealthy compared to the poor. Jesus is sitting next to the trea­sury and observes the wealthy put in “much.” “And ­there came a certain poor ­w idow, and she threw in two mites, which makes a farthing.” Jesus then called his disciples about him and said: “Verily I say unto you, that this poor w ­ idow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the trea­sury. For they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all she had, even all her living.” In speaking of the difficulty of reform, Defoe seems to be returning to his view, expressed in his The Poor Man’s Plea (1698), to the effect that reform fell on the poor while the wealthy escaped censure. 85. good Laws to reform the ­People] This would certainly support the idea that this was writ­ ten, in some form, during the reign of William III or even William and Mary, since at that

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

95

consists in the executive Power, which if not vigorously put forth, Laws become useless, and it ­were better they ­were not made at all. I was once ­going to have added ­here a Treatise, entituled, an Essay upon the Insignifi­ cancy of Laws and Acts of Parliament in ­England; but upon second Thoughts, resolving to mingle no Satyr with my serious Observations, I omitted this also. The Deficiency of our Laws, is chiefly in the Want of Laws to reform the Law-­makers,86 that the Wheel of executive Justice might be kept ­going; Of what Use ­else can Laws be? (2) An exemplar87 Behaviour in our Gentry, ­a fter whose Copy the poor ­People generally write;88 not but that I acknowledge it w ­ ill be harder, to reform a Nation, than it would to debauch it; though Virtue should obtain upon Custom;89 and become the Fashion, b ­ ecause Inclination does not stand neuter;90 but it would be a g­ reat Step to this Reformation, if we could all time the government was acting on the impetus given to reform by the Society for Reforma­ tion of Manners. On the other hand, the period during which Serious Reflections was written saw the hysteria caused by the rise of South Sea Com­pany stocks and was hardly one of notable reform. See chapter 6, notes 109 and 110 in this edition. Claydon, in his William III and the Godly Revolution, 119, quotes a proclamation by William III in 1697 complaining that the failure of reform was due to the “magistrates not putting into execution ­t hose good laws which have been made for suppressing and punishing thereof and by the ill example of many in authority.” Claydon sees William’s complaint about the failure of magistrates to enforce the law as part of a larger strategy to gain popularity. In a similar manner, Queen Mary had ­earlier complained about Justices of the Peace who “refused or neglected to discharge the duty of [their] place.” Defoe expressed similar ideas in his Commentator for 6 June 1720 and The Manufacturer, 23 February  1721 (ed. Robert Gosselink [Delmar: Scholars’ Facsimilies, 1978], no. 56). 86. reform the Law-­makers] Defoe’s Reformation of Manners (1702) and More Reformation (1703) reached into the governing structure of ­England, in naming the vices of par­tic­u­lar per­ sons, but in some ways his most daring effort along t­hese lines was his Hymn to the Pillory (1703). 87. exemplar] “Of a kind to become an example” OED 3. Exemplar was used during the sev­ enteenth ­century as equivalent to exemplary. More quotations are provided ­under “exem­ plary” OED 4 ­under the definition, “Of a kind to become an example.” ­There may be some overtones of “Fit to serve as an example or pattern for imitation” (OED 6). U ­ nder exemplar (OED 4) with its reference to exemplary, the OED provides as an example, a passage from Defoe’s Jure Divino, “Exemplar Vertue took the reigns in Hand.” 88. Copy . . . ​poor ­people write] The pattern of be­hav­ior set by the wealthy and power­f ul is usually followed by ­t hose on the lower spectrum of society. Once again, this was the lesson of Defoe’s Poor Man’s Plea. The image is that of the school room in which a specimen of pen­ manship is to be copied by a pupil. See OED IV, 8b. In a more abstract sense, it is any pattern to be imitated. See OED IV, 8c. 89. obtain upon Custom] Win against, prevail over. See OED 4a, c. Defoe used this phrase with “upon” rather than “against” or “over” frequently. See, for example, The Consolidator, 46, though ­here Defoe uses it in the sense of persuade successfully. 90. Inclination . . . ​neuter] Defoe is advancing a series of propositions in quick succession, but the thrust of the argument is that even if somehow virtue became the fashion (in an age dominated by fashions) such a state could hardly be expected to last, since ­human beings are dominated by a tendency ­toward evil. In the first volumes of The ­Family Instructor [Tegg, 16:190], he wrote a number of expositions on original sin descending from Adam and bring­ ing with it for his descendants a propensity t­ oward evil. “Nature,” he wrote, “is vitiated and

96

Ser ious R eflections

joyn to discourage Immorality by Example; That if a Man w ­ ill be drunk or lewd, he s­ hall as a Thief robs a House, do it in the Dark, and be ashamed of it.91 If t­ hese two Heads ­were brought to pass I question not but Reformation would come to such an heighth, that if a poor Man happened to be drunk, he should come and desire the Constable to set him in the Stocks, for fear of worse Punishment; and if a rich Man swore an Oath92 in his Passion, he should send his Footman to the next Justice of the Peace with his Fine, and get a Discharge for fear of being inform’d against and expos’d. In order to the furthering this ­g reat Work, it would be very necessary, if pos­si­ble, to draw the Picture of our modern Vices, to let Mankind see by a true Light what they are d ­ oing, and how ugly a Phyz93 the Mistress they court ­really appears with, when Inclination which paints her in dif­fer­ent Colours is taken off. ’Twill be impossible to bring Vice out of Fashion,94 if we cannot bring Men to an Understanding of what it r­ eally is: But could we prevail upon a Man to exam­ ine his Vice, to dissect its Parts, and view the Anatomy of it; to see how disagree­ able it is to him as a Man, as a Gentleman, or as a Christian; how despicable and contemptible in its highest Fruition, how destructive to his Senses, Estate, and Reputation; how dishonourable, and how beastly, in its publick Appearances, such a Man would certainly be out of Love with it, and be but Mankind once out of love with Vice, the Reformation is half brought to pass. I ­shall not pretend to invade the Province of the Learned, nor offer one Argu­ ment from Scripture or Providence; for I am supposed to be talking to Men that doubt or deny them both. Divinity is not my Talent,95 nor ever like to be my Profes­ sion, the Charge of Priestcraft and Schoolmen would not lie against me; besides, tainted with variety of infirmities; ­whether originally, and by descent from the first man, is not our pre­sent subject, but so it is; t­ here are power­f ul inclinations to do evil in e­ very one, and where t­hese are not governed by the power of our reason or sense of religion, they become our governors and push us upon unavoidable folly.” 91. Thief . . . ​ashamed] See Jeremiah 2:26; Job 24:14. 92. rich Man swore an Oath] Defoe is indulging in utopian thinking ­here, since as noted previously (88:4), the Black List[s] avoided including the rich and power­f ul. He imagines a wealthy man paying a fine voluntarily a­ fter an infraction, though it is clear in the following passage that out of fear of being reported by an informer. According to the act to suppress swearing and cursing, ­t hose above the level of laborers and common seamen and soldiers, who ­were to be fined a shilling for a first offense, ­were supposed to be fined two shillings. 93. Phyz] Face. A colloquial shortening of physiognomy. See OED. 94. Scripture . . . ​out of Fashion] This heavy-­handed irony at a time when religious lit­er­a­ture still commanded the largest attention from the reading public was typical of Defoe. In his Consolidator, 25, very much in this manner, he referred to “that so much ridicul’d Old Leg­ end, call’d Bible.” And in a discussion of charity as a religious duty, in his Review of 11 August 1709 (6:221), he noted ironically that speaking of religion “would be so out of Fashion, so odd, so bizarre, so ungenteel—no Body would mind me.” 95. Divinity . . . ​not my Talent] The narrator becomes Crusoe the sailor once more, at this point in the text, perhaps recalling his inept explanation to Friday of God’s seeming toler­ ance of evil and the Dev­i l.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

97

’tis not the way of talking that the World relishes at this Time; in a Word, talking Scripture is out of Fashion: But I must crave leave to tell my Reader, that if t­ here ­were no God or Providence,96 Devil or ­future State, yet they ­ought not to be Drunken and Lewd, Passionate, Revengeful or Immoral; ’tis so Unnatural, so Unruly, so Ingenteel,97 so Foolish and Foppish, that no wise Man as a Man can justify it so much as to his own Reason, or the Memory of his Ancestors. I suppose my self talking to Men that have nothing to do with God, and desire he should have nothing to do with them; and yet even to such, a vicious Conversation, look’d on without the Gust of Inclination,98 would appear too brutish to be meddled with, if we ­will but choose like Men, not to say like Christians; Virtue and Morality 99 is more agreeable to ­human Nature, more manly than Vice and Intemperance; ’tis more suitable to all the Ends of Life, to the Being of Society, to the publick Peace of Families, as well as Nations. Mankind would rather be virtuous than vicious, if they w ­ ere to choose only for their own Case and Con­ve­nience. Vice tends to Oppression, War and Confusion; Virtue is peaceable and honest; Vice is a Poison to Society, no Man is safe if Men have neither Sobriety or Honesty; for the Inno­ cent ­will be robb’d by the Thief, ravisht by the Lewd, and murther’d by the Drunkard. It might not be a ­needless Digression if I should examine ­here, ­whether Whor­ ing and Drunkenness100 be not the two ­Mother Sins of the Times, the Spring and Original of all our fash­ion­able Vices; I distinguish this ­because other Sins, as Murders, Thefts, Rapes101 and the like, are now come so much in Vogue; we are 96. no God or Providence] Natu­ral Law theorists sometimes argued that the law of nature and reason would or should prevail even if t­ here ­were no God acting immediately and con­ tinually directing the lives of h ­ uman beings: “The law of nature is a dictate of right reason, which points out that an act according as it is or is not in conformity with rational nature, has in it a quality of moral baseness or moral necessity; and that, in consequence, such an act is ­either forbidden or enjoined the author of nature, God.” Hence: “The law of nature, again, is unchangeable—­even in the sense that it cannot be changed by God.” See Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacs Libri Tres, 2 vols., trans. Francis Kelsey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 2:38, 40. 97. Ingenteel] Ungenteel. The OED gives one example of this spelling. 98. Gust of Inclination] For gust the OED 4 gives “Keen relish, appreciation or enjoyment.” In providing three examples of Defoe’s use of this word in vari­ous senses, the OED rightly sug­ gests that it was a word that Defoe used quite often. The somewhat redundant phrase “Gust of Inclination” also appears frequently in Defoe’s writings, most notably when Moll Flanders meets a man at the Cloisters. She has sexual intercourse with and robs this gentleman, who is both drunk and in a state of sexual arousal. Moll (226) moralizes: “­There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting, so ridicu­lous as a Man heated by Wine, and a wicked Gust in his Inclination.” 99. Virtue and Morality . . . ​Society] This theme had broad agreement among writers as dif­ fer­ent as Defoe, Swift, and Shaftesbury, and inculcating it was one of the ideals of The Spectator of Addison and Steele. 100. Whoring and Drunkenness] Although parts of this section may have been written ­earlier than 1720, Defoe had ­t hese as major themes in his Col­o­nel Jack (1722), The ­Great Law of Subordination Consider’d (1724), and Conjugal Lewdness (1727). One of Col­o­nel Jack’s wives becomes what we would call an alcoholic and commits adultery. 101. Murders, Thefts, Rapes] Th ­ ere was a spike in lawlessness a­ fter the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht (1712), when so many soldiers ­were discharged, that lasted into the 1720s—­t he time

98

Ser ious R eflections

content the Laws should be executed for them, but should think it very hard a Man shou’d be hang’d for Whoring, or transported for being Drunk. I would not have any of our Gentlemen think, that my laying the Charge of our Debauchery on the Examples of the Gods,102 has taken off any ­Thing of the Blame from ­those who have industriously propogated the spreading Evil, among their Tenants and Neighbours, by their own vicious Example; and I could turn the ­whole Observation into a Satyr on the manners of our Gentlemen, and describe with what Easiness our Magistrates let fall the Reins of their Authority,103 and connive at the Practice of all manner of Intemperance and Excess among the ­People; with what Eagerness the poor Country-­men are call’d in to be made drunk 104 upon ­every Occasion; with what Contempt any Person is look’d upon ­either in Town or Country, that ­either ­w ill not be drunk, or cannot bear an exces­ sive Quantity of Wine: How our common Mirth105 is fill’d with Songs and Poems, recommending Drunkenness and Lewdness, and rampant Vice rides Riot through the Nation. But as above I avoid Satyr, I ­shall endeavour to treat this foul Subject, in as civil Terms106 as the Case ­w ill bear, and only examine general Con­ versation in par­tic­u­lar Heads, with some vulgar Errors of Behaviour which are crept in, and which seem authorized by Custom.

3. Of Athiestical and Prophane Discourse. GOD Almighty himself is the least beholding to this Age, of any that ever was from the Beginning of Time; for that being arriv’d to a Degree of Knowledge of the writing of Serious Reflections (1720). The text has been emended to “Murders,” chang­ ing the original typography “Mudrers.” 102. Examples of the Gods] See chapter 3, note 226 in this edition. 103. Magistrates . . . ​Authority] For attacks on the failure of magistrates to enforce laws against immorality during the reign of William and Mary and William III, see Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution, 119. 104. Country-­men . . . ​made drunk] Although Defoe does not mention elections specifically, the scene of drunkenness approved by the “Magistrates” evokes some of the scenes of drink­ ing that Defoe satirized in the Review. He complained in the Review of 5 October 1710 (7:329): “Drunk at one Election, drunk at ­every Election; till ’tis as Natu­ral as the Election itself; and of many, you have it plainly told you in down right Rustick, that they ­w ill not vote without it.” In this passage, Defoe pre­sents the same critique of the upper ­orders corrupting the lower ­orders as he did in his Poor Man’s Plea (1698), near the beginning of his ­career as a writer. Some de­cades l­ ater, in 1757, Hogarth’s series of prints depicting elections shows drunkenness seemingly as a way of life on t­ hese occasions. 105. common Mirth] The libertine lyr­ics of the Restoration and the plays of that time spread to the skits put on during the Lord Mayor’s pro­cessions; and song books, such as ­t hose pro­ duced by John Playford and Henry Playford, included drinking and love songs. The same was true of Thomas D’Urfey’s collection Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, which appeared in six volumes between 1719 and 1720. 106. foul subject . . . ​civil Terms] This stance of having to purify a text with more accept­ able language is reminiscent of the “editor” of Moll Flanders’s narrative, who, in introduc­ ing the work, claims that he had to change the text to clean up Moll’s foul language and some of her subject m ­ atter. See Moll Flanders, ed. G. A. Starr (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

99

superior to all that went before us, or at least fancying it to be so. Whereby the greater Glory might accrew to himself the Author of all Wisdom, that very Gift, the brightest of all the heavenly Blessings, is made use of to put the greatest Con­ tempt upon his Majesty that Mankind is capable of, to deny his Essence: Such an Affront that the Dev­ils themselves never had the Impudence to suggest to the World, till they found Man arriv’d to a Degree of Hardness fit for something never done before. All the Heathen Nations in the World came short of this; the most refin’d Phi­los­o­phers107 own’d a first Cause108 of all ­Things, and that some­ thing was superior, whose Influence govern’d, and whose being was Sacred and to be Ador’d. The Devil himself, who is allow’d to be full of Enmity against the supreme Being, has often set up himself to be worshipped as a God, but never prompted the most barbarous Nations to deny the Being of a God;109 and ’tis thought that even the Devil himself believ’d the Notion was too absurd to be imposed upon the World. But our Age is even with him for his Folly; for since they cannot get him to joyn in the Denial of a God, they w ­ ill deny his Dev­ilship110 too, and have neither one nor other. ’Tis worth Observation, a­ fter the most convincing Arguments that Nature and Reason can produce for the Existence of a Deity, what weak, foolish, ridicu­lous Shifts the most refin’d of our Atheistical Disputants111 fly to in Defence of their Notion; with what senseless Pains they ­Labour to reason themselves into an Opin­ ion, which their own Constitution, Nature and way of Living gives the Lie to, ­every Moment; with how ­little Consistency they solve all the other Phœnomena112 of 107. most refin’d Phi­los­o­phers] See Augustine, City of God, 348, where he discusses the cre­ ation of the world by God: “For, though the voices of the prophets wee s­ ilent, the world itself, by its well-­ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearances of all vis­i­ble ­t hings, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has been created, and also that it could not have been created save by god, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible.” Augus­ tine dismisses the argument of the Epicureans the effect that the world is “eternal and with­ out beginning” as well as t­hose of the Neo-­Platonists who maintained that although God may have created the world, he did not stay about to regulate it. 108. first cause] Saint Thomas Aquinas offered as his first proof for the existence of God the concept of motion: “Therefore, what­ever is moved must be moved by another. . . . ​Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, moved by no other; and this every­one understands to be God.” Basic Writings, ed. Anton Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), 1:22 (Q2. art. 3). In the Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 182–183, Crusoe is able to convince Friday of a first cause with none of the difficulty he was to have in explaining the relationship between God and the Dev­il: “Nature assisted all my Argument to Evidence to him, even the Necessity of a g­ reat first Cause and over-­ruling governing Power; a secret direct­ ing Providence, and of the Equity, and Justice of paying Homage to him that made us.” 109. deny the Being of a God] In his A System of Magick, Defoe makes almost the same state­ ment. Satan could never conceive that the denial of the existence of God could be believed by the humanity he was attempting to corrupt. Hence it was not originally part of his plan to lead them ­toward evil. 110. Denial . . . ​Dev­i lship] For the relationship between the denial of the existence of God and the Devil, see Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 20. 111. Atheistical Disputants] Among contemporaries suspected of atheism ­were John Toland (1670–1722) and Anthony Collins (1676–1729). 112. Phœnomena] John Harris states of “PHAENOMENON” that “in Natu­ral Philosophy, [it] signifies any Appearance, Effect, or Operation of a Natu­ral Body, which offers its self to the

100

Ser ious R eflections

Nature, and Creation; that when in all other Points they are capable of arguing strenuously, and are not to be satisfied but with Strength of Reason and sound Argument; h ­ ere they admit Sophisms, delusive Suppositions, and miserable Shams and Pretences to prevail upon their own Judgments. This is touch’d at in the follow­ ing Lines upon the System of Prometheus, which I could not omit upon this Occa­ sion, relating to the Heathens Ignorance in the ­great Doctrine of first ­Causes. The ­Great Promethean Artist,113 Poets say,114 First made the Model of a Man in Clay Contriv’d the form of Parts, and when he had done, Stole vital Heat from the Prolifick115 Sun: But not a Poet tells us to this Day, Who made Prometheus first, and who the Clay, Who gave the g­ reat Prolifick to the Sun, And where the first productive Work begun.116

Also Epicurus117 his Phylosophy ­w ill satisfy some P ­ eople, who fancies the World was made by a strange fortuitous Conjunction of Atoms, without any pre-­ existent Influence, or without any immediate Power, which Mr. Creech118 very well translates thus: Consideration and Solution of an Enquirer into Nature.” Lexicon Technicum: or, An Universal En­glish Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1704), sig. 5 U3. One of Aquinas’s proofs for the existence of God is the sense of order and governance in the world: “some intelligent being exists by whom all natu­ral ­things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.” Basic Writings, 1:23. 113. Promethean Artist] Defoe’s account of Prometheus’s making man out of clay and stealing heat from the sun to give him life is in accord with standard mythological accounts, such as François Antoine Pomey’s The Pantheon, first published in Latin in 1654, and Andrew Tooke’s adaptation of that work that first appeared in En­g lish in 1698. Defoe was familiar with Tooke’s work. See Andrew Tooke, The Pantheon (London, 1713; repr., Garland, 1976), 362–365. 114. Poets say] See, for example, Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Miller, Loeb Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 1:8–9 (ll. 82–83). 115. Prolifick] The OED has this word only as an adjective, but it might be defined ­here as productive power and influence. 116. The ­Great . . . ​begun] Defoe composed this poem and used it in a number of works writ­ ten during the 1720s. It first appeared in Defoe’s Continuation of the Letters of a Turkish Spy (London, 1718), 219–220 and is essentially an argument for the existence of God from ­human ignorance of the nature of a first cause for the universe. For Defoe’s use of this poem else­ where, see, for example, The History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, in the Several Arts and Sciences (London, 1727), 83. 117. Epicurus] Epicurus (ca. 341–271 b.c.e.) was the founder of a school of philosophy that placed an emphasis upon higher forms of plea­sure, upon an interpretation of the world as governed by the chance meetings of atoms, and upon death as a release from earthly cares involving no terrifying afterlife of punishment. See Wilhelm Windelband, History of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Herbert Cushman (New York: Scribner’s, 1924), 319–329. 118. Mr.  Creech] Thomas Creech (1659–1700) translated Titus Lucretius Carus’s De Rerum Natura in 1682. Extraordinarily well thought of and popu­lar, this work gave Creech a consid­ erable reputation as a poet and translator. It was advertised on the title page as being an exposition of the thought of Epicurus, and Defoe was likely to have gotten his knowledge of

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

101

But some have dreamt of Atoms strangely hurl’d, Into the decent Order of the World, And so by Chance combin’d, from whence began The Earth, the Heaven, the Sea, and Beast, and Man.119

To which I crave leave to subjoin one Complement, by way of Confutation of this Folly; Forgetting first that something must bestow, Existence on ­those Atoms that did so.120

The Arguments for the Existence of a Deity, are so many, so nicely handled, and so unanswerable, that ’tis ­needless to attempt any ­Thing that Way, no Man in his Wits needs any further Demonstration of it, than what he may find within himself; nor is it any Part of the Work I am upon, I have only a few Th ­ ings to ask of our modern Atheists. 1. ­Whether their more serious Thoughts do not reflect upon them in the very Act, and give the Lie to their Arguments. My Lord Rochester,121 who was arriv’d to an extraordinary Pitch in this Infernal Learning, acknowledg’d it Epicureanism through Creech’s translation. Creech’s subsequent translation of Horace in 1684 was far less successful. 119. But . . . ​Man] We have not been able to find the first line of this passage in Creech’s trans­ lation. Defoe may have been quoting from memory or deliberately summarizing while retaining Creech’s choice of words: “strange,” “atoms,” “hurled.” The last three lines are almost an exact match, and Defoe has the same rhyme scheme for the last four lines. But Lucretius has a number of similar passages. The last three lines are almost an exact match, and Defoe has the same rhyme scheme for the last four lines. But Lucretius has a number of similar passages. See, for example, Titus Lucretius Carus, His Six Books of Epicurean Philosophy, trans. Thomas Creech, 3rd ed. (London, 1683), 65 (2:1056–1063): Who can imagine ­t here should only rise Our single Earth, our Air, and our Skies; Whilst all the other ­Matter scatter’d lies? Especially, since ­t hese from chance arose; When the unthinking Seeds, by vari­ous blows, Now this now that way mov’d, at last ­were hurl’d Into the decent order of this World; And made fit Combinations: whence began The Earth, the Heaven, the Sea, and Beast and Man. See also Lucretius, Of the Nature of ­Things, Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ versity Press, 1982), 177. 120. Forgetting . . . ​so] This couplet is part of the full poem by Defoe, eight lines of which are presented above, 98:5–12. 121. Lord Rochester] John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the model of the libertine wit for the Restoration, experienced a deathbed conversion to Chris­tian­ity. Gilbert Burnet, an Anglican Bishop, recorded his conversations with Rochester on religious subjects during his final days and hours and his conversion in his Some Passages in the Life and Death of the Right Honorable John, Earl of Rochester (London, 1680).

102

Ser ious R eflections

on his Death Bed; the Sense Nature has upon her of the Certainty of this ­great Truth, ­w ill give some Convulsions at so horrid an Act. Nature pays Homage with a trembling Bow, And Conscious Men but faintly disallow, The secret Trepidation racks the Soul, And while he says, no God, replies, Thou Fool.122

2. I would ask the most confident Atheist, what Assurance he has of the Negative, and what a Risque123 he runs if he should be mistaken? This we are sure of, if we want Demonstration124 to prove the Being of a God, they are much more at a Loss for a Demonstration to prove the Negative.125 Now no Man can Answer it to his Prudence, to take the Risque they run, upon an uncertain supposititous Notion; for if t­ here be such a Th ­ ing as a first 126 Cause, which we call God, they have very l­ ittle Reason to expect much from him, who have made it their Business to affront him by denying his Existence. Nor have they acted in their Denial like wise Men, for they have not used so much as the Caution of good Manners, but as if they w ­ ere as sure of his Non-­entity, as of the strongest Demonstration, they have been witty upon the Th ­ ing, and made a jest of the Supposition, turn’d all M ­ atters 122. Nature . . . ​Fool] This quatrain is taken from Defoe’s “The Storm. An Essay,” a work orig­ inally appended to An Elegy on the Author of the True-­Born-­Englishman (1704), and repub­ lished in [Works], 2:98, He quotes the last two line elsewhere in his writings, for example, A System of Magick, 237. Defoe is echoing Psalm 14:1 “The fool hath said in his heart, ­There is no God. They are currpt.” If the use of poetry in this way appears slightly odd to modern read­ ers, it is noteworthy that Defoe’s teacher, Charles Morton, also used bits of verse to summa­ rize an argument. 123. Risque] This argument viewing the ac­cep­tance of religion as a wager is similar to that of Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). The idea is that one bets on the possibility of a God and Heaven as a relatively minor activity in relation to the reward (“an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss”) that might be won and the risk that one might purchase eternal damnation by refusing to choose to believe. In Pascal’s view, ­human beings have to wager one way or another. See Blaise Pascal, Pensées and the Provincial Letters, trans. Thomas M’Crie and W. F. Trotter (New York: Random House [Modern Library], 1941), 82 (233; 418). 124. Demonstration] In his Lexicon Technicum, sig. Ff1v, John Harris defines this word as “a Chain of Arguments depending on one another, and founded primarily on first and self-­ evident Propositions established and proved from them, and at last ending the invincible Proof of the ­t hing to be demonstrated at the Conclusion.” Such proofs depended on the logi­ cal method propounded by Aristotle and still influential in Defoe’s day, especially in theo­ logical disputes, though writers such as Harris w ­ ere more involved in scientific evidence and proof. 125. prove the Negative] The notion that a negative could not be proven was commonly believed, but not true. In Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, 2 vols. (London, 1738), sig. 7C2, it is asserted that a negative statement must be changed into a positive statement to be proved. 126. first Cause] The argument for God as the first cause has its basis mainly in scholasticism as systemized by Saint Thomas Aquinas. See Aquinas, Basic Writings, ed. Anton Pegis, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1945), 1:105–115 (1, question 19, 1–12).

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

103

of Faith into Ridicule, burlesqu’d upon Religion it self, and made Ballads and Songs on the Bible; thus Rochester has left us a long lewd Song, begin­ ning thus: Religion’s a Politick Cheat Made up of many a Fable, Ne’re trou­ble the Wise or the ­Great, But only amuses the Rabble.127

Now, I am not in this Discourse entring into any of the Arguments in t­hese ­grand Questions on one side or other, that would be to make this Work a Collec­ tion of Polemicks; nor am I Casuist enough128 for such a Work; but I am observ­ ing or remarking upon the Wickedness of the treating ­t hese Subjects with Levity and Ignorance in the common Road of Conversation. Methinks t­hese Gentlemen act with more Courage than Discretion; for if it should happen at last, that ­t here should be a God, and that he has the Power of Rewards and Punishments in his Hand, as he must have or cease to be Almighty, they are but in an ill Case. If it should so fall out, as who can tell, But ­there may be a God, a Heaven, a Hell, 127. Rochester . . . ​R abble] This “lewd Song” was actually by John Vaughan (1639–1713). Called Lord Vaughan from 1667 and Earl of Carberry ­a fter 1686, he was described to Sam­ uel Pepys as “one of the lewdest fellows of the age” (see Diary, ed. Robert Latham and Wil­ liam Matthews, 11 vols. [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970–83], 8:532–533). The poem preaches a materialist form of libertinism. Many poems ­were ascribed to Rochester that ­were, in fact, written by his contemporaries, and Defoe may have owned a manuscript with such an ascription. The “beginning” is somewhat dif­fer­ent from that provided by Defoe, but his discussion of a type of poetry that ridiculed religion describes the ­actual beginning: ­There’s no such Th ­ ing as good or Evill, But that which do’s please, or displease, ­There’s no God, Heav’n, Hell or a Dev­i ll, ’Tis all one to debauch, or to be Civill: ­There’s no virtue but Health, Nor no Vice but disease. Religion’s a politic Cheat, Made up of a g­ reat many Fables, Forbidding good Wyne, and good Meat, Design’d to wheedle the Rabble: Ne’re Trou­bles the wise, nor the ­Great. . . . We owe this information to Professor John O’Neil’s unparalleled knowledge of Restora­ tion court poetry. 128. Casuist enough] This is reminiscent of Crusoe’s reaction to Friday’s difficult question as to the reason that God does not “kill the Dev­il.” Crusoe notes that he was “ill enough qualified for a Casuist, or a Solver of Difficulties,” Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 259. For a discussion of casuistry, or ways of solving difficult ethical and religious prob­lems not always covered by specific religious injunctions, see George Starr, Defoe and Casuistry (Prince­ton: Prince­ton University Press, 1971).

104

Ser ious R eflections

Mankind had best consider well for fear, T’shou’d be too late when their M ­ istakes appear.129

Nor do they in my Opinion discover any ­g reat Wit in it; ­t here is if I might pass for a Judge, something flat, something that shocks the Fancy, in all the Satyr upon Religion that ever I saw; as if the Muse ­were not so much an Atheist as the Poet,130 but bauks the Hint,131 and could not favour a blasphemous Flight with so much Freedom and Spirit that at other Times it has shown; which is a Notice that t­ here is a tacit Sense of the Deity,132 though they pretend to deny it lodg’d in the Understanding, that it is not stifled without some Difficulty, and strug­g les hard with the Fancy,133 when the Party strives to be more than ordi­ nary Insolent with his Maker. In the next Place as ’tis one of the worst Immoralities of Conversation when it is prophane, so Blasphemy is the Extream of Prophaneness; you cannot come into Com­pany with an Atheist, but you have it in his common Discourse; he is always putting some Banter or foolish Pun upon Religion, affronting the invisible Power, or ridiculing his Maker; all his Wit runs out into it, as all Diseases run, into the Plague in a Time of Infection,134 and you must have Patience to hear it or quarrel with him.

129. If . . . ​appear] This quatrain by Defoe is from his poem The Storm. An Essay, which was originally appended to his An Elegy on the Author of the True-­Born-­Englishman (London, 1704), and was included in his Second Collection of the Writings of the True Born En­glishman ([Works, 2:98] 1705). See Defoe, Novels and Miscellaneous Works, 7 vols. (London: Bohn Library, 1855), 5:419. 130. Muse . . . ​Poet] Defoe suggests that in ­these satires upon religion ­there appears to be a certain lack of poetic inspiration. As a g­ reat admirer of Rochester, Defoe may have felt that Vaughan’s poem was not equal to the level of poetic achievement that he expected from Rochester. 131. bauks the Hint] Checks or hinders the moment of inspiration. See OED. Bauks is an old spelling of balks. Defoe is arguing that poets attempting to write blasphemous poems always find themselves with a lack of inspiration and produce bad poetry. 132. tacit Sense of the Deity] This suggests that despite his tendency to agree with John Locke on the lack of innate ideas and the importance of experience, Defoe ­either believed that the knowledge of God was an exception or felt strongly that Locke’s argument for the existence of a God based on ideas of “excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary” along with what was “agreeable to the common light of reason” (Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding, 1:99 [1:3.9]) amounted to much the same ­t hing. 133. Fancy] The imaginative pro­cess. 134. all Diseases . . . ​Infection] The suggestion appears to be that ­those weakened by vari­ous diseases w ­ ere more susceptible to the bubonic plague. In Defoe’s fictionalized account of the plague, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), ­t here is the general argument that the bills of mor­ tality, published during the plague of 1665, and which included the ­causes of death, ­were highly inaccurate and did not reflect the true extent of the plague’s effect on the population. Defoe used the same image in his Anatomy of Exchange-­Alley (London, 1719), 40–41, where he writes of what he foresees ­w ill be the collapse of the “­Bubble” that had raised the stocks of the South Sea Com­pany and other firms to impossible heights. Thus he writes that this event ­w ill be “like a general Visitation, where all Distempers are swallow’d up in the Plague, like a com­ mon Calamity, that makes Enemies turn Friends and drowns lesser grievances in the general Deluge.”

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

105

Below ­t hese we have a Sort of ­People who ­w ill acknowledge a God, but he must be such a one as they please to make him; a fine well bred good natur’d Gentleman like Deity,135 that cannot have the Heart to damn any of his Crea­ tures to an Eternal Punishment,136 nor could not be so weak as to let the Jews crucify his own Son;137 ­these Men expose Religion, and all the Doctrines of Repentance, and Faith in Christ, with all the Means of a Christian Salvation, as ­matter of Banter and Ridicule. The Bible they say is a good History in most Parts, but the Story of our Saviour they look upon as a meer Novel,138 and the Miracles of the New Testament as a Legend of Priestcraft.139 135. Gentleman like Deity] In this satiric attack, Defoe has in mind deists such as John Toland, who tended to see God as the benevolent guardian of the universe. In his System of Magick (London, 1726 [1727 on the title page]), Defoe argued that the deist’s concept of God takes from him the crucial role of being a judge over humanity: “The deist strips him of the very constituting part of the Deity, and brings him down to a level with our reason­ ing; divesting him of all governing, protecting and preserving providence, and particu­ larly of all resentment against the vilest offences; robbing him of the power of rewards and punishments, and making him so good, so kind and gracious, that they do not leave him room to be just, or allow him any resentment, let the case be what they ­w ill.” Defoe, The Novels and Miscellaneous Works, 20 vols. (Oxford: Tegg, 1840–1841), 12:237. 136. Eternal Punishment] For the declining notion of the traditional Hell for the punish­ ment of sinners during Defoe’s life time, see D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-­ Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964). Walker argues that the “En­g lish Arians” (93–103) including Isaac Newton, did not believe in a traditional Hell. 137. Jews crucify his own Son] In varying degrees, the gospels blame the Jewish leaders for the death of Christ. See, for example, Luke 22:52–23:23. However, the point being made ­here has to do with the tendency of the deists to dismiss the crucifixion as doubtful history or a fable. 138. Story of our Saviour . . . ​Novel] The term “novel,” as opposed to “romance,” was used by contemporaries to refer to fictional works of some one to three hundred pages, which tended to be more about ordinary life than the longer romances. In the preface to his Incognita, Wil­ liam Congreve contrasted the “lofty Language,” the high-­born heroes and heroines, and miraculous happenings of romance to the more ordinary events of the “Novel,” which “are of a more familiar nature; Come near us, and represent to us Intrigues in practice, delight us with Accidents and odd Events, but not such as are wholly unusual or unpre­ce­dented.” Complete Works, ed. Montague Summers, 4 vols. (Soho: Nonesuch Press, 1923), 1:111. In his Nazarenus, much like t­ hose modern scholars who have given serious attention to vari­ous Gnostic gos­ pels, John Toland treated the account of Christ’s life in the New Testament as merely one of many versions, giving some attention to another version that had Judas crucified rather than Jesus. In so ­doing, Toland did indeed treat ­t hese accounts as kinds of novels rather than as a true history. Although Defoe praised the force of fiction and the parables within the Bible, he was outraged that Toland would treat the Bible as a collection of fictions. 139. Legend of Priestcraft] In addition to the poem with the lines “Religion’s a Politick Cheat,” quoted above (see chapter 3, note 127 in this edition), ­t here is a somewhat similar Restoration poem, sometimes ascribed to Charles Sackville, Sixth Earl of Dorset, with which Defoe may have been familiar, called “The Deist. A Satyr on the Parsons: To the Tune of Old Simon the King.” It begins: Religion’s a Politick Law Devis’d by the Priggs of the Schools; To keep the Rabble in awe And amuse poor Biggotted Fools. This poem burlesques a number of stories from the Bible.

106

Ser ious R eflections

Further, besides t­ hese we have Arians140 and Socinians,141 the Disciples of an ancient Heretick,142 who went out of the Chutch always at the singing the Gloria Patri,143 that 140. Arians] The Arians held to the notion that God the ­Father was superior to and ante­ cedent to Christ. This idea was dismissed at the First Council of Nicea in 325, and it was declared a heresy by the Council of Constantinople in 381 c.e. From the very beginning, it was opposed vigorously by Saint Athanasius and Saint Ambrose. Augustine (On the Trinity, 147–148) argued that the Arians did not understand that God and Christ ­were of the same “substance.” The most distinguished adherent of this position in Britain was prob­ ably Samuel Clarke (1675–1729). His The Scripture-­Doctrine of the Trinity, published origi­ nally in 1712 and republished in a second edition in 1719, was mainly a series of quotations from the Bible. But the headings to his chapters ­were often provocative: “The reason why the Scripture, though it stiles the ­Father God, and also stiles the Son God; yet at the same time always declares ­there is but One God (300).” And in his preface (xxvii–­x xviii), he challenged the notion of a Hell and argued directly for the “Supremacy of the ­Father” (xxxi). More polemic in their arguments about Arianism ­were William Whiston and John Toland. In his Nazarenus (London, 1718), Toland praised Whiston for speaking the truth about Arianism and attempted to throw doubt on the entire Christian establishment. Defoe is prob­ably reacting to Toland ­here. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), Defoe ­ amily Instructor, 74–75, he was also to accuse John Milton of Ariansim, and in his New F was to give a brief history of Arianism. For full discussions of Defoe’s reactions to ­t hese con­temporary publications, see Katherine Clark, Daniel Defoe: The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 117– 121; and Maximillian Novak, “Defoe, the Occult and the Deist Offensive during the Reign of George I,” in Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment, ed. Leo Lemay (Newark: Dela­ ware University Press, 1987), 93–108. 141. Socinians] A sect founded by Laelius Socinus or Sozini (1525–1562) and Faustus Soci­ nus (1539–1604), two Italian theologians of the sixteenth ­century, who not only denied the coexistence of Jesus with God but also denied the divinity of Christ and a number of other traditional beliefs such as original sin. The crucifixion was to be seen as a signifi­ cant example for humanity, rather than an atonement for the sins of the h ­ uman race. As a religious sect, it spread to Poland and other countries of Eu­rope, particularly Holland. It should be noted that, in ­E ngland, voicing anti-­t rinitarian beliefs during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries might lead to being burned at the stake. H. John McLach­ lan (Socinianism in Seventeenth-­C entury ­England [London: Oxford University Press, 1951]) traced Socinianism’s early roots and development in E ­ ngland, where it eventually became the basis of Unitarianism. With the Dissenting minister, Thomas Emlyn (1663– 1741), becoming a controversial exponent of this belief, it became a frequent object of attack by theologians of the Church of ­England and sometimes by other Dissenting sects during Defoe’s life time. At the divisive Salter’s Hall meeting of 1719, some of t­ hose who refused to subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity had already moved to this religious position. 142. ancient Heretick] Arius (ca. 250–ca. 336 c.e.), founder of Arianism, was said to have  been offended by the notion of the Trinity in glorifying the “­Father, Son and Holy Ghost” and changed it to “Glory be to the ­Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost.” But he de­c ided that an even more extreme change might be necessary. See Louis Sébas­ tian Le Nain de Tillemont, The History of the Arians, trans. Thomas Deacon (London, 1721), 28. 143. Gloria Patri] “Glory be to the ­Father, and the son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever s­ hall be: World without end.” This is as it appears in The Book of Common Prayer. The singing of this verse, ­a fter each of the psalms, was first introduced by Pope Damasus (366–384). It was known as the lesser doxology. (See the following note.) See also Baptista Platina, The Lives of the Popes, trans. Paul Rycaut (London, 1688), 63. Some­ thing like the form of this prayer existed in early Christian liturgy. Since this is an assertion of the Trinity, it is not surprising that the opponents of this belief, particularly the Arians, would have found it offensive.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

107

he might be out of the Noise, and would sit down at the Doxology of the Prayers,144 to note his disowing the Godhead of Jesus Christ. ­These are Iniquities, as Job said, should be punished by the Judges, cap. xxxi.v.xi.145 and ­these are the ­Th ings which have given such a Stroke146 to the Ruin of the Nation’s Morals; for no Method can be so direct to prepare P ­ eople for all Sorts of Wickedness, as to perswade them out of a Belief of any supreme Power to restrain them; make a Man once cease to believe a God, and he has nothing left to limit his Appetite but meer Philosophy;147 if ­t here is no supreme Judicature, he must be his own Judge and his own Law, and ­w ill be so; the Notion of Hell, Devil, and Infernal Spririts are empty Th ­ ings, and have nothing of Terror in them, if the Belief of a Power superior to them be obliterated. But to bring this par­tic­u­lar Case nearer to the Point of Conversation, the Errors of which lie before me; though we live in an Age where ­these horrid Degrees of Impiety are too much practised; yet we live in a Place where Religion is professed, the Name of God owned and worshipped, Religion and the Doctrines of Chris­tian­ity estab­ lished; and as it is so, it ­ought as much to be preserved by the Civil Power,148 from the 144. Doxology of the Prayers] A short prayer that acknowledges the greatness of God, com­ monly sung at the end of a ser­v ice. In Protestant churches, the end of the Lord’s Prayer, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” which appeared originally in 1 Chronicles 29:10, is an example. It appears again in Matthew 6:13, where it has the form used in the Lord’s Prayer. 145. ­These are Iniquities . . . ​x xii.v.xi] Defoe has his reference wrong ­here. At 22:5, it is Eliphaz, upbraiding Job, who says, “Is not thy wickedness ­great? and thine inquities infinite.” The last part of the quotation in the text rightly comes at Job 31:11. A ­ fter reciting some of the crimes and sins that he might have committed, Job instances the sinful action that his wife might have done and says, “For this is an heinous crime; yea it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges.” In several other places, he speaks of his “iniquities,” as in 13:23, “How many are mine iniquities and sins? Make me to know my transgression and my sin,” but this is where he speaks of punishment by society. In Conjugal Lewdness, 354, Defoe also ascribes this speech directly to Job. 146. Stroke] A violent blow. See OED 1a and 2e. 147. meer Philosophy] Socinianism, in Defoe’s mind, would remove the entire system of rewards and punishments, and this, Defoe believes, would change the reaction to fear and the desire for reward that ­ought to motivate all believing Christians. In his Tyrannick Love, Dryden has Saint Catharine debate phi­los­o­phers who claim that virtue is its own reward. She argues for the superiority of Chris­t ian­ity with its benefits of a heavenly reward. Some modern scholars view Socinianism somewhat more favorably as the product of Reforma­ tion and Re­nais­sance humanism, a mixture of Italian rationalism with some Polish Ana­ baptist ele­ ments. But Defoe’s con­ temporary, John Edwards, maintained that Locke’s Reasonableness of Chris­tian­ity suggested that Chris­t ian­ity had to be judged by reason and saw a Socinian tendency in this. See Edwards, The Socinian Creed: or, A Brief Account of the Professed Tenents and Doctrines of the Foreign and En­glish Socinians (London, 1697), 126–134. 148. Civil Power] The British state certainly had laws against atheism, but Defoe had to be somewhat ner­vous about this appeal to state power to regulate religion, since as a Dissenter, his ­family had been the victim of informers who had been hired to suppress Dissent. Cer­ tainly some members of the Church of ­England regarded the Quakers as enthusiasts and blasphemers. And the image of Jack of Leyden, leading a Protestant religious group into orgies and vari­ous other forms of license, was a familiar one in Church of ­England polemics. On the other hand, as Katherine Clark has argued, Defoe was almost obsessed with replying to the deists of his time. In The ­Great Law of Subordination Consider’d (London, 1724), 40–41,

108

Ser ious R eflections

horrid Invasion of Atheists,149 Deists and Hereticks, as the Publick Peace, o ­ ught to be 150 defended against Freebooters, Thieves, and Invaders. ’Tis very improbable any Reformation of Manners151 should be brought to pass, if the debauching the religious Princi­ples of the Nation, goes on with an unrestrain’d Liberty. How incongruous is it to the Decoration of Government,152 that a Man s­ hall be punished for Drunkenness, and set in the Stocks for Swear­ ing, but s­ hall have Liberty to deny the God of Heaven, and dispute against the very Sum and Substance of the Christian Doctrine, ­shall banter the Scripture, and make Ballads of the Pentateuch,153 turn all the Princi­ples of Religion, the Salvation of the Soul, the Death of our Saviour, and the Revelation of the Gospel, into Ridicule? And ­shall we pretend to Reformation of Manners, and suppress­ ing Immoralities, while such as this, is the general Mixture of Conversation? If a Man talk against the Government, or speak scurrilously of the King, he is had to the Old Bayly,154 and from thence to the Pillory,155 or Whipping Post, and ’tis fit it should be so: But he may speak Treason against the Majesty of Heaven,156 deny the Godhead of his Redeemer, and make a Jest of the Holy Ghost,157 and thus Defoe’s narrator argues that the state does not allow “a Liberty to harden’d Consciences to worship no God at all, and to fear neither GOD or Dev­il” and that t­hose who “blaspheme God, deny his Redeemer, and make a Mock of all Religion . . . ​­ought to be punished; ­t here’s nothing of Religion or Conscience in the Case.” The narrator is a naturalized Frenchman, writing to his b ­ rother, and this may color his remarks to some extent; but Defoe has similar comments in A System of Magick. For Clark’s arguments, see especially her chapter “The Devil and Daniel Defoe,” esp. 196–208. 149. Atheists] Although the charge of atheism was not properly made against the Socinians, it was often insinuated. See Edwards, Socinian Creed, 38, 43, 52. 150. Freebooters] The OED defines this as “One who goes in search of plunder; esp. a pirate or piratical adventurer.” 151. Reformation of Manners] The g­ reat thrust for reformation of manners came during the reign of William and Mary and then, William III, with the Society for Reformation of Man­ ners. Defoe has a poem (1702) by this title and another titled More Reformation (1703) in which he excoriated ­those whom he believed had ­violated the moral and religious laws of his society. 152. Decoration of Government] It is not unusual for Defoe to stretch the meaning of a word. In a footnote to his edition of Serious Reflections (90), George Aitken suggested that this might have been a misprint for “Declaration.” George Starr has substituted “Decorum” (118) in his edition. But “Decoration” seems more likely if the OED sense of beauty or beautifying might be stretched to include order and dignity. 153. Ballads of the Pentateuch] See chapter 3, note 127 in this edition. 154. Old Bayly] The Old Bailey was the seat of the central criminal court in London. 155. Pillory] Like many sections of Serious Reflections, this comment, as similarly the refer­ ence to “Reformation of Manners” (above 102:35), raises questions about the dates of compo­ sition. Although Defoe’s attacks upon the heresies of his time ­were equally applicable to the period of the 1690s as to 1720 when Serious Reflections was published, Defoe did not speak so easily about sending ­t hose speaking against the government to the pillory ­a fter 1703, when he was punished for libel in this manner. 156. Treason . . . ​Heaven] ­Under “Blasphemy” in Jacob’s New Law Dictionary, sig. Aa2, a denial of the existence of God or the Trinity might be “punished by Fine, Imprisonement, Pillory, Etc.” A first offense would deprive the person of any office in the state; a second offense would result in three years’ imprisonment. 157. Holy Ghost] For the denial of this part of the Trinity by the Socinians and Unitarians, see Edwards, Socinian Creed, 52. For the Crusoe trilogy as a defense of the Trinity, see Clark, Daniel Defoe, 122–125.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

109

affront the Power we all adore, and yet pass with Impunity; perhaps some in the Com­pany may have Courage enough to blame him, and vindicate their Religion with a Why do ye talk so? But where is the Man, or the Magistrate, that ever vin­ dicated the Honour of his Maker, with a Resentment becoming the Crime? If a Man give the Lie158 to a Gentleman in Com­pany, he takes it as an Affront, flies into a Passion, quarrels, fights, and perhaps murders him;159 nay, some have done it for an absent Friend, whom they have heard abused: But where is the Gentle­ man that ever thought himself so much concern’d in the Quarrel of his Maker, but that he could hear him affronted, his Being deny’d, the Lie given to his divine Authority, nay, to his divine Being,160 and all his Commands ridicul’d and expos’d, without any Motion of Spirit to punish the Insolence of the Party, and without drawing his Sword161 in the Quarrel, or letting him know he does not like it.

158. give the Lie] The OED 2a provides the definition: “to accuse (a person to his face) of lying.” In Defoe’s time, it almost always had the context of a challenge that had to end in some form of violent confrontation, often a duel. To accuse a person of lying was considered an affront to a person’s honor. In William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (V.iv.67–103), Touch­ stone lays down the vari­ous levels of vio­lence in a quarrel, from the “retort courteous” to the “lie direct.” To “give the Lie” is equivalent to Touchstone’s “lie direct.” M ­ atters had not changed much by 1711. Although Joseph Addison in Spectator, no. 99, 3 June 1711 (1:416–418) argued against dueling for trivial reasons, he still begins by accepting the notion that “the ­great Point of Honour in Men is Courage” and states that the “­great Violation of the Point of Honour from Man to Man is giving the Lye.” It is this kind of challenge—­a challenge intended to bring on a duel—­Defoe has in mind. In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, Defoe has a w ­ oman tell a man, who, by the apparition of a minister, had been prevented from seducing her, that he would not speak as he did to a man and that “if he gave her the Lie again she would spit in his Face” (106). Although during the quarrel he gives her his sword, she refuses to fight an unarmed man. Nevertheless the affront taken by the lady at being accused of lying is truly violent. 159. murders him] Although in this passage Defoe is arguing for defending the honor of God as a person might defend his personal honor, he was a firm opponent of dueling. In his Review, he praised the laws of France that made dueling a crime (1:77–79), and in the issue of 29 November 1711 (9:67–68), he wrote of the famous Mohun-­Hamilton duel, in which both duelists died, as a shameful form of murder. Yet in speaking of his personal “Penitence” (7:451) over dueling, Defoe was not unwilling to let his readers know that he had at least once engaged in a duel. The pattern of showing one’s courage while refusing to duel became a staple of sentimental lit­er­a­ture such as Sir Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1721), in which the protagonist, in his anger, is ready to fight a duel, but then steadies his emotions and refuses. On the other hand, Bernard Mandev­ille maintained that dueling added to the “Politeness” of society. For a discussion of arguments for and against dueling, see Markku ­ ngland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern E 2003). For his remarks on Defoe, see esp. 220, 252. For his chapter on Mandev­ille, see 262–302. 160. his divine Being] Socinians denied the divine nature of Christ. He was rather a ­human being appointed by God to show the way to eternal life. See McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-­Century ­England, 13–14. 161. drawing his Sword] In some ways this bellicose defense of religion may be seen as more an aspect of the Crusoe persona than is usually to be found in t­ hese theological discussions. The Crusoe who blows up the Siberian idol in The Farther Adventures is indeed willing to war against what he considers to be an offense to the deity.

110

Ser ious R eflections

Methinks, I need not make an Apology for this, as if I meant, that Quarrelling and Fighting w ­ ere a proper Practice in the Case; the Law does not admit it in any Case; nor is it reasonable it should, and God Almighty is far from desiring us to run any Risque in his Ser­v ice: But I chuse to bring the Cases into a Parallel, to signify, that I think ’tis a vulgar Error162 in our Behaviour, not to show our Resent­ ment, when we hear the Honour and Essence of God slighted and denied, his Majesty abused, and Religion banter’d and ridicul’d in common Discourses. I think it would be very reasonable, to tell a Gentleman he wants Manners, when he talks reproachfully of his Maker, and to use him scurvily if he resented it. It would very well become a Man of Quality to cane a lew’d Fop, or kick him down Stairs, when his Insolence took a Loose163 at Religion in his Com­pany, ­else Men may be bullied out of their Chris­tian­ity,164 and lampoon’d into Prophaneness, for Fear of being counted Fools. Besides, ’tis in in this as in all other like Cases; he that w ­ ill talk atheistically in my Com­pany, ­either believes me to be an Atheist like himself, or ventures to impose upon me; and by imposing upon me, ­either accounts me a Fool that ­can’t tell when I am put upon, or a Coward that dare not resent it. Upon which Account, even in good Manners, it o ­ ught to be avoided; for it c­ an’t be introduc’d into any Part of Conversation, where the Com­pany are not all alike, without the greatest Affront upon the rest that can be offered them.

4. Of Lewd and Immodest Discourse TAlking Bawdy, that Sodomy of the Tongue165 has the most of ill Manners, and the least of a Gentleman in it, of any Part of common Discourse. Sir George Mackenzie166 162. vulgar Error] A commonly accepted but false notion. See OED. 163. took a Loose] The OED defines this as “to give oneself up to indulgence.” ­Here Defoe uses it in terms of overstepping the bounds of propriety in speaking of religious subjects. 164. bullied out of their Chris­tian­ity] Defoe imagines a libertine group such as the kind that surrounded John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in which religion was ­imagined as a deceit prac­ ticed by a church and society to keep most members of society docile. ­Those who ­were not to be “counted Fools” would be intimidated into accepting such a view. 165. Sodomy of the Tongue] The emphasis ­here would be on the “unnatural” nature of the act of swearing, rather than on a specific sexual act. See OED. Defoe prob­ably took this phrase from Sir George Mackenzie’s work, Moral Gallantry, A Discourse, Wherein the Author Endeavours to Prove, that Point of Honour . . . ​Obliges Men to Be Vertuous, first published in 1667. Speaking of “Obscenity in Discourse,” Mackenzie wrote: “This Vice may well enough be ranged u ­ nder one of the Species of Sodomy, seeing such as use it, employ in their Lust ­these Members which ­were so far from being destinate for so low Uses, that the Psalmist . . . ​doth shew us, that our tongues are amonst the noblest parts of our Body.” Mackenzie, Works, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1716–1722), 1:112– 113. In his Conjugal Lewdness, 337, Defoe writes that “talking Lewdly, according to a known Author, is infamous . . . ; ’tis a kind of a Sodomy of the Tongue.” 166. Sir George Mackenzie] Mackenzie (1630–1691) held a number of titles during his life, including Viscount Tarbat and first Earl of Cromarty. He began as an ardent supporter of the House of Stuart and monarchy in general and was rewarded ­a fter the return of Charles II. Between 1664 and 1678, he fell into disgrace, but was returned to positions of influence in 1678 when he became Lord Justice General of Scotland. With the Glorious Revolution, his po­liti­cal ­career came to an end, and he devoted his final years to scholarly pursuits. He wrote

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

111

has very handsomely expos’d it167 in its proper Colours: But it may not be an Intrench­ ment at all upon his Province, to say something to it in t­ hese Observations. This Part is the peculiar Practice of such Person as are hardened to a Degree beyond other Men; Proficients in Debauchery, whose Lives are so continually devoted to Lewdness, that their Mouths cannot contain it; who can govern their Tongues no better than their Tails,168 and are willing to be thought what r­ eally they are. In ­t hese, it is neither so strange, nor so much a Crime as in o ­ thers; ­t hese are Persons not to be reclaim’d. This Part of my Observation is not designed for their Use; they are not to be talk’d out of their Vice; they must go on and run their Length: Nothing but a Goal169 or an Hospital ever brings them to a Reformation; they repent sometimes in that Emblem of Hell, a fluxing House,170 and u ­ nder the Surgeons Hands, wish a ­little they had been wiser; but they follow one Sin with another, till their Carcass stinks as bad as their Discourse, and the Body becomes too nasty, for the Soul to stay any longer in it: From ­t hese no Discourse is to be expected, but what is agreeable to the Tenor of their Lives; for them to talk other­ wise, would be strain’d and excentrick, and become them as ­little, as it would be tedious to them; but for a Gentleman, a Man of seeming Modesty, and a Man of Behaviour, not arriv’d to that Class in the Dev­il’s School, for such a one to mix his Discourse with lew’d and filthy Expressions, has something in it of a Figure, which intends171 more than is express’d.

a series of essays, including one, “A Moral Essay Preferring Solitude to Publick Employ­ ment,” that brought him considerable fame as an author by provoking a debate with John Evelyn over the advantages of a life of solitude and retirement in opposition to the active life. Defoe is likely to have known of this debate, and it may have had some influence on the writ­ ing of the Crusoe volumes. See Andrew Lang, Sir George Mackenzie King’s Advocate of Rosehaugh: His Life and Times (London: Longmans, Green, 1909). For the debate between Mackenzie and Evelyn, see Brian Vickers, “Public and Private Life in Seventeenth-­Century ­England: The Mackenzie-­Evelyn Debate,” Arbeit Musse Meditation (Zürich: Verlag der Fach­ vereine, 1985), 257–278. For its influence on Defoe and Robinson Crusoe, see Beesemyer’s article, “Crusoe the Isolato,” 79–102. 167. expos’d it] In addition to alluding to Mackenzie’s Moral Gallantry, alluded to at the beginning of this discussion (see chapter 3, note 165 in this edition), Defoe may also have been referring to Mackenzie’s “An Essay on Reason,” where he identifies some writers of satires with “Atheists.” In another essay, “It Is Easier to Be Virtuous than Vicious,” Macken­ zie argued that t­ hose who attempted to build the Tower of Babel w ­ ere punished for speaking blasphemy. See Mackenzie, Works, 1:127, 192. 168. Tails] Their sexual organs. 169. Goal] Gaol or jail. The OED shows this as a variant spelling ­until late in the eigh­teenth ­century. 170. fluxing House] A place where patients are treated for venereal diseases by fluxing the patient with mercury and by purging. Defoe seems to imagine this treatment as involving both vomiting and a flow of excrement. Some of the cures involved sweating (hence the heat), adding to this place as an “Emblem of Hell.” See Richard Boulton, A Treatise of the Pox, in Physico-­Chyrugical Treatises of the Gout, The King’s Evil and Lues Venera (London, 1714), 267–318. For a summary of con­temporary cures, see Philip Wilson, Surgery, Skin and Syphilis: Daniel Turner’s London 1667–1741, Clio Medica 54 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 149–189. 171. intends] In the first edition this was printed as “inrends.” George Aitken (92) silently emended the word to “intends.”

112

Ser ious R eflections

­ ither we must believe such a one to be very lew’d in his Practice; or ­else, that E not being able yet to arrive to such a Degree of Wickedness as he desires, he would supply that Defect with a Cheat, and perswade you to believe he is ­really worse than he is.172 Which of ­t hese two Characters I would chuse to wear, I cannot tell; for he that desires to be worse than he thinks he is, is certainly as bad as he desires to be; and he that is so bad as to let fly the Excrescencies173 of it at his Mouth, is as wicked as the Devil can in Reason desire of him. But I descend from the Wickedness to the Indecency of the M ­ atter; its being a Sin against God, is not so much the pre­sent Argument, as its being unmannerly, a Sin against Breeding,174 and Society, a Breach of Behaviour, and a saucy insolent Affront to all the Com­pany. I do not deny, but that Modesty, as it re­spects the Covering our Bodies,175 was at first an Effect of the Fall of our Parents into Crime,176 and is therefore said still to be the Consequences of criminal Nature, and no Virtue177 in itself, b ­ ecause no Part of the Body had been unfit to be exposed,178 if Vice had not made the Distinc­ tion necessary. 172. worse than he is] For this concept of p ­ eople using obscenity to give the impression that they are worse than they actually are, Defoe wrote in his More Reformation: ’Tis strange that Men so forward should appear, Fond to be thought more Wicked than they are. He that to such a pitch in Vice is brought, Is quite as wicked as he wou’d be thought. [Works, 2:59] 173. Excrescencies] “An abnomal, morbid, or disfiguring outgrowth.” See OED. 174. Sin against Breeding] This is the theme not only of Mackenzie’s Moral Gallantry, but of a number of his other essays, such as “A Moral Paradox: Maintaining It is Much Easier to Be Virtuous than Vicious.” See Works, 1:121–135. 175. Covering our Bodies] See Genesis 3:7 “And the eyes of them both ­were opened, and they knew that they ­were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” 176. Fall . . . ​into Crime] The crime of eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, which God had stipulated as forbidden. See Genesis 2:17. 177. Modesty . . . ​no Virtue] This discussion of modesty balances a strong advocacy of this quality with an acknowl­edgment that had Adam and Eve not sinned in the Garden of Eden, t­ here would have been no need for it. He was to say much the same t­ hing at the beginning of his introduction to Conjugal Lewdness, 1: “It is certainly true, that Modesty is no natu­ral Virtue; what the Latins call’d Pudor or Shamefacedness, is the Effect of Crime, and is always occasioned by a Conscious­ ness of Guilt, w ­ hether it be ­actual Guilt, or intentional, guilt of a Fact already committed, or Guilt of a Crime resolv’d on, ’tis much the same.” Defoe goes on (5) to equate modesty with “Decency,” “Virtue,” and “Religion.” He offered a similar approach to modesty in the Review, supplement for November 1704, 1:20. The Scandal Club is asked to judge ­whether a ­woman who allows a man to sit on her bed late at night is not equivalent to a prostitute. Defoe begins by stating: “Customs and Sin, which ­were the Original of Shame, have made Modesty a Vertue; for ’tis plain, ’tis no Natu­ral Endowment; ­Children in the Bloom of Innocence, know nothing of it, have not native Propensity to it, but see and do t­ hings without Blushing which they ­will afterwards Blush to think of.” The Club rules against the argument that the w ­ oman is of necessity without proper virtue, but warns against the power of slander and concludes that “Crime, Custom and Necessity” have made mod­ esty “a most needful Vertue.” 178. no Part . . . ​exposed] Matthew Poole, with whose commentaries on the Bible Defoe was familiar, remarked that before the fall, the nakedness of Adam and Eve “was their glory.” Annotations upon the Holy Bible, 1:sig. B3v.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

113

But from this very Argument, lewd Discourse appears to be a Sin against Cus­ tom and Decency; for why must the tongue industriously expose ­Things and Actions at which Nature blushes,179 and which Custom, let the Original be what it ­will,180 has dedicated to Privacy and Retirement? What if it be true, that Shame is the Consequence of Sin, and that Modesty is not an original Virtue;181 it cannot but be allowed, that Sin has thereby brought us to a Necessity of making Modesty be a Virtue, and Sin would have a double Influence upon us, if ­after it had made us asham’d, it should make us not asham’d again. ’Tis in my Opinion a M ­ istake, when we say, Sin was the immediate Cause of Shame; ’twas Sin indeed gave a Nudity to our Natures and Actions; the Innocence which serv’d as a Glory182 and Covering, being gone, then Shame came in as the Effect of the conscious Sinner; so the Text says, They knew that they ­were naked:183 Shame was the Effect of Nakedness, as Nakedness was the Effect of Sin. From hence then I argue, and this is the Reason of my naming it, That to be asham’d of our Nakedness, is a Token of our Wisdom, and a Monument of our just Sense of the first Sin that made it so, and as much a Duty now, as any other Part of our Repentance. To give the Tongue then a Liberty in that which ­there is so much Reason to  blush at, argues no Sense of the Original Degeneracy.184 Where is the Man that partakes not of Adam’s Fall, has no vicious contracted Habit and Nature convey’d to him from his Grand-­Predecessor? Let him come forth, let him go naked, and live by himself, and let his Posterity partake of his Innocence; his Tongue cannot offend, nothing can be indecent for him to say, nothing uncomely for him to see.

179. Nature blushes] For the notion of blushing as a complicated sign of innocence, knowl­ edge, or both during the eigh­teenth ­century, see Ruth Yeazell, Fictions of Modesty: ­Women and Courtship in the En­glish Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 180. let the Original . . . ​­will] In allowing that arguments based on biblical origins may not be the strongest argument for the audience of 1720, Defoe makes a concession to readers of such works as Bernard Mandev­ille’s Fable of the Bees (1714), which attempted to view society in secular terms. Nevertheless he quickly slips back into his argument based on Genesis. 181. Modesty . . . ​not an original Virtue] Both John Locke, in his work on education, and Bernard Mandev­i lle, in his Fable of the Bees, treated shame and modesty as emotions incul­ cated in men and ­women by the rules of society. Defoe had come to this conclusion as early as 1704. See chapter 3, note 180 in this edition. See also Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 1:69–80; and John Locke, Educational Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 155. 182. Innocence . . . ​Glory] See chapter 3, note 185 in this edition. 183. They knew . . . ​naked] Genesis 3:7. 184. no Sense . . . ​Original Degeneracy] Defoe conjures up what he conceives to be an impos­ sibility—­a ­human who is ­free from original sin, a person capable of g­ oing naked without shame as did Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In 1726, ­a fter the discovery of Peter the Wild Boy, by way of framing his arguments against ­t hose who appeared to regard mankind as without the effect of original sin, Defoe appears to have been aiming mainly at Antony ­ uman Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, whose Characteristicks (1711) viewed h beings as tending naturally ­toward benevolence. Defoe may have had Shaftesbury in mind ­here as well. See Defoe, Mere Nature Delineated, passim.

114

Ser ious R eflections

But if t­hese Gentlemen think it proper to cover their Nakedness with their Clothes, methinks they should not be always uncovering it again with their Tongues; if t­ here are some needful Th ­ ings, which Nature requires to be done in secret, and which they by Inclination chuse to act in Private: What Reason can they give for speaking of them in Publick. ­There is a strange Incongruity in the Behaviour of t­ hese ­People, that they fill their Mouths with the foul Repetition of Actions, and ­Things which their own Practicing in Private condems them for, nay, which they would be asham’d to do in Publick; such Men o ­ ught to act the common Requirements of Nature, in the most publickest Places of the Streets, bring their Wives or Whores to the Exchange, and to the Market Places, and lye with them in the Street, or e­ lse hold their Tongues, and let their Mouths have no more the Stench of their Vices in Publick,185 than their Actions. And why of all the rest of the Parts of Life,186 must the Tongue take a peculiar Licence to revel thus upon Nature?187 as if she had a Mind to reproach her with the Infirmities she ­labours ­under: The Customs we are obliged to, tho’ they are Cloggs upon Nature,188 and a Badge of original Defection;189 yet neither is ­t here any ­thing so odious, or so burdensome, that ­these Gentlemen should triumph over the Nurse that brought them up. Take the lewdest and most vicious Wretch that ever gave his Tongue a Loose in this hateful Practice, and turn him about to his ­Mother, you ­shall hardly prevail upon him to talk his lewd Language to her; ­t here is something nauseous and sur­ feiting190 in that Thought. This talking Bawdy, is like a Man g­ oing to debauch his own M ­ other; for ’tis raking into the Arcana,191 and exposing the Nakedness of Nature, the common ­Mother of us all. 185. Vices in Publick] The discussion on this page might involve a distant allusion to the subtitle of Bernard Mandev­i lle’s Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714). 186. Parts of Life] As in parts of the body. Thus instead of the usual phrase body and soul, some writers use life and soul. See OED P10b. 187. Tongue . . . ​Nature] The image ­here is not very dif­fer­ent from the fables in which the parts of the body revolt against reason, the rightful ruler. See “Of the Rebellion of the Hands and Feet,” in John Ogilby, trans., The Fables of Ǽsop Paraphras’d in Verse (1668), introduc­ tion by Earl Miner (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1965), 114–116. 188. Customs . . . ​Cloggs upon Nature] Clogs as in impediments, OED 3. The rules of society prevent ­human beings from following their immediate desires. In his Conjugal Lewdness, 300–301, Defoe attacks custom, where it has “set up a vitious Practice in contradiction to Nature and Reason,” as “an Invader of nature and an Usurper of the Throne of Reason, that sets up for a Judge of Con­ve­nience, and a judge of Right and Wrong” where it has no more right than it would have to rule over “Truth and Religion.” But in this passage, he accepts custom as a curb upon what he regards as vile and blasphemous speech. 189. original Defection] The original sin of disobedience. 190. nauseous and surfeiting] Surfeiting in the sense of excessive (see OED). Defoe frequently united ­t hese words to express a physical sense of disgust. In the Review of 30 August 1712 (9:1), he complained of the publication of the “grossest Lyes” that have been swallowed by a deluded public: “What surfeiting and nauseous Stuff has been drank by this w ­ hole Nation within ­t hese three Years last past.” 191. Arcana] That which is deliberately hidden from h ­ uman knowledge and which, by implica­ tion, should not be probed. This is the second time Defoe used this word in Serious Reflections, and it was common throughout his writings. See also chapter 3, note 64 in this edition.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

115

If, as a famous Man of Wit192 pretended, lying with a ­Woman was the homliest ­thing that Man can do;193 ’tis much more true, that talking of it is the homliest ­t hing that Man can say. Nor is ­t here to me any Jest in ­t hese ­t hings, no Appearance of Mirth: ­There may be some Plea­sure in wicked Actions, as the World rates Plea­sure, but I must pro­ fess ’tis dull, and for Want of other more regular Tastes, that t­ here should be Plea­ sure in the Discourse: ’Tis a prophaning of Nature, and bringing forth ­those ­Things she has hallowed to Secresy and Retirement, to the scandalous Indecency of publick Banter and Jest. But Men, who have always something to say for their Folly, tell us, ’tis Custom only which has made any of t­ hese ­t hings uncommon; and ­t here’s no Sin in speak­ ing194 that which ­t here is no Sin in d ­ oing. Let us grant them, that Custom only has done this: But if Custom has made ­t hese ­t hings uncommon, and conceal’d, or at least, banish’d them from the Voice of Conversation. ’Tis a Sin then against Custom to expose them again. Lawful Customs become allowed Virtues, and ­ought to be preserved. Custom is a good Reason in such Concealments; if Custom has lock’d them up, let them remain so; at least, till you can give a better Reason for calling them abroad again, than Cus­ tom has given for restraining them. Custom has made ­t hese ­t hings uncommon, ­because that Sin, which first made Nature naked, left her so captivated, by some of

192. famous Man of Wit] Prob­ably a reference to John Oldham (1653–1683). For speculation about Defoe’s pos­si­ble friendship with Oldham, see Frank Bastian, Defoe’s Early Life (Lon­ don: Macmillan, 1981), 52–53. For Defoe’s familiarity with Oldham’s poetry, see Review, 7:162. A less likely possibility is Sir John Suckling (1609–1642) in his “Against Fruition,” Works, ed. L. A. Beauline and Thomas Clayton, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 1:37. For Defoe’s knowledge of Suckling’s poetry, see A Supplement to the Advice from the Scandal Club, in Review, 1:23; and Review, 3:29. 193. homliest ­thing . . . ​do] Homeliest in the sense of ugliest. See OED 5. A direct quote from John Oldham’s “A Fragment of Petronius, Paraphrased” (Poems, ed. Harold Brooks and Raman Selden [Oxford: Clarendon, 1987], 215–216, 462). Before the work turns into a poem of love, the speaker states: I hate Fruition, now tis past, ’Tis all but nastiness at best; The homeliest ­t hing, that man can do, Besides, ’tis short and fleeting too. ­There is a remote possibility that Defoe misremembered Suckling’s line, “The homeliest ­t hing which mankind does is so.” See the previous note. We owe this reference to Professor Paul Baines of the University of Liverpool. Just as Oldham’s poem has the speaker argue against coition “now tis past,” Defoe was ironic about the possibility of such abstinence. In Conjugal Lewdness, 131, he quotes Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici on “this foolish ­t hing called Coition,” but immediately tells the story of a “grave ­Widow,” who pretends to wish for a marriage without sexual intercourse, but is outraged when the possibility is offered to her. 194. no sin in speaking] Although Defoe accepted “Usage” as the dominant force in lan­ guage, in his Essay upon Proj­ects he proposed an acad­emy that would pronounce the legiti­ macy of new words, particularly ­t hose introduced by translators. He used this proposal to launch into an attack on “Swearing” that is similar in many re­spects to his attitudes ­here. See An Essay upon Proj­ects, 89–96.

116

Ser ious R eflections

her Parts195 more than ­others, that she could not but blush at t­ hose, where Sin had taken up its peculiar Residence. Now, as I noted before, no Man can with any tolerable Satisfaction, expose the Parts, till he has first abstracted and separated the Sin,196 which having possess’d them, cover’d them at first with Shame: He that can do this, may go naked, and talk any t­ hing. And for the same Reason, no Man can justify talking lewdly, but he that at the same Time throws away his Clothes, for to cover himself with his Hands, and uncover himself with his Tongue, are Contradictions in their own Nature, and one condemns the other. He that scorns the Decency of Words, should also scorn the Decency of Clothes,197 let his Body be as bald as his Discourse, and let him scorn the Shame of one, as well as the Shame of the other. It is no Sin, they say, to talk of, what it is no Sin to do; and I may add, ’tis no Sin at all to shew, what ’tis no Sin to describe. Why is the Eye to be less offended than the Ear, since both are but the common Organs of the Understanding? But the Weather and Inconveniencies of the Climate, are urged for clothing our Bodies, and I urge, Decency and good Manners for the Government of our Tongues; and let any one contend it with me, that thinks he can prove, that the Obligation of the first is greater than the Obligation of the last. Much more might be said to this, but I make but an Essay, and am unwilling to run out into a long Discourse.198

Of Talking falsly. BY Talking falsly, I do not design to enter upon a long Dissertation upon the Sin of Lying in general, I suppose all Men that read me w ­ ill acknowledge Lying to be one

195. Parts] The sexual organs. 196. separated the Sin] Despite momentarily putting aside the Bible as his main point of ref­ erence (chapter 3, notes 183 and 187 in this edition), Defoe returns to Adam and Eve’s shame at their nakedness as the motivation for social rules regarding modesty and propriety in the use of language. 197. Decency of Words . . . ​Clothes] Although libertine thinkers often exalted the body above abstract reason and regarded rules about modesty as part of the restraints that society placed upon h ­ uman freedom, t­ here does not appear to have been a serious movement t­oward the nudist life. However, Rochester and his friends caused a scandal when they went romping in the countryside without clothes. Rochester told Henry Saville that he and his friends ­were trying to dry off ­a fter swimming in the nude. This may be partly true, but it was certainly also an expression of their sense of freedom. As for the defenders of obscene language (the “they” mentioned at 110:14), the closest one may come is Robert Wolsey’s defense of Roches­ ter’s literary efforts and the values of his poetry. Wolsey argued that “all depends upon the Genius and Art of the Writer” and that in Rochester’s case the brilliance of the poetry might be some justification for what some critics considered obscene. See The Rochester-­Saville Letters, ed. Harold Wilson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1941), 45–47; and Wolsey, “Preface to Valentinian” (1685), in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth ­Century, ed. Joel Spin­ garn, 3 vols. (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1957), 3:1–31. 198. Essay . . . ​Discourse] An essay implies a relatively brief and not highly polished work of prose. A discourse is a fully finished work of considerable length. See OED.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

117

of the most scandalous Sins between Man and Man; a Crime of a deep Dye,199 and of an extensive Nature leading into innumerable Sins; That is, as Lying is practised to deceive, to injure, betray, rob, destroy, and the like. Lying in this Sense is the concealing of all other Crimes, ’tis the Sheeps Clothing200 hung upon the Wolves back, ’tis the Pharisee’s Prayer,201 the Whore’s Blush, the Hypocrite’s Paint,202 the Murderer’s Smile, the Thief’s Cloke,203 ’tis Joab’s Embrace,204 and Judas’s Kiss;205 in a Word, ’tis Mankind’s Darling-­Sin, and the Dev­il’s distinguishing Character.206 But this is not the Case I am upon, this is not the talking falsly I am upon, but a strange Liberty which (particularly in Conversation) ­People take to talk falsly, without charging themselves with any Offence in it, e­ ither against God or Man: This is to be considered in two or t­ here Parts, not but that it has many more. 1. The Liberty of telling Stories, a common Vice in Discourse; the main End of this extraordinary Part of Tittle Tattle207 is to divert the Com­pany, and make them laugh; but we o ­ ught to consider, w ­ hether that very empty Satisfaction ­either to ourselves or Friends, is to be purchased at so g­ reat an Expence as that of Conscience, and of a Dishonour done to Truth. ’Tis scarce fit to say, how far some P ­ eople go in this Folly, to call it no worse, even till sometimes they bring the general Credit of their Conversation into decay, and P ­ eople that are used to them, learn to lay no Stress upon any ­Thing they say. For once we w ­ ill suppose a Story to be in its Substance true, yet to what mon­ strous a Bulk doth it grow, by that frequent Addition put to it in the Relation, till 199. Crime of a deep Dye] A violation of the most serious kind, “Dye” being used in the sense of a tint or color. The OED treats this as a common phrase. 200. Sheeps Clothing] An allusion to Aesop’s fable of the wolf who successfully disguises himself in the pelt of a sheep and is able to deceive his prey. 201. Pharisee’s Prayer] An allusion to Luke 18:9–14 and Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the publican coming to the ­Temple to pray. The Pharisee’s prayer was, “God, I thank thee, that I  am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as the publican.” The publican’s prayer was, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus states that the publican was “jus­ tified,” whereas the Pharisee was not b ­ ecause he “exalteth himself.” The Pharisee was guilty of pride and hy­poc­risy in failing to acknowledge himself as a sinner. 202. Hypocrite’s Paint] Paint is used ­here in the sense of a false outward appearance. See OED. 203. Thief’s Cloke] Presumably the thief wears a cloak to conceal himself or what he has sto­ len rather than for warmth. 204. Joab’s Embrace] ­A fter Sheba, the son of Bichri, broke his allegiance to David, Amasa was sent to gather an army to aid David, but he appeared to have taken so much time that Sheba succeeded in ­doing harm to David’s cause. David then sent Joab to do the job. On meeting Amasa, Joab took him by the right hand in a seeming gesture of affection and kissed him while concealing a sword that he used to kill Amasa. See 2 Samuel 20:1–10. 205. Judas’s Kiss] Before Jesus is captured by the soldiers, Judas, one of the twelve disciples, tells the soldiers to arrest the person whom he ­w ill kiss. He kisses Jesus, who is arrested immediately. See Mark 15:43–46. 206. Dev­i l’s . . . ​Character] Following traditional interpretations, Milton in his Paradise Lost (bk. 9) has Satan take the form of the serpent and lie to Eve about what ­w ill befall her and Adam if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Although Milton sees pride as the distin­ guishing trait of Satan, his lying is what dooms humankind. 207. Tittle Tattle] The OED defines this as “empty or trifling talk about trivial ­matters.”

118

Ser ious R eflections

not only it comes to be improbable, but even impossible to be true;208 and the ignorant Relator is so tickled with having made a good Story of it, what­ever it was when he found it, that he is blind to the Absurdities and Inconsistencies of Fact in Relation, and tells it with a full Face,209 even to t­ hose that are able to confute it, by proving it to be impossible. I once heard a Man who would have taken it very ill to be thought a Lyar, tell a Story, the Facts of which ­were impossible to be true; and yet assert it with so much Assurance, and declare so positively, that he had been an Eye-­Witness of it him­ self, that t­ here was nothing to do but in re­spect to the Man, let him alone and say nothing. A Gentleman who sat by, and whose good Breeding restrained his Pas­ sion, turn’d to him, and said, did you see this ­Thing done Sir? yes, I did Sir, says Relator: Well Sir, replies the Gentleman, since you affirm that you did see it, I am bound in regard to you to believe it; but upon my Word, ’tis such a Th ­ ing, that if I had seen it my self, I would not have believed it: This broke the Silence, set all the Com­pany a laughing, and exposed the Falsehood, more than down right telling him it was a Lye, which might besides have made a Broil210 about it. ’Tis a strange ­Thing, that we cannot be content to tell a Story as it is, but we must take from it on one Side, or add to it on another; till the Fact is lost among the Addenda, and till in Time even the Man himself remembring it only as he told it last, ­really forgets how it was Originally; this being so generally practised now, nothing is more common, than to have two Men tell the same Story quite differ­ ing one from another, yet both of them Eye-­Witnesses to the Fact related. ­These are that sort of P ­ eople, who having once told a Story falsly, tell it so often in the same or like manner, till they r­ eally believe it to be true. This supplying a Story by Invention, is certainly a most scandalous Crime and yet very ­little regarded in that Part, it is a sort of Lying211 that makes a ­great Hole 208. impossible to be true] Defoe may have been influenced by Montaigne’s essay “Of Liars,” in Essays, 1:27–32 (bk. 1, chap. 9). Montaigne (1:29) argues that narratives eventually awaken the imagination, which adds false details to a story that might have been true in the first telling. 209. full Face] The OED 3 includes “boldness” in its definition and adds, “In l­ater use often connoting absence of shame: impudence, effrontery, cheek.” One of their examples is from The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: “With What face can I say anything.” Face is a common word with Defoe to indicate incredible impudence in getting through a situation. Thus in speaking of the cheating tradesman who boldly confronts his accusers, Defoe states that he “goes upon a meer Stock of Face, a kind of Hardness that I can hardly give a Name to.” See The Compleat En­glish Tradesman, 2:[end of chap. IX]. 210. Broil] Quarrel. See OED. 211. Story by Invention . . . ​Lying] Defoe is speaking h ­ ere of oral discourse, not printed fic­ tions of the type he wrote. Although Defoe frequently used the terms “romance” and “romances” disparagingly, as referring to works about love, by the time he published Col­o­nel Jack (ed. Samuel Monk [London: Oxford University Press, 1965], 2), at the end of 1722 he was arguing that the work would be “equally useful” w ­ hether it was a “History or Parable.” When he came to write his New ­Family Instructor (1727), 52, he maintained that “Fables, feigned Histories, in­ven­ted Tales, and even . . . ​Romances, have always been allow’d as the most pun­ gent Way of writing or speaking; the most apt to make Impressions upon the Mind.” See Maximillian Novak, “Defoe’s Theory of Fiction,” Studies in Philology 61 (1964): 650–668.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

119

in the Heart, at which by Degrees a Habit of Lying enters in: Such a Man comes quickly up, to a total disregarding the Truth of what he says, looking upon it as a Trifle, a Th ­ ing of no import, w ­ hether any Story he tells be true or no, so it but commands the Com­pany as they call it; that is to say, procures a Laugh, or a kind of Amazement Th ­ ings equally agreeable to t­ hese Story-­Tellers; for the Business is to affect the Com­pany, ­either startle them with something wonderful, never heard of before; or make them laugh immoderately, as at something prodigiously tak­ ing, witty, and diverting. It is hard to place this Practice in a Station equal to its Folly, ’tis a Meanness below the Dignity of common Sense: They that lye to gain, to deceive, to delude, to betray as above, have some End in theiv Wickedness; and though they cannot give the Design for an excuse of their Crime, yet it may be given as the Reason and Foundation of it: But to lye for Sport, for Fun,212 as the Boys express it, is to play at Shuttle-­cock 213 with your Soul, and load your Conscience for the meer sake of being a Fool, and the making A meer Buffoonry of a Story, the Plea­sure of what is below even Madness itself.214 And yet, how common is this Folly? How is it the Character of some Men’s Conversation, that they are made up of Story? And how mean a Figure is it they bear in Com­pany? Such Men always betray their Emptiness by this, and having only a certain Number of Tales in their Bud­get,215 like a Pedlar with his Pack, they can only at e­ very House shew the same Ware over again, tell the same Story over and over, ’till the Jest is quite worn out; and to convince us, that much of it, if not all, is born of Invention, they seldom tell it the same Way twice, but vary it even in the most material Facts: So that though it may be remembred, that it was the same Story, it o ­ ught never to be remembred, that it was told by the same Man. With what Temper should I speak of t­ hese ­People? What Words can express the Meanness and Baseness of the Mind, that can do thus? that sin without Design, and not only have no End in the View, but even no Reflection in the Act: 212. Fun] Amusement, diversion or sport. The OED rec­ords 1727 (Swift) as the earliest usage of the word with this meaning. Defoe clearly associates it with the language of c­ hildren rather than formal En­glish. 213. Shuttle-­cock] A piece of cork with feathers attached as is now used in the game badmin­ ton but which was used for a game with the same name or the game battledore. See OED. 214. Madness itself] Montaigne (1:30) too stresses the seriousness of lying, arguing that “If we knew the horror of it, and the gravity, we should pursue it with fire, and more justly so than other crimes.” 215. Bud­get] In their heads, minds, or possibly a “collection” of stories held in the memory. The first meaning of this word, according to the OED, was “A pouch, bag, wallet, usually of leather.” But a secondary, figurative meaning, as in “to open one’s Bud­get,” meant “to speak one’s mind.” One example from 1642, “Infinite are the subtilties which are in the bugit of this traitor,” suggests that it had already been shortened to mean head or mind before Defoe’s usage. But OED 3 also defines the word as the contents of a bag or wallet or a collection of such items. The subsequent comparison of the Bud­get to a “Pedlar with his Pack” is intended to move from immaterial stories in the mind to the concrete contents of the peddler’s pack. The OED classifies this word as obsolete.

120

Ser ious R eflections

the Folly is grown up to a Habit, and they not only mean no Ill, but indeed mean nothing at all in it. It is a strange Length that some ­People run in this Madness of Life, and it is so odd, so unaccountable, that indeed ’tis difficult to describe the Man, tho’ not dif­ ficult to describe the Fact. what Idea can be form’d in the Mind, of a Man, who does ill without meaning ill? that wrongs himself, affronts Truth, and imposes upon his Friends, and yet means no Harm; or to use his own Words, means noth­ ing? That if he thinks any ­Thing, ’tis to make the Com­pany pleasant, and what is this but making the Circle a Stage,216 and himself the Merry Andrew.217 The best Step such Men can take is to LYE ON; and this shews the Singularity of the Crime; it is a strange Expression, but I s­ hall make it out; their Way is, I say, to Lye on; ’till their Character is compleatly known, and then they can lye no longer; for he whom no Body believes, can deceive no Body, and then the Essence of Lying218 is removed; for the Description of a Lye is, that ’tis spoken to deceive, or ’tis a Design to deceive. Now, he that no Body believes, can never lye any more, ­because no Body can be deceiv’d by him. Such a Man’s Character is a Bill upon his Forehead,219 by which e­ very Body knows, ­Here dwells a Lying Tongue:220 When ­every Body knows what is to be had of him, they know what to expect; and so no Body is deceiv’d; if they believe him afterwards, ’tis their Fault as much as his. ­There are a ­great many Sorts of ­t hose ­People, who make it their Business to go about telling Stories; it would be endless to enumerate them, some tell formal Stories forg’d in their own Brain without any Retrospect ­either on Persons or ­Things; I mean, as to any par­tic­u ­lar Person, or Passage known, or in Being, and only with the ordinary Introduction of, ­There was a Man, or, ­there was a ­Woman, and the like. 216. Circle a Stage] Perhaps more the notion of a gathering of ­people around a person of inter­ est as in a court than simply the notion of a par­tic­u ­lar set of p ­ eople, though both meanings might apply ­here. See OED. Defoe is making a distinction between conversations among friends, or acquaintances, which he admired, and a public per­for­mance, about which he had considerable misgivings. 217. Merry Andrew] A clown, mountebank, or mime often used to draw the attention of a crowd for ­t hose selling vari­ous medicines. The mention of the “Merry-­Andrew” grows more frequent in Defoe’s writings of the 1720s, and this may have something to do with the success of John Rich (1692–1761) in staging pantomimes at the theater in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. See A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians . . . ​in London, ed. Philip Highfill Jr., Kalman Burnim, and Edward Langhams, 16 vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993), 12:337–353. 218. Essence of Lying] In a letter to his patron, Harley, Defoe argued, as he does ­here, that a lie consists in the intent of the deceiver, “in the Design by False Speaking to Deceive and Injure my Neighbour.” This left open the possibility of telling lies to benefit one’s neighbor, as Defoe argued he was ­doing by acting in a good cause, and with that the possibility of a form of fiction that was informative and beneficial to the reader. See Novak, “Defoe’s Theory of Fiction,” 663; and Defoe, Letters, 42–43. 219. Bill upon his Forehead] Advertisements of the crimes of a felon ­were often posted on the pillory. Defoe imagines the equivalent announcement attached to the liar. 220. Lying Tongue] This phrase has biblical resonance in the Old Testament. See Psalms 109:2; Proverbs 6:17, 12:19 and 22, 21:6, 26:28.

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

121

­ thers again, out of the same Forge of Invention, hammer out the very Person, O Man or ­Woman, and begin, I knew the Man, or I knew the ­Woman, and ­these ordinarily vouch their Story with more Assurance than ­others; and vouch also, that they knew the Persons who ­were concern’d in it. The telling or writing a Parable, or an allusive allogorick History221 is quite a dif­fer­ent Case, and is always Distinguisht from this other Jesting with Truth; that it is design’d and effectually turn’d for instructive and upright Ends, and has its Moral justly apply’d:222 Such are the historical Parables223 in the holy Scripture, such the Pilgrims Pro­gress,224 and such in a Word the Adventures of your fugi­ tive225 Friend, Robinson Crusoe. ­Others make no Scruple to relate real Stories with innumerable Omissions and Additions: I mean, Stories which have a real Existence in Fact,226 but which by the barbarous Way of relating, become as romantick and false,227 as if they had no 221. allusive allegorick History] In his “Preface” (especially sig. A4), Defoe mixes terms such as t­ hese in trying to defend a type of fiction that was realistic on the surface and meaningful, as opposed to trivial romances. ­ amily Instructor, 222. Moral justly apply’d] Defoe presented a similar argument in his New F 52. One of the b ­ rothers in the ­family objects to his s­ ister’s severe attitude ­toward all forms of fiction: “But on the contrary, where the Moral of the Tale is duly annex’d, and the End directed right, herein it evidently accords; the enforcing sound Truths; making just and solid Impressions on the Mind; recommending g­ reat and good Actions, raising Sentiments of Virtue in the Soul, and filling the Mind with just Resentments against wicked Actions of all Kinds: . . . ​in such Cases, Fables, feigned Histories, in­ven­ted Tales, and even such as we call Romances, have always been allow’d as the most pungent Way of writing or speaking; the most apt to make Impressions upon the Mind and open the Door to the just Inferences and Improvement which was to be made of them.” 223. historical Parables] The word “historical” is used h ­ ere in terms of embodying genuine truths and in the sense that they are to be accepted as the ­actual words of Jesus and the apostles. 224. Pilgrims Pro­gress] Published in two parts in 1678 and 1684 by John Bunyan (1628–1688). Although ­t here are realist ele­ments in Bunyan’s work, it is an ingenious and easily under­ stood allegory of the Christian’s path to Heaven. In this it is very dif­fer­ent from the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe. Defoe does not mention Bunyan very often in his writings. In his early years Defoe tried to establish his reputation as a wit by his prose tracts and po­liti­cal poetry, and allusions to Bunyan, considered by many to be a writer of religious lit­er­a­ture appealing to a lower class audience, would not have been particularly helpful to his reputa­ tion. Charles Gildon had Defoe associate his work with Pilgrim’s Pro­gress by appeasing the anger of his Crusoe, but Crusoe remains angry, complaining of being made a “Mob Hero.” Defoe may have taken his hint from Gildon, hoping to gain by associating himself with Bun­ yan’s religious sincerity. See Gildon, Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 71–72 (ix–­x). 225. fugitive] The OED has “Moving from place to place; flitting, shifting, vagabond.” The word “wandering” might fit best ­here. 226. real Existence in Fact] In his preface to The Storm, A5, Defoe discussed the way in which real historical accounts had been distorted, naming “the Legends of Fabulous history which have swallow’d up the Actions of our a[n]cient Pre­de­ces­sors, King Arthur . . . ​Guy Earl of War­ wick, Bevis of Southampton, and the like.” Defoe may have been thinking of the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the World, argued had originally concerned historical persons. Defoe ­adopted this concept, called euhemer­ ism, in his Jure Divino (bk1:6–13) arguing that the gods had originally been “Monarchs and Tyrant-­Princes.” 227. romantick and false] Defoe is using “romantick” ­here in the sense of the OED 2a: “of a fabulous or fictitious character; having no foundation in fact.” In his New ­Family Instructor,

122

Ser ious R eflections

real Original. Th ­ ese Tales, like the old Galley of Venice,228 which had been so often new vamped, doubl’d and redoubl’d, that ­t here was not one Piece of the first Tim­ ber in her, have been told wrong so often, and so many Ways, ’till t­ here would not be one Circumstnnce of the real Story left in the relating. ­There are many more Kinds of t­ hese, such namely, as are personal and mali­ cious, full of Slander and Abuse;229 but t­ hese are not of the Kinds I am speaking of; the pre­sent Business is among a Kind of white Dev­ils,230 who do no Harm or Injury to any but to themselves; they are like the Grashopper, that spends his Time to divert the Traveller, and does nothing but starve himself.231 The Conver­ sation of ­these Men is full of Emptiness,232 their Words are Levity itself, and according to the Text, they not only tell Untruths, but the Truth is not in them.233 ­There is not a settl’d Awe or Reverence of Truth upon their Minds; ’tis a Th ­ ing of 56, the ­Father of the ­family defines romance as having origins in the fabulous legends pro­ moted by the Catholic Church. Thus the “Roman Legend” came to mean a story full of lies, and telling any story, ­whether in writing or orally, that was untrue came to be called a “Romantic Style” or a “Romantick Discourse.” 228. old Galley of Venice] Prob­ably the galley of the Doge used for the ceremonies on Ascen­ sion Day to celebrate the marriage of Venice to the sea. The ceremony went back to 1173, when Pope Alexander III gave a ring to celebrate Venice’s “empire over the sea.” Each year the Doge would throw a ring into the Adriatic Sea with the words, “We espouse thee O Sea in honor of our perpetual sovereignty.” The galley was called the Bucintoro. The J. Paul Getty Museum has a painting depicting this scene by Luca Carvarijs titled The Bucintoro Departing from the Bacino di San Marco, executed in 1710. 229. Slander and Abuse] Having raised the concept of printed works of fiction, as well as tell­ ers of lies, Defoe may ­here be alluding to the scandalous memoirs such as the New Atalantis by Delarivier Manley. Manley retailed gossip about the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough ­under the disguise of fiction. 230. white Dev­i ls] Used ­here in the sense that one speaks of a white lie or a lie that is intended to be harmless. Defoe’s point is that no lie is harmless. ­There is a proverb recorded by Tilley, Dictionary (155 [D310]), “The white Devil is worse than the black,” but this appears to refer to the Devil assuming an angelic role to deceive. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 21, he writes skeptically of using one kind of devil against another, “supplicating one Dev­il ­under the notion of a good Spirit, to drive out and protect them from another, whom they call’d a bad Spirit, the white Dev­il against the black Dev­il?” 231. Grashopper . . . ​starve himself] Defoe has in mind Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper who attempts to beg food from the industrious ants and is refused by them a­ fter he confesses that he spent the entire summer singing. See Aesop and other “Eminent Mythologists,” Fables, trans. Roger L’Estrange (London, 1694), 197 (217). The notion that the grasshopper sang to entertain “the Traveller” may be Defoe’s misremembering another fable about lying, “The Apes and the Two Travellers.” 232. full of Emptiness] In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 183, Defoe speaks of the contrast between full and emptiness as “an ancient paradoxical Saying.” He may have been intending a distant biblical allusion. Though “emptiness” appears only once in the Bible (Isaiah 34:11) and not in a context such as that suggested h ­ ere, perhaps Defoe may have been thinking of Isaiah 32:6: “For the vile person ­w ill speak villany, and his heart ­w ill work iniquity, to prac­ tise hy­poc­risy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he ­w ill cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.” 233. Truth is not in them] See John 8:44, where Jesus accuses a group of Jews, who refuse to acknowledge his being the son of God, of being ­children of the Devil and given over to the Dev­il’s lies: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, ­because ­t here is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the ­father of it.”

C h a p t e r 3 /o f t h e I m m o r a l i t y o f c o n v e r s at i o n

123

no Value to them, ’tis not regarded in their Discourse, and they give themselves a Liberty to be perfectly unconcern’d about the ­Thing they say, or the Story they tell, w ­ hether it be true, or no. This is a most abominable Practice on another Account, namely, that t­hese Men make a Jest of their Crime; they are a Sort of P ­ eople that Sin laughing; that play upon their Souls as a Man plays upon a Fiddle, to make other ­People dance and wear itself out; they may be said to make some Sport indeed, but it is all at themselves, they are the Hearers Comedy and their own Tragedy; and like a peni­ tent Jack-­pudding,234 they w ­ ill at last say, I have made o ­ thers merry, but I have been the Fool. I would be glad to shame Men of common Sense, out of this horrid Piece of Buffoonry; and one ­Thing I would warn them of, namely, that their learning to Lye so currently in Story, w ­ ill insensibly bring them to a bold entrenching upon Truth, in the rest of their Conversation; the Scripture Command is, Let ­every Man speak Truth unto his Neighbour;235 if we must tell Stories, tell them as Stories, add nothing willfully to illustrate or set forth in the Relation; if you doubt the Truth of it, say so, and then e­ very one ­w ill be at Liberty to believe their Share of it. Besides, ­there is a spreading Evil in telling a false Story as true, namely, that you put it into the Mouths of o ­ thers, and it continues a brooding Forgery236 to the End 237 of Time; ’tis a Chimney-­corner Romance,238 and has in it this distinguishing Article, that whereas Parables, and the Inventions of Men publish’d Historically,239 are once for all related, and the Moral being drawn, the History remains allusive only, as it was intended, as in several Cases240 (a) may be instanced within our Time 234. Jack-­pudding] Similar to a Merry Andrew (see chapter 3, note 217 in this edition), a clown or mime, especially one used to attract the attention of crowds for one selling vari­ous cures. 235. speak Truth unto his Neighbour] A biblical allusion to Zechariah 8:16: “Speak ye ­every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.” This is echoed by Saint Paul in Ephesians 4:25, who urges “putting away lying.” 236. brooding Forgery] Incubating or coming to life. OED. By telling “a false Story” as if it ­were true, one “puts it in the Mouths of o ­ thers” who ­w ill give new life to it by telling o ­ thers the same tale. 237. End of Time] In his preface to The Storm (London, 1704), sig. A2v, Defoe dwelt on the ability of a book to give what is written a kind of immortality. Similarly, he noted that “if a Book Printed obtrudes a Falsehood, if a Man tells a Lye in Print, he abuses Mankind, and imposes upon the w ­ hole World, he c­ auses our ­Children to tell Lyes ­after us, and their C ­ hildren to tell ­after them . . . ​to the End of the World.” 238. Chimney-­corner Romance] A story told by old men or ­women from their position at the corner of a fireplace, repetitive, naive, and unreliable. Prose fiction was often derided in this way in con­temporary discussions. Defoe used the phrase “A Chimney-­Corner Tale, fit for a Legend” in his System of Magick (London, 1727), 47, ­a fter recounting the doubtful story that had the Three Magi descended from Abraham’s third wife, Keturah. 239. publish’d Historically] Defoe appears to draw a distinction between the oral communi­ cation of folk tales and books published by authors such as Bunyan and himself. Whereas published books provide texts that may be consulted for accuracy and reliably reflect the intentions of the authors, oral accounts may be expanded and changed endlessly. On the confusion caused by legends and the duty of the author of a published history to “convey ­matter of Fact upon its legitimate Authority, and no other,” see The Storm, sig. A3v-­A5v. 240. several Cases] For an e­ arlier comparison of his work to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro­gress, see chapter 3, note 224 in this edition. The footnote to the two volumes of The ­Family Instructor

124

Ser ious R eflections

(b) and without; ­here the Case alters, Fraud goes unto the World’s End, for Story, never dies ­every Relator Vouches it for Truth, tho’ he knows nothing of the M ­ atter. ­These Men know not what Foundations they are laying for handing on the Sport of Lying, for such they make of it to Posterity, not only leaving the Example, but dictating the very Materials for the Practice; like Family-­Lies handed on from ­Father to Son, till what begun in Forgery Ends in History, and we make our Lies be told for Truth, by all our C ­ hildren that come ­after us. If any Man object h ­ ere, that the preceeding Volumes of this Work seem to be hereby condemn’d, and the History which I have therein publish’d of my self,241 censur’d; I demand in Justice, such Objector stay his Censure, till he sees the End of the Scene, when all that Mystery s­ hall discover it self, and I doubt not, but the Work ­shall abundantly justify the Design, and the Design abundantly justify the Work. (a)  The Pilgrims Pro­gress. (b)  The ­Family Instructor and ­others.

that Defoe had published in 1715 and 1718 is even more problematic than his comparison to Bunyan’s work, since the fictions in The ­Family Instructor are essentially directly illustrative of specific moral and religious themes. Even in ­these volumes, however, Defoe sometimes creates plots and convincing characters in interaction with one another for l­ittle other pur­ pose than the amusement of his readers. But by linking the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe to his didactic use of fiction in The ­Family Instructor, Defoe attempts to solidify his claim to have written a type of narrative steeped in significant themes. 241. History . . . ​of my self] This specific return to the ­earlier volumes as a form of autobiog­ raphy of Robinson Crusoe is notable, since Crusoe has argued e­ arlier, in the Preface, that his story alludes to the life of another person. To some extent it is preparatory to the next sec­ tion, chapter 4, in which the character of Crusoe is reintroduced.

Chapter 4

•

An ESSAY on the pre­sent State of R ELIGION in the World IN that Part of my Work, which may be called History, I have frequently mention’d the unconquerable Impressions which dwelt upon my Mind, and fill’d up all my Desires immoveably pressing me to a wandring travelling Life, and which push’d me continually on, from one Adventure to another, as you have heard. ­There is an inconsiderate Temper which reigns in our Minds, that hurries us down the Stream of our Affections,1 by a kind of involuntary Agency, and makes us do a thousand ­t hings, in the ­doing of which, we propose nothing to our selves, but an immediate Subjection to our ­WILL, that is to say, our Passion, even with­ out the Concurrence of our Understandings,2 and of which we can give very l­ ittle Account, ­after ’tis done. You may now suppose me3 to be arriv’d, a­ fter a long Course of infinite Vari­ ety, on the Stage of the World, to the Scene of Life, we call Old Age;4 and that I am writing ­t hese Sheets in a Season of my Time, when (if ever) a Man may be supposed capable of making just Reflections upon ­t hings past, a true Judgement of t­ hings pre­sent, and tolerable Conclusions of ­t hings to come. 1. hurries . . . ​A ffections] Swept away by our emotions. The sense is that of a person caught in a swift moving “Stream” and unable to resist. Defoe frequently uses this image when he is describing the relationship between reason, the w ­ ill, and the emotions or affections. See Conjugal Lewdness, 315. For the image of the passions as a “torrent,” see Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-­Smith (New York: Tudor, 1941), 218 (pt. 1, sec. 2, memb. 3, subs. 1). 2. Understandings] This psychological system, in which the reason was supposed to rule over the emotions but finds that the passions have control of the ­w ill, was not very dif­fer­ent from that described by numerous writers during the En­glish Re­nais­sance and often applied by modern critics to the psy­chol­ogy of Shakespeare’s characters. For a discussion of how the passions undermine the reason and the ­w ill, see Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in General, ed. William Newbold (New York: Garland, 1986), 2:126–134 (bk. 2, chaps. 1 and 2). 3. You may now suppose me] Having once more introduced Robinson Crusoe as the narra­ tor, Defoe uses a formula to appeal to the imaginations of his readers. 4. Old Age] At the end of The Farther Adventures, Crusoe rec­ords the date as 10 January 1705. Since he was born on an unknown date in 1632, he was then prob­ably seventy-­t wo years old. In 1720, he would have been about eighty-­eight.

125

126

Ser ious R eflections

In the Beginning of this Life of Composure; for now, and not till now, I may say, that I begun to live, that is to say, a sedate and compos’d Life, I enquir’d of my self very seriously one Day, what was the proper Business of old Age? The Answer was very natu­ral, and indeed return’d quick upon me, namely that two t­hings ­were my pre­sent Work, as above. 1. Reflection upon ­t hings past. 2. Serious Application to ­t hings ­f uture. Having resolv’d the Business of Life into t­hese Heads, I began immediately with the First; and as some Times I took my Pen and Ink to disburthen my Thoughts, when the Subject crowded in fast upon me; so I have ­here communi­ cated some of my Observations for the Benefit of t­ hose that come ­after me. About the Time that I was upon ­these Enquiries, being at a Friend’s House, and talking much of my long Travels, as you know Travellers are apt to do; I observ’d an antient Gentlewoman in the Com­pany listen’d with a ­great deal of Attention, and as I thought, with some Plea­sure, to what I was saying: And a­ fter I had done, pray Sir, says she, turning her Speech to me, give me Leave to ask you a Question or two? With all my Heart, Madam, said I; so we began the following short Dialogue. Old Gent. ​ Pray Sir, in all your Travels, can you tell what is the World a-­doing? What have you observ’d to be the principal Business of Mankind? Rob. Cru. ​Truly Madam, ’tis very hard to answer such a Question, the ­People being so differently employ’d, some one Way, and some another; and par­ ticularly, according to the several Parts of the World, thro’ which our Obser­ vations are to run, and according to the differing Manners, Customs, and Circumstances of the ­People in ­every Place. Old Gent. Alas! Sir, that is no Answer at all5 to me, ­because I am not a Judge of the differing Customs and Manners of the ­People you may speak of: But, Is ­t here not one common End and Design in the Nature of Men, which seems to run thro’ all their Actions, and to be form’d by Nature, as the main End of Life, and by Consequence is made the chief Business of Living? Pray, how do they spend their Time? R. C. ​ Nay; now Madam you have added a Question to the rest, of a dif­fer­ent Nature from what, if I take you right, you meant as a first. Old Gent.  What Question, Sir?

5. no Answer at all] Crusoe has supplied an answer in accord with his conclusions about the cannibals in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures: that dif­fer­ent socie­ties have dif­fer­ ent patterns of be­hav­ior, but as her comment on this page suggests, the Old Gentlewoman desires a key to “the Nature of Men.” Both ways of seeing h ­ uman beings w ­ ere typical of the eigh­teenth ­century. For Defoe’s interest in the latter approach, see Maximillian Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man, passim.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

127

R. C.  ​W hy! how Mankind spend their Time; for I cannot say, that one half of Mankind spend their Time in what they themselves may acknowledge to be the main End of Life. Old Gent. ​Pray, ­don’t distinguish me out of my Question, we may talk of what is the true end of Life, as we understood it ­here in a Christian Country another Time: But take my Question as I offer it, What is Mankind generally a ­doing as their main Business? R. C. ​Truly, the main Business that Mankind seems to be ­doing, is to eat and drink, that’s their Enjoyment, and to get Food to eat is their Employment, including a l­ ittle, their eating and devouring one another. Old Gent. ​That’s a Description of them as Brutes. R. C. ​ It is so in the First Part, namely, their Living to each and drink: But in the last Part6 they are worse than the Brutes; for the Brutes destroy not their own Kind, but all prey upon a dif­fer­ent Species; and besides, they prey upon one another, for Necessity, to satisfy their Hunger, and for Food: But Man for baser Ends, such as Avarice, Envy, Revenge,7 and the like; devours his own Species, nay, his own Flesh and Blood, as my Lord Rochester8 very well expresses it. But judge your self, I’ll bring it to the Test, Which is the basest Creature, Man or Beast. Birds feed on Birds, Beasts on each other Prey, But Savage Man alone does Man betray. Press’d by Necessity, they kill for Food, Man, undoes Man, to do himself no Good. With Teeth and Claws, by Nature amr’d they bunt, Nature’s Allowance to supply their Want: But Man with Smiles, embraces, Friendship, Praise, 6. last Part] Cannibalism. For a discussion of Defoe’s remarks on cannibalism throughout his writings, see Maximillian Novak, “Der Fleischloser Freitag,” in Das Andere Essen: Kannibalismus als Motiv und Meta­phor, ed. Walter Pope and Daniel Fulda (Freiburg im Breis­ gau: Rombach, 2001), 197–216. For a complex treatment of cannibalism in relation to Western attitudes, see Claude Rawson, God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the Eu­ro­pean Imagination, 1492–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17–91. 7. Man for . . . ​Revenge] ­A fter speaking literally of cannibalism, Crusoe, as he approaches the quotation from Rochester, uses the image of ­humans devouring other h ­ umans in a meta­ phoric sense. But the notion that cannibalism was part of a system of revenge among war­ ring tribes was already available in Montaigne’s essay on cannibals, in which he found their actions similar to t­ hose of con­temporary armies in Eu­rope. 8. my Lord Rochester] Crusoe’s reply (122:3–11) is a prose paraphrase of the poem quoted on this page in lines 13–24 from Rochester’s Satyr against Mankind, sometimes A Satyr against Reason and Mankind or simply Against Reason and Mankind. Defoe’s transcription is close to the text in Harold Love’s edition (60–61), except for the opening line beginning “Be judge . . .” and the final line being “Not through Necessity. . . .” The philosophic position involved in praising the be­hav­ior of animals and criticizing that of h ­ uman beings, as an expression of philosophic skepticism about ­human wisdom, is argued at length in Mon­ taigne’s “Apology for Raymond de Sebond,” in chapter 12 of the second book of Essays.

128

Ser ious R eflections

1.  Inhumanly his Fellows Life betrays. With voluntary Pains works his Distress, Not for Necessity, but Wantonness. Old Gent. ​A ll this I believe is true; but this does not reach my Question yet: ­There is certainly something among them, which is esteemed as more par­ ticularly the End of Life, and of Living, than the rest; to which they apply in common, as the main Business, and which it is alway esteemed to be their Wisdom to be employ’d in: Is t­here not something that is apparently the ­great Business of Living? R. C. ​W hy ­really, Madam, I think not. For Example: ­Great Part of the World, and a greater Part by far than we imagine, is resolv’d into the lowest Degen­ eracy of ­human Nature, I mean the Savage Life;9 where the chief End of Life seems to be meerly to eat and drink, that is to say, to get their Food, just as the brutal Life is employ’d, and indeed with very l­ittle Difference between them; for except only Speech and Idolatry, I see nothing in the Life of some ­whole Nations of ­People, and for ­ought I know, containing Millions of Souls, in which the Life of a Lion or an Elephant in the Desarts of Arabia, is not equal. Old Gent. ​I could mention many t­ hings, Sir, in which they might differ, but that is not the pre­sent ­t hing I enquire about: But, pray Sir, Is not Religion the principal Business of Mankind in all the Parts of the World; for I  think you granted it when you nam’d Idolatry, which they, no doubt, call Religion? R. C. ​­Really, Madam, I cannot say it is; ­because, what with Ignorance on one hand, and Hy­poc­risy on the other, ’tis very hard to know where to find Reli­ gion in the World. Old Gent. ​You avoid my Question too laboriously, Sir, I have nothing to do ­either with the Ignorance or Hy­poc­risy of the ­People, ­whether they are blindly devout, or knavishly and designedly devout, is not the Case; but

9. Savage Life] ­Here through Crusoe, Defoe refuses to be impressed by the many writers who attempted to see in the lives of ­peoples in areas of the world less developed than Eu­rope as ­either a kind of golden age (“soft primitivism”) or a type of purity in the often harsh condi­ tions among the natives (“hard primitivism”). To a certain extent, in his treatment of Friday in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures and in some of his other works, such as A New Voyage Round the World (1724), Defoe could indulge in this kind of idealization. However, he never forgets that he is treating humanity ­a fter the Fall and in its depraved condition. In his Mere Nature Delineated (1726), Defoe forcefully attacked what he considered to be the wrongheaded and sentimental notions of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury on the savage life. For discussions of concepts of wildness and the savage life during the seventeenth and eigh­ teenth centuries, see Lois Whitney, Prmitivism and the Idea of Pro­gress in En­glish Popu­lar Lit­er­a­ture of the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1934); A Documentary History of Primitivism, ed. Arthur Lovejoy et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935); The Wild Man Within, ed. Edward Dudley and Maximillian Novak (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1972); and Cătălan Avramescu, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism, trans. Alistair Blyth (Prince­ton: Prince­ton University Press, 2003).

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

129

­ hether Religion is not apparently the main Business of the World, the prin­ w cipal apparent End of Life, and the Employment of Mankind? R. C. ​W hat do you call Religion? Old Gent. ​By Religion, I mean, the Worshipping and Paying Homage to some supreme Being, some God, known or unknown, is not to the Case, so it be but to something counted supreme. R. C. ​It is true, Madam, ­t here are scarce any Nations in the World so stupid, but they give Testimony to the Being of a God, and have some Notion of a supreme Power. Old Gent. ​That I know also, but that is not the main Part of my Question: But my Opinion is, that paying a divine Worship, Acts of Homage and Adora­ tion, and particularly, that of Praying to the Supreme Being, which they acknowledge, is deriv’d to Mankind from the Light of Nature,10 with the Notion or Belief itself. R. C. ​I suppose Madam, you mean by the Question then, ­W hether the Notion or Belief of a God in general, and the Sense of Worship in par­tic­u ­lar, are not one and the same natu­ral Princi­ple. Old Gent. ​I do so, if you and I do but agree about what we call Worship. R. C. ​By Worship, I understand Adoration. Old Gent. ​But ­t here you and I differ again a ­little; for by Worship, I under­ stand Supplication. R. C. ​Then you must take them both in together; for some Part of the Indian Savages only adore. Old Gent. ​I confess ­ t here is much Adoration, where ­ t here is ­ little Supplication.11 R. C. ​You distinguish too nicely, Madam.

10. Supreme Being . . . ​Light of Nature] In The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 184, Crusoe concludes that although “the meer Notions of Nature . . . ​­w ill guide reasonable Creatures to the Knowledge of a God, and of a Worship or Hommage due to the supreme Being of God,” in m ­ atters of salvation, it is necessary to have “the Word of God and the Spirit of God.” This follows Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:14: “But the natu­ral man receiveth not the ­t hings of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, ­because they are spiritually discerned.” Nevertheless, such defenders of orthodoxy as Edward Stillingfleet, insisted that e­ very ­human being had an “Idea of God,” and the Boyle Lecturers thought that the obvious sense of design in the world would lead any ­human being to conclude that ­t here had to be a creator. Crusoe is willing to admit that some form of worship seemed to be universal. See Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae (London, 1680), 363–369. For an example of the opinion of a lecturer in the series established by Robert Boyle, see John Clarke’s lectures for 1719, An Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of [Moral] Evil, 2 vols. (London, 1720–1721), 2:259–261. 11. Adoration . . . ​Supplication] The OED uses the term “worship” for adoration but not for supplication. The distinction is between a genuine love of God and a relationship based peti­ tioning and appeasement, on the desire for gifts and the fear that the deity ­w ill withhold his protection. The Old Gentlewoman appears to hold to this distinction in speaking of “mere supplication” (124:33). Crusoe appears to be doubtful that the two can be separated, but comes to agree with her on “the apparent End of Worship” (125:6–7).

130

Ser ious R eflections

Old Gent. ​No, no, I do not distinguish in what I call Worship; I alledge, that all the Adoration of t­ hose poor Savages is mere Supplication: You say they lift up their Hands to their Idols, for Fear they should hurt them.12 R. C. ​I do say so, and it is apparent. Old Gent. ​Why, that is the same t­ hing, for then they lift up their Hands to him, that is to say, pray to him not to hurt them; for all the Worship in the World, especially the outward Per­for­mance, may be resolv’d into Supplication. R. R. ​ I agree with you in that, if you mean the apparent End of Worship. Old Gent. ​W hy! did not your Man Friday and the Savage ­Woman13 you tell us of, talk of their old Idol they call’d Benamuckee?14 And what did they do? R. C. ​It is very true they did. Old Gent. ​And did not Friday tell you they went up to the Hills, and said O15 to him? Pray, what was the Meaning of saying O to him: But O do not hurt us; for thou art Omnipotent, and canst kill us: O heal our Distempers; for thou art Infinite, and can’st do all ­t hings: O give us what we want; for thou art Bountiful; O spare us; for thou art Merciful:16 And so of all the other Conceptions of a God? R. C. ​Well, Madam, I grant all this, pray what do you infer from it? What is the Reason of your Question? Old Gent. ​O Sir, I have many Inferences to draw from it for my own Observa­ tion, I do not set up to instruct you.

I thought this serious old Lady would have entertain’d a farther Discourse with me on so fruitful a Subject; but she declin’d it, and left me to my own Meditation, which indeed she had rais’d up to an unusual Pitch: And the first 12. Fear . . . ​hurt them] The Old Gentlewoman seems to believe that the basis of religion among the ­peoples of the lands Crusoe has visited is mainly fear. Although she refuses to draw conclusions from her conversation with Crusoe, her questions lead Crusoe into a highly critical discussion of the state of religion in the world. Defoe did not take much com­ fort, as did the deists, in the mere existence of some form of worship throughout the world. In his Jure Divino, 7:25, he depicted a meeting of the dev­ils in Pandaemonium to establish idol worship. The tyrant who was feared in life is made into an idol and feared and wor­ shipped ­a fter his death. They “Blaspheme the Sacred, and usurp his Place,” perverting the nature of religion: From hence the captivated Wretch he draws, Graspt by his Fear, for Fear’s the might Cause Of blind Subjection: Fear’s the Bond of Crime, The Second Sin of Nature, First-­born Child of Time. For Defoe such worship was part of the dev­i l’s plan, corrupting mankind in ­every way. 13. Savage ­Woman] The wife of ­Will Atkins in The Farther Adventures. ­ ill Atkins’s wife refer to this being as the deity they 14. Benamuckee] Both Friday and W worship. 15. said O] Crusoe translates this phrase as equivalent to “saying Prayers.” See The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 181. 16. O do not . . . ​Merciful] This rendering of the manner of praying to Benamuckee is not pre­ sent in e­ ither of the first two volumes and must be assumed to have been part of the long description of his travels that Crusoe gave to his audience.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

131

t­ hing that occurr’d to me, was to put me upon enquring ­a fter that nice ­t hing, I ­ought to call Religion, in the World; seeing ­really I found Reason to think, that ­t here was much more Devotion than Religion in the World; in a Word, much more Adoration than Supplication: And I doubt, as I come nearer Home, it w ­ ill appear, that t­here is much more Hy­poc­risy than Sincerity: Of which I may speak by itself. In my first Enquiries, I look’d back upon my own Travels, and it afforded me but a melancholy Reflection, that in all the Voyages and Travels which I have employ’d two Volumes in giving a Relation of, I never set my Foot in a Christian Country, no not in circling three Parts of the Globe; for, excepting the Brasils, where the Portuguese indeed profess’d the Roman-­Catholick Princi­ples,17 which however, in Distinction from Paganism, I ­w ill call the Christian Religion; I say, except the Brasils, where also I made ­little Stay, I could not be said to set Foot in a Christian Country, or a Country inhabited by Christians, from the Bay of La’rache, and the Port of Sallee, by the Straits Mouth, where I escap’d from Slav­ ery, thro’ the Altantick Ocean, the Coasts of Africk on one Side, and of Carribea on the American Shore, on the other Side; from thence to Madagascar, Malabar, and the Bay and City of Bongale, the Coast of Sumatra, Malacca, Siam, Cambodia, Cochinchina, the Empire and Coast of China, the Desarts of Karakathay, the Mongul Tartars, the Siberian, the Samoiede Barbarians,18 and till I came within four or five Days of Arch-­Angel in the Black Rus­sia.19 It is, I say, a melancholy Reflection to think, how all ­these Parts of the World, and with infinite Numbers of Millions of P ­ eople, furnish’d with the Powers of Reason, and Gifts of Nature, and many Ways, if not ­every Way, as capable of the Reception of sublime ­t hings, as we are, are yet abandon’d to the grossest Ignorance and Depravity; and that not in Religion only, but even in all the desirable Parts of humane Knowledge, and especially Science and acquir’d Knowledge. 17. Brasils . . . ​Roman–­Catholick Princi­ples] The Farther Adventures gives an extremely favorable account of the Catholic Priest, whom Crusoe rescues and who marries the En­glishmen to their native wives on Crusoe’s island. And while in Brazil, Crusoe had appar­ ently worshipped at the Catholic churches. ­Under ­t hese circumstances, Crusoe’s grudging distinction between Catholicism and “Paganism” is surprising. 18. Samoiede Barbarians] This refers to a major Siberian tribe inhabiting both sides of the river Ob, but Crusoe does not mention them by name in The Farther Adventures. See Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (London, 1688), Ss5v–­Ss6. 19. Bay of La’rache . . . ​Rus­sia] This summary of Crusoe’s travels in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures and The Farther Adventures has a few odd ele­ments. The Bay of Larache is not mentioned in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, but it is geo­graph­i­cally not far from the site of his captivity at Salé. The city of Larache is on the North African coast between Tanger (Tangier) and Salé (Sallee). “The Strait’s Mouth” is clearly a reference to the Straits of Gibraltar, but Crusoe was enslaved over a hundred miles south of Gibraltar. The passage would make more sense if it read: “from the Bay of La’rache, by the Straits Mouth, and the Port of Salee, where. . . .” See Edmund Bohun, A Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (London, 1695), 222.

132

Ser ious R eflections

What the Divine Wisdom has determined concerning the Souls of so many Millions,20 it is hard to conclude, nor is it my pre­sent Design to enquire; but this I may be allow’d ­here, as a Remark: If they are received to Mercy in a ­Future State, according to the Opinion of some,21 as having not sin’d against saving Light, then their Ignorance and Pagan Darkness is not a Curse, but a Felicity;22 and ­t here are no unhappy P ­ eople in the World, but t­ hose lost among Christians, for their Sins against reveal’d Light; nay, then being born in the Regions of Christian Light, and ­under the Revelation of the Gospel Doctrines, is not so much a Mercy to be acknowledged as some teach us, and it may be in a negative Manner be true, that the Christian Religion is an Efficient23 in the Condemnation of Sinners, and loses more than it saves, which is impious but to imagin: On the other Hand, if all ­t hose Nations are concluded24 ­under the Sentence of eternal Absence from God, which is Hell in the Abstract;25 then what becomes of all the sceptical Doc­

20. Souls of . . . ​Millions] The Athanasian Creed, which was part of the Book of Common Prayer, insisted that salvation could come only through Christ. This was essentially the posi­ tion of John Calvin and the Presbyterians in E ­ ngland. But as Philip Harth has shown (The Contexts of Dryden’s Thought [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968], 148–173), reli­ gious opinion was divided. At the beginning of the seventeenth ­century, Protestant thought tended to assume Calvin’s view, while the Catholic Church allowed for the possibility of the salvation of the heathen. But by the end of the ­century, no clear division could be made on such a basis. The Latitudinarians in ­England tended to accept a more lenient position, and in his Religio Laici (1682), both in the preface and the poem, Dryden refused to accept Athana­ sius’s judgment on this point. Harth shows that such a view had strong support in the Angli­ can Church hierarchy. The basis for such a view came from an interpretation of Saint Paul’s statement (Romans 2:14-5): “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the ­things contained in the law, ­these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves. Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts.” Defoe, who thought of himself as an ortho­ dox Christian, takes the path of Athanasius and the Calvinists for the most part. In his Review, supplement November (1:10–11), he rejected the notion that a good Turk might be saved, arguing that followers of Islam had consciously rejected Chris­tian­ity. In his persona of Crusoe, who shuns religious disagreements among Christians, he shows slightly less cer­ tainty about ­those ­peoples who appeared to have no knowledge of Chris­tian­ity, but in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, he viewed the heathen world as ruled by the devil. For a discus­ sion of the differing religious attitudes among Christians, see The California Edition of the Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg, Vinton Dearing, et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954–2000), 2:350–353. 21. the Opinion of some] In addition to John Dryden (see the previous note), John Donne, Archbishop John Tillotson, and Gilbert Burnet held this notion. 22. Ignorance . . . ​Felicity] In the argument that follows, Defoe suggests that if non-­Christians may find salvation by simply leading a good life, then it must seem as if Christians have a greater burden for salvation than ­those who follow other religions. But he argues that to believe that would be “impious to imagin” (127:22). 23. Efficient] “The cause which makes effects to be what they are,” OED B1. 24. concluded] Included. See OED. 25. Absence . . . ​Hell in the Abstract] Abstract is used ­here as meaning the essence or epit­ ome. In this passage, rather than insisting on the damnation of the heathen to some literal place of torture, Defoe suggests that their punishment might be the deprivation of the pres­ ence of God. This is something like Milton’s notion of Hell in Paradise Lost in which part of Satan’s punishment lies in being deprived of God’s presence.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

133

trines26 of its being inconsistent with the Mercy and Goodness of an infinite and beneficent Being, to condemn so ­great a Part of the World, for not believing in him of whom they never had any Knowledge or Instruction? But I desire not to be the Promoter of unanswerable Doubts in M ­ atters of Religion;27 much less would I promote Cavils at the Foundations of Religion, ­either as to its Profession or Prac­ tice, and therefore I only name ­Things. I return to my Enquiry ­after Religion as we generally understand the Word. And in this I confine myself in my pre­sent Enquiries to the par­tic­u­lar Nations professing the Christian Religion only, and I ­shall take Notice afterward, what influence the want of Religion has upon the Manners the Genius, and the Capaci­ ties of the P ­ eople, as to all the improvable Parts of ­human Knowledge. The Moors of Barbary 28 are Mahometans, and that of the most degenerate and unpolished Sort, especially of that Part of the World where they live; they are cruel as Beasts, vicious, insolent, and inhuman as degenerated Nature can make them: Moral Vertues29 have so l­ittle recommended themselves to any among them, that they are accounted no Accomplishment, and are in no Esteem; nor is a Man at all respected for being grave, sober, judicious, or wise, or for being just in his Dealings, or most easy in his Conversation; but Rapine and Injury is the Cus­ tom of the Place; and it is to recommend a ­great Man, that he is rich, power­f ul in Slaves, merciless in his Government of them, and imperiously haughty in his ­whole Houshold. ­Every Man is a King within himself, and regards neither Justice or Mercy, Humanity or Civility, e­ ither to them above him, or them below him, but just as his arbitrary Passions guide him.

26. sceptical Doctrines] Defoe is using this more as a vague term of abuse for ­those who express doubts on this issue without arriving at definite conclusions than as a precise ­ nder “sceptic.” description of a philosophic or religious position. See OED 4, u 27. unanswerable Doubts . . . ​Religion] Crusoe is in character ­here as the supporter of the French Roman Catholic Priest in The Farther Adventures. Defoe was prob­ably thinking of the Salter’s Hall Controversy (1719) and the debate over the Trinity. He regarded the notion of the Trinity as a mystery, not completely comprehensible to Christian believers but to be taken as an item of faith. He therefore regarded the debate to be futile and the controversy as a disaster both to the theology of the Dissenters and to their existence as a group. See Novak, Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions, 523–524. 28. Barbary] As defined by Bohun (1688, sig. E1v), this included most of North Africa, mod­ ern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya and as far east as the border of Egypt. For a fuller discussion see “A Vision of the Angelick World,” note 57 in this edition. 29. Moral Vertues] Crusoe argues against the notion of the wise and moral pagan or “Turk.” Perhaps the most famous reflection on this came in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (ed. Martin Battestin [Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1967], 82–83), when Parson Abra­ ham Adams announces that he had always believed “that a virtuous and good Turk or Hea­ then, are more acceptable in the sight of the Creator, than a vicious and Christian, tho’ his Faith was as perfectly Orthodox as St. Paul himself.” Battestin suggested Bishop Benjamin Hoadly’s sermon, “The Good Samaritan,” as a pos­si­ble source. Defoe himself had created a moral and religious Turk in his Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy (London, 1718), but see his arguments in the Review for his negative view on this subject.

134

Ser ious R eflections

Religion ­here is confin’d to the Biram30 and the Ramadan,31 the Feast and the Fast, to the Mosque and the Bath; reading the Alcoran32 on one Hand, and per­ forming rhe Washings and Purifications on the other, make up their religious Exercises; and for the rest, Conversation is eaten up with Barbarisms and Brutish Customs; so that ­t here’s neither Society, Humanity, Confidence in one another, or Conversation with one another; but Men live like the wild Beasts, for e­ very Man ­here r­ eally would destroy and devour the other if he could.33 This guided me to a just Reflection, in Honour of the Christian Religion, which I have often since made Use of, and which on this Occasion I ­will make a Digres­ siou to, viz. That it is to be said for the Reputation of the Christian Religion in general, and by which it is justly distinguish’d from all other Religions, that where-­ever Chris­tian­ity has been planted or profess’d nationally in the World, even where it has not had a Saving Influence, it has yet had a Civilizing Influence:34 It has operated upon the Manners, the Morals, the Politics, and even the Tempers and Dispositions of the P ­ eople: It has reduc’d them to the Practice of Virtue, and to the true Methods of Living, has wean’d them from the Barbarous Customs they had been used to, infusing a Kind of Humanity and Softness of Disposition into their very Natures; civilizing and softning them, teaching them to love a Reg­ ularity of Life, and filling them with Princi­ples of generous Kindness and Benefi­ cence one to another; in a Word, it has taught them to live like Men, and act upon the Foundations of Clemency, Humanity, Love, and good Neighbourhood, suit­ able to the Nature and Dignity of God’s Image, and to the Rules of Justice and Equity, which it instructs them in. Nay farther, I must observe also, That as the Christian Religion has worn out, or been removed from any Country, and they have returned to Heathenism and Idolatry, so the Barbarisms have return’d, the Customs of the Heathen Nations have been again restor’d; the very Nature and Temper of the P ­ eople, have been 30. Biram] Prob­ably a reference to the lesser Bairam or the feast of Eid-­U l-­Fitr at the conclu­ sion of the fasting month of Ramadan. It was intended to celebrate the revelation of the Koran. The ­great Bairam, Eid-­U l-­Azha, occurs seventy days ­a fter Ramadan, and is a more somber occasion. See Rafi Ullah Shehab, Islamic Festivals and Rituals (Lahore: Maqbool Acad­emy, 1988), 73–77, 139–144; and Marjo Buitelaar, Fasting and Feasting in Morocco (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 71–76, 135–137. 31. Ramadan] The ninth month of the Islamic year, during which ­t here is a thirty-­day fast during daylight hours. See Shehab, Islamic Festivals and Rituals, 46–76. 32. Alcoran] The usual way of referring to the Koran or Q’ran, the holy book of Islam during this period. 33. destroy and devour . . . ​could] An allusion to Rochester’s Satyr against Mankind. See chap­ ter 1, note 5 and chapter 2, 48 in this edition with their discussion of Rochester’s observation that all men would be cowards if they “could.” 34. Saving . . . ​Civilizing Influence] Defoe distinguishes between ­t hose places where Chris­ tian­ity has led to the possibility of the salvation of souls and t­ hose place where it has e­ ither been displaced or where, in his mind, the practice of Chris­tian­ity is hardly sufficient for sal­ vation. See Review, 3:311, where in heaping praise on Lord Petersborough for his clemency in warfare, he digresses on the cruelty of the Romans ­toward their prisoners, blaming it on their lack of the Christian religion, which “has civiliz’d the Nations as to their Manners and Temper, even ­t here ­were it has not had a saving Operation.”

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

135

again lost; all their generous Princi­ples have forsaken them, the Softness and Goodness of their Dispositions have worn out, and they have returned to Cruelty, Inhumanity, Rapin,35 and Blood. It is true, and it may be nam’d as an Objection to this Remark of mine, that the Romans tho’ Heathens, and the Grecians by the Study of Philosophy, in par­tic­u ­lar Persons, and by the Excellency of their Government in their general or national Capacity, ­were fill’d with Notions of Virtue and Honour, with most generous and just Princi­ples, and acted with an heroic Mind in many Occasions; practising the most sublime and exalted Height of Virtue, such as sacrificing their Lives for their Country, with the utmost Zeal; descending to ­great Examples of Humanity and Beneficence, scorning to do base or vile Actions, as unworthy the Roman Name, to save their Lives; and a ­great many most excellent Examples of Virtue and Gal­ lantry, are found in the Histories of the Roman Empires.36 This does not oppose, it rather indeed illustrates what I say; for with all the Philosophy, all the Humanity and Generosity they practis’d, they had yet their Remains of Barbarity, w ­ ere cruel and unmerciful in their Natures, as appear’d by the Barbarity of their Customs, such as throwing Malefactors to wild Beasts, the Fightings of their Gladiators, and the like; which w ­ ere not only appointed as Pun­ ishments and Severities, by the Order of Public Justice; but to shew it touch’d the very Article I am upon, it was the Subject of their Sport and Diversion, ­these ­Things ­were exhibited as Shows to entertain the Ladies; the Cutting in Pieces fourty or fifty Slaves, and the Seeing twenty or thirty miserable Creatures thrown to the Lyons and Tygers, was no less pleasant to them, than the G ­ oing to see an Opera, a Masquerade, or a Puppet Show, is to us; So that I think, the Romans ­were very far from a ­People civiliz’d and soften’d in their Natures by the Influencss of Religion. And this is evident, ­because that as37 the Christian Religion came among them, all ­t hose cruel Customs w ­ ere abhorr’d by them, the famous Theatres and Circles38 for their publick Sports, ­were overthrown, and the Ruines of them testify the Justice of my Observation at this very Day. Nor ­w ill it be deny’d, if I should carry this yet farther, and observe, That even among Christians, t­hose who are more reform’d, and farther and farther christianiz’d, are still in Proportion rendred more ­human, more soft and tender; and we do find, without being partial to our selves, that even the Protestant Coun­ tries39 are much distinguish’d in the Humanity and Softness of their Tempers, 35. Rapin] Plunder, pillage, robbery. None of the examples in the OED spell this word with­ out the e at the end, and this may be a ­simple typo. 36. Histories . . . ​Roman Empires] In addition to his reading in Augustine’s City of God (chapter 3, note 76 in this edition), Defoe had read Plutarch’s Lives, Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, and Laurence Echard’s Roman History. 37. ­because that as] The sentence makes better sense if “that” is removed. 38. Circles] Arenas or circuses, such as the Circus Maximus in Rome. The OED cites an example from 1623, which, as in this example, equates circles with theaters. 39. Protestant Countries] Defoe had made a similar argument early in his c­ areer as a writer. In his The Poor Man’s Plea (1698), he argued: “The Protestant Religion has in it self a natu­ral ten­ dency to Virtue, as a standing Testimony of its own Divine Original, and accordingly it has

136

Ser ious R eflections

the meek merciful Disposition Extends more among Protestants, than among the Papists, as I could very particularly demonstrate from History and Experience. But to return back to the Moores, where I left off, they are an Instance of that Cruelty of Disposition, which was anciently in their Nature, and how in a Coun­ try abandon’d of the true Christian Religion, a­ fter it has been first planted and profess’d among them, the Return of Heathenism or Mahometanism has brought back with it all the Barbarisms of a Nation void of Religion and good Nature. I saw enough of t­ hese dreadful P ­ eople to think them at this Time the worst of all the Nations of the World; a Nation, where no such t­ hing as a generous Spirit, or a Temper with any Comparison mixt with it, is to be found; among whom Nature appears stripp’d of all the additional Glories, which it derives from Reli­ gion, and yet whereon a Christian flourishing Church had stood several hundred Years. From ­t hese I went among the Negroes of Africa; many of them I saw without any the least Notion of a Deity among them, much less any Form of Worship; but I had not any Occasion to converse with them on Shore, other than I have done since by Accident, but went away to the Brasils: Here I found the Natives, and that even before the Portuguese came among them, and since also, had Abundance of Religion, such as it was: But it was all so bloody, so cruel; consisting of Murders, ­human Sacrifices, Witchcrafts, Sorceries, and Conjurings, that I could not so much as call them honest Pagans, as I do the Negroes. As for the Cannibals, as I have observ’d in the Discourse of them, on Account of their Landing on my Island, I can say but very l­ ittle of them: As for their eating ­human Flesh, I take it to be a Kind of martial Rage, rather than a civil Practice; for ’tis evident, they eat no h ­ uman Creatures, but such as are taken Prisoners in their ­Battles; and as I have observ’d in giving the Account of ­t hose ­t hings, they do not Esteem it Murder, no nor so much as unlawful. I must confess, saving its being a Practice in itself unnatural, especially to us,40 I say, saving that Part, I see ­little Difference between that and our Way, which in the War is frequent in Heat of Action, viz. refusing Quarter;41 for as to the Difference between Eating and Kill­ ing ­t hose that offer to yield, it ­matters not much. And this I observed at the same suppress’d Vice and Immorality in all the Countries where it has had a Footing: It has civiliz’d Nations, and reform’d the very Tempers of its Professors: Chris­tian­ity and Humanity have gone Hand and Hand in the World; and ­there is so vis­i­ble a difference between the other Civiliz’d Governments in the World, and ­those who are now ­under the Protestant Powers, that it carries Evidence in it self.” In The Shortest Way with the Dissenters and Other Pamphlets, in The Shakespeare Head Edition of the Writings of Daniel Defoe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1927), 2. 40. unnatural . . . ​to us] In The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 144–145, Crusoe comes to the conclusion that he has no right to punish the cannibals for actions that do not appear to them as crimes but which are accepted cus­ toms of their tribes. Although writers such as Samuel Pufendorf argued that ­t here was an ideal law of nature for all socie­ties, they recognized that the customs of individual nations might vary greatly from such an ideal. This was especially true about marriage customs. See Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man, 109. 41. refusing Quarter] This argument was essentially the same as that of Michel Montaigne in his essay “Of Cannibals,” in Essays, 1:209–211.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

137

Time, that in their other Conduct, ­those Savages ­were as ­human, as mild, and gentle, as most I have met with in the World, and as easily civiliz’d. From ­these Sorts of ­People, I come to the Indians; for as to the Madagascar Men, I saw very ­little of them, but that they ­were a Kind of Negroes, much like ­t hose on the Coast of Guinea, only, a l­ ittle more used and accustomed to the Eu­ro­ pe­ans, by their often Landing among them. The E. Indians42 are generally Pagans or Mahometans, and have such Mix­ tures of Savage Customs with them, that even Mahometanism is t­ here in its Cor­ ruption; neither have they ­t here, the upright just Dealing in ­Matters of Right and Wrong, which the Turks in Eu­rope have, with whom ’tis generally very safe trad­ ing: But h ­ ere they act all the Parts of Thieves and Cheats,43 watching to deceive you, and proud of being thought able to do it. The Subjects of the g­ reat Mogul44 have a seeming polite Government; and the Inhabitants of Ceylon45 are ­under very strict Discipline; and yet what Difficulty do we find to trade with them? Nay, their very Oeconomy renders them fraudu­ lent, and in some Places they cannot turn their Thoughts to being honest. China is famous for Wisdom, that is to say, that they, having such a boundless Conceit of their own Wisdom, we are oblig’d to allow them more than they have; the Truth is, they are justly said to be a wise Nation among the foolish ones, and may as justly be called a Nation of Fools46 among the wise ones. 42. E. Indians] Defoe would have had some familiarity with modern Indonesia from such works as William Dampier’s New Voyage Round the World (1697) and Daniel Beeckman’s Borneo, published by Thomas Warner, one of Defoe’s regular publishers, in 1718. 43. Thieves and Cheats] In his Atlas Maritimus, 214, Defoe refers to the ­people of Java as “a thieving, cheating, murdering Race of ­People,” adding that “no body cares to deal with them but in publick and in com­pany with ­others.” 44. g­ reat Mogul] Northern India had been subject to invasions by the followers of Mahomet from 711 c.e., but it was Babur (1483–1530), with his victories in 1526 at Panipat and in 1527 at Kanwaka, who extended his territories from modern Iran to the Gan­ges River. During the period that Crusoe had been in India, Aurengzeb (1658–1707) had been the most power­ful ­Great Mogul. John Dryden had depicted him as a moral and brave leader in his play Aureng-­ Zebe (1676). 45. Ceylon] Defoe was familiar with Robert Knox’s captivity in Ceylon. His An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies (1681) was listed in his library sale cata­logue. See The Libraries of Daniel Defoe and Phillips Farewell, ed. Helmut Heidenreich (Berlin: Heidenreich, 1970), 14 (item 198). Knox had depicted a nation that was indeed ­under the “very strict Discipline” of its ruler. 46. China . . . ​Nation of Fools] For Defoe’s attempt to overturn the image of China as a wise, power­ful and advanced civilization, see the notes to The Farther Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, especially to pages 204–211. In that work, Crusoe describes a Mandarin, whom he encounters, to be incredibly proud, living in an impoverished land. In a short arti­ cle, “A Pos­si­ble Source for Defoe’s Serious Reflections,” N&Q, n.s. 37 (1990): 301–302, Takau Shimada argues that Defoe’s criticism of Chinese culture has its roots in the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns during the 1690s, when William Wotton, taking the side of the Moderns, criticized Sir William ­Temple idyllic picture of the Chinese and of Confucius. In his chapter “Of the Learning of the Chineses,” Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (London, 1694), 144–154, Wotton gave most space to the absurdity of Chinese medicine, but he also mocked Sir William ­Temple’s opinions on China in the pro­cess. As Shimada points out, Charles Gildon (Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticiz’d, 120 [46]) took the part of Sir William

138

Ser ious R eflections

As to their Religion, ’tis all summ’d up in Confucius47 his Maxims,48 whose Theology, I take to be a Rhapsody of Moral Conclusions; a Foundation, or what we may call Ele­ments of Polity,49 Morality and Supersition, huddl’d together in a Rhapsody50 of Words, without Consistency, and indeed with very ­little Reason­ ing51 in it: Then ’tis r­ eally not so much as a refin’d Paganism, for t­ here are in my Opinion much more regular D ­ oings among some of the Indians that are Pagans in Amer­i­ca, than ­t here are in China: And if I may believe the Account given of the Government of Montezuma in Mexico, and of the Unca’s of Cusco in Peru;52 their Worship and Religion such as it was, was carry’d on with more Regularity than ­ emple in suggesting that ­Temple had to know more about Chinese culture than Defoe and T that it was clearly “the most Polite and Magnificent Empire in the World.” In reiterating his stance, Defoe, through Crusoe, placed himself squarely on the side of the Moderns. 47. Confucius] The Morals of this Chinese phi­los­o­pher ­were published in Latin during the seventeenth ­century and abridged as The Morals of Confucius a Chinese Phi­los­o­pher Who Flourished above Five Hundred Years before the coming of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (London, 1691). Writing of Confucius’s influence, Sir William ­Temple stated: “The sum of his writings seem to be a body or digestion of ethics, that is, of all moral virtues, ­either personal, oeco­nom­ical, civil or po­liti­cal; and framed for the institution and conduct of men’s lives, their families, and their governments, but chiefly of the last. . . . ​In short, the ­whole scope of all Confucius as writ seems aimed only at teaching men to live well, and to govern well; how parents, masters, and magistrates should rule, and how c­ hildren, servants, and subjects should obey.” Works, 4 vols. (London, 1814), 3:332–334. T ­ emple went on to praise Confucius as “a very extraordinary genius, of mighty learning, admirable virtue, excellent nature, a true patriot of his country, and lover of mankind” (334). Sir William Wotton criticized ­Temple for this praise of Confucius and Chinese culture, in his Reflections, 145. 48. Maxims] Pages 115–142 in the 1691 version of The Morals are composed of eighty “Max­ ims,” that are supposed to summarize the teachings of Confucius. 49. Polity] Prob­ably used ­here in the negative sense of “crafty” be­hav­ior enabling one to avoid enmity and to get along in the world. See OED. 50. Rhapsody] Without order or design. See OED. For the probable echo of William Wotton, see chapter 4, note 46 in this edition. William Wotton, in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (London, 1694), 145, referred to the writings of Confucius as “an incoher­ ent Rhapsody of moral Sayings.” For a discussion of this as Defoe’s source, see Takau Shi­ mada, N&Q (1990), 301–302. 51. ­little Reasoning] In the “Advertisement” (sig. A5) prefixed to Confucius’s Morals the translators and editors make the point that Confucius offered wise and practical advice: “­Every ­Thing herein is Solid. . . . ​­There is nothing of Falsity in his Reasonings, nothing Extream, none of ­those frightful Subtilties, which are observ’d in the Moral Treatise of most Modern Metaphysitians,” indicating in a note that they are attacking the writings of the con­temporary phi­los­o­pher Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715). Crusoe comes to the defense of Western phi­ losophy and its “Subtilties.” 52. Government . . . ​Peru] In his Royal Commentaries of the Yncas (1609), Garcilasso de la Vega presented the government of the Incas in Peru as a highly or­ga­nized and orderly type of utopia in which ­people followed “the natu­ral law.” On the other hand, although the Spanish ­under Cortés ­were impressed by the beauty of Tenochtitlan, the city ruled by Montezuma, they had encountered a number of tribes that fretted ­under the harsh rule of the Aztecs and ­were willing to help the Spanish in defeating them in the wars waged by the Spanish con­ querors between 1519 and 1521. And the Spanish conquerors w ­ ere horrified by the h ­ uman sacrifices performed by the Aztecs. Defoe was certainly aware of the differences between the two civilizations, but he has Crusoe lump the two socie­ties together by way of criticizing Chinese civilization. See First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, trans. Clements Markham, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1869–1871), 1:89, 101, 174; and Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo, trans. Francis MacNutt, 2 vols. (New York: Putnam, 1912), 2:87–136.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

139

t­ hese in China. As to the ­human Ingenuity, as they call it, of the Chineses,53 I ­shall account for it by itself: The utmost Discoveries of it to me appear’d in the Mechanicks,54 and even in them infinitely short of what is found among the Eu­ro­ pe­an Nations. But let us take ­t hese ­People to Pieces a ­little, and examine into the ­great Pene­ tration, they are so fam’d for: First of all, their Knowledge has not led them that Length in religious ­Matters, which the common Notions of Philosophy would have done, and to which they did lead the wise Heathens of Old among the Grecian and Roman Empires; for they having not the Knowledge of the true God, preserv’d notwithstanding, the Notion of a God to be something Immortal, Omnipotent, sublime; exalted above in Place, as well as Authority; and therefore made Heaven to be the Seat of their Gods, and the Images by which they repre­ sented the Gods and Goddesses, had always some Perfections that w ­ ere ­really to be admir’d; as the Attendants of their Gods, as Jupiter was call’d the Thunderer, for his Power; F ­ ather of Gods and Men, for his Se­niority; Venus ador’d for her Beauty; Mercury for Swiftness; Apollo for Wit, Poetry, Musick; Mars for Terror and Gallantry in Arms,55 and the like: But when we come to ­t hese polite Nations of China, which yet we cry up for Sense, and Greatness of Genius, we see them groveling in the very Sink and Filth of Idolatry; their Idols are the most frightful monstrous Shapes,56 not the Form of any real Creature, much less the Images of Virtue, of Chasity, of Lit­er­a­ture; but horrid Shapes of their Priests Invention; nei­ ther hellish or ­human Monsters compos’d of in­ven­ted Forms, with neither Face 53. Ingenuity . . . ​Chineses] The Jesuit accounts of China would have been familiar to Defoe through collections such as t­ hose of Samuel Purchas. He certainly knew and mentions (142) Louis Le Comte’s account of China, translated as Memoirs and Observations Topographical, Physical, Mathematical, Mechanical, Natu­ral, Civil, and Ecclesiastical. Made in a Late Journey Through the Empire of China (London, 1697). The Jesuits ­were impressed by Chinese civi­ lization and by its scientific knowledge, though some of the Jesuits found that, among the Chinese, knowledge of astronomy had declined. For an account of Chinese science, see Joseph Needham’s magisterial Science and Civilization in China, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1954–[2004]). 54. Mechanicks] In his Lexicon Technicum (London, 1704), sig. 5G, John Harris defined “Mechanicks” as a “Mathematical Science which shews the Effects of Powers, or moving Forces, so far as they are applied to Engines: and demonstrates the Laws of Motion.” He noted, “Tis also commonly taken for ­t hose Handy-­crafts, which require as well the ­Labour of the Hands, as the Study of the Brain.” Defoe appears to be using it in the slightly ambiguous sense that includes the second definition. In his Consolidator (1705), Defoe treated the inven­ tions that w ­ ere usually credited to the Chinese—­g unpowder, the compass, printing—­w ith a degree of irony. See The Consolidator, ed. Michael Seidel, Maximillian Novak, and Joyce Kennedy (New York: AMS Press, 2001), 1–5. 55. Jupiter . . . ​Arms] This survey of the gods and goddesses adjusts them in terms of a West­ ern aesthetic as comprehensible when read by the symbols that surround them. For a similar pre­sen­ta­tion, see Antoine Povey, The Pantheon, trans. J.  A.  B. (London, 1697; repr., New York: Garland, 1976), in which such a pre­sen­ta­tion is made by “Mystagogus” in s­ imple terms. 56. monstrous Shapes] Illustrations of deities and demons appeared in the two-­volume col­ lection of voyages to China translated by John Ogilby, including Johann Nieuhof’s An Embassy from the East-­India Com­pany of the United Provinces to the G ­ rand Tartar Cham Emperour of China (London, 1669–1671), 1:pt. 2, 41, 223; 2:581. Th ­ ese show figures with sixteen arms, heads piled one on top of another, and demons with horrific bodies and heads.

140

Ser ious R eflections

or Figure, but with the utmost Distortions, form’d neither to walk, stand, fly, or go; neither to hear, see, or speak, but meerly to instill horrible Ideas of something nauseous and abominable,57 into the Minds of Men that ador’d them. If I may be allow’d to give my Notions of Worship, I mean, as it relates to the Objects of natu­ral Homage, where the Name and Nature of God is not reveal’d, as in the Christian Religion. I must acknowledge, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Ele­ments, as in the Pagan and Heathen Nations of old; and above all t­hese, the Repre­sen­ta­tions of superiour Virtues and Excellencies among Men, such as Valour, Fortitude, Chasity, Patience, Beauty, Strength, Love, Learning, Wisdom, and the like; The Objects of Worship in the Grecian and Roman Times,58 ­were far more eligible,59 and more rational Objects of divine Rites, than the Idols of China and Japan; where with all the Oeconomy of their State Maxims and Rules of Civil Gov­ ernment, which we insist so much on, as Tests of their Wisdom,60 their g­ reat Capac­ ities, and Understandings; their Worship is the most brutish, and the Objects of their Worship, the coursest, the most unmanly, inconsistent with Reason or the Nature of Religion of any the World can shew; bowing down to a meer Hob-­gobblin, and ­doing their Reverence not to the Work of Mens Hands61 only, but the ugliest, basest, frightfullest ­things that Man could make; Images so far from being lovely and amiable, as in the Nature of Worship is implied, that they are the most detest­ able and nauseous, even to Nature. How is it pos­si­ble ­t hese ­People can have any Claim to the Character of wise, ingenious, polite, that could further suffer themselves to be overwhelm’d in an Idolatry repugnant to common Sense, even to Nature, and be brought to chuse to adore that which was in itself the most odious and contemptible to Nature; not meerly terrible, that so their Worship might proceed from Fear, but a Complica­ tion of Nature’s Aversions. I cannot omit, that being in one of their T ­ emples, or rather in a kind of Oratory or Chapel, annexed to one Part of the ­great Palace at Pequin,62 ­t here appear’d a Mandarin with his Attendants, or, as we may say, a ­great Lord and his Retinue, 57. horrible Ideas . . . ​abominable] Ogilby, 2:581 shows a scene of worship in a t­ emple with a variety of grotesque figures. Crusoe, who was so outraged by the idol worshipped by the ­ ere Tatars in Farther Adventures that he insisted on using explosives to blow it up, appears h to make a direct connection between the aesthetic implications of ­t hese idols and their reli­ gious meaning. 58. Objects of Worship . . . ​Times] See chapter 4, note 55 in this edition. 59. eligible] Used ­here in the sense of “deserving to be chosen or ­adopted.” See OED. 60. Tests of their Wisdom] The Jesuits who translated and discussed the maxims of Confu­ cius argued that they represented “the excellentest Morality that ever was taught” and com­ pared his ethical teachings to t­ hose of “Christ himself.” See Morals of Confucius, 8, 60. 61. Work of Mens Hands] This phrase is always used in the Bible to indicate idols. In Deuter­ onomy 4:27, t­here is a warning that the Israelites ­w ill be scattered “among the heathen” where they “­shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.” In 2 Kings 19:18 and Isaiah 37:19, a similar formula is used in which they have “cast their gods into the fire: for they ­were no gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone.” See also Psalms 115:4 and 135:15. 62. Palace at Pequin] Modern Beijing and at the time usually Peking. Ogilby (1:126–127) pro­ vides an illustration of the inner court of the palace.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

141

prostrate before the Image, not of any one of God’s Creatures, but a Creature of meer h ­ uman Forming, such as neither was alive, nor was like any t­ hing that had Life, or had ever been seen or heard of in the World. The like Image, or something worse, if I could give it a true Repre­sen­ta­tion, may be found in a Garden Chapel, if not defac’d by wiser Heads, of a ­great Tartarian Mandarin,63 at a small Distance from Nanquin,64 and to which the poor abandon’d Creatures, pay their most blinded Devotions. It had a ­thing instead of a Head, bnt no Head; it had a Mouth distorted out of all Manner of Shape, and not to be described for a Mouth, being only an unshapen Chasm, neither representing the Mouth of a Man, Beast, Fowl, or Fish: The ­Thing was neither any of the four, but an incongruous Monster: It had Feet, Hands, Fin­ gers, Claws, Legs, Arms, Wings, Ears, Horns, e­ very Th ­ ing mixt one among another, neither in the Shape or Place that Nature appointed, but blended together, and fix’d to a Bulk, not a Body; form’d of no just Parts, but a shapeless Trunk or Log; ­whether of Wood or Stone, I know not; a ­thing that might have stood with any Side forward, or any Side backward, any End upward, or any End downward, that had as much Veneration due to it on one Side, as on the other, a kind of celestial Hedge-­hog, that was rolled up within itself, and was e­ very t­ hing ­every Way; that to a Christian could not have been worthy to have represented even the Dev­il;65 and to Men of common Sense, must have been their very Souls Aversion: In a Word, if I have not repre­ sented their monstrous Deities right, let Imagination supply any ­thing that can make a misshapen Image horrid, frightful, and surprising; And you may with Jus­ tice suppose, ­those sagacious ­People, called the Chineses, whom forsooth we must admire, I say, you may suppose them prostrate on the Ground, with all their Pomp and Pageanty, which is in it self not a ­little, worshipping such a mangled, promiscu­ ous gendred Creature. ­Shall we call ­these a wise Nation, who represent God in such hideous mon­ strous Figures as ­these, and can prostrate themselves to ­things ten thousand Times more disfigured than the Devil? Had t­hese Images been contriv’d in the Romans Time, and been set up for the God of Ugliness, as they had their God of Beauty, they might indeed have been thought exquisite; but the Romans would have spurn’d such an Image out of their ­Temples. Nothing can render a Nation so compleatly foolish and ­simple, as such an Extravagance in M ­ atters of religious Worship; for if gross Ignorance in the Notion 63. Tartarian Mandarin] The Tatars, centered in Siberia, had reconquered China in the sev­ enteenth ­century, and the Mandarins, officials or magistrates, ­were Tatars or u ­ nder their control. For the reverence of the Mandarins and the pomp with which they move about, see Ogilby, 2:416. 64. Nanquin] For Crusoe’s visit to this city, see The Farther Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 204. Although in that volume Crusoe admired the regular plan of the city, he argued that to consider the notion of Chinese “Glory” in comparison to the strength of Western Eu­rope would be foolish. 65. Devil] In his lengthy study of the Devil (1726), Defoe attacked the grotesque repre­sen­ta­ tions in medieval and folk art as absurd. See The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, ed. Irving N. Rothman and R. Michael Bowerman (New York: AMS Press, 2003), 184–195.

142

Ser ious R eflections

of a God, which is so extremely natu­ral, ­w ill not demonstrate a Nation unpolish’d, foolish, and weak, even next to Ideotism,66 I know nothing that w ­ ill. But let me trace this wise Nation that we talk so much of, and who not only think themselves wise, but have drawn us in, to pay a Kind of Homage to their low-­priz’d Wit. Government, and the Mechanick Arts, are the two main t­ hings in which our ­People in ­England,67 who have admir’d them so much, pretend they excel; as to their Government, which consists in an absolute Tyranny, which, by the Way, is the easiest Way of Ruling in the World, where the ­People are dispos’d to obey, as blindly as the Mandarin commands or governs imperiously; what Policy is required in governing a P ­ eople, of whom ’tis said, that if you command them to hang themselves, they w ­ ill only cry a l­ittle, and submit immediately? Their Max­ ims of Government68 may do well enough among themselves, but with us they would be all Confusion. In their Country it is not so, only ­because, what­ever the Mandarin says, is a Law, and God himself has no Power or Interest among them to contradict it, ­unless he pleases to execute it brevi ma­nu69 from Heaven. Most of their Laws consist in immediate Judgment, swift Executions, just Retaliations, and fair Protection from Injuries: Their Punishments are cruel and exorbitant,70 such as Cutting the Hands and the Feet off for Theft, at the same Time releasing Murders and other flagrant Crimes. 66. Ideotism] Idiocy. See OED. 67. ­People in ­England] Despite the continuing rage for Chinese porcelain in Britain and tea becoming a British institution during Defoe’s lifetime, it is difficult to know if ­t here was the overwhelming admiration for China among British writers in 1720 of the kind Defoe describes. The Spectator (ed. Donald Bond, 5 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1964], 2:244) makes a favorable mention of the obedience of ­children to their parents among the Chinese. And Sir William ­Temple (Five Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Samuel Monk [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963], 30) had argued that the Chinese notion of gardening, the aesthetic effect he called “shawawadgi,” was prob­ably superior to anything the Eu­ro­pe­a ns had devel­ oped. But prob­ably the most favorable pre­sen­ta­tion of Chinese civilization in an En­glish writer goes back to John Webb’s The Antiquity of China (London, 1678). In addition to argu­ ing that Chinese was as close to the language of Noah as pos­si­ble, Webb also points to their advanced knowledge of the sciences and of government. See esp. 88–91, 99–117. 68. Maxims of Government] Crusoe’s use of the word “Maxims” is specifically directed to the eighty “maxims” of Confucius, which inculcate reverence for parents and the rulers. For the rules governing be­hav­ior, see Morals of Confucius, 83–84. 69. brevi ma­nu] Immediately, summarily, a Latin tag literally meaning with a short hand, but usually used to describe a form of swift l­egal judgment—­a judgment that avoids such lengthy pro­cesses entailed in procedures such as a trial by jury. 70. cruel and exorbitant] Le Comte notes that the punishment of c­ hildren who are disobedi­ ent ­toward their parents or try to harm them is particularly violent: “­There is no Punish­ ment which they think too severe. They cut him into a thousand pieces, burn him, destroy his House to the ground, and even t­hose Houses which stand near it, and set up Monu­ ments and Memorials of this so Horrible an insolence.” Memoirs and Observations (Lon­ don, 1697), 268. Other forms of punishment include whipping (forty to fifty strokes), or what Le Comte calls the “Bastinado,” public humiliations, death by torture, whipping to death, flaying, and beheading. Like ­t hose who mistreat their parents, traitors are “cut . . . ​ into a Thousand Pieces” (289).

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

143

Their Mandarines are their Judges in very many Cases, like our Justices of the Peace; but then they judge by Customs, Oral Tradition, or immediate Opinion, and execute the Sentence immediately, without room, or Time to reflect upon the Justice of it, or to consider of Mitigations, as in all Christian Countries is prac­ tised, and as the Sense of ­human Frailty would direct.71 But let me come to their Mechanics, in which their Ingenuity is so much cry’d up, I affirm t­here is l­ittle or nothing sufficient to build the mighty Opinion we have of them upon, but what is founded upon the Comparisons which we make between them and other Pagan Nations, or proceeds from the Won­der which we make, that they should have any Knowledge of Mechanics Arts, ­because we find the remote Inhabitants of Afric and Amer­i­ca, so grossly ignorant, and so entirely destitute in such ­t hings; whereas we do not consider that the Chineses inhabit the Continent of Asia; and tho’ they are separated by Desarts and Wildernesses, yet they are a continuous Continent of Land, with the Parts of the World once inhab­ ited by the politer Medes, Persians, and Grecians; that the first Ideas of Mechanic Arts ­were prob­ably receiv’d by them from the Persians, Assyrians, and the banish’d transplanted Israelites,72 who are said to be carry’d into the Regions of Parthia,73 and the Borders of Karacathay,74 from whence they are also said to 71. their Laws . . . ​direct] Much of this passage appears to reflect the section in Ogilby (2:432– 437), which contains some vivid illustrations of the kinds of punishments inflicted. The author observes (2:432), “Their Sentences differ not much from ours, onely they give them not so long time, nor their ­Trials so fair, having no Juries, but onely Examiners and Writings, wherein every­one may set down what they please in the Court-­Stile.” The judgments of the Mandarin are depicted as swift but often arbitrary. 72. Arts . . . ​transplanted Israelites] This reference to the dispersions of Israelites is most likely a reference to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 c.e. at the hands of the Assyrians u ­ nder Shalmaneser V. The ten tribes w ­ ere deported, hence the legend of the lost tribes. In the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (Giovanni Paolo Marana et al., 8 vols. [London, 1691], 6[7]:287–317), a work with which Defoe was thoroughly familiar, some of the lost tribes ­were located in Asia. ­These ­were technically the “Israelites,” as opposed to inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. If Defoe was using the term loosely, he might have been refer­ ring to the destruction of Jerusalem and its ­Temple in 586 b.c.e. and the deportation of the Jews to Babylon and elsewhere. Less likely, given the date, would be the dispersion of Jews ­a fter the destruction of the second T ­ emple by the Romans in 70 c.e. In his History of the Principal Discoveries, 88–91, Defoe places the development of the crafts necessary for the building of the ­Temple in the Near East, mainly with the inhabitants of Tyre, whom he asso­ ciates with the Cartha­ginians, another dispersal of ­peoples involved the sons of Noah, but Defoe was unlikely to call them “Israelites” or to be speaking of them in the context of the time frame involved in this passage. 73. Parthia] The ancient country of Parthia included all of modern Iran as well as parts of modern Pakistan and Af­ghan­i­stan. 74. Karacathay] Usually Cathay, sometimes applied to all of China, sometimes to northern China, sometimes to the area of modern Mongolia. The vagueness of the term is suggested by Bohun’s Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. I), published in 1688: “Catay or Catio, a Region of Asia, supposed by Learned Men to be China, or some part of it.” Pierre-­Daniel Huet sug­ gested that it referred to “Black” Cathay, the far north of China as a land covered in dark­ ness. Pierre Daniel Huet, The History of the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients (London, 1717), 218. For the notion of Jews transported to this region, see the reference to Letters of a Turkish Spy in chapter 4, note 72 in this volume.

144

Ser ious R eflections

have communicated Arts,75 and especially Handicraft, in which the Israelites excell’d, to the Inhabitants of all t­ hose Countries, and consequently in Time to ­t hose beyond them. But let them be received from whom they ­w ill and how long ago soever; let us but compare the Improvement76 they have made, with what o ­ thers have made; and except in t­hings peculiar to themselves by their Climate, we s­ hall find the utmost of their Ingenuity amounts but to a very Trifle, and that they are out-­done even in the best of their Works by our ordinary Artists,77 whose Imitations exceed their Originals, beyond all Comparison. For Example, they have Gun-­powder and Guns, ­whether they have learned to make them by Direction of Eu­ro­pe­ans, which is most likely, or that they found it out by meer Strength of Invention, as some would advance, tho’ without Cer­ tainty, in their Favour: Be it which it ­w ill, as I say, it ­matters not much; their Pow­ der is of no Strength for the needful Operations of Sieges,78 Mines, Batteries, no nor for shooting of Birds, as ours is, without ­great Quantities put together; their Guns are rather an Ostentation than for Execution, clumsy, heavy, and ill made; neither have they arriv’d to any tolerable Degree of Knowledge in the Art of Gun­ nery or Engineering; they have no Bombs, Carcasses,79 Hand-­grenades; their artificial Fireworks are in no Degree comparable, or to be nam’d with ours; nor 75. communicated Arts] Defoe has Crusoe insist that the Chinese ­were not the inventors of such ­t hings as gunpowder, the compass, and printing but actually received their knowledge from nations in the Near East. The trend of historians of science, such as Joseph Needham, is to suggest that t­ here was actually more knowledge of Chinese inventions in the West than had been previously supposed. 76. Improvement] In Defoe’s mind, improving on the inventions of ­others was as impor­tant as the original invention itself. Thus in The Consolidator, 4, his moon voyager wrote of ­England as “our Nation, so fam’d for improving other P ­ eople’s Discoveries.” Although this comes in a passage that subjects the inventions of China to ironic scrutiny, this part appears to be taken as a genuine observation. Defoe has a similar comment in his A General History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, 213, in which he wrote of how the En­glish, “who are justly fam’d for improving Arts rather than invention,” succeeded in producing better woolen manufactures than the Flemish immigrants who had brought the knowledge of that manufacture into ­England. The Chinese ­were famous for their failure to make scien­ tific advances on their inventions. One geographic manual, ­a fter remarking on their inven­ tions, states: “but for want of due improvement, t­ hese useful Inventions have not turn’d to near so good an Account among them as in Eu­rope.” See Patrick Gordon, Geography Anatomiz’d: or, The Geo­graph­i­cal Grammar (London, 1719), 260. 77. Artists] Craftsmen. See OED. 78. Operation of Sieges] The criticism of China’s military capabilities follows Crusoe’s con­ temptuous remarks in The Farther Adventures (Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 217) about the inability of the ­Great Wall of China to protect the nation from a Eu­ro­pean army and its artillery. Louis Le Comte had made similar remarks, suggesting that if Louis XIV w ­ ere to attack China, he would have a victory in a few days. And at the end of the ­century, members of the expedition led by Macartney came to the same conclusion. See Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations . . . ​Made in a Late Journey through the Empire of China (London, 1698), 73; and Alain Peyrefitte, The Immobile Empire, trans. Jon Rothschild (New York: Knopf, 1992), 53, 527. 79. Carcasses] A type of incendiary bomb made in oval form consisting of ribs of iron and filled with combustible materials. It is covered over with a “pitch’d Cloath” and fired out of a mortar. Its chief purpose was to set ­houses on fire. See The Gentleman’s Dictionary (London, 1705), pt. 2: sig. Bb.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

145

have they arriv’d to any t­hing in the military Skill,80 in martialling Armies, ­handling Arms, Discipline, and the Exercise in the Field, as the Eu­ro­pe­ans have; all which is depending on the Improvement of Fire-­Arms, &c. in which, if they have had the Use of Gun-­powder so many Ages as some Dream, they must be unaccountable Blockheads, that they have made no farther Improvement; and if it is but lately, they are yet apparently dull enough in the managing of it, at least, compar’d to what o ­ ught to be expected of an ingenious P ­ eople, such as our P ­ eople cry them up to be. I might go from this to their Navigation,81 in which it is true they out-do most of their Neighbours: But what is all their Skill in Sailing compar’d to ours? Whither do they go? And how manage the l­ ittle and foolish Barks and Jonks they have? What would they do with them to traverse the ­great Indian, American, or Atlantic Oceans? What Ships, what Sailors, what poor, awkard, and ignorant ­Doings is t­ here among them at Sea? And when our ­People hire any of them, as sometimes they are oblig’d to do, How do our Sailors kick them about, as a Parcel of clumsy, ignorant, unhandy Fellows? Then for building of Ships, What are they? And what are they able to do ­towards the glorious Art of building a large Man of War? ’Tis out of Doubt with me, that all the P ­ eople of China could not build such a Ship as the Royal Sovereign,82 in a hundred Years, no not tho’ she was ­t here for them to look at, and take Pattern by. 80. military Skill] In his first book, An Essay upon Proj­ects, 97–108, Defoe proposed the founding of an En­glish military acad­emy and noted the many new inventions and new methods of forti­ fication and fighting that had changed what he called the “Arts of War.” For Defoe in 1697, new inventions and their application ­were most evident in warfare. By 1727, when he came to write The History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, he could point to other advances in science, but new inventions in warfare ­were still impor­tant. And in The Farther Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 205, he maintained, “I do not boast if I say that 30000 German or En­glish Foot, and 10000 French Horse, would fairly beat all the Forces of China.” 81. Navigation] This repeats much of what appeared in The Farther Adventures, Stoke New­ ington Edition, Bucknell, 204: “One En­glish, or Dutch, or French Man of War, of 80 Gun, would fight and destroy all the Shipping of China.” In his Atlas Maritimus, 225, he noted the lack of Chinese ships in the Bay of Bengal, blaming this failure on their poor ships and equally poor ability at navigation. He also remarked (222) on their failure to use their naval strength to subdue the surrounding nations, blaming it on their being “the most effeminate, weak-­hearted ­People in the Universe.” The rationale for this failure was the Chinese admira­ tion for tradition. Thus, according to one traveler, who noted their admiration for Eu­ro­pean ships, his suggestion that they imitate the Eu­ro­pean model was greeted with disbelief. They told him: “This is the Chinese Way of building.” When he pointed out how poorly their ships ­were constructed, he was told, “No ­matter . . . ​since it is the Way of the Empire, that is enough for us, and it would be a Crime to alter it.” See “A Letter from F. Chavagnac,” dated 10 Febru­ ary 1703, in The Travels of Several Learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus into Divers Parts of the Archipelago, India, China, and Amer­i­ca (London, 1714), 181. 82. Royal Sovereign] ­There ­were many ships in the En­glish navy by this name, but this prob­ ably refers to the one commanded by Sir George Rooke at the ­Battle of Vigo in 1702. In was painted by Willem van de Velde, the Younger in 1703 as The En­glish Ship “Royal Sovereign” with a Royal Yacht in a Light Air, and in its description of this painting, the National Mari­ time Museum at Greenwich states that it was “regarded as the greatest ship in the world” at the time.

146

Ser ious R eflections

I might go on to abundance more t­hings, such as Painting, making Glasses, making Clocks and Watches, making Bone-­lace,83 Frame-­work Knitting;84 of all which, except the two first, they know l­ ittle or nothing; and of the two first, noth­ ing compar’d to what is done in Eu­rope. The Height of their Ingenuity, and for which we admire them with more Colour85 of Cause than in other t­hings, is their Porcellain86 or Earthenware Work, which, in a Word, is more due to the excellent Composition of the Earth they make them of, and which is their Peculiar, than to the Workmanship; in which, if we had the same Clay, we should soon outdo them, as much as we do in other t­ hings. The next Art is, their Manufacturing in fine Silks, Cotton, Herba,87 Gold, and Silver, in which they have nothing but what is in common with our ordinary poor Weavers. The next Mechanic Art is, their Lacquering,88 which is just as in the China Ware, a Peculiar to their Country, in the Materials, not at all in the Workman­ ship: And as for the Cabinet Work of it, they are manifestly out-­done by us; and 83. Bone-­lace] The OED defines this as “Lace usually made of linen thread, made by knitting upon a pattern marked by pins, with bobbins originally made of bone.” In his A Plan of the En­glish Commerce, Shakespeare Head Edition, 216–217, Defoe hailed the manufacture of bone lace as a huge advance in industry in Britain, where it benefitted the economy by put­ ting to work “above an Hundred Thousand ­Women and ­Children.” 84. Frame-­work Knitting] In his Essay upon Proj­ects, Defoe praised this invention: “For Handycraft Instruments, I know none owes more to true genuine Contrivance, without bor­ rowing from any former use, than a Mechanick Engine contriv’d in our time, called A Knitting Frame . . . ​[which] may be . . . ​seen in ­every Stocking-­Weaver’s Garret.” It was in­ven­ted in 1589 by William Lee of Culverton. See Essay upon Proj­ects, 14, and the note on 159–160. For an illustration of a stocking frame, see Abraham Wolf, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th & 17th Centuries (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1935), 465–466. 85. Colour] ­Under figurative uses for color, the OED 12a gives, “A show of reason; a specious or plausible reason or ground; fair pretence, pretext, cloak.” Thus, although the admiration for the Ingenuity of the Chinese may seem to be better placed in the case of their porcelain, it too is mistaken. 86. Porcellain] Defoe was to make the same argument about the unique quality of Chinese porcelain in his Atlas Maritimus & Commercialis, 217: “Our Workmen are able to make the Goods, and can perform with the utmost Nicety ­every ­t hing the Chinese can do of that kind; but they have not the Materials, Nature has not give us the Species of Clay.” According to Defoe’s argument, then, the excellence of Chinese porcelain has nothing to do with its “Inge­ nuity.” On the other hand, Crusoe (310–311) does show some admiration for an entire ­house made of porcelain. He goes to view it ­a fter being told that it was “the greatest Rarity in the Country” and admits that it was admirable in many re­spects. 87. Herba] A cloth made of a par­tic­u ­lar kind of grass. It apparently has some of the same quality as silk. The OED mentions it as an import from India rather than China. 88. Lacquering] The art of lacquer work was greatly admired by Defoe’s Eu­ro­pean contem­ poraries, and while Crusoe is correct in arguing that the lacquer was the product of the sap of a native Chinese tree and therefore, like Chinese porcelain, “Peculiar to their Country in the Materials,” the careful application of layer ­a fter layer of lacquer and the fine polish of the work was indeed an example of Chinese artistry. It may be said that in his attempt to argue for the superiority of Western culture, Crusoe stretches his argument beyond the point of common sense. See Adolf Reichwein, China and Eu­rope: Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth-­Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 33–35. Defoe’s attitude may relate more to economics than to aesthetics. He considered the trade to China to be a loss to Britain ­because bullion was used to purchase goods that competed with ­t hose produced by

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

147

abundance is ­every Year sent thither fram’d and made in ­England, and only lacquer’d in China, to be return’d to us. I might run the like Parallel thro’ most of the t­hings ­these ­People excel in, which would all appear to be so deficient, as would render all their fam’d Wisdom and Capacity most scandalously imperfect: But I am not so much upon their Cunning in Arts, as upon their Absurdity and ridicu­lous Folly in ­Matters reli­ gious, and in which I think the rudest Barbarians out-do them. From this wise Nation, we have a vast Extent of Ground, near 2000 Miles in Breadth; partly u ­ nder the Chinese Government, partly ­under the Muscovite, but inhabited by Tartars of Mongul Tartary, Karkathay, Siberian, and Samoides Pagans; whose Idols are almost as hideous as the Chineses, and whose Religion is all Nature;89 and not only so, but Nature ­under the greatest Degeneracy, and next to Brutal. ­Father La Comte90 gives us the Pictures of some of their House Idols, and an Account of their Worship; and this lasts, as I have observ’d, to within a few days of Arch-­Angel:91 So that, in a Word, from the Mouth of the Straits, that is to say, from Sallee, over to Caribbea,92 from thence round Africa by the Cape of good Hope, cross the vast Indian Ocean, and upon all the Coast of it, about by Malacca and Sumatra, thro’ the Straits of Sincapore93 and the Coast of Siam94 Northwards to China, and thro’ China by Land over the Desarts of the G ­ rand

British workers, destroying the “Life-­Blood of the Nation” for the “Trumpery of China.” See Review, 4:606 and 9:82. 89. Religion is all Nature] In speaking of the religion of the Siberian lands through which he passed, Crusoe may be stating that the Tatar tribes literally worshipped nature—­mountains and the world around them. This was true enough, although Tibetan Buddhism had made inroads by this time. But he is mainly intent on stating that this was a nature corrupted by satanic forces. Le Comte also (1697), 325, sees the devil b ­ ehind the idols in both China and Siberia. 90. ­Father La Comte] Louis Daniel Le Comte (1655–1728) was a Jesuit missionary whose Nouveaux Mémoires sur l’État Présent de la Chine appeared in two volumes in French in 1696 and 1697. A third volume by another Jesuit, Charles Le Gobien, was sometimes added. Like Le Comte, Le Gobien defended the notion that the Jesuit’s ac­cep­tance of the re­spect shown to Confucius and to dead ancestors was not religious in nature and therefore might be toler­ ated. The Roman Catholic Church officially condemned the Jesuits for their attempts to allow some Chinese religious practices. I have been using the first and second editions of the En­glish translation published in 1697 and 1698, which have no illustrations of the kind men­ tioned by Crusoe. The “third” French language edition published in Amsterdam in 1698 con­ tains many more illustrations than the En­glish editions, but none of them depict Chinese idols. Since Le Comte’s account was often reprinted in collections of travels, it is pos­si­ble that some of t­ hose had such illustrations; or Defoe might have recalled some of the illustrations in the Ogilby collection and misremembering, thought they came from Le Comte’s book. For Le Gobien’s defense of the Jesuit’s position, see Histoire de l’Edit de l’Empereur de la Chine (Paris, 1698). 91. Arch-­Angel] Archangel or Arkhangelsk is the northern Rus­sian port from which Crusoe Departs for Eu­rope at the end of The Farther Adventures. 92. Caribbea] The area around the Ca­rib­bean Sea. Crusoe may be using this to include Brazil. 93. Sincapore] Modern Singapore. 94. Siam] Modern Thailand.

148

Ser ious R eflections

Tartary, to the River Dwina,95 being a Cir­cuit three times the Dia­meter of the Earth, and e­ very jot as far as the w ­ hole Circumference. The Name of God is not heard of, except among a few of the Indians that are Mahometan;96 the Word of God is not known, or the Son of God spoken of. Having some Warmth in my Search a­ fter Religion, occasion’d by this Reflec­ tion, and so l­ ittle of it appearing in all the Parts which I had travel’d, I resolv’d to travel over the rest of the World in Books, for my wandring Days are pretty well over; I say, I resolv’d to travel the rest in Books; and sure, said I, t­ here must appear abundance of serious Religion in the rest of the World, or ­else I know nothing at all of where I ­shall find it. But I find by my Reading, just as I did in Travelling, that all the Customs of Nations, as to Religion, w ­ ere much alike; that one with another, they are more devout in their Worship of something, what­ever it be, than inquisitive ­after what it is they worship; and most of the Altars of Worship in the World, might to this Day be inscrib’d to the Unknown God.97 This may seem a strange ­thing; but that Won­der may cease, when farther Enquiry is made into the par­tic­u­lar Objects of Worship, which the several Nations of the World bow down to, some of which, are so horrid, so absurd, as one would think ­human Nature could not sink so low, as to do her Homage in so irrational a Manner. And h ­ ere, being to speak of Religion as idolatrous, it occurs to me, that it seem’d strange, that except in Persia,98 and some Part of Tartary,99 I found none of the ­People look Up for their Gods, but Down; by which it came into my Mind, that even in Idolatry itself, the World was something degenerated, and their Rea­ son was more hoodwink’d100 than their Ancestors. 95. Straits . . . ​Dwina] This is a brief survey of Crusoe’s travels from Africa to Rus­sia in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures and The Farther Adventures. 96. Indians . . . ​Mahometan] The “Indians” mentioned ­here are t­hose who live in modern Bangladesh, where Crusoe spends some time in The Farther Adventures. Crusoe apparently accepts Islam’s Allah as a version of the Judeo-­Christian God, and in his Continuation of the Letters of a Turkish Spy (1718), Defoe had treated the religion of the Turkish Spy, Mahomet, with ­great re­spect. 97. Unknown God] In his visit to Athens Saint Paul preached against the superstition of the Athenians and attempted to instruct them: “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye igno­ rantly worship, him declare I unto you.” See Acts 17:23. 98. Persia] This comment on looking up in worshipping rather than down prob­ably refers to the religion of Zoroaster. In con­temporary commentary on Zoroastrianism, worship was said to have involved turning to the sun and to the fires on their altars. See David Pailin, Attitudes to Other Religions: Comparative Religion in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-­Century Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 243. 99. Part of Tartary] Among some of the tribes of Siberia, before the coming of Tibetan Lamanism, ­t here had been a worship of nature, especially mountaintops. See Walter Hessig, The Religions of Mongolia, trans. Geoffrey Samuel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ­ eoples of Siberia: Rus­sia’s North Asian Colony 1980), 3; and James Forsyth, A History of the P 1581–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 100. hoodwink’d] Deceived. The OED 3 gives this a figurative use for covering the head and eyes with a hood: “To blindfold mentally, to prevent anyone from seeing the truth of fact; to . . . ​deceive.”

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

149

By looking up, and looking down, I mean, they do not as the Romans, look up among the Stars for their Idols, place their Gods in the Skies,101 and worship, as we might say, like Men; but look down among the Brutes, form Idols to them­ selves out of the Beasts, and figure t­ hings like Monsters, to adore them for their Ugliness and horrible Deformity.102 Of the Two, the former, in my Opinion, was much the more rational Idolatry, as particularly, the Persians worshipping the Sun;103 and when I had a par­tic­u ­lar Account of that at Bengale,104 it presently occur’d to my Thought, that ­t here was something awful, something glorious, and God-­like in the Sun, that, in the Igno­ rance of the True God, might rationally bespeak the Homage of the Creatures; and to whom it seem’d reasonable,105 where Reason was its own Judge only, without the Helps of Revelation, to pay an Adoration, as the Parent of Light, and the Giver of Life to all the Vegetative World, and as in a vis­i­ble Manner, enlivening and influencing the rational and sensitive Life, and which might, for ­ought they knew, at first create, as it did since, so plainly affect all ­t hings round us. 101. Gods in the Skies] As in Apollo representing the sun and Diana the moon. See F.  A. Pomey, The Pantheon, ed. Andrew Tooke (London, 1713; repr., New York: Garland, 1976), 48, 239. 102. Monsters . . . ​Deformity] For a previous commentary on the idols of China, see chapter 4, notes 89 and 90 in this edition. It is noteworthy that even a­ fter the rage for Chinese art, architecture, and gardens most vis­i­ble in the Chinese pagoda built by William Chambers (1723–1796) at Kew, Lord George Macartney (1737–1806), who led the British expedition to China in 1793–94, could still comment on Chinese idols as “all most horribly ugly.” Alain Payrefitte, The Immobile Empire, trans. Jon Rothschild (New York: Knopf, 1992), 251. For the entirely negative reaction of a con­temporary of Defoe to an idol among a Siberian tribe, see Adam Brand, A Journey of the Embassy from their Majesties John and Peter Alexovitz, Emperors of Muscovy (London, 1698), 41. 103. the Sun] In his A New Voyage Round the World (Romances and Narratives, ed. George Aitken, 16 vols. [London: Dent, 1895], 14:148, 150), Defoe showed a similar appreciation of a group of natives who worshipped the heavens. The probable sources for this may be found in Humphrey Prideaux, The Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament, 2nd ed. (London, 1716), 214–220; and Prideaux, A Letter to a Deist, in The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet, 7th ed. (London, 1718), 174–176. Prideaux believed that Zoroaster and the Persians borrowed their concepts from the Jews. Both his debunking biography of Mohammed with its accompanying attack on the deists and his work on Near Eastern religions went into many editions. 104. Persians . . . ​Bengale] Crusoe says nothing about the Persians, or Parsee, in his account of his life in Bengal. This group, followers of Zoroastrianism, fled to India from Persia a­ fter the conquest of their country by the Arabs in the eighth ­century. They ­were mainly centered around Bombay (Mumbai) and Delhi. Repre­sen­ta­tions of Mithra, associated with this reli­ gion, showed his face surrounded by the rays of the sun. See Paul Kriwaczek, In Search of Zarathustra (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002), 3–4. 105. reasonable] In his The Court of the Gentiles, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Oxford, 1672–1676), 1, book 2:103, Theo­philus Gale described the idolatry among Noah’s sons but found the worship of the sun understandable: “Indeed ­these Admirable perfections of the Sun, afford excellent mater of Admiration and Contemplation to a gracious heart, that can contemplate and admire the infinite perfections of his Creator, in his glorious creature . . . ; no won­der if the corrupt imaginations of mans foolish heart, attribute a Deitie unto him.” Gale (2:66) also notes the many times in the Bible that the greatness of God is revealed in his creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars.

150

Ser ious R eflections

This Thought gave Birth to the following Excursion,106 with which I ­shall close this Observation. Hail! Glorious Lamp,107 the Parent of the Day, Whose Beams not only Heat, and Life convey; But may that Heat and Life, for o­ ught we know, On many many distant Worlds 108 bestow. Im­mense, amazing Globe of heavenly Fire; To whom all Flames ascend, in whom all Lights expire. Rolling in Flames, emits eternal Ray, Yet Self-­sufficient suffers no Decay.109 106. Excursion] The OED gives as its first meaning an “escape from confinement” and “­running to extremes.” The second, figurative meaning includes an “outburst (of feeling); a sally of wit.” Crusoe’s description of the poem to follow may include both of t­ hese suggested meanings. It is a “sally of wit” in the sense of a work of fancy or imagination. It is highly emotional, certainly more emotional than Crusoe’s prose in its admiration for the sun. Defoe seems to use this word for what he considered to be emotion-­charged poetry and sometimes similarly emotional prose. In his poem, Caledonia, he has an invocation to “extraordinary Improvement and Perfection which the World has attain’d in the practical part of Navigation” (“Hail Science, Nature’s second Eye”), which he calls a “Poetical Excur­ sion.” See Caledonia (London, 1706), 7, note a. 107. Hail! Glorious Lamp] This poem is undoubtedly by Defoe. His con­temporary reputation as a poet was based on satires, such as his True-­Born En­glishman (1701), but he composed a considerable body of poetry, most of it on religious subjects, within the books he produced during the 1720s. He may have been influenced by Paradise Lost, 7:370–372. First in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, Regent of the Day, and all th’Horizon round Invested with bright Rayes. . . . 108. many distant Worlds] The most famous work on this subject was by Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686). It was translated by Aphra Behn in 1688. Fontenelle’s attitude was skeptical but open to the possibility of some kind of life on other planets. ­Here Crusoe takes up a similar position, but in his “Vision of the Angel­ ick World,” he rejects the idea, and in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 63, he mocks the entire attempt by astronomers to find something resembling ­human life on other planets. On the other hand, like Daniel Sturmy, in his A Theological Theory of a Plurality of Worlds (London, 1711), Defoe seemed to feel that the contemplation of the vastness of space with its many worlds could lead to religious won­der and awe. And like Sturmy, he did not rule out the existence of spirits on such worlds. 109. suffers no Decay] In his article on “Heat” (Lexicon Technicum, 1704), sig. Ooo4v, the edi­ tion Defoe knew well, John Harris stated that the sun was like the earth, but “vehemently hot, whose Heat is conserved by the greatness of the Bodies, and the mutual Action and Reaction between them and the Light which they emit; and whose Parts are kept from fum­ ing away, not only by their Fixity, but also by the vast Weight and Density of the Atmo­ spheres incumbent upon them, and very strongly pressing them, and condensing the Vapours which arise from them.” In ­later editions, in the article on the sun (for example, 2 vols. [London, 1708–10], 2:sig. 7D2), Harris discussed Robert Hooke’a argument that t­here was no “danger of . . . ​[the sun] being burned out in so many 1000 Years.” And he produced evidence from Isaac Newton suggesting that stars such as the sun did not appear to decrease in size and heat and might continue “many millions of Years without losing any considerable part of their Heat.” But Newton did not suggest that it could remain the same eternally. Defoe, however, seemed to believe that the sun could produce its light “without the least Ebb or Diminution to himself.” See An Essay upon Proj­ects, 114.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

151

Thy Cent’ral Vigour never never dies, But Life the Motion, Motion, Life supplies. When lesser Bodies rob us of thy Beams, And intercept thy flowing heavenly Streams; Fools by M ­ istake ecclipse 110 thee from their Sight, When ’tis the Eye’s ecclips’d,111 and not thy Light. Thy Absence constitutes effectual Night, When rolling Earth deprives us of thy Light: And Planets all opaque112 and beggerly,113 Borrow thy Beams,114 and strive to shine like thee. In their mock life-­less Light we starve and freeze, And wait the Warmth of thy returning Rays. Thy Distance leaves us all recline 115 and sad, And hoary Winter governs in thy Stead: Swift thy returning Vigor, warm and mild, Salutes the Earth, and gets the World with Child.116 ­ reat Soul of Nature, from whose vital Spring G Due Heat and Life’s diffus’d, thro’ e­ very ­thing: 110. ecclipse] ­There was a memorable eclipse of the sun on 22 April 1715, and this passage is prob­ably a reflection of that event. Defoe made it part of a violent quarrel between a husband and wife in the second volume of his ­Family Instructor (1718). In the role of “editor” of ­t hese dialogues, he remarked, “The eclipse of the sun was the subject of all conversation at that time, having been, as is well known, so total, and the darkness so g­ reat, as that the like had not been known in some hundred years before.” See Defoe, The Novels and Miscellaneous Works, 20 vols. (Oxford: Tegg, 1840–1841), 16:4–5. For a discussion of the eclipse in relation to William Whiston’s public lectures on astronomy at that time, see Marjorie Nicolson and George Rousseau, This Long Disease My Life (Prince­ton: Prince­ton University Press, 1968), 159–165. 111. Eye’s eclips’d] Not only does Defoe show some knowledge in this account of the Newto­ nian concept of the universe, but he also shows an awareness of some of the con­temporary notions of vision put forward by every­one from John Locke to Bishop George Berkeley, maintaining that h ­ umans had to learn how to see the world. 112. opaque] Unlike the sun, the planets do not generate light. They merely reflect the light of the sun. See OED 2a. 113. beggerly] Beggarly. Compared to the sun, the planets are mean and insignificant. 114. Borrow thy Beams] In his Essay upon the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 25–26, Defoe played with this idea of the insignificance of the planets, writing, they are “of no use but to shine a l­ ittle, and that with but borrow’d Beams too, upon this ­little Point called Earth.” And in his Compleat En­glish Gentleman (ed. Karl Bülbring [London: David Nutt, 1890], 19–20), he remarked, a­ fter a paragraph on the sun as an “amazing Globe of Fire shining in its full Strength, warming us with his illustrious Beams,” that “the h ­ umble Moon and her S­ isters the Planets with their Satellites, the Plebeii of the Skies, dark and opake in themselves, shine by Reflection only, and borrowing Beams from the Patrician Sun, give Light without Heat, pale and languid, and seem to be in a wonderful Round of Negative Glory what they r­ eally are not.” 115. all recline] A poetic use of this word to suggest the posture of the head leaning in a sym­ bolic gesture of grief. 116. gets the World with Child] The warmth of the sun in spring brings with it the germina­ tion of seeds and the fresh growth of plants.

152

Ser ious R eflections

Govern’st the Moon and Stars by dif­fer­ent Ray, Shee Queen of Night, thee Monarch of the Day, Thee Moon, and Stars, and Earth, and Plants obey When darker Nations see thee plac’d on high, And feel thy Warmth, their Genial Heat supply: How imperceptible thy Influence Slides thro’ their Veins, and touches ­every Sense; By glimmering Nature led, they bow their Knee, ­Mistake their God, and sacrifice to thee. Mourn thy declining Steps, and hate the Night, But when in Hope of thy approaching Light, Bless thy Return, which brings the chearful Day, And to thy wond’rous Light false Adorations pay. Nor can we blame the Justice of the Thought, In Minds by erring Reason only, taught. Nature it seems instructs a Deity,117 And Reason says, ­there’s none so bright as thee. Nor is the Influence so much a Jest, ­There’s something shocks our Nature in the Rest: To make a God, and then the Tool118 adore, And bow to that, that worshipp’d us before. The Nonsense takes off all the Reverence, That c­ an’t be worshipping that is not Sense. But when the Spring of Nature shews its Face, The Glory of its Rays, the Swiftness of its Race.119 Stupendous Height, and Majesty Divine, And with what awful Splendor it can shine: Who that no other News from Heaven could hear, Would think but this was God, would think and fear, No other Idol ever came so near.

Certain it is, that the Persians who thus paid their Adoration to the Sun, ­were at that Time some of the wisest P ­ eople in the World. Some tell us, that the g­ reat Image that Nebuchadnezzar 120 set up for all his P ­ eople to worship, was repre­ 117. Nature . . . ​instructs a Deity] Thus where nature is not extraordinarily corrupted, h ­ umans are drawn to sun worship as they are in A New Voyage Round the World. 118. Tool] Prob­ably used in the double sense of a ­t hing created for a certain purpose and the use of a person (in this case a being) as a “mere instrument” for getting ­t hings done. See OED. 119. Swiftness . . . ​Race] Defoe uses poetic license in depicting the sun as racing through the skies as Apollo drove his chariot. He had no doubt about the correctness of the Copernican theory of the sun at the center of our system, with the Earth and planets revolving about it. 120. Image . . . ​Nebuchadnezzar] See Daniel 3:1–28. Through his ability to interpret dreams and visions, Daniel becomes an impor­tant prophet in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebu­ chadnezzar’s dates ­were ca. 605–562 b.c.e.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

153

sented holding the Sun in his Right-­hand;121 and that it was to the Repre­sen­ta­tion of the Sun that he commanded all Nations and Kindreds to bow and to worship: If so, then the Assyrians ­were Worshippers also of the Sun, as well as the Persians, which is not at all improbable; we read also in the Scripture, of ­t hose Nations who worshipped all the Host of Heaven,122 a ­Thing much more rational, and nearer of Kin to Worshipping the G ­ reat God of Heaven, than worshipping the ­whole Host of the Earth, and worshipping the most abject and loathsome Creatures, or but even the Repre­sen­ta­tions of ­t hose Creatures, which was still worse than the other. But what are all the Absurdities of Heathenism, which at last are resolv’d into the Degeneracy of Mankind, and their being fallen from the Knowledge of the  true God, which was once, as we have Reason to believe, diffused to all Mankind.123 I say, What are ­t hese? And how much Ground for just Reflection do they afford us, compar’d to the gross t­hings in Practice, which we find e­ very Day among ­t hose Nations, who profess to have had the clear Light of Gospel Revelation? How many Self-­contradicting Princi­ples do they hold? How contrary to their Profession do they act? How do one Side burn for what another Side abhors? And how do Christians, taking that venerable Name for a general Appellation, doom one another to the Devil, for a few disagreeing Clauses of the same Religion, while all profess to worship the same Deity, and to expect the same Salvation? With what preposterous Enthusiasms do some mingle their Knowledge, and with as gross Absurdities ­others their Devotion? How blindly superstitious? How furious and raging in their Zeal? How cruel, inexorable, and even inhu­ man and barbarous to one another, when they differ? as if Religion divested us of Humanity, 124 and that in our worshipping a God of Mercy, and in whose 121. Sun in his Right-­hand] Although the statue was supposed to be made of gold, nothing is said of the sun in Daniel 3:1. Nor does Poole say anything similar in his Annotations. Theo­ philus Gale (2, book 1:66) wrote of the connection between the sun and worship among the Chaldeans, but has no specific mention of such an image. On the other hand, Nebuchadnez­ zar II was a strong supporter of the Babylonian gods associated with the sun, Marduk and Shamash. See Morris Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston: Ginn, 1898), 158; and Lewis Spence, Myths and Legends of Babylonia and Syria (London, 1916; repr., Detroit: Gale, 1975), 249. 122. Host of Heaven] Sections of Deuteronomy imply that God permits the worship of the heavenly bodies among the dif­fer­ent ­peoples of the earth, but forbids it to the Israelites. Deu­ teronomy 4:19 warns the Israelites against worshipping the “sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven.” 123. diffused to all Mankind] The notion that all of the ­peoples of the world had had some contact with Chris­tian­ity and that some had rejected it made somewhat more acceptable ­those parts of the Athanasian Creed that damned to hell all ­those who did not believe in Jesus Christ. John Dryden, in his “Preface” to Religio Laici, rejected this part of the Creed as cruel, arguing that even if some form of revelation descended from the ­children of Noah, it would have been too dim to expect such knowledge to persist. But the Jesuit Matthew Ricci felt certain that China had at one time been converted by Saint Thomas. See Dryden, Works, 2:99–102; and Ricci, China in the Sixteenth ­Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci 1583–1610, trans. Louis Gallagher (New York: Random House, 1953), 111–113. 124. Religion . . . ​Humanity] Defoe continues that aspect of the beliefs of Crusoe, which included a broad ecumenical approach to Chris­tian­ity.

154

Ser ious R eflections

Compassions alone it is that we have room to hope, we should to please and serve him, banish Humanity from our Nature, and shew no Compassion to ­t hose that fall into our Hands. In my Travelling thro’ Portugal, it was my Lot to come to Lisbon,125 while they held ­t here one of their Courts of Justice, call’d Auto de fe,126 that is to say a Court of Justice of the Inquisition: It is a Subject has been handled by many Writers, and indeed expos’d by some of the best Catholicks;127 and my pre­sent Business is not to write a History, or engage in a Dispute, but to relate a Passage. They carry’d in Pro­cession all their Criminals to the ­great Church; where eight of them appear’d first, dress’d up in Gowns and Caps of Canvass, upon which was painted all that Man could devise, of Hell’s Torments, Dev­ils128 broiling and roasting h ­ uman Bodies, and a thousand such frightful t­ hings, with Flames and Dev­ils besides in ­every Part of the Dress. ­Those I found w ­ ere eight poor Creatures condemn’d to be burnt, and for they scarce knew what; but for crimes against the Catholick Faith, and against the Blessed Virgin, and they w ­ ere burnt. One of them, it was said, rejoic’d that he was to be burnt; and being ask’d, Why? Answer’d, That he had much rather die, than be carry’d back to the Prison of the Inquisition, where their Cruelties ­were worse than Death:129 Of t­ hose eight, as I was told, some w ­ ere Jews, whose greatest Crime, 125. Portugal . . . ​Lisbon] ­Toward the end of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, ­a fter his stay on the island, Crusoe goes to visit the Portuguese Captain who had picked him up ­a fter his escape from slavery at Sallee. 126. Auto de fe] Act of faith. In Portuguese it would be auto-­da-­fé. Crusoe gives the impres­ sion that the term referred to the court itself, whereas it was actually a ritual of public pen­ ance by ­t hose victims already sentenced as heretics by the Inquisition. During Defoe’s youth, 30 June 1680, ­t here was a large auto de fe in Madrid as part of the marriage cele­bration of Spain’s Charles II to Louise Marie d’Orleans. Seventy-­t wo ­people accused of retaining some remnants of their Jewishness ­were tried. Eigh­teen ­were condemned to death, and the rest ­were sentenced to life in prison. 127. best Catholicks] Defoe may have been thinking mainly of Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), whose account of the Inquisition (1611) was often included with his more famous History of the Council of Trent (1619). At the beginning of his work, Sarpi printed the rules from 1551 that restricted the rights of the Inquisition to act in Venice and gave a chapter-­by-­chapter outline. This included the protection of Jews or “Infidels.” Sarpi warned throughout of the dangers to secular government posed by the Inquisition. See The History of the Inquisition (London, 1655), 2–8, 38, 79. More specifically about the horrors of the Inquisition in Portugal, “Written by one of the Secretaries to the Inquisition,” and described as devoted to the Roman Catholic Church (v) is, An Account of the Cruelties Exercis’d by the Inquisition in Portugal (London, 1708). 128. painted . . . ​Dev­i ls] See the similar description in Luke de Beaulieu, The Holy Inquisition (London, 1681), 159. See also An Abstract of the Account of the Proceedings of the Inquisition in Portugal (London, 1713), 13. In his Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy, 271, Defoe’s Mahmut describes how the Inquisition dressed “the P ­ eople up whom they determine to the Flames, in Coats painted all over with Dev­i ls and tormenting Spirits, to fill the Minds of the ­People with Horror and Detestation at the Poor Victims; determining them to be Enemies to god and his Church, hating and abhorring them as such, without enquiring into any ­t hing of which they are accused.” 129. worse than Death] For an account of the tortures, see Beaulieu, Holy Inquisition, 137– 140. See also Philipp van Limborch, The History of the Inquisition, trans. Samuel Chandler, 2 vols. (London, 1731), 217–226, and the illustration, 222–223.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

155

as many t­ here did not scruple to say, was, that they w ­ ere very rich;130 and some Christians ­were in the Number at the same Time, whose greatest Misery was, that they ­were very poor. It was a Sight that almost gave me a Shock in my Notion of Chris­tian­ity itself, till I began to recollect, that it might be pos­si­ble, that Inquisitors ­were scarce Christians, and that I knew many Catholic Countries do not suffer this abomi­ nable Judicature to be erected among them. I have seen much, and read more, of the unhappy Conduct in ­Matters of Reli­ gion, among the other Nations of the World, professing the Christian Religion; and upon my Word, I find some Practices infinitely scandalous, some which are the common receiv’d Customs of Christians, which would be the Abhorrence of Heathens; and it requires a strong Attachment to the Foundation, which is indeed the principal Part in Religion, to guard our Minds against being offended, even at the Christian Religion itself; but I got over that Part afterward. Let it not offend the Ears of any true Lover of the Christian Religion, that I observe some of the Follies of the Professors of the Christian Religion, assuring you, ’tis far from being my Design to bring the least Scandal upon the Profession itself. And ­here therefore let me give the Words of a judicious Person131 who travell’d from Turkey thro’ Italy: His Words are t­ hese. “When I was in Italy, I rang’d over ­great Part of the Patrimony of St. Peter,132 where one would think indeed, the Face of Religion would be plainest to be seen, and without any Disguise; but in short I found t­ here the Face of Religion, and no more. “At Rome ­t here was all the Pomp and Glory of religious Habits: The Pope and the Cardinals walk’d with a religious Gravity, but liv’d in a religious Luxury, kept

130. very rich] The Church had the right to take the possessions of ­t hose accused. See Beau­ lieu, Holy Inquisition, 124–125. See also James Salgado, The Slaughter-­house, or a Brief Description of the Spanish Inquisition (London, 1683), 45; and An Abstract . . . ​of the Inquisition in Portugal, sig. A2, 32. 131. a judicious Person] We have not been able to identify this source. A good candidate might be Jean Dumont, whose New Voyage to the Levant (London, 1696), 107–109, contains very similar sentiments about Rome and the Catholic Church, but we have not been able to find anything resembling this passage in the editions we have examined. The possibility that ­t hese passages might have been written by Defoe should not be dismissed entirely. 132. Patrimony of St. Peter] The papal territories, which at this time included vari­ous parts of what is now modern Italy, extending north and south of Rome and across the country from the Adriatic Sea to the Tyrrhenian Sea. More specifically it referred to the Papal Court at Rome. See Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary, sig. Mm7; and Laurence Echard, A Most Compleat Compendium of Geography, 8th ed. (London, 1713), 37. The Catholic Church claimed that Saint Peter visited Rome and based its claim to jurisdiction on that notion; but Defoe doubted ­whether Peter had ever been in Rome. In two works he gave as his example of the absurdity of this claim a sermon by a Dr. Smith, who maintained wrongly that he had con­ futed the Protestant hero, Bishop Ridley, on this ­matter. See Defoe’s Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 251–253 and New F ­ amily Instructor, 122–123.

156

Ser ious R eflections

up the Pomp of Religion, and the Dignity of religious Titles: But like our Lord’s Observation on the Pharisees, I found within they w ­ ere all ravening Wolves.133 “The religious Justice they do ­t here, is particularly remarkable, and very much recommends them. The Church protects Murthers and Assassins, and then deliv­ ers the Civil Magistrates over to Satan, for ­doing Justice. They interdict ­whole Kingdoms, and shut up the Churches for Want of paying a few Ecclesiastic Dues, and so put a Stop to Religion for Want of their Money. I found the Courtezans134 ­were the most constant Creatures at the Church, and the most certain Place for an Assignation with another Man’s Wife, was at Prayers. “The Court of Inquisition burnt two Men for speaking dishonourably of the Blessed Virgin, and the Missionaries in China135 tolerated the Worshipping the Devil by their new Convert. A Jew was likewise burnt for denying Christ, while the Jesuits136 join’d the Paganism of the Heathen with the High Mass, and sung Anthems to the immortal Idols of Tonquin.137 “When I saw this, I resolv’d to enquire no more a­ fter Religion in Italy, till by Accident meeting with a Quietist, he gave me to understand, that all Religion was internal,138 that the Duties of Chris­tian­ity ­were summ’d up in Reflection and 133. Pharisees . . . ​ravening Wolves] An allusion to Luke 11:39: “Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.” It was easy enough to introduce wolves into the text, but the writer may also have been thinking of Matthew 7:15: “Beware of false Prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” 134. Courtezans] For a complaint about the courtesans, see Dumont, New Voyage to the Levant, 110; and François Maximillian Misson, A New Voyage to Italy, 2 vols. (London, 1699), 2:31. 135. Missionaries in China] For the dispute between the Jesuit missionaries and the papacy about allowing the Chinese to worship their ancestors and Confucius, see chapter 4, note 90 in this edition. Defoe was critical of the Jesuits and their methods of converting the Chinese. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 11, he said that the Jesuits “brought Jesus Christ and Confucius to be so reconcilable, that the Chinese and the Roman idolatry appeared capable of a confederacy, of ­going hand in hand together and consequently of being very good friends.” He depicted Satan as being puzzled by this plan, but fi­nally working out “a hotch potch of religion made up of Popery and Paganism” that blended Chris­tian­ity with Confucianism. In his attack on Defoe, Gildon tried to make the words of Defoe’s French priest from The Farther Adventures about Catholic missionaries into a strangely sinister advocacy by Defoe of the Jesuits’ activities in China. See Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticiz’d, 122 (42). 136. Jesuits] The Jesuits ­were active throughout the Far East at this time, and tended to accept aspects of the worship used by ­t hese nations as not incompatible with the preachings of the Catholic Church. The papacy de­cided that the Jesuits had been guilty of syncretism. For an account of a con­temporary Jesuit missionary, see Rhodes of Vietnam, Divers Voyages et Missions du Père Alexandre de Rhodes en la Chine et autre Royaumes de l’Orient, trans. Solange Hertz (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1966), 51–75. 137. Tonquin] Now the northern part of Vietnam but at the time a separate country. 138. Quietist . . . ​internal] Quietism was a quasi-­mystical movement stressing quietude and passivity as a path to direct contact with God. It was mainly associated with seventeenth-­ century France, though one of the expositors of Quietism was Miguel de Molinos (1640– 1696), a Spanish priest, and though it eventually had followers throughout Eu­rope. Karl Philipp Moritz’s autobiographical novel, Anton Reiser, describes how the f­ather of the hero was influenced by a German Quietist, Johann Friedrich Fleischbein (1700–1774) in the

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

157

Ejaculation, He inveigh’d bitterly against the Game of Religion, which he said was playing over the ­whole World by the Clergy; and said, Italy was a Theatre, where Religion was the ­Grand Opera, and the Popish Clergy w ­ ere the Stage Players. I lik’d him in many of his Notions about other ­Peoples Religion; but when I came to talk with him a l­ittle closely about his own, it was so wrapp’d up in his Internals,139 conceal’d in the Cavities and dark Parts of the Soul, viz. Meditation without Worship, Doctrine without Practice, Reflection without Reformation, and Zeal without Knowledge;140 that I could come to no Certainty with him, but in this, that Religion in Italy was r­ eally invisible.” This was very agreeable to my Notions of Italian Religion, and to what I had met with from other ­People that had travel’d the Country: But one Observation of ­ iddle of the eigh­teenth ­century. The most impor­tant figures associated with the movement m aside from Molinos (Quietists ­were sometimes called Molinists) ­were Antoinette Bourgig­ non (1615–1680), Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon (1648–1717), and François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon (1651–1715). Madame Guyon described how the entire sense of selfhood was annihilated and joined with God. Similarly, Bourgignon wrote of becoming “Dead to one’s self” as the best path to reaching God and that God is reachable when one is at home in bed as well as when one is in a church. And Molinos praised an “interiour Soli­ tude” that would lead to direct conversation with God. In 1687, Pope Innocent XI condemned Quietism and attempted to eradicate it, since it seemed to suggest a path to salvation that had ­little need for the Catholic Church. Fénelon engaged in a debate over Quietism with Bossuet during the 1690s and was eventually silenced in 1699. Defoe seemed to view the meditative aspects of Quietism with a degree of approval. His Turkish Spy (Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy, 274) views the attacks on Molinos by the Jesuits as motivated by their objection to a religious view that would “return to the first Princi­ples of their Prophet Jesus.” And in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 234–235, he is not entirely severe on “the Calm of a retired Soul” that might be attained through “the Meditations of an upright Mind and the Calm of a clear Heart.” But Defoe quickly proceeds to attack a “thoughtless Calm” that fails to be continually alert to moral and religious issues, compar­ ing it to a person who fails to react when his ­house is on fire. Despite being intrigued by Quietism, then, Defoe feels that it must be rejected. See Bourgignon, The Light Risen in Darkness (London, 1703), 14–15; Miguel de Molinos, The Spiritual Guide ([London?], 1688), 155; “A Letter Writ from Rome to One in Holland concerning the Quietiests,” in Three Letters concerning the Pre­sent State of Italy (n.p., 1688), 1–92; and Ritchie Robertson, ed., Anton Reiser (Harmonds­worth: Penguin, 1997), xii–­x vi. For a commentary on Molinos at the time when he had been arrested but Quietism not yet condemned, see Gilbert Burnet, Dr. Burnet’s Travels, or Letters Containing an Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, France, and Germany (Amsterdam, 1687), book 2:15–16. 139. Internals] The OED suggests, “The inner nature, soul, spirit,” but in context—in connec­ tion with the notions of the Quietists—it has the wider significance of relying entirely on the soul’s ability to achieve communion with God through the emptying of the self. See chapter 4, note 138 in this edition. 140. Meditation without . . . ​Knowledge] Although Defoe states that he is quoting from another author in this account of Italy, this parallel list of paradoxes joined by “without” was one of his favorite devices, particularly in his satiric vein. He used it as early as his “Histori­ cal Collections” (1682), and in The Consolidator, 33–34, he had pages filled with similar paral­ lelisms: “­There we saw Partition Treaties damned, and the ­whole given away, Confederacies without Allies, Allies without Quota’s, Princes without Armies, Armies without Men, and Men without Money, Crowns without Kings, Kings without Subjects. . . . ​In ­Matters of Civil Concerns . . . ​­here was . . . ​Plunder without Vio­lence, Vio­lence without Persecution, Con­ science without Good Works, and Good Works without Charity.”

158

Ser ious R eflections

Blindness and Supersition I must give within my own Knowledge, and nearer Home; when passing thro’ Flanders,141 I found the P ­ eople in a certain City t­ here, in a very ­great Commotion: The Case was this;142 A certain Scelerate,143 so they call an abandon’d Wretch given up to all Wickedness, had broken into a Chapel in the City, and had stoln the Pix 144 or Casket wherein the Sacred Host was depos­ ited; which Host, ­after rightly consecrated, they believe to be the real body of our Blessed Saviour, being transubstantiated, as they call it, from the Substance of Bread. The Fact being discover’d, the City, as I said above, was all up in a Tumult; the Gates w ­ ere shut up, no Body suffer’d to go out; e­ very House was searched, and the utmost Diligence used; and at length, as it was next to Impossibility he should escape, he was discover’d. His Execution was not long deferr’d: But first he was examin’d, and I think by Torture, What he had done with the sacred t­ hing which was in the Pix, which he had stoln? And at length he confess’d, That he had thrown it into a House of Office;145 and was carry’d with a Guard to shew them the Place. As it was impossible to find a l­ittle Piece of a Wafer in such a Place, tho’ no Pains was spar’d in a most filthy Manner to search for it; but, as I say, it could not be found, immediately the Place was judg’d consecrated ipso facto,146 turn’d into an Oratory,147 and the devout ­People flock’d to it, to expiate by their Prayers, the Dishonour done to the Lord God, by throwing his precious Body into so vile a Place. It was determin’d by the Wiser part, that the Body would not fall down into the Place, but be snatch’d up by its inherent Power, or by the holy Angels, and not be suffer’d to touch the Excrements in that Place. However, the P ­ eople continu’d their Devotions for some Time, just in the Place where it was, and afterwards a large Chapel was built upon it, where the same Prayers are continued, as I sup­ pose, to this Day. I had a par­tic­u­lar Occasion to come at a very accurate Account of Poland, by a Polish Gentleman, in whose Com­pany I travell’d, and from whom I learn’d all

141. Flanders] Roughly modern Belgium, but it was sometimes considered “the greatest and Noblest of ­those Seventeen Provinces, commonly called the Low Countries,” Bohun, Geo­ graph­i­cal Dictionary, sig. P5. In 1713 Laurence Echard (A Most Compleat Compendium of Geography [London, 1713], 54–55), referred to them as “the Spanish Provinces.” 142. The Case was this] Defoe had already told this story in his Continuation of the Letters Written by a Turkish Spy (1718), 287–288. He set the story specifically in the city of Bruges and had his Turk, Mahmut, moralize about the “Enthusiasm and blinded Zeal in ­t hese Infidels.” 143. Scelerate] Defoe defines this word appropriately. He appears to give it as a French word, but it had been anglicized previously. See OED. 144. Pix] Usually Pyx, though the OED rec­ords an occasional use of the i. This casket was used to contain the “Host” or consecrated wafer used in the Catholic mass. 145. House of Office] A privy. 146. ipso facto] A Latin tag: by the very fact. 147. Oratory] A small chapel or shrine. In providing this satiric account, Defoe reveals his Protestant contempt for the Catholic Church’s notion of transubstantiation.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

159

that was worth enquiring of, about religious Affairs in Prus­sia on one Side, and Muscovy 148 on the other. As for Poland, he told me they w ­ ere all Confusion, both in Church and in State; that notwithstanding their Wars, they ­were Persecutors of the worst Kind; that they let the Jews live among ’em undisturb’d, to such a Degree, that in the Coun­ try about Lemberg and Kiow,149 ­t here ­were reckon’d above 30000 Jews: That ­t hese had not Toleration only, but many Privileges granted them, tho’ they deny’d Christ to be the Messiah, or that the Messiah was come in the Flesh; and blas­ phemed his Name upon frequent Occasions; and at the same Time they perse­ cuted the Protestants,150 and destroy’d their Churches, where-­ever they had Power to do it. On the other Hand, when I came to enquire of t­hose Protestants, and what Kind of P ­ eople they ­were, who suffer’d so severely for their Religion, I found they ­were generally a Sort of Protestants, call’d Socinians, and that Lelius Socinus151 had spread his Errors so universally over this Country, that our Lord Jesus Christ was reduc’d h ­ ere to l­ ittle more than a good Man sent from Heaven to instruct the World, and far from capable of effecting by the Influence of his Spirit, and Grace, the glorious Work of redeeming the World; As for the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, they have no Trou­ble about it. Having given this Account of Knowledge and Piety in the Countries inhabited by Christians of the Roman Church, it seems natu­ral to say some t­hing of the Greek Church.152 There are in the Czar of Muscovy’s Dominions abundance of Wooden ­ Churches; and had not the Country been as full of Wooden Priests, something might have been said for the Religion of the Muscovites; for the P ­ eople are won­ derfully devout t­ here, which would have been very well, if it had not been attended with the profoundest Ignorance that was ever heard of in any Country, where the Name of Christian was so much as talk’d of.

148. Prus­sia . . . ​Muscovy] Con­temporary Prus­sia and Rus­sia ­were both putting po­liti­cal pressure on Poland, and by 1772, along with the Austrian Empire, they had partitioned Poland out of the Eu­ro­pean map. 149. Jews . . . ​Lemberg and Kiow] Modern L’viv (Luvov) and Kiyyiv (Kiev) are now situated in the Ukraine but at one time ­were part of Poland. The Jews ­were invited into Poland by the then king of Poland and more or less flourished ­t here ­until the Holocaust (1939–1945). 150. persecuted the Protestants] A flashpoint in Defoe’s time was in the city of Thorn or Torun in Poland, where ­t here ­were frequent reports of the Catholic Church’s persecution of Protestants. 151. Socinians . . . ​Socinus] For Socinus and his influence, see chapter 3, notes 141 and 147 in this edition. It was mainly the nephew of Lelius (Lelio), Faustus Socinus, who spread the ideas of Lelius through Poland and Eastern Eu­rope. Lelius was the founder of the doctrine, but he spent most of his life in Switzerland, particularly Zürich. 152. Greek Church: The Rus­sian Orthodox Church was a part of the Orthodox Eastern Church, often called the Greek Orthodox Church. It continues to function separately from the Roman Catholic Church.

160

Ser ious R eflections

But when I came to enquire about their Worship, I found our Lord Jesus Christ made so much a meaner Figure among them than St. Nicholas153 that I concluded Religion was swallow’d up of Superstition; and so indeed I found it was upon all Occasions; as to the Conduct of the ­People in religious ­Matters, their Ignorance is so establish’d upon Obstinacy, which is the Muscovite’s national Sin,154 that it would be r­ eally to no Purpose to look any longer for a Reformation among them. In short, no Man ­w ill, I believe, say of me, that I do the Muscovites any Wrong, when I say they are the most ignorant, and most obstinate P ­ eople in the Christian World, when I tell the following Story of them. It was ­after the ­Battle at Narva, where the late King of Sweden Charles XII.155 defeated their ­great Army, and a­ fter the Victory, extended his Troops pretty far into their Country, and perhaps plunder’d them a l­ ittle, as he advanc’d; when the Muscovites, we may be sure, being in the utmost Distress and Confusion, fell to their Prayers. We read of nothing they had to say to God Almighty in that Case; but to their Patron Saint156 they address’d this extraordinary Prayer. O Thou our perpetual Comforter in all our Adversities! Thou infinitely Power­ful St. Nicholas, by what Sin, and how have we highly offended thee in our Sacrifices, Genuflections, Reverences and Actions of Thansgiving, that thou has thus forsaken us? we had therefore sought to appease thee entirely, and we had implor’d thy Presence and thy Succour against the Terrible, Insolent, Dreadful, Enrag’d, and Undaunted Enemies and Destroyers; when like Lyons, Bears, and other Savage Beasts, that have lost their young ones, they attack’d us a­ fter an insolent and terrible Manner; and terrify’d and wounded, took and killed us by thousands, us who are thy P ­ eople: Now as it is impossible that this should happen 153. St. Nicholas] The patron saint of Rus­sia. Though he was supposed to have lived at the time of Dioclesian (254–312 c.e.) and been the Bishop of Myra, Nicholas appears to have been entirely the material of legend. His remains are supposed to lie at a church in Bari. Many churches ­were built to him in ­England, and he is the original of Amer­i­ca’s Santa Claus. This kind of saint was disparaged by Protestants ­a fter the Reformation. For his importance to the Rus­sians, see William Turner, The History of all Religions in the World (London, 1695), 544– 545. See also Jeremy Seal, Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005). 154. Ignorance . . . ​Obstinacy . . . ​national Sin] In the True-­Born En­glishman, Defoe had put down the Muscovite’s governing passion as “stupid Ignorance.” Poems on Affairs of State, 6:269. And in his Compleat En­glish Gentleman, 67–68, Defoe also complained of Rus­sian stupidity and obstinacy. ­A fter discussing the lack of knowledge among surgeons, astrono­ mers, and geographers in Moscow and the re­sis­tance to the reforms attempted by Peter the ­Great, Defoe noted: “It may be true that this is an example of brutality and meer obstinacy, and the worse, as their customes ­were inconsistent with common sence: and it is true it is so.” 155. Narva . . . ​Charles XII.] ­A fter Peter the ­Great attempted to lay siege to Narva, Charles XII, on 20 November, at the age of eigh­teen, though badly outnumbered, won a tremendous victory over the czar’s forces. Robert Massie remarks that the victory “made a sensational impression throughout Eu­rope.” See Massie, Peter the G ­ reat: His Life and World (New York: Knopf, 1980), 330–337. 156. Patron Saint] To Eu­ro­pean eyes, the attention paid to saints and their icons by most Rus­ sians seemed barbaric, but at the time, bowing to icons was “deeply engrained” in most Rus­ sians. See Lindsey Hughes, Rus­sia in the Age of Peter the ­Great (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 293.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

161

without Witchcraft, and Enchantment, seeing the g­ reat Care that we had taken to fortify our selves a­ fter an impregnable Manner, for the Defence and Security of thy Name. We beseech thee, O St. Nicholas, to be our Champion, and the B ­ earer of our Standard, to be with us, both in Peace and in War, and in our Necessities, and at the Time of our Death to protect us against this horrible and Tyrannical Crew of Sorcerers, and to drive them far enough off from our Frontiers, withthe Recompence which they deserve.157

It may be hoped I may give a better Account of Religion among Protestants ­ ill, if in Justice it is than I have among the Roman and Grecian Churches; and I w pos­si­ble. The next to the Nations I have been mentioning, I mean, in Geo­graph­i­cal Order, are ­t hose reform’d Christians, call’d Lutherans; to say no worse of them, the Face of Religion indeed is alter’d much between ­these and the latter: But I scarce know what Name to give it, at least as far as I have enquir’d into it, or what it is like. It was Popery and no Popery; ­t here was the Consub, but not the Transub.158 The Ser­v ice differ’d indeed from the Mass, but the Deficiency seem’d to be made up very much with the Trumpets, Kettle-­Drums, Fiddles, Hautboys,159 &c. and all the merry Part of the Popish Devotion; upon which it occurr’d to me presently, that if ­t here was no Danger of Popery among the Lutherans, ­t here was Danger of Superstition; and as for the pious Part, I saw very l­ ittle of it in ­either of them. By Religion therefore, the Reader is desired to understand ­here, not the Princi­ ples upon which the several Nations denominate themselves so much, as the Manner in which they discover themselves to be sincere in the Profession which they make. I had no Inclination h ­ ere to enter into the Enquiry a­ fter the Creeds, which e­ very Nation profess’d to believe; but the Manner in which they practised that Religion which they r­eally profess’d; for, What is Religion to me without Practice? And altho’ it may be true, that t­ here can be no true Religion, where it is 157. Thou . . . ​deserve] This entire prayer appears in a work usually ascribed to Defoe, The History of the Wars, of his late Majesty Charles XII. King of Sweden, 2nd ed. (London, 1720), 67. The supposed author, a Scot serving with the Swedish army, is not absolutely certain that such ‘ridicu­lous Stuff ’ could be genuine, but he notes that it was “handled about in our Camp, to be laughed at by our Soldiers.” 158. Consub . . . ​Transub.] Consubstantiation as opposed to transubstantiation. In his list of ­ nder the relatively neutral account of transubstantiation, “The t­ hings “Heresies and Errors,” u signified are the Body and Blood of Christ, taken by the godly Receiver,” Turner, in his History of All Religions in the World (1674), put the Lutherans among ­t hose who believe “Christ’s body is corporally taken by e­ very Communicant, the Bread and Wine being consubstanti­ ated.” The distinction is between a real and substantial presence of the blood and body of Christ during communion as opposed to the wine and wafer being transformed into the blood and body of Christ during communion. See Balthazar Mentzer, A Vindication of the Lutheran Religion, from the Charge of Popery (London, 1720), 165–175. 159. Hautboys] Oboes. It is doubtful that Defoe had a general objection to the use of ­music during church ser­v ices. Some Puritans, such as William Prynne, argued strongly against it. However, in his Augusta Triumphans (1728), Defoe argued for establishing a British acad­emy of ­music.

162

Ser ious R eflections

not profess’d upon right Princi­ples; yet that which I observe ­here, and which to me is the greatest Grievance among Christians, is the Want of a religious Practice, even where ­t here are right Princi­ples at Bottom, and where ­t here is a Profession of the Orthodox Faith. In Brief, I am not hunting ­after the Profession of Religion, but the Practice: The first I find almost in ­every Nation, Nulla gens tam barbara160—­But the last I am like to travel thro’ the Histories of all Christendom with my Search, and perhaps may hardly be able, when I have done, to tell you where it is. All the Satyr of this Enquiry ­w ill look this Way; for where God has not given a ­People the Blessing of a true Knowledge of himself, it would call for our Pity, not Reproach. It would be a very dull Satyr indeed, that a Man should be witty upon the Negroes in Africa for not knowing Christ, and not understanding the Doc­ trine of a Saviour: But if turning to our modern Christians of Barbadoes and Jamaica161 for not teaching them, not instructing them, and for refusing to bap­ tize them; t­ here the Satyr would be pointed and seasonable, as we s­ hall hear far­ ther by and by. But to return to the Lutherans, for t­here I am supposed to be at this Time, I mean, among the Courts and Cities of Brandenburgh, Saxony,162 &c. I had Oppor­ tunity ­here to view a Court, affecting Gallantry, Magnificence, and gay ­t hings, to such a Height, and with such a Passion, to exceed the ­whole World in that empty Part of ­human Felicity, call’d Show, that I thought it was impossible to pursue it

160. Nulla gens tam barbara] The full quote, attributed to Cicero or to Cicero quoting Epicu­ rus, concludes “cui non insideat haec persuasio Deum esse”: “­t here is no ­people so barbarous as not to believe in the existence of God.” It appears in this form in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and a number of seventeenth-­century texts. We have not been able to locate this precise quote, but Cicero made or quoted similar statements, sometimes ascribing them to Epicurus. See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King, Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 36–37 (1:30); and Cicero quoting Epicurus in De Natura Deorum, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer­ sity Press, 1961), 44–45 (1:16). The quote from the Tusculan Disputations is so close (“nulla gens tam fera, nimo omnium tam est immanis, euius mentem non imbuerit deorum opinio”) that one might think that some early commentator, knowing it was supposed to have been a quote from the Greek of Epicurus, felt no qualms about reshaping it. 161. Barbadoes and Jamaica] Both British colonies in the Ca­rib­bean imported and used slaves for the production of sugar. Barbados was particularly infamous for its ill treatment of slaves. Some planters feared that if they converted the slaves to Chris­tian­ity, they might have some claim to freedom. This is discussed in the second volume of Defoe’s ­Family Instructor (1718), when Toby, a fourteen-­year-­old Black slave from Barbados, is introduced into the ­family. He tells of how the plantation ­owners loaded their slaves with work and refused to convert them to Chris­tian­ity for fear they would become “­free mans.” See Works (1841), 16:305. 162. Brandenburgh, Saxony] Brandenburg and Prus­sia had become one ­under the rule of the Hohenzollerns and had increased in power ­a fter the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Social life was centered in Berlin. Saxony, held by the ­family of Wettin, lay to the south of Prus­sia. Like Brandenburg, it held an Electorship within the Holy Roman Empire. It was ruled by Freder­ ick Augustus, or Augustus II (1670–1733), whose interest in becoming King of Poland caused him to convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism. The center of court life was in Dresden. See C. T. Atkinson, A History of Germany 1715–1815 (London: Methuen, 1908), 38–41.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

163

with such an impetuous Torrent of the Affections, without sacrificing all ­t hings to it, which wise Men esteem more valuable. Nor was my Notion wrong; for the first t­ hing I found sacrific’d, as I say, to this voluptuous Humour, was the Liberties of the ­People, who being by Constitution or Custom, rather ­under absolute Government, and at the arbitrary ­Will of the Prince, are sure to pay, not all they can spare, but even all they have, to gratify the unbounded Appetite of a Court given up to Plea­sure and Exorbitance. By all I have read of the Manner of Living ­t here, both Court and ­People; the latter are entirely given up to the former; not by Necessity only, but by the Con­ sent of Custom, and the general Way of Management thro’ the ­whole Country; nay, this is carry’d to such a Height, that as I have been told, the King’s Coffers163 are the general Cess-­Pool of the Nations, whither all the Money of the Kingdoms flow, and only disperses again, as that gives it out; w ­ hether by r­ unning over or ­running out at its proper Vent, I do not enquire; so that as all the Blood in the ­human Body circulates in 24 Hours thro’ the Ventricles of the Heart,164 so all the Money in the Kingdom is said to pass once a Year thro’ the King’s Trea­sury. How far Poverty and Misery may prompt Piety and Devotion among the poor Inhabitants, I cannot say: But if Luxury and Gallantry, together with Tyranny and Oppression to support it, can subsist with true Religion in the ­great Men, than for o ­ ught I know, the Courts of Prus­sia and Dresden may be the best qualify’d in the World to produce this ­Thing call’d Religion which I have hitherto seen, is hard to be found. It is true, that the Magnificence of the wisest King in the World in Jerusalem,165 was esteemed the Felicity of his ­People:166 But it seems to be express’d very ele­ gantly, not as a Testimony of his Glory only, but of the flourishing Condition of his P ­ eople at the same Time, ­under the prosperous Circumstances which his 163. King’s Coffers] A coffer is a strong box for keeping money; hence it is equivalent to the monarch’s trea­sury. Frederick William I (1640–1688) reformed the collection of taxes and almost doubled the revenue of the state during his reign. See Atkinson, History of Germany, 88–89; and Penfield Roberts, The Quest for Security 1715–1740 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). 164. Blood . . . ​Heart] The comparison between the circulation of blood and the circulation of money was a common image in con­temporary economic treatises, including ­t hose by Defoe. See, for example, Defoe, A General History of Trade (London, 1713), 1:5. Defoe’s twenty-­four-­ hour blood flow period would seem to have more to do with metaphysics than con­temporary science. John Harris in his Lexicon Technicum (1704), sig. Sv–­S2, quoted Dr.  Richard Lowther’s experiment on the circulation of a dog. Lowther believed it would take three min­ utes for the blood to leave the animal. Harris argued that the blood flowed through the body from the heart in ten minutes or less. According to modern science, the blood flow velocity from the heart throughout the body at a pulse of seventy is approximately one minute. See Neil A. Campbell, Biology (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 1999), 816–819. 165. wisest King . . . ​Jerusalem] Solomon. When the Queen of Sheba encounters the wisdom of Solomon, she says, “Happy are thy men, happy are ­t hese thy servants, which stand con­ tinually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom.” See 2 Chronicles 9:3–7 and Kings 10:4–8. 166. Felicity of his ­People] Hovering over this biblical example of Solomon is the Latin motto: “Salus populi suprema est lex” or, the well-­being of the ­people is the first ­great law. It was sup­ posed to have derived from the Laws of the Twelve ­Tables at Rome.

164

Ser ious R eflections

Reign brought them to, viz. That he made Gold to be for Plenty like the Stones in the Streets,167 amply expressing the flourishing Condition of his P ­ eople ­under him. I have likewise read indeed, and heard much of the same Kind of the King of Prus­sia, and that even from his own Subjects, who ­were always full of the gener­ ous and truly royal Qualities of that Prince: He was the first King168 of the Coun­ try, which before was a Dukedom or Electorate only:169 The Summ of their Discourse is, That is Majesty was so true a ­Father of his Country and of his ­People, that his w ­ hole care was the Flourishing of their Trade, establishing their Manu­ factures, encreasing their Numbers, planting Foreigners, French, Swiss, and other Nations, among them,170 to instruct and encourage them; and being noway acces­ sory to any of their Oppressions, but relieving and redressing all their Grievances, as often and as soon as they came to his Knowledge: And indeed, I could not but entertain a g­ reat Regard to the Character of so just and good a Prince. But all I could infer from that was, That a Government may be tyrannical, and yet the King not be a Tyrant; but the Grievances to the ­People are oftentimes much the same: And e­ very Administration, where the Constitution is thus stated, as it seems to be in most, if not all of the Northern Courts, Protestant as well as o ­ thers, seems inconsistent with the true Ends of Government; the ­t hing we call Govern­ ment was certainly established for the Prosperity of the P ­ eople;171 Whereas, on 167. Gold . . . ​Stones in the Streets] See 2 Chronicles 1:15, “And the king made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones.” Changing this into “Stones in the Street” was something of a habit with Defoe. In his Atlas Maritimus, 228, he argued that silver, had it not been drained off by the trade to the Far East, might have been more abundant in Eu­rope, “and like gold in Solomon’s time, it would have been like Stones in the Streets.” 168. Prus­sia . . . ​first King] Frederick I (1657–1713) became the first King of Prus­sia, a title granted to him by Emperor Leopold I for his aid in the War of the Spanish Succession, and he held that title from 1701 ­until his death. But it was his son, Frederick William I, who reigned from 1713 to 1740, who succeeded in increasing the power of Prus­sia. By the end of his reign, the army had been increased from 38,000 in 1713 to more than 80,000 in 1740. See Atkinson, History of Germany, 91; Roberts, Quest for Security, 64. 169. Dukedom or Electorate only] See chapter 4, note 167 in this edition. 170. planting Foreigners . . . ​a mong them] ­A fter Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainbleau in October 1685, revoking the Edict of Nantes and thereby effectively outlawing Protestant­ ism as practiced by the Huguenots within the bound­aries of France, Frederick William, on 29 October of that year, issued what was called the Edict of Potsdam, welcoming the Hugue­ nots to his realm and giving them special tax status to attract them. Some twenty thousand Huguenots took advantage of this offer. He also encouraged the coming of other oppressed nationals, and for a time, Potsdam became a thriving, cosmopolitan city. David Ogg stated that Frederick William “sedulously encouraged industry and commerce” throughout his territories and that if greatness consisted in a freedom prejudice, he might justly be called a “­great” monarch. See Eu­rope in the Seventeenth ­Century (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1946), 443. 171. true Ends . . . ​­People] Although he is mainly speaking of economic prosperity in this passage, in Defoe’s mind, the notion of the well-­being of the ­people being the supreme law of government, had to include and indeed go beyond the kind of freedoms embodied in the Whig concept of the constitution as at least partly stated in the Bill of Rights of 1689. In his Preface to Jure Divino, xxv, he argued, “I esteem the Liberty of Estate and Religion equally with our Lives, e­ very man’s Birthright by Nature, no Government ever received a L ­ egal

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

165

the contrary, in all t­ hose German Courts, where I have made my Observations, the Magnificence of the Court, and the Prosperity of the ­People, stand like the two poles; what Excess of Light you see at one, is exactly balanced by so much Darkness at t’other. And where, pray, is the Religion of all this? That a ­whole Nation of ­People should appear miserable, that their Governours may appear gay, the P ­ eople starve, that the Prince may be fed; or rather, the P ­ eople be lean, that their Sovereign may be fat; the Subjects sigh, that he may laugh; be empty that he may be full; and all this for meer Luxury, not for the needful Defence of the Government, resisting Enemies, preserving the public Peace, and the like, but for meer Extravagance, Luxury, and Magnificence, as in Prus­sia; or for Ambition, and pushing at Crowns, and the Lust of Domination, as in Saxony. But to come back to the religious Transactions of ­t hese Countries, How are the Ecclesiastics jealous of their Hierarchy, afraid to reform farther, least, as they gave a mortal Stabb to the Perquisites and Vails172 of God Almighty’s Ser­v ice in the Roman Church, modern Reformation might give the like to them? For this Rea­ son they set a Pale about their Church, and ­t here, as well as in other Places, they cry to their Neighbours, Stand off, I am holier than thou;173 and with what Perse­ cution and Invasion, persecuting for Religion, and invading the Princi­ples of one Authority to abridge or take it away.” He also argued (bk. XI, p. 15) that the situation where the king was wealthy and his ­people poor could not be a valid form of government. For a capsulated version of Defoe’s politics as based on this po­liti­cal theory, see Defoe’s The Original Power of the Collective Body of the P ­ eople of ­England, Examin’d and Asserted (London: 1702 [1701]). 172. Vails] The OED II 4 has the meaning of this word as “A casual profit or emolument in addition to salary, stipend, wages, or other regular payment, esp. one accruing or attached to an office or position; a fee or offering of this nature.” Almost all of the examples provided refer to additions to the pay of an ecclesiastical office. 173. Stand off . . . ​holier than thou] See Isaiah 65:5: “Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. ­These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.” The biblical context of this passage involves a ­humble and awestruck prayer in chap­ ter 64 begging God’s mercy ­toward Israel a­ fter the destruction of the first ­Temple (64:10): “Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.” God then speaks of his anger against Israel, while promising a brighter ­f uture. If the previous verses are clues to this claim of holiness, the speaker who feels “holier than thou” appears to feel sanctified by some ritual that violates the religious code of the Jews, but some have seen it as a general attack on the pride of the priesthood; and this is the way Defoe seems to have read the passage. Crusoe, acting in the role of Isaiah, attacks the Protestant churches (mainly Lutheran) of Northern Eu­rope for their refusal to make further reforms, while acting as if they had the only path to salvation. Defoe tended to read this passage from Isaiah as an attack upon the pride of the Pharisees, conflating it with the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:10–14), in which the publican who confesses his sins receives justification, while the Pharisee, who fasts twice a week, and who, in his pride, thinks, “I am not as other men are,” does not. In his Compleat En­glish Gentleman, 17, he again conflated the two pas­ sages. Commenting on the absurdity of such a ­t hing as a “Gentleman” based on “some Glob­ ules in the Blood,” he compared such a stance to this combination of texts: “. . . ​as the Pharisees of old said to the Publicans, Stand off for I am holier than Thou.” Such a loose play with biblical passages was not uncommon in this period. In his Annotations on the Holy Bible, 2 vols. (London, 1700), 1: sig. 6Iv, Matthew Poole suggests that it might have been an allusion to the Samaritans, but then he too connects this be­hav­ior to the Pharisees in the

166

Ser ious R eflections

another. If ­there was any Peace among them, it was that only which passes all Understanding.174 It presently occurr’d to me, what Charity can h ­ ere be, where ­t here is no Peace? And what Religion, where is no Charity? And I began to fear I should find ­little of what I look’d for in ­t hose odd Climates. I had travell’d personally thro’ the Heart of France, where I had Occasion to look round me often enough in my Rout from the Foot of the Pyrenean Moun­ tains to Thoulouse, from thence to Paris and Calais.175 ­Here I found the ­People so merry, and yet so miserable, that I knew not where to make any Judgment. The Poverty of the Poor was so ­great, that it seem’d to leave them no room to sigh for any ­t hing, but their Burthens, or to pray for any ­t hing, but Bread: But the Temper of the ­People was so volatile, that I thought, they went always dancing176 to Church, and came singing out of it. I found a World of Teachers ­here, but no body taught: The Streets ­were ­every where full of Priests, and the Churches full of W ­ omen, But as for Religion, I found most of the Clergy w ­ ere so far from having much of it, that few of them knew what it was. Never sure was a Nation so full of truly blind Guides;177 for nothing can be more grossly ignorant of Religion, than many of their Clergy are; nothing time of Jesus and their fear that they might be contaminated by ­others ­a fter ritual cleansing of their hands. 174. Peace . . . ​passes all Understanding] This allusion to Philippians 4:7 is ironic. The biblical passage reads: “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, s­hall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” But in this case, the peace achieved is entirely incomprehensible given the be­hav­ior of ­t hese clerics. 175. Pyrenean Mountains . . . ​Calais] Crusoe’s travels through Spain and France appear ­toward the end of The Surprizing Adeventures. But in this case, the peace achieved is entirely incomprehensible given the be­hav­ior of ­t hese clerics. 176. Temper . . . ​volatile . . . ​dancing] The merriness amidst misery that Crusoe observes in the French ­people was not uncommon. In his characterization of national temperaments in  his True-­Born En­glishman, Defoe had described France as the place of “Ungovern’d Passion”: Ungovern’d Passion settled first in France, Where Mankind lives in haste, and thrives by Chance. A Dancing Nation, Fickle and Untrue: Have oft undone themselves, and ­others too. POAS, 6:268 (ll. 117–120) And in his Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy, 132–133, Mahmut stated that the French ­were usually characterized by “eternal dancing and Singing, even as they walk along the Streets, and scarce restrained even in the Churches.” Yet in a moment they can change from a “Face covered with Smiles and Joys” to acting the roles of hermits and reli­ gious enthusiasts. In his Commentator (19 August 1720), Defoe noted that the ­people ­were “merry” despite the hardships created by the collapse of the Mississippi Com­pany, warning, however, that ­unless conditions improve, “as merry a Nation as the French are, they ­w ill Dance out of their Wits at last.” In The Farther Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Buck­ nell, 22, Crusoe himself observes the way the French behave when they are rescued at sea, noting that their “Temper is allow’d to be more volatile, more passionate, and more sprightly, and their Spirits more fluid than in other Nations.” 177. blind Guides] See Matthew 23:16, “Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever ­shall swear by the t­ emple, it is nothing; but whosoever s­ hall swear by the gold of the t­ emple, he is a debtor.” This comes ­a fter several verses in which Jesus inveighs against the “scribes and Pharisees” as religious “hypocrites” whose real focus is on wealth and power rather than holiness. Jesus then continues the image of blindness and folly for several verses.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

167

more void of Morals, than many of t­ hose to whom other P ­ eople go to confess their Sins. I made some Enquiry about Religion; and among the rest, I happen’d to fall in Com­pany with a good honest Hugonot incognito;178 and he told me very honestly, that the State of Religion in France stood thus: First, That for some Years ago it was put to the Test by the King, and that was, when the Edicts179 came out to ban­ ish and ruin the Hugonots; at which Time, said he, we thought t­ here had been a ­great deal of Religion in it: But ­really when it came to the Push, said he, it was hard to tell where we should find it. The Persecution, as it was thought at first, would be ingrateful to the more religious Roman-­Catholicks, and that some would be found too good to do the Drudgery of the Dev­il: But we ­were mistaken, the best fell in with Persecution, when it was done by other Hands, and not their own; and ­t hose that would not do it, acknowledg’d they rejoic’d that it was done; which shew’d, said he, that the Catholicks ­either had no Princi­ple, or acted against Princi­ple, which is much at one. And as for us Hugonots, says he, we have shewn that we have no Religion lost among us: For first, some run away for their Reli­ gion, and yet left it ­behind180 them, and we that stay’d ­behind did it at the Price of 178. Hugonot incognito] The Huguenot would have to be incognito b ­ ecause the practice of his religion was forbidden. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and the Edict of Fon­ tainbleau culminated a series of often brutal actions (dragonnades) that succeeded in outlaw­ ing the religious practice of France’s Protestant community known as the Huguenots. Huguenot churches ­were destroyed and the religion uprooted. 179. Edicts] The edict that fi­nally revoked the Edict of Nantes (1598), which allowed for the toleration of the French Protestants called the Huguenots, was the Edict of Fontainbleau of October 1685. Prior to this time, Louis XIV had put in place the infamous dragonnades that allowed for the billeting of French troops in the homes of Huguenot families. The subsequent horror stories involving ­these events ­were pop­u ­lar­ized in ­England by Jean Claude in his Account of the Persecutions and Oppressions of the Protestants in France (London, 1686). 180. Religion . . . ​left it b ­ ehind] The Huguenots w ­ ere welcomed into ­England as refugees for their religious beliefs, but Defoe clearly believed that some fled France for their economic benefit. In Roxana or the Fortunate Mistress, 5–6, Defoe has his protagonist, whose f­ather was among the group that came over early enough to bring some of his wealth with him, throw doubt on the motivation of the Huguenot refugees. She notes that her ­father was con­ tinually besieged by t­hese “miserable objects of the poor starving Creatures, who at that Time fled hither for Shelter, on Account of Conscience, or something ­else.” Roxana quotes her ­father’s doubts about the religious fervor of many of the refugees, suggesting that they came over “for what they call in En­glish, a Livelihood” rather than for “Conscience.” As Roxana’s ­father remarks, many ­were helped by En­glish charity and established themselves as success­ ful silk weavers in London’s Spittle Fields and in Canterbury. Roxana describes herself as “apt to be Satyrical.” But in his True-­Born En­glishman (ll. 322–323), Defoe had much the same attitude: “Hither for God’s sake and their own they fled / Some for Religion came, and some for Bread.” And in Mist’s Weekly Journal of 28 November 1719 (Lee, Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 2:170), Defoe may have been the author of a letter from “Boatswain Trinkolo,” an immigrant hating, Tory sailor, who complained of the Huguenot and Palatine refugees and the ways in which they have deprived the true En­glish of their wages: “What the Plague have I been fighting for all this Time, for Liberty and Property, the Dianas of our Ancestors? It seems I have fighting for a Parcel of Outlandish pretended Hugonots, half Papists; who now they are grown rich among us, despise the Name of an En­glishman.” In his engraving Noon (1738), William Hogarth, with a similar, satiric eye, depicted the wealthy Huguenot community as they exited from their church.

168

Ser ious R eflections

our Princi­ples: For now, says he, we are meer Hypocrites, neither Papists nor Hugonots, for we go to Mass with Protestant Hearts; and while we call our selves Protestants, we bow in the House of Rimmon,181 Where then, said I, is the Reli­ gion, once boasted of ­here, to be found? Indeed, said he, it is hard to tell you, and except a ­little that is in the Galleys,182 I can give you no good Account of it. This indeed was confining the Remains of a flourishing Church to about 350 Confes­ sors, who ­really suffer’d Martyrdom for it, for it was no less; so I minuted down French Religion, tugging at the Oar, and would have come away. But it came into my Thought to ask him, What he meant by telling me, that ­t hose who run away for their Religion out of France, left most of it ­behind them? He answer’d, I should judge of it better, if I observ’d them when I came into my own Country; where, if I found they liv’d better than other ­People, or shew’d any ­thing of Religion suitable to a ­People that suffer’d Persecution for their Profes­ sion, I should send Word of it; for he had heard quite other­wise of them, which was the Reason why he and Thousands of o ­ thers did not follow them. It happen’d, while I was warm in my Enquiries thus a­ fter Religion, a Proclama­ tion came out in London, for appointing a General Thanksgiving, for a ­great Vic­ tory obtain’d by the En­glish Forces and their Confederates, over the French183 at—­—­—­I care not to put Names to the par­tic­u­lar Times of ­t hings. 181. House of Rimmon] Rimmon was a Syrian thunder god. It is a specific quotation from 2 Kings 5:19, but a general allusion to 2 Kings 5:1–19, the story of Naaman, captain of the armies of the King of Syria. He was a power­f ul figure, though a leper, and close to the monarch of Syria. In one of the raids against Israel, he had captured a “­little maid” who became a servant to Naaman’s wife. She suggested that Naaman might find a cure if he consulted with a prophet in Israel. When the monarch of Israel heard of this, he rent his clothes, saying he had no abilities to cure leprosy, but Elisha sent a message to him saying that that “he ­shall know that ­t here is a prophet in Israel.” ­A fter obeying Elisha’s instructions, Naaman is cured, and says that he ­w ill only offer worship to the God of Israel. But he asks ­pardon for the fact that when he goes with his master into the ­house of Rimmon, he must “bow . . . ​[himself].” Elisha does not respond but merely says, “Go in peace.” Poole (1:sig. Pppv) found Elisha’s response ambiguous, deciding, on the w ­ hole, that ­t here had to be some allowance for ­human weak­ ness and accepting the notion that Naaman is not actually bowing to the idol but merely helping his master. Although ­t here is the suggestion of hy­poc­risy in Naaman’s actions, Defoe sometimes used the allusion to argue for the necessity of subterfuge in a good cause and did so in a letter to Charles de la Faye dated 26 April 1718 (Healey, 453–454) by way of explaining his activities as a spy among the opposition press. ­A fter explaining the difficulties of his “Secret Mannagement” of ­t hese newspapers, he asked for understanding and sympathy for his difficult positions: “Thus I bow in the ­house of Rimmon; and must Humbly Recommend my Self to his Lordpps Protection, or I may be Undone the Sooner, by how much the more faithfully I execute the Commands I am ­Under.” 182. Galleys] Some of the Huguenots, who refused to convert, ­were sent, or threatened to be sent, as prisoners to the galleys as punishment. The same punishment was threatened against ­t hose who tried to remove their wealth from France in trying to emigrate. In his Cruel Persecutions of the Protestants in the Kingdom of France (1707), Jean Claude listed a number of terrible t­rials endured by the Huguenots before and a­ fter the revocation of the Edict of Nantes on 18 October 1685. See the American reprint (Boston: Narcisse Cyr, 1893), 97–135. See also John Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: Norton, 1968), 394. 183. Proclamation . . . ​French] The event that Crusoe is describing is ­either the Thanksgiving for the victory over the French at Blenheim, a cele­bration that lasted from the end of 1704 into 1705, or the victory at Ramillies celebrated at the end of 1706. In his Review of 2 September 1708,

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

169

I started at the Noise, when they cry’d it in the Streets: Hah, said I, then I have found it at last; and I rejoyc’d in par­tic­u ­lar, that having look’d so much abroad for Religion, I should find it out at home: Then I began to call myself a thousand Fools, that I had not sav’d myself all this L ­ abour, and look’d at home first; tho’ by the By, I had done no more in this than other Travellers often, or indeed generally do, viz. go abroad to see the World, and search into the Curiosities of foreign Countries, and know nothing of their own. But to return my Observations: I was resolv’d to see the Ceremonies of this pious Piece of Work; and as the Preparations for it ­were prodigious ­great, I enquir’d how it would be; but no body could remember that the like had ever been in their Time before: E ­ very one said, it would be very fine, that the Queen184 would be t­ here her self, and all the Nobility; and that the like had never been seen since Queen Elizabeth’s Time.185 This pleased me exceedingly; and I began to form Ideas in my Mind, of what had been in former Times among religious Nations; I could find nothing of what I was made to expect, u ­ nless it was Solomon’s Dedication of the T ­ emple,186 or Josiah’s ­Great Feast of the Reformation;187 and I expected God would have a most royal Tribute of Praise. But it shock’d me a ­little, that the ­People said ­there had never been such a Thanksgiving since Queen Elizabeth’s Time. What thought I can be the Reason of that? and musing a l­ittle, O! says I to myself, now I have found it: I suppose, no body gives God Thanks in our Country, but Queens: But this look’d a l­ ittle harsh; and I rumag’d our Histories a ­little for my farther Satisfaction, but could make nothing of it: At last, talking of it to a good old Cavalier, that had been a Soldier for King Charles,188 O, says he, I can tell you the Reason of it: They have never given Thanks, says he, ­because they have had nothing to give Thanks for. Pray, says he, When have they had any Victories in ­England since Queen Elizabeth’s Defoe had his “Madman” character criticize the be­hav­ior of the crowd in exactly the same terms, arguing that the event was treated as a time for drinking and interest in the queen and other celebrities rather than as a time of solemnity. See chapter 4, note 195 in this edition. 184. the Queen] Queen Anne (1665–1714). She assumed the throne in 1702. 185. Queen Elizabeth’s Time] Queen Elizabeth (1533–1603) assumed the throne in 1558. 186. Solomon’s Dedication . . . ​­Temple] At the beginning of the Second Book of the Chroni­ cles, Solomon sets about building the ­Temple in Jerusalem. In the fifth chapter, the ­Temple being completed, he assembled the leaders of Israel and brought in the ark. The following two chapters involved Solomon’s invocation, followed by the presence of the Lord filling the ­Temple, the sacrifices, and a feast of seven days followed by the dedication of the altar. ­A fter dismissing the assembly, Solomon had a dream or experienced a contact with the divinity “by night” (2 Chronicles 7:12) in which God promised to dwell in the ­Temple so long as the ­people remained true to his statutes. 187. Josiah’s . . . ​Reformation] See 2 Kings 23. This reformation followed the discovery of what is usually assumed to be Deuteronomy or the “book of the law,” though Josiah had already begun by repairing the ­Temple (2 Kings 22:5). In a manner similar to Solomon, Josiah gathered an assembly and “made a covenant before the Lord” (2 Kings 23:3). ­ ntil 1649, but in 1642 the coun­ 188. King Charles] Charles I (1600–1649) reigned from 1625 u try was plunged into the Civil War and Parliament ruled in London and vari­ous parts of the country.

170

Ser ious R eflections

Time, except two or three in Ireland in King William’s Time;189 and then they ­were so busy, had so many other Losses190 with them abroad, that they ­were asham’d to give Thanks for them. This I found had too much Truth in it, however b ­ itter the Jest of it: But still heighten’d my Expectation, and made me look for some strange Seriousness, and religious Thankfulness in the Appearance that was to be on the Occasion in Hand; and accordingly I secur’d myself a Place, both without and within the Church, where I might be a Witness to ­every Part of the Devotion and Joy of the ­People. But my Expectations ­were wound up to a yet greater Pitch, when I saw the infinite Crowds of ­People throng with so much Zeal, as I, like a charitable Coxcomb, thought it to be, to the Place of the Worship of God; and when I consid­ ered, that it was to give God Thanks for a ­g reat Victory, I could think of nothing ­else than the Joy of the Israelites, when they landed on the Banks of the Sea, and saw Pharoah’s Army, Horses, and Chariots, swallow’d191 up b ­ ehind them; and I doubted not I should hear something like the Song of Moses and the C ­ hildren of Israel,192 on the Occasion, and should hear it sung with the same Elevation of Soul. But when I came to the Point, the first ­t hing I observ’d was, That nine Parts of ten of all the Com­pany, came ­t here only to see the Queen, and the Show, and the other tenth Part, I think, might be said to make the Show. When the Queen came to the Rails, and descended from her Coach, the P ­ eople, instead of crying out Hosannah, blessed be the Queen that cometh in the Name of 189. King William’s Time] The period from 1689 to 1702. William III ruled with Queen Mary ­until her death at the end of 1694 and then as sole monarch ­until his death. The victories of his armies in Ireland against the forces of James II ensured his control of the En­glish throne. Appearing on the field in person, William won a ­great victory at the Boyne over James II on 1 May 1690, but despite its strategic importance in ensuring his control of Ireland, from a military standpoint, this was hardly more than a “heavy skirmish.” In September of that year, John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough captured Cork and Kinsale, and in 12 July 1691, William’s forces, ­under the command of Godard van Ginkel, won a victory at the ­Battle of Aughrim against the forces of James. On the Continent, where huge armies ­were involved, William’s only significant victory came at Namur in the beginning of September 1695. See Stephen Baxter, William III (London: Longmans, 1966), 264–267, 327–330. 190. Losses] ­Until William III was able to win a ­battle at the siege of Namur in 1695, he had to maneuver his forces in such a way as to keep his army intact against the superior armies of Louis XIV. But two fierce ­battles, at Steenkerk (3 August 1692) and Landen, sometimes called Neerwinden (29 July  1693), ­were usually considered defeats, especially by ­those interests opposed to William III. See, for example, Craig Rose, ­England in the 1690s (Oxford: Black­ ­ attle” well, 1999), 23. Baxter (William III, 303–305, 313–315) viewed Steenkerk as a “drawn b and Landen as something of a tactical victory, noting that although ­t here was discontent in ­England at Steenkerk, ­t here was less criticism over Landen. Crusoe acknowledges that ­t here is “much Truth” in the criticism of the Cavalier. Defoe expressed some dissatisfaction over the defensive warfare waged by William III in his Essay upon Proj­ects, 98–99, while acknowl­ edging that it was the new way of warfare and that its methods needed to be studied. 191. Pharoah’s Army . . . ​swallow’d] Exodus 14:26–31. 192. Song of Moses . . . ​Israel] Exodus 15:1–19.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

171

the Lord;193 I say, the ­People cry’d Murder, and Help, for God’s sake; treading upon one another, and stifling one another, at such a rate, that in the Rear of the two Lines or Crowds of P ­ eople, thro’ which the Queen Pass’d, it look’d something like a B ­ attle, where the wounded ­were retir’d to die, and to get Surgeons to come to them, for ­there lay Heaps of ­Women and ­Children dragg’d from among the Feet of the Crowd, and gasping for Breath. I went among some of them, and ask’d them, What made them go into such a Crowd? And their Answer was all the same, O Sir, I had a Mind to see the Queen, as the rest did. Well, I had my Answer ­here indeed; for in short, the ­whole Business of the Thanksgiving without Doors, was to see the Queen, that was plain; so I went away to my Stand, which, for no less than three Guineas,194 I had secur’d in the Church. When I came ­t here, it was my Fate to be placed between the Seats, where the Men of God perform’d the Ser­v ice of his Praise, and sung out the Anthems and the Te Deum,195 which celebrated the religious Triumph of the Day. As to the Men themselves, I lik’d their Office, their Vestments, and their Appearance; all look’d awful and grave enough, suitable in some Re­spects to the Solemnity of a religious Triumph; and I expected they would be as solemn in their Per­for­mances, as the Levites that blow’d the Trumpets196 at Solomon’s Feast, when all the P ­ eople shouted and praised God. But I observed ­t hese grave ­People, in the Intervals of their worshipping God, when it was not their Turn to sing, or read, or pray, bestow’d some of the rest of their Time in taking Snuff, adjusting their Perukes,197 looking about at the fair Ladies, whispering, and that not very softly neither to one another, about this fine 193. Hosannah . . . ​Lord] Hebrew for “Save, we pray” and associated with the eigh­teenth psalm, David’s psalm of thanksgiving a­ fter his victory over Saul. It was also sung at Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem. See, for example, Matthew 21:9. 194. three Guineas] This would have been a large expense for Defoe, less so for the fictionally wealthy Crusoe. First issued in 1663, the guinea was a gold coin roughly equivalent to twenty-­ one shillings, but its value fluctuated wildly, g­ oing as high as thirty shillings before the recoinage ­under William III that brought it close to its original value. In 1717, its value was officially set at twenty-­one shillings. 195. Te Deum] In a Review essay of 21 September 1708, involving a dialogue between Review and Mad Man, Defoe recounted the singing of the Te Deum at a Thanksgiving cele­bration for a victory over the French. Mad Man states, “I ­don’t quarrel any ­Peoples Form of giving Thanks, provided they do but ­really give Thanks; the Organs, or the Musick, or the Firing of Guns at the Te Deum, gives me no Offence; if Te Deum be sincerely in their Hearts.” But he objects to the “Want of the Essentials of Thanksgiving, and supplying with something essen­ tially contrary to the very Nature of giving Thanks, and to the Nature of him you give Thanks to. . . .” Defoe may have had in mind the particularly elaborate cele­brations for the victory at Blenheim between 1704–1705 or for the victory at Ramillies on 31 December 1706. See Defoe, Review, 5:301–302; and George Trevelyan, The History of Queen Anne, 3 vols. (London: Methuen, 1948), 1:421–422, 2:172. 196. Levites . . . ​Trumpets] Prob­ably a reference to 2 Chronicles 5:12–13, when the Levites sang and the trumpets sounded at the dedication of the ­Temple. In his dialogue with Mad Man (see the previous note, and Review 5:302), Review mentions this as a biblical justification for such cele­brations. 197. Perukes] Wigs.

172

Ser ious R eflections

Lady, that pretty W ­ oman, this fine Dutchess, and that g­ reat Fortune, and not without some Indecencies, as well of Words, as of Gestures. Well, says I, you are none of the P ­ eople I look for, where are they that give God Thanks? Immediately the Organ struck up for the Te Deum; up starts all my Gentlemen, as if inspir’d from above, and from their talking together, not over modestly, fall to praising God with the utmost Precipitation, singing the heavenly Anthems, with all the Grace and ­Music imaginable. In the ­Middle of all this Musick and t­ hese exalted t­ hings, when I thought my Soul elevated with divine Melody, and began to be reconcil’d to all the rest, I saw a ­little rustling Motion among the P ­ eople, as if they had been disturb’d or frighted: Some said it thunder’d, some said the Church shook. The true Business was, the Te Deum within was answer’d without by the Thunder of 100 Pieces of Cannon, and the Noise of Drums, with the Huzza’s198 and Shouts of ­great Crowds of ­People in the Streets. This I did not understand, so it did neither disturb or concern me; I found indeed no g­ reat Harmony in it; it bore no Consort199 in the ­music, at least, as I understood it; but it was over pretty soon, and so we went on. When the Anthem was sung, and the other Ser­v ices succeeded them, I that had been a ­little disturb’d with the lucid Intervals of the Choristers, and the Gen­ tlemen that sat crowded in with them, turn’d my Eyes to other Places, in Hopes I should find some Saints among the Crowd, whose Souls w ­ ere taken up with the exalted Raptures of the Day. But alas, it was all one, the Ladies w ­ ere busy singling out the Men, and the Men the Ladies. The Star and Garter200 of a fine young Nobleman, beautiful in Person, rich in Habit, and sparking in Jewels, his blew Ribbond intimating his Character, drew the Eyes of so many W ­ omen off of their Prayer Books, that I think his Grace ­ought to have been spoken to by the Vergers, to have withdrawn out of the Church, that he might not injure the Ser­v ice, and rob God Almighty of the Homage of the Day. As for the Queen, her Majesty was the Star of the Day, and infinitely more Eyes ­were directed to her than ­were lifted up to Heaven, tho’ the last was the Business of the w ­ hole Pro­cession. Well, said I, this is mighty fine, that’s true: But where’s the Religion of all this? Heavens bless me, said I, out of this Crowd, and I’ll never mock God any more ­here, when the Queen comes again. Cannot t­ hese ­People go and see the Queen, where the Queen is to be seen, but must they come hither to prophane the Church with her, and make the Queen an Idol? And in a g­ reat Passion I was both at the ­People and at the Manner of the Day, as you may easily see by what follows. 198. Huzza’s] Shouts of exultation, cheers (see OED). 199. Consort] Partner (see OED). Crusoe is being mildly ironic. The “divine Melody” with which he found himself inspired is interrupted by the very unmusical noise of the cannon, the drums, and the crowd. 200. Star and Garter] The En­glish Order of the Garter was granted only to the highest mem­ bers of the nobility. Crusoe depicts such honors in terms of the kind of celebrity bestowed on modern movie stars.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

173

N.B.201 I had made some other satyrical Reflections upon the Conduct of the Day; but as it looks too near home, I am not willing, that poor Robinson Crusoe should disoblige any body. I confess, the Close of the Day was still more extravagant; for ­t here the Thanks­ giving was adjourned from the Church to the Tavern, and to the Street; and instead of the Decency of a religious Triumph, t­here was indeed a Triumph of religious indecency, and the Anthems Te Deum and Thanksgiving of the Day ended in the Drunkenness, the Bonefires, and the Squibs and Crackers of the Street. How far Religion is concern’d in all this, or w ­ hether God Almighty w ­ ill accept of this noisy D ­ oings for Thanksgivings, that I have nothing to do with; let t­ hose ­People consider of it, that are concern’d in it.

Of Differences in Religion. ’TIS known alone to the Divine Wisdom, why he has been pleased to suffer any Part of Religion, and the Adoration paid to his Majesty, the Supplications made to him, and the Homage which his Creatures owe to his glorious Being, to be so doubtfully directed, or so differently understood by his Creatures, as that ­t here should be any M ­ istakes or Disagreements about them. How comes it to pass, that the paying a Reverence to the Name and Being of God, should not be uncapable of being disputed in the Manner of it, as in the ­thing itself? That all the Rules of Worshipping, Believing in, and Serving the ­Great God of Heaven and Earth, should be capable of being understood any more than one Way?202 And that the Infallible Spirit of God, who is our Guide to Heaven, should leave any one of its Dictates in a State of being misunderstood? Why have not the Rules of Religion, as well t­ hose of Doctrine as of Life, been laid down in Terms so plain, and so impossible to be mistaken, that all Men in the World in e­ very Age, should have the same Notions of them, and understand them in ­every Title of them exactly alike? Then as Heaven is but one blessed ­great Port, at which all Hope to arrive, t­here would have been but one Road to travel the Journey in; all Men would have gone the same Way, steer’d the same Course; and Brethren would no more have fallen out by the Way. God alone, who for wise and righ­teous Reasons, b ­ ecause he can do nothing but what is wise and righ­teous, has other­w ise order’d it, and that is all we can say of it: As to the Reason and Justice of it, that is a ­t hing, of which, like as of the Times and of the Seasons, we may say, Knoweth no Man.203 201. N.B.] An abbreviation for “nota bene” or “note well,” used to draw attention to par­tic­u ­lar parts of a text. 202. Rules . . . ​one Way?] Like Friday’s question concerning God’s allowing the existence of the Devil, this one is not answerable given the state of ­human knowledge. But it was very much the kind of question that the casuists enjoyed discussing. See chapter 3, note 128 in this edition. 203. Knoweth no Man] An allusion to Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32. Christ speaks of the coming of the messianic period but confesses “my F ­ ather only” knows of when this event ­shall occur. The same response must be given as an explanation of the variations in Chris­tian­ity.

174

Ser ious R eflections

In the State of Uncertainty we are now in, so it is; two Men believing in the same God, holding the same Faith, the same Saviour, the same Doctrine, and aiming at the same Heaven; yet cannot agree to go to that Heaven, or worship that God, or believe in that Saviour the same Way, or ­after the same Manner: Nay, they cannot know, or conceive of God, or of Heaven, or of the Redeemer, or indeed of any one Princi­ple of the Christian Religion, in the same Manner, or form the same Ideas of ­t hose ­t hings in their Minds. It is true, the dif­fer­ent Capacities and Faculties of Men, are in Part a Reason for this; by which it is occasioned, that scarce two Men together have the same Notions and Apprehensions even of one and the same t­ hing, b ­ ecause their Under­ standings are led by dif­fer­ent Guides, and they see by dif­fer­ent Lights. But this is not all; they are not alike honest to the Light they have: Three Men read the same doctrinal Article, say it be of the Trinity,204 or of any other, and they all examine the Foundation of it in the Scripture. One thinks verily he has found out the Mystery effectually, goes on with his Enquiries, and brings e­ very Scripture and ­every Passage to correspond exactly with his first Notion; and thus he confirms himself immoveably in his Opinion; and it is so clear to him, that he can not only never be argued out of it, but can entertain no good Opinion of any Man, that conceives of it in any other Way, but takes him for an ­Enemy to the Orthodox Doctrine, and that he merits to be expell’d out of Christ’s Church, deny’d the Christian Communion; and in short, treats him with no Re­spect, no nor thinks of him with Charity. Another comes to the same Scripture, and in quest of the same Doctrine, and he reads over the same Texts, and receives Notions from them directly opposite to the other, or at least, very remote from them: He follows in his Search thro’ all the corroborating Texts, and is confirm’d in his first Opinion from them all: He grows as immoveable in his receiv’d205 Construction of the Scripture, as the other; and all is so clear to him, that he not only can never be argued out of his Opinion, but can entertain no good Opinion of any Man that conceives of it any other Way, but takes him for an ­Enemy to the Orthodox Doctrine.206 The third Man,207 he reads over all the same Texts of Scripture, but ­doing it with an Indifferency as to the Substance, and ­whether he receives right informa­ 204. Trinity] Though it is selected as a random Christian doctrine, Defoe was surely alluding to the quarrel among the Dissenters over the Trinity in 1719 at Salter’s Hall. See chapter 3, note 67 in this edition. 205. receiv’d] In the sense of mentally “accepted, taken in” (OED 2), not in the sense of “Gen­ erally ­adopted, or approved as true.” Crusoe is discussing individual decisions about religion made by this second believer, based on what he considers to be proper evidence. 206. so clear . . . ​Doctrine] Defoe repeats four lines from above on this page (ll. 12–16). ­W hether he was deliberately trying to describe the same ritual of ascertaining religious truth that leads to dif­fer­ent conclusions and therefore wanted to use the exact same lines or ­whether this was an accident in composition is impossible to determine. Defoe was a g­ reat believer in repetition, but he usually varied his language somewhat. 207. third Man] In being “half inform’d” and “indifferent,” this man hardly seems an ideal Christian. Yet, in at least one way, he seems somewhat like Daniel Defoe in his effort to calm the violent disagreements among the Dissenters about the meaning of the Trinity at Salter’s Hall. Defoe certainly had a specific belief in the Trinity, but from a po­liti­cal standpoint, he

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

175

tion or no, truly he comes away with a Calmness of Mind as to the Substance; and as he went with no g­ reat Concern about being certain, so he comes back as uncer­ tain as he went. ­These three Men are enough to fill the ­whole World full of Disputes about Reli­ gion. The first two meet, and being equally positive of their being infallibly guided, equally warm in defending their Opinions, and equally tenacious of them, and above all equally void of Charity to the other; truly they fall out, Part, condemn, censure, revile, and as Opportunity and Power offers, at last, persecute one another, and all one anothers Adherents. The third, half inform’d indifferent Man, he comes in between ­these two, laughs at them both, says they are a Parcel of furious Christians, that the ­t hing is not absolutely necessary to be known, that it is no Article of Faith,208 so as that without deciding it, a Man cannot be sav’d; says, they are a Parcel of Fools to fall out thus about what they cannnot be certain of, and which they may go to Heaven tho’ they should not understand it till they come ­t here: And thus the World comes to be divided. Could they differ with Humility, they would differ with Charity; but it is not to be, in Religion, what­ever it may be in civil or politick Affairs; for t­ here is a t­ hing call’d Zeal, which Men call a Grace in Religion,209 and esteem a Duty; and this makes Men fall out in religious ­Matters, with a more fatal Warmth, and more Animosity, than in other Cases, according to Hudibrass. “Zeal makes men fight like mad or drunk, “For Dame Religion as for Punk.210 did not want to see the Dissenters torn apart by an argument on this subject. Certainly he thought, with the “third Man,” that some “Calmness of Mind” would have been admirable. See Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 523–524. 208. no Article of Faith] Crusoe begins this discussion by mentioning a “doctrinal Article, say it be the Trinity” (169:4–5). If, indeed, he is discussing the Trinity, it is mentioned as the first article in the Book of Common Prayer: “And in unity of this Godhead ­there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the F ­ ather, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” At the same time, it was considered by many contemporaries as something not subject to rational analy­sis, a ­matter of faith and revelation and as something impossible about which to argue. 209. Zeal . . . ​Grace in Religion] Zeal, or enthusiasm in ­matters of religion, was attacked by writers supporting the Church of ­England as the evil that brought about the rebellion against Charles I, the Civil Wars, the execution of Charles I, and the excesses of the Interregnum. For someone such as Jonathan Swift, who satirized enthusiasm in his Tale of a Tub, it repre­ sented the conquest of reason by the imagination and the libido. He regarded the preaching of the Dissenters in Ireland as an extreme example of this. On the other hand, in his Spiritual Refining: Or a Treatise of Grace and Assurance (London, 1652), 322, Anthony Burgess, a preacher who sided with Parliament and who refused to conform ­a fter the Reformation, wrote, “Grace is used for ­t hose holy qualities infused into the soul. . . . ​Thus faith is a Grace, repentance is a Grace, zeal is a Grace.” As the subsequent quotation from Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, an attack on the excesses of the Interregnum, Defoe could be amused at the zeal of some of the Christian believers of that period, yet in his The Pre­sent State of the Parties in ­Great Britain (1712), Defoe attacked preachers among the Dissenters who lacked a degree of enthusiasm in delivering their sermons. 210. Zeal . . . ​Punk] Defoe’s adaptation of this quotation, with his addition of “Zeal,” is from the beginning of Samuel Butler’s mock epic, Hudibras (ed. John Wilders [Oxford: Claren­

176

Ser ious R eflections

Nor is this the Fate only of the Christian Religion, tho’ ’tis more so t­ here than in any other; but ’tis the same in other Cases, as between the Persians and the Turks,211 about the Successors of their Prophet Mahomet. It was so of Old between the Heathen and the Jews: And the Assyrian Monarch212 prepar’d a fiery Furnace for ­t hose that would not fall down and worship the ­great Image that he had set up. In the Primitive Times of God’s Church, the Heathen did the like by the Chris­ tians, and Christianos ad Leones213 was the common Cry: But when the Church came to its Halcyon-­Days, Constantine the ­Great214 gave Peace to the Christians, and it was but a l­ ittle While that they enjoy’d that Peace, before they fell out by the Way, the Arian Heresies215 ­rose up, and differing Opinions rent the State into Fac­ tions, the Church into Schisms, and in the Space of two Reigns, the Arians perse­ cuted the Orthodox, and the Orthodox the Arians, almost with the same Fury as the Heathen had persecuted them both with before. From thence to our Time, Persecution has been the Practice even of all Parties, as they have been clothed with Power, and as their Differences have mov’d them: For Example, in all the Christian Countries, ­t here is a mortal Feud between Pop­ don, 1967], 1, Canto 1: ll. 5–6). Defoe may have expected his readers to know this passage by heart. It begins: When civil Fury first grew high, And men fell out they knew not why; When hard words, Jealousies and Fears, Set Folks together by the ears, And made them fight, like mad or drunk, For Dame Religion as for Punk. Defoe quoted this passage in a number of places, including The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 9. 211. Persians . . . ​Turks] Crusoe refers to the split in the Islamic world between the Shiites, who still dominate modern Persia or Iran, and the Sunnis, located in modern Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and a number of other nations throughout the ­Middle East and around the world. Crusoe would have encountered the Sunnis during his captivity in North Africa. In his Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy, 20–21, Defoe has his Mahmut state that the Calvinists and Lutherans differ “one from another, and separate even in Charity and Affec­ ­ reat Prophet tion, as much as our Ottomans, and Persians do, about the Successors to our G Mahomet. Nay they have likewise proceeded to Persecution and even to Blood.” 212. Heathens . . . ​Assyrian Monarch] An allusion to Daniel 3:1–30 and the story of how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to obey the edict of Nebuchadnezzar concerning the worship of a golden image. A ­ fter they survived an ordeal in a fiery furnace, they w ­ ere promoted by the monarch, who acknowledged the power of the God of Israel. 213. Christianos ad Leones] Christians to the Lions, or by implication, throw the Christians to the lions. Tertullian wrote of it as a cry that arose when ­there was any disaster: “If the Tiber reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields . . . ​if ­t here is famine, if ­t here is plague, the cry is at once: ‘The Christians to the lions.’ ” See Quintus Septimus Florens Ter­ tullian, Apologeticus, trans. T. R. Glover, Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 182–183 (40:2). ­ reat] Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus (ca. 280–337) was the 214. Constantine the G Roman emperor in 306, but had to contend with five other claimants to the throne. He ­adopted Chris­tian­ity in 312, and in 313, with the Edict of Milan, more or less ended the per­ secution of Christians throughout the empire. In 324 Chris­tian­ity was elevated to the status of a state religion. 215. Arian Heresies] For Arius and his followers, see M. Maimbourg, The History of Arianism, trans. William Webster (London, 1728), esp. 2–102.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

177

ish and Protestant; and tho’ indeed the former have carry’d their Zeal farthest, yet the latter have not been able to say they have not persecuted in their Turn, tho’ not with Fire and Faggot. What Wars and Bloodshed molested Eu­rope on the Account of Religion in Germany? especially till the general Pacification of t­ hose Trou­bles at the Treaty of Westphalia?216 when the Protestants having had the apparent Advantage of the War, obtain’d the everlasting Settlement of their Religion, as well as Liberties thro’ the ­whole Empire. Since t­hose times, what Persecution in the same Country, between the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches?217 And how l­ittle Charity is among them? insomuch, that the Lutherans to this Day ­w ill not allow the reformed Evangelick Churches, so the Calvinists are call’d, Liberty to assem­ble for Worship within the Gates of their Cities, or give them Christian Burial. I avoid looking too near Home, or searching in Scotland and ­England among the unhappy Divisions of Episcopal and Presbyterian, Church of ­England and Dissenter;218 and this I do, ­because it is at Home: But it is too evident, that all ­these come e­ither from Mens being negligent of right Informations, or too tenacious when they have it; for ’tis evident, if all Men would be honest to the Light they have, and favourable to their Neighbours, we might hope, that how many several Ways soever, we chose to walk t­ owards Heaven, we should all meet ­there at last. I look upon all the Seeds of religious Dissention, as Tares sow’d by the Devil among the Wheat:219 And it may be observed, that tho’, as I have already said, the Assyrians persecuted the Jews, and the Romans the Christians; yet where the 216. Treaty of Westphalia] Concluded in 1648, the treaty ended the Thirty Years’ War, and in some sense it also ended the notion of a war to be fought over religion in Eu­rope. It gave permanent status to Protestant religions throughout Northern Eu­rope and allowed each prince, in a fragmented and weakened Germany, to establish the religion for his state. 217. Lutheran and Calvinist Churches] Martin Luther (1483–1546) began the Reformation in Germany. Emphasizing grace rather than works, he nailed his objections to indulgences to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517. In 1519, he denied the supremacy of the pope and was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1520. In 1522, he returned to Wittenberg to or­ga­nize what became the Lutheran Church. John Calvin (1509–1564) was a French theologian who gradu­ ally moved in the direction of the reforms started by Luther. He was banished from Paris in 1533 and went to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion. In Geneva in 1541, he succeeded in establishing a theocratic government. His emphasis on predestination was very dif­fer­ent from that of Luther. The Presbyterians, with whom Defoe was allied, ­were essentially Calvinist in their point of view. Given his religious viewpoint, Defoe was undoubtedly sensitive to the sleights t­oward Calvinists among the Lutherans, but other observers found the existence of vari­ous denominations within Ger­ man cities a sign of toleration. See Turner, History of All Religions, 498. Dissenter] According to the agreement at the Union of 218. Scotland and ­England . . . ​ ­England and Scotland (1707), the Presbyterian Church was allowed to be the dominant reli­ gious power in Scotland and the Church of E ­ ngland (“Episcopal”) was allowed a degree of toleration. In ­England, ­a fter the return of Charles II in 1660 and the failure of any reconcili­ ation between dissenting sects and the Church of ­England at the Westminster Conference of 1662, the sects, among them the Presbyterians, ­were permitted to function but ­under griev­ ous restrictions that often led to the arrests of dissenting ministers and their congregants. 219. Tares sow’d . . . ​W heat] Matthew 13:24–30. Jesus offers the parable of an “­enemy” who “sowed tares among the wheat” and a man who “sowed good seed in his field.” The person

178

Ser ious R eflections

Devil is immediately and personnally worshipped, t­ here we meet with ­little or no Persecution; for Satan having a kind of peaceable Dominion t­ here, offers them no Disturbance: He desires no Innovation for ever; he finds the Sweetness of it, and lets it all alone. But if once they talk of other Gods before him,220 he is far less easy; ­t here he is continually sowing Strife, and hatching Divisions among them; for like all other Monarchs, the Devil loves to reign alone.221 It would be too long a Task h ­ ere, to reckon up the several Sorts of Differences in Religion, even among us in ­England; where, if two happen to differ, presently like St. Paul to St. Peter,222 they withstand one another to the Face: that is to say, carry on the Dispute to the utmost Extremity. But ­t here is another Question before me, and that is not only, Why ­t here are such Differences in the Points of Religion? And, why are religious Differences hotter and more irreconcilable than other Breaches? But, why are ­t here more Dif­ ferences of this Kind among us, than among any other Nation in the World? Certainly this pushing on our religious Broils to the Extremity, is the Peculiar of this Country of ­England, and is not the same ­thing in other Places; and the Variety is such h ­ ere, that ’tis said, t­ here are more several Communions or Com­ munities of religious Kinds in ­England, than in all the other Protestant Countries in the World.223 The best and most charitable Answer that I can think of to give for this, is to compliment our selves, and say, ’tis ­because we are the most religious Nation in the World; that is to say, that we in general set more seriously to work, to enquire into the Substance and Nature of Religion; to examine Princi­ples, and weigh the Reasons of t­hings, than other P ­ eople; being more concern’d for, and anxious about, the Affairs of God, of Heaven, and our Souls; that thinking, as we ­ought to do, that Religion is of the utmost Concern to us, and that it is of the last Moment to us to be certain about it, and well grounded in the Points before us, particularly ­whether we are rightly inform’d or not; this anxious Concern makes us jealous of ­every Opinion and Tenacious of our own, breaks much in upon the Custom of submitting our Judgments to the Clergy, as is the Case in Countries, where P ­ eople are more indifferent in their Search ­after ­t hese ­t hings, and more unconcern’d in the Certainty or Uncertainty of them. who sowed the wheat de­cided to let the wheat grow with the tares ­until the harvest, when he separates them. Defoe assumes the “­enemy is the “Dev­i l.” 220. other Gods before him] A quote from Exodus 20:3, the first commandment. 221. Dev­il . . . ​reign alone] In the very beginning of Jure Divino (Introduction, i), Defoe argued that “NATURE has left this Tincture in the Blood, / That all Men would be Tyrants if they cou’d.” The Devil, like mankind, also desires absolute power. 222. St. Paul to St. Peter] Paul and Peter had differences over circumcision. Paul said, “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, b ­ ecause he was to be blamed.” See Galatians 2:11. 223. more several Communions . . . ​World] ­There may be some truth to this claim, but Hol­ land, which had allowed religious toleration throughout the seventeenth c­ entury, might have equaled Britain in this re­spect.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

179

I must acknowledge, that I think the true and the only just Reason that can be given for this ­Matter, is not, that we are more furious than other ­People, more censorious and rash in our Judgment, that we have less Charity, or less Patience, in debating religious Points, than other ­People: But the Truth is, that we have less Indifference about them; and we cannot sit down contented with a Slight and overly224 Enquiry, or a Cursory or School Answer225 to the Doubts in Question: But we make it a Th ­ ing of absolute necessity, to be fully inform’d of, and therefore are earnest in the Enquiry, and knowing the Scripture to be the ­great Rule of Faith, the Standard for Life and Doctrine, we flie thither and search for our selves, not having Popery enough to expect an infallible Judge, not Indifference enough to acquiesce in the Judgment of the Clergy; and perhaps a l­ittle too tenacious of our own Interpretation, even in t­ hings we are uninstructed about. This indeed I take to be the true Reason why religious Disputes encrease so much h ­ ere, and why ­there are such Separations and Schisms among us, more than they are in any other Nation in the World. I know much of it is laid to the Door of the Confusions they ­were all in ­here, during the bloody intestine Wars226 in the Years 1640 to 1656, and the Liberty given to all Opinions to set up themselves at that Time: But I wave that as a ques­ tion that tends to more Division. I believe, the Reason I have given for it, stands as well grounded, and as likely to be approved as any I can give, or as any that has been given in this Case. ­There is another difficult Question, which still remains before us; and that is, What Remedy can we apply to this Malady? And first, I must answer negatively; not to have us be less religious, that we might differ less about it: But to have us exercise more Charity in our Disputes, that we might differ more like Men of Temper, and more like Christians, than we do: This is striking at the Root of reli­ gious Differences; for if they ­were carry’d on mildly with a peaceable Spirit, will­ ing to be inform’d, a Disposition to Love as Brethren, tho’ in ­every ­t hing not like minded: Our Variety of Opinions would not then have the Name of Differences, we should not separate in Communion and in Charity, tho’ we did not agree in ­every ­t hing we ­were to believe or not believe, about Religion. It is hard that we should say t­hese Differences are the Consequences of a Nation, having more Religion than their Neighbours, since we have still this one Part too l­ittle; and as I suppose us to have more Religion, I must be oblig’d to grant we have not enough more; for if, as we have just so much more Religion, as is sufficient to make us quarrelsome in religious Disputes; we had yet as much more, as ­were sufficient to make us peaceable again ­after it, then we should be religious to Purpose.

224. overly] Superficial, casual, careless, cursory. See OED 2. 225. Cursory or School Answer] Scholastic in the sense of something learned by rote, an answer that has not required any real thought. 226. bloody intestine Wars] The En­glish Civil War.

180

Ser ious R eflections

So that, in a Word, our being so religious, as above, is only an unhappy m ­ iddle 227 Composition between the enquiring and fully inform’d Christian on one Hand, and the careless, indifferent, unconcern’d Temper, that takes up with any t­ hing, on the other Hand: And this I take to be a just tho’ short Account of our Differences in ­England about Religion. It might be a very useful Question to start ­here, namely where all our unhappy religious Differences ­w ill end. I that am not willing to give the worst natur’d Answer, where the best and kindest w ­ ill hold ­Water, am for the pre­sent dispos’d to answer in general, rather than descend to Particulars, viz. in Heaven: ­There all our unkind, unchristian, unneighbourly, unbrotherly Differences w ­ ill end: We ­shall freely shake Hands ­there with many a ­pardon’d Sinner, that ­here we bid stand off; embrace many a Publican, that ­here we think it a Dishonour to converse with; see many a Heart that we have broken ­here with Censures, Reproachings, and Revilings, made w ­ hole again by the Balm of the same Redeemer’s Blood. ­There we s­ hall see, that t­ here have been other Flocks than t­ hose of our Fold, other Paths to Heaven than t­hose we shut Men out from; that t­hose we have excommunicated have been taken into that superiour Communion; and ­t hose we have plac’d at our Left-­hands, have been t­ here summon’d to the Right-­hand;228 all Separations ­w ill be ­t here taken away, and the Mind of ­every Christian be entirely reconcil’d to one another; no Divisions, no Differences, no charging sincere Minds with Hy­poc­risy, or embracing painted Hypocrites for Saints; e­ very t­ hing to be seen, and to be known, as it ­really is, and by a clear Light; none ­will desire to deceive, none be subject to be deceived. ­There we ­shall look upon all we have done and said in prejudice of the Charac­ ter of our Brethren with a just Change, and sufficiently repair to one another all the injurious t­ hings we have said, or indeed but thought of one another, by rejoic­ ing in the common Felicity; and praising the sovereign Glory, that had receiv’d ­t hose we had foolishly rejected, and let t­ hose into the same Heaven, whom we had in the Abundance of our Pride, and the Penury of our Charity, shut out. How many Actions of Men, which we, seeing only their Out-­side, have now censur’d, s­ hall we find t­ here, by that Penetration that cannot err, be accepted for their in-­side Sincerity? How many an Opinion that we condemn h ­ ere, ­shall we see then to be Orthodox? In a Word, How many contradicting Notions and Princi­ ples, which we thought inconsistent with true Religion, s­ hall we find then to be reconcilable to themselves, to one another, and to the Fountain of Truth? All the Difficulties in our Conceptions of ­ t hings invisible, ­ will then be explain’d; all the Doctrines of the Immutability of the divine Councils ­will then be reconcilable to the changeable Events of ­t hings, and to the Va­ri­e­ties often hap­ pening in the World: The Unchangeableness of the eternal Decrees ­will then 227. ­middle Composition] Compromise or agreement. See OED 24. 228. Left-­hands . . . ​R ight-­hand] This symbolism is a traditional part of Christian iconogra­ phy with the damned placed on the left and t­ hose ­going to or already in Heaven on the right of Christ.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

181

appear; and yet the Efficacy of praying to God to do this, or not do that, to ­pardon, forgive, spare, and forbear, which we now say is inconsistent with t­ hose unchange­ able Decrees, ­shall be reconcilable to that Unchangeableless, in a Manner to us now inconceiveable.229 And this is the Foundation of what I now advance, viz. That in Heaven all our Differnces in Religion w ­ ill be reconcil’d, and w ­ ill be at an End. If any Man ask me, ­whether they cannot be ended before? I answer, If we ­were all thoroughly convinc’d, that they would be reconcil’d then, we should certainly put an End to them before; but ’tis impossible to be done. Mens Convictions of the greatest and most certain Truths, are not equal to one another, or equal to the Weight and Significancy of ­those Truths; and therefore, such a general Effect of this Affair cannot be expected on this Side of Time.230 ­There is one very g­ reat Reconciler of religious Differences in this World, which has sometimes been made use of by Providence to heal the Breaches in Christian Charity among religious ­People; and it is, generally speaking, very effectual: But it is a ­bitter Draught, a Potion that goes down with ­great Reluctance, and that is Persecution. This generally reconciles the Differences of Christians, about the lesser ­Matters in Religion: The Primitive Churches, while ­under the Roman Per­ secutions, had a much greater Harmony among themselves, and very few Schisms and Divisions broke out among them. When they did differ in any Par­tic­u ­lar Points, they wrote healing Epistles to one another, contended with Modesty and with Charity, and referr’d willingly their Notions to be de­cided by one another. They did not separate Communion, and excommunicate w ­ hole Churches and Nations, for a Dispute about the Cele­bration of Easter,231 or unchurch one another 229. All the Difficulties . . . ​inconceiveable] The thrust of this paragraph is to say that some of the seemingly firm decrees of Heaven, which seem impossible to match with the religious experience on earth ­w ill be made understandable ­a fter the soul reaches Heaven. What he particularly aims at is the notion of the immutability of God’s decrees and the notion of change through prayer. Defoe frequently expressed doubts about what he sometimes deri­ sively called a “Turkish” view of predestination, a belief that every­thing is predestined, although the Confession of Faith and Catechism Agreed by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster (London, [1649]), 9, in the section on “Of God’s Eternal Decrees,” stated, “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy Counsel of his own ­w ill freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.” 230. this Side of Time] Crusoe contrasts ­human experience with its quarrels over religion and fierce convictions with what he conceives to be the experience of Heaven, where all dif­ ferences ­w ill be reconciled. Time was often conceived as part of the h ­ uman experience that had l­ittle or no relation to what may have been the timeless realm of God. Saint Augustine wrestles with this prob­lem in bk. XII, chap. 15 of The City of God. 231. Cele­bration of Easter] Defoe was prob­ably thinking that the Council of Nicea (325 c.e.) settled the dispute about Easter, and he was right in thinking that t­ here ­were no violent dis­ agreements. In fact it was never entirely settled. Certainly it was one of the goals set for the Council to have every­one agree on a date. However some Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria continued to follow a dif­fer­ent calendar, and some even dissented about having the cele­bration on a Sunday. Apparently Constantine urged a general agreement between dif­fer­ ent factions, but although it was generally de­cided that Easter should be celebrated on a Sunday and not follow the Jewish practice of celebrating Passover on the 14th–15th of Nissan, the exact method of calculating the date differed. Even t­oday, the Greek Orthodox Church

182

Ser ious R eflections

for the Question of receiving and re-­baptizing of Penitents,232 as was afterwards the Case. The Furnace of Affliction burnt up all that Dross, the Fury of their Per­ secutors kept their Minds ­humble, their Zeal for Religion hot, and their Affection for, and Charity to one another encreased as their Liberty, and their Number was lessened. Thus Bishop Ridley,233 and Bishop Hooper;234 the first, a rigid Church of ­England Bishop, the other, almost a Presbyterian, or at least a Calvinist, like Peter and Paul, differ’d hotly, and withstood one another to the Face, in the very Begin­ ning of the Reformation: But when they came to burn for their Religion, Fire and Faggot shew’d them the Reconcilableness of all their Disputes; convinc’d them, that it was pos­si­ble for both to hold fast the Truth in Sincerity, and yet entertain differing Notions of the Rites and Outsides of the divine OEconomy, and at the Stake235 they ended all their Disputes, wrote healing Letters to one another, and became Fellow-­Martyrs and Confessors for that very Profession which was so intermix’d with Censure and Dislike before. has a dif­fer­ent date for celebrating Easter, and this, along with permitting priests to marry, has remained among the disputes between them and the Roman Catholic Church. 232. receiving and re-­baptizing of Penitents] Saint Stephen (d. 257 c.e.) believed that t­ hose who had been baptized by vari­ous heretical groups of Christians did not need to be re-­ baptized when they joined the Roman Catholic Church. Eventually it was de­cided that such former heretics had to be baptized in the Roman Catholic Church following the exact ritual. Defoe’s main point, however, is that at this stage in the development of Chris­tian­ity, the “Fury of their Persecutors” (178:26–27) gave Christians a sense of charity ­toward ­t hose with whom they disagreed on ­matters of doctrine. For a discussion of this controversy, see Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Christian Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy (­Grand ­Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 394–399. 233. Bishop Ridley] Nicolas Ridley (ca. 1500–1555) was made Bishop of Rochester in 1547 and was one of the early reformers of the Anglican Church. He helped Thomas Cranmer (1489– 1556) write the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty Nine Articles that ­were the basis of Anglican beliefs. He was declared a heretic when Mary I (1516–1558; reigned from 1553) attempted to restore Roman Catholicism in ­England. He was burned alive for heresy along with Bishop Hugh Latimer (1485–1555) on 16 October 1555. 234. Bishop Hooper] John Hooper (1495–1555) was Bishop of Gloucester (1550) and Worcester (1552). He was burned alive for heresy at Gloucester on 9 February 1555. Hooper is sometimes regarded as the real founder of En­glish Dissent. He had to flee ­England in 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; reigned from 1509). He quarreled with Ridley over the foun­ dations of Episcopalianism. Both he and Ridley ­were immortalized in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, 3 vols. (London, 1684), 3:128, 431. Foxe included a letter (3:121) from Hooper to Ridley in which Hooper expressed some disagreement on religious doctrine but in a tone of complete humility and friendship. The g­ reat disagreement between Hooper and Ridley was over the question of wearing vestments. Hooper, who had gone to Zürich, where he fell ­under the influence of the religious reformers, Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger, believed ornate clerical vestments w ­ ere a remnant of the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. On ­these grounds he refused the offer of being made Bishop of Gloucester. On 8 March 1551, he fi­nally agreed to wear the vestments required, but only ­a fter letters from Bull­ inger and John Calvin assured him that vestments w ­ ere too minor a ­matter to refuse such a position. The issue of vestments in the Church of E ­ ngland continued into the reign of Eliza­ beth and eventually fueled an under­ground puritan movement. Defoe’s judgment to the effect that he was “almost a Presbyterian” (178:33) has some basis. 235. at the Stake] Hooper was burned at the stake on 9 February  1555. Ridley, along with Hugh Latimer, was burned at the stake on 16 October 1555.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

183

And let all that think of this Remedy remember, that whenever t­ hese quarrel­ some Christians come, by Persecution, or any other Incident, to be thus reconcil’d in their Charity, they find always a ­great deal to ask ­pardon of one another for, with re­spect to what is past; all their Vio­lence, Heat of Zeal, and much more Heat of Passion, all their Breach of Charity, their Reproaches and Censures, and hard Words, which have pass’d between them, ­w ill only then serve to bring them together with more Affection, and to Embrace more warmly; for, depend upon it, all the Differences in Religion among good Men, (for I do not mean Essential, Doctrinal, and Fundamental Differences) serve only to make them all asham’d of themselves at last.

Of the wonderful Excellency of Negative Religion, and Negative Virtue Negative Virtue236 sets out like the Pharisee,237 with God I thank thee; ’tis a Piece of religious Pageantry; a jointed Baby238 dress’d up gay, but stript of its Gewgaws, it appears a naked Lump, fit only to please C ­ hildren and deceive Fools. ’Tis the Hope of the Hypocrite, ’tis a Cheat upon the Neighbourhood, a Dress for without Doors, for ’tis of no Use within; ’tis a Mask put on for a Character,239 and as gener­ ally ’tis used to cheat ­others, ’tis so ignorantly embrac’d, that we cheat even our­ selves with it.

236. Negative Virtue] In his Commentator of 15 April 1720, written just a few months before ­ ying of a “­Great Man” the publication of Serious Reflections, Defoe set a scene involving the d as he was interviewed by a Clergyman Aside from some charitable works, the “­Great Man” cannot name any specific religious beliefs that might earn his salvation. “All his Religion, in other Re­spects, had consisted in Negatives.” The Clergyman then sums up what the man considers to be his virtues: “I am not so and so; I have been no Rake, nor Gamester, no Drunkard, nor Adulterer; I have not frequented Plays, Assemblies, or Masquerades: And that was all he had to say of another World.” The Clergyman considers this “a Pharisaical Outside Reli­ gion,” and tells him that “a Negative Holiness would not do.” 237. Pharisee] See Luke 18:11. Defoe alludes to this parable a number of times e­ arlier in this text (see, for example, chapter 3, note 201 in this edition) and frequently throughout his writ­ ings. His concept of the complex of ideas that he saw in this parable not only included an attack on the pride of the Pharisee from the standpoint of religious attitudes but also, sec­ ondarily, an egalitarian attack on the Pharisee’s sense that his class and wealth gave him special privileges in his relationship with God. In the first volume of his ­Family Instructor (London, 1715), 3, he attempted to create this Pharisee as a religious character type: “a kind of a negative Christian, a God-­I-­thank-­thee Pharisee, sound in knowledge, but negligent in Conversation; Orthodox in opinion, but Heterodox in Conversation.” 238. jointed Baby] OED 2 defines a baby as “a doll, puppet,” and refers to Alexander Pope’s letter to Edward Blount of 3 October  1721  in which Pope spoke of once seeing the young Mrs. Blount and how he “fancy’d I saw her sober over a Sampler, or gay over a jointed Baby” (Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1952], 2:86). Defoe seems to have in mind both a doll with moveable limbs for c­ hildren and a puppet used in shows such as ­t hose in Bartholomew Fair. 239. Character] See OED 13a: “The estimate formed of a person’s qualities; reputation: when used without qualifying epithet implying ‘favourable estimate, good repute.’ ”

184

Ser ious R eflections

In a Word, Negative Virtue is Positive Vice, at least when it is made use of in any of the two last Cases; namely, ­Either as a Mask to deceive240 ­others, or as a Mist to deceive ourselves. If a Man ­were to look back npon it, to see in what Part he could take up his Nest,241 or lay a Foundation of Hope for the Satisfaction of his Mind, as to ­f uture ­t hings, he would find it the most uncomfortable Condition to go out of the World with, that any Man in the World can think. The Reason is plain, compare it with the Publican,242 whom such a Man despises: H ­ ere is my Landlord is a Drunkard, one of my Tenants is a Thief, such a poor Man is a Swearer, such a rich Man a Blasphemer, such a Tradesman is a Cheat, such a Justice of the Peace is an Atheist, such a rakish Fellow is turn’d Highwayman, such a Beau is debauch’d; But I! I that am cloath’d in Negatives, and walk in the Light of my own Vanity, I live a sober, regular, retir’d Life, I am an honest Man: Vide Page.243 I defraud no body, no Man ever heard me swear, or an ill Word come out of my Mouth; I never talk irreligiously or prophanely, and I am never miss’d out of my Seat at Church. God I thank thee! I am not debauch’d, I am no Highwayman, no Murderer, &c. Now, what’s the Difference of all t­hese? I must confess, speaking of all t­hese together, and of what is usually the End of them, I think a Man had better be any of them, nay, almost all of them together, than the Man himself; and my Reason is, in a few Words, as follows: All ­t hese know themselves to be wicked Persons; Conscience, tho’ for a Time oppress’d and kept ­under,244 yet upon all Occasions tells them plainly what their Condition is, and oftentimes they repent. ’Tis true, sometimes they do not, God is 240. Mask to deceive] The OED 2c, defined as a figurative use, has “A facial expression assumed deliberately to conceal an emotion or give a false impression; an outward appear­ ance which hides a person’s true nature.” The period of the Restoration during which Defoe grew into maturity was obsessed with concealment and deception. In his Letter to Mr. Bisset (London, 1709), 10, Defoe complained, “This is an Age of Plot and Deceit, of Contradiction and Paradox. . . . ​It is a very hard ­under all ­t hese Masks to see the ture Countenance of any Man.” For a general discussion, see Maximillian Novak, ed., En­glish Lit­er­a­ture in the Age of Disguise (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1977), 1–14. 241. Nest] A place of security. See OED 2a: “A place in which a person (or personified t­ hing) lives or finds rest; a lodging, shelter, home, bed, ­etc., esp. of a secluded or comfortable nature; a snug retreat.” 242. Publican] Defoe is continuing his allusion to the parable of the Pharisee and the Publi­ can. See chapter 3, note 201 and chapter 4, notes 173 and 237 in this edition. 243. honest Man: Vide Page] Prob­ably a specific reference back to his previous treatment of this theme in the second chapter, the section titled “An Essay upon Honesty,” 31–76. He uses the phrase “honest Man” frequently in this section. “Vide Page” was prob­ably intended as a direction to the reader as well as for the compositor to supply a page number. The compositor left the space blank in the first edition. 244. Conscience . . . ​oppress’d . . . ​­under] Defoe takes the side eventually outlined by Jean-­ Paul Sartre against Sigmund Freud’s arguments about repression. Knowledge about what one has done or happened in the past is never entirely “kept u ­ nder”; it is never entirely repressed or “oppress’d” but it can be shunted aside while a person goes about his or her life. Defoe’s fictional characters vary in the degree to which they can avoid thinking about their past actions as they narrate their stories, with Roxana the most conscience stricken and Moll Flanders the most capable of avoiding the complications of past actions.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

185

pleas’d sometimes to treat them in the vindictive Attribute, and they are cut off in their Crimes, insensible and stupid, without a Space or a Heart to repent; and therefore, let none take Hope in their profligate Living, from what I am ­going to say. Again; o ­ thers, tho’ they do repent, and God is please’d to give them the Grace to return to him as Penitents, come to it very late, and sometimes ­under a severe Hand,245 as perhaps on a Death-­Bed, or ­under some Disaster, and oftentimes at the Gallows. But still I say, ­t hose Men tho’ they sin, they do it as a Crime, and when they come to be told of it often, they are brought to repent: But the Negative Christian I speak of, is so full of him-­self, so perswaded, that he is good enough, and reli­ gious enough already, that he has no Thoughts of any ­t hing, ­unless it be to pull off his Hat to God Almighty now and then, and thank him, that he has no Need of him; this is the Opiat246 that doses247 his Soul even to the last Gasp; and it is ten thousand to one, but the Lethargic Dream shoots him thro’ the Gulph248 at once, and he never opens his Eyes till he arrives in that Light, where all t­ hings are naked and open; where he sees too late, that he has been a Cheat to himself, and has been hurry’d by his own Pride in a Cloud of Negatives, into a State of positive Destruc­ tion, without Remedy. 245. ­under a severe Hand] From a dire position. The OED provides sixty-­five major catego­ ries for the use of hand, none of which seem to fit Defoe’s usage exactly. OED 4c has “at a bad hand” as referring to a difficult position or case. OED 10b has to do with buying or selling from a position of advantage or disadvantage. OED 35 supplies several meanings for “­under hand” having to do with medical care or treatment, but to accept this would require more twisting of meaning than Defoe prob­ably intended. 246. Opiat] Opiate. The OED 2a gives as a figurative use: “Something that soothes or dulls the senses or ­causes drowsiness or inaction.” 247. doses] Dozes. The OED classifies this as obsolete and gives: “To stupefy; to muddle; to make drowsy or dull; to bewilder, confuse, perplex.” Among the examples provided are two from the Robinson Crusoe volumes, one from The Surprizing Adventures and one from The Farther Adventures. 248. shoots him thro’ the Gulph] Gulf (meaning abyss) was a common con­temporary spell­ ing. ­Here it clearly means the gulf of death, a phrase that Defoe used in the first volume of his ­Family Instructor, 1:20, in which the F ­ ather explains to his son how God, a­ fter the disobedi­ ence of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, “in mere operation of his own goodness, determin’d to recover sinful Men from the Gulph of Death.” But Defoe’s use is prob­ably figu­ ­ nder shoot, gives as its definition: “To succeed in sailing through (a rative. The OED 4b, u dangerous strait, passage, gulf, ­etc. Hence to shoot the gulf (fig.): proverbally for any daring enterprise.” ­Under “gulf,” the OED 2c quotes from Defoe’s A New Voyage Round the World, 15, as giving an explanation for the phrase “shoot the gulf”: “Such a mighty and valuable ­t hing also was the passing this strait (the Straits of Magellan) that Sir Francis Drake’s g­ oing through it gave birth to that famous old wives’ saying viz., that Sir Francis Drake shot the gulf, a saying that was current in ­England for many years, I believe near a hundred ­a fter Sir Francis Drake was gone his last journey of all, as if t­ here had been but one gulf in the world.” It is impossible to say if many of the divines who used the image of shooting the gulf of death during the seventeenth ­century ­were aware of such an origin for the phrase, but it became a traditional usage in the religious polemics of the seventeenth ­century depicting life as a jour­ ney or voyage. Certainly Richard Baxter, in The Life of Faith (London, 1670), sig. A4v, wrote specifically of “so many thousand souls . . . ​t hat daily shoot the gulf of death” in terms of “a tempestuous Sea, where winds and tide are hasting them to the shore!”

186

Ser ious R eflections

I am reading no par­tic­u­lar Man’s Fate; God forbid! I restrain it to no Circum­ stances, I point out no Persons; ’tis too solemn a ­t hing to make it a Satyr; ’tis the State, not the Man, I speak of; let the guilty apply it to themselves, and the proud good Man ­humble himself, and avoid it. I have observ’d, that many fall into this Case by the excessive Vanity of being thought well of by their Neighbours, obtaining Character, &c. ’tis a Delusion very fatal to many; a good Name, is indeed a precious Ointment,249 and in some Cases is better than Life: But with your ­Pardon, Mr. Negative, it must be a good Name for good Deeds, or other­w ise, a good Name upon a bad Life is a painted Whore,250 that has a gay Countenance upon a rotten, diseased, corrupted Carcass. Much to be preferr’d is the general Slander of a prejudic’d Age, and a State of universal Calumny, where the Mind is ­free from the Guilt they charge: Such a Man, tho’ the World spits upon and despises him, looks in with Comfort, and looks up with Hope. —­—— ­ ­—­ Hic murus Aheneus esto, Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.251 Virg.

General Contempt, universal Reproach, is a Life that requires a world of Cour­ age252 and Steadiness of Mind to support: But, be this my Portion in this World, with a Heart that does not reproach me with the Guilt, much rather than to be a Man of Negatives only, and who all the World caresses with their good Wishes, and good Opinion, but is himself empty of real Virtue, a Hypocrite at Bottom, a

249. good name . . . ​precious Ointment] Ecclesiastes 1.7: “A GOOD name is better than pre­ cious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” At this point in his text, in keeping with his source, which praises the “house of mourning” for its truth, Defoe does not treat this bit of wisdom with g­ reat optimism. 250. painted Whore] Paint is used ­here in the sense of cosmetics that conceal disease. The classical depiction of this concept is Jonathan Swift’s “A Beautiful Young Nymph G ­ oing to Bed.” Poems, 2:581–583. As Irvin Ehrenpreis argued, such an image was common in satiric works of the period. See Swift, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962– 1983), 3:694–695. 251. Hic murus . . . ​culpa] “Be this our wall of bronze, to have no guilt at heart, no wrongdo­ ing to turn us pale.” The author of this verse was not Virgil, as the text suggests, but Horace. It was a common motto during the eigh­teenth ­century. See Horace, Epistle 1:1, 60–61, in Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 254–255. Defoe had quoted t­ hese lines ­earlier in his Review (8 November 1712; 9:58) in justifying his own be­hav­ior against the slander of his enemies. This is one of the passages in the text at which the characters of Crusoe and Defoe appear to merge. He ­later quoted them in his Essay upon the History and Real­ity of Apparitions,142, in a less personal vein. 252. Contempt . . . ​Courage] In the first volume of The ­Family Instructor, 381, Defoe wrote that “true courage consists in sustaining the mind u ­ nder the most pressing afflictions, and passive valour is the greatest extreme of true magnanimity.” He associated this kind of “pas­ sive” courage with the biblical figure of Job. For a discussion of courage in Defoe’s writings, see Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man, 138–50, esp. 139.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

187

Cheat, and ­under the Delusion of it; whose Portion is with Hypocrites,253 and who can neither look in, or look up with Plea­sure, but must look without himself, for all that can be call’d Good, e­ ither by ­others, or by himself. As at the ­Great and Last Day,254 the Secrets of all Hearts ­shall be disclosed,255 so I am perswaded, the Opinion we have of one another ­here, ­will be one of the ­Things which ­w ill be ­there, and perhaps not till then fully rectify’d; and as we ­shall be ­t here thorowly enlightended, we ­shall find Room to see, that we have been much mistaken in our Notions of Virtue and Vice, Religion and Irreligion, in the Characters of our Neighbours. And I am perswaded, we ­shall see many of our Acquaintances placed at the Right-­hand of a righ­teous Judge, whose Characters we have oppressed with Slanders, and who we have censoriously placed at his Left-­hand ­here: And many a painted Hypocrite, who has insulted his Neighbour with, Stand off, I am holier than thou, or whom he has turned from with Disdain, and with a This Publican! plac’d at the Left-­hand, who we made no Doubt we should have seen at the Right-­hand in Triumph. This is a Support to the Mind of a good Man, even when his Enemies, as David says, gnash upon him with their Teeth,256 and have him in Derision,257 that is to say, when he is run down by universal Clamour, and damn’d by the Tongues of Men, even for this World and another. Happy the Man, who with exalted Soul, Knows how to rate the ­great the prosp’rous Fool, Who can the Insults of the Street contemn, And values not the Rage or Tongues of Men? He like the Sun exists on his own Flame, And when he dies, is to himself a Fame.258 253. Portion is with Hypocrites] In speaking to his disciples of the f­uture judgment, Jesus warns of the need to be prepared and uses the parable of the evil servant who is caught in his wicked actions by the lord of the ­house who “­shall cut him asunder and appoint him his por­ tion with the hypocrites: ­t here ­shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” See Matthew 24:51. 254. ­Great and Last Day] The Day of Judgment in traditional Christian eschatology. 255. Secrets . . . ​Hearts . . . ​disclosed] See Romans 2:16: “In the day when God s­ hall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel.” The paragraph that follows may be generally influenced by what follows in this chapter from Romans in which Paul inveighs against the circumcised Jew who lacks a circumcised heart or genuine moral rectitude. 256. gnash . . . ​Teeth] David is credited with this from Psalm 37:12: “The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.” See also Job 16:9. 257. have him in Derision] An Old Testament phrase. Perhaps Crusoe was thinking of Psalm 119:51 or Job 30:1. 258. Happy the Man . . . ​Fame] This poem is almost certainly by Defoe. The beginning is in what is called the beatus ille tradition. It has its main roots in the opening of the second Epode of Horace, which depicts the happy life of the man who spends his time in the country cultivating his ancestral fields. Virgil’s “O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint agricolas” (Georgics 2:458) was translated by Abraham Cowley as “O happy (if his happiness he knows) / The Country Swain.” For a full discussion of this poetic tradition, see Maren-­Sofie Røstvig, The Happy Man, 2 vols. (Oslo: Norwegian Universities Press, 1962). But the opening also sug­ gests Old Testament sources, and the poem is not about the happiness of the country life but rather about the happiness of the man living in society who is able to rise above the insults of

188

Ser ious R eflections

But take this with you as you go, that as negative Praise ­will build no Man Comfort, so negative Virtue ­w ill not support the Mind ­under universal Con­ tempt. Scandal is much worse than Slander; for the first is founded upon real Guilt, the other attacks Innocence. Nothing is a Scandal, but what is true: Noth­ ing is a Slander, but what is false.259 He that fortifies himself against Reproach, must do it with a certain Reserve of Real, and solid Virtue, and Piety; it must be Uprightness and Integrity that must preserve him; nothing but a Fund of what is good can support the Mind u ­ nder the Reproach of being all that is bad; I do not mean neither, that the Man must be perfect, have no Follies or Failings, have made no Excursions,260 have nothing to be laid to the Charge of his Character; for where then ­shall the Man be found I am speaking of? And I may be said to be describing the Black-­swan,261 a Person that is not, and never was to be found: But the right Way of judging Men, and the Way which alone can be just, is to judge of them by their general Conduct; and so a Man may in his own Mind justly denominate himself: As ­every good Action does not denominate me to be a good Man, so neither does e­ very Failing, e­ very Folly, no nor ­every scandalous Action, denominate me a Hypocrite, or a wicked Man; other­w ise, some of the most eminent Saints in Scripture, and of e­ very Age since the Scripture was written, are gone to the Dev­il; and ’twill be hard to say, ­t here was ever a good Man in the World. But I return to my Subject, the negative good Man; and let me examine him a ­little in his just Character, in his Conduct, publick and private: He is no Drunk­ ard, but is intoxicated with the Pride of his own Worth: He is a good Neighbour, a the world. From a verbal standpoint, it resembles Proverbs 3:13: “Happy is the man that find­ eth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.” But the poem is essentially an ampli­ fication of Psalm 37 mentioned a few lines e­ arlier. See especially verse 37, which comes a­ fter assurances that the wicked ­w ill not prosper: “Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.” Segments of this poem appear in Defoe’s other works. For example, in his The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley, he has the line, “By partial Fame the prosperous Fool’s caress’d” ([Works], 1:116). And in his poem to the sun, in this Serious Reflections (above 144), he describes the sun: “Rolling in Flames, emits eternal Ray, / Yet Self-­sufficent suffers no Decay.” 259. Scandal . . . ​true . . . ​Slander . . . ​false] Although t­hese definitions are generally correct, the OED 2b gives examples of scandal as a “baseless imputation” and of slander (OED 3c) as “a discreditable act; a disgrace; a wrong.” 260. Excursions] The OED 2 gives a figurative use of this word as “an overstepping of the bounds of propriety or custom.” Defoe used it in this sense in his Commentator for 15 July 1720, when he wrote of a man who had become drunk and had been arrested. His f­ amily was relieved that he had not done something criminal but had “only made some Frolicksome Excursions.” 261. Black-­swan] The OED notes this as a proverbial phrase for persons or t­ hings that w ­ ere rare or non­ex­is­tent giving examples involving such rarities as a perfectly honest ­lawyer or a faultless husband. In his Religious Courtship (The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe, 20 vols. [Oxford: Thomas Tegg, 1840–1], 14:145) Defoe has a dialogue in which one of the ladies, hearing of a gentleman converted to being an active Christian by a poor man, asks “in what part of the world does this black swan, this unheard-of nonsuch ­t hing of a gentle­ man live.” Black swans w ­ ere ­later discovered to be common enough in Australia and the South Seas.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

189

common Arbitrator and Peace-­maker in other Families, but a cursed Tyrant in his own: He appears in a publick Place of Worship for a Show, but never enters into his Closet262 and shuts the Door about him, to pray to him that sees in Secret: He is covered with the vain-­glorious, and ostentatious Part of Charity, but does all his Alms before Men,263 to be seen of them: He is mighty e­ ager in the Duties of the second ­Table, but regardless of the first;264 appearingly religious265 to be seen and taken Notice of by Men; but between God and his own Soul, no Entercourse,266 no Communication: What is this Man? And what Comfort is ­t here of the Life he lives? He knows l­ittle, or perhaps nothing of Faith, Repentance, and a Christian mortifed Life: In a Word, he is a Man perfect in the Circumstances of Religion,267 and perfectly a Stranger to the essential Part of Religion. Take this Man’s Conversation apart, enter into the private and retir’d Part of it, What Notions has he of mispent Hours, and of the natu­ral Reflux 268 of all our Minutes, on to the ­great Center and Gulph of Life, Eternity? Does he know how to put a right Value upon Time? Does he esteem it the Life-­Blood of his Soul, as it ­really is, and act in all the Moments of it, as one that must account for them? Alas! this is of no Weight with such a Man; he is too full of himself to enter into any Notions about an Account, e­ ither for mispent Time, or any t­ hing ­else misdone; but perswading himself, that he never did any ­t hing amiss, entertains no Notion of Judgment to come, Eternity, or any t­ hing in it. What Room has a Man to expatiate in his Thoughts upon so im­mense and inconceivable a Subject, as that of eternal Duration, whose Thoughts are all taken up, and swell’d Top-­f ull with his own extraordinary self. It would be impossible for any Man in the World to entertain one proud Thought of himself, if he had but 262. enters into his Closet] A popu­lar devotional work of the seventeenth ­century by Bishop Edward Wetenhall (1636–1713) on meditation had the title Enter into Thy Closet. It apparently first appeared in 1666 and was in its fifth edition by 1684. Wetenhall urged every­one to find time during the day for private religious meditation. 263. Alms before Men] See Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:1: “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; other­w ise ye have no reward of your ­Father which is in heaven.” 264. Duties of the second T ­ able . . . ​first] A reference to the Ten Commandments. The com­ mandments from six to ten have to do with relations between o ­ thers, setting out prohibitions against vari­ous crimes, from killing to adultery. The person ­imagined obeys ­these com­ mandments as conspicuously as pos­si­ble. One to five are about relations with God and what Defoe considers to be genuine religion. See Exodus 20:3–17. 265. appearingly religious] Apparently, seemingly. The OED provides only two examples, the last from 1656, but states that it is “Still used in Scotland.” 266. Entercourse] The OED lists this as a variation of intercourse. 267. Circumstances of Religion] The OED III.8 defines this as that “which is non-­essential, accessory, or subordinate. OED III.9 gives “viewed as extraneous to its essence.” Both mean­ ings appear to apply ­here. 268. natu­ral Reflux . . . ​Minutes] The OED notes that this word is often used with “flux” in figurative terms or in speaking of the movement of the sea or a ­great river. Defoe is ­here using it in terms of the sea of time with Eternity as its center. In this passage, time is the “Life-­Blood of his Soul.” The argument is that ­humans should have a constant awareness of the death that each person must experience and the life a­ fter death, which should be the most impor­tant consideration.

190

Ser ious R eflections

one right Idea of a ­f uture State. Could such a Man think, that any ­t hing in him, or any ­t hing he could do, could purchase for him, a Felicity that was to last to Eter­ nity? What! that a Man should be capable in one Moment (for Life is not that in Length compar’d to Eternity) to do any ­t hing for which he should deserve to be made happy to Eternity? If then you can form no Equality269 between what he can do, and what he ­shall receive; less can it be founded pon his negative Virtue, or what he has forborn to do; and if neither his negative nor his positive Piety can be equal to the Reward, and to the Eternity that Reward is to last for; What then is become of the Pharisee? he must think no more of himself, for all his Boasts; neither of his Negatives nor his Positives, but of a rich unbounded Grace, that rewards according to itself, not according to what we can do; and that to be judged at the last Day according to our Works,270 if literally understood, would be to be undone; but we are to be judged by the Sincerity of our Repentance, be rewarded according to the infinite Grace of God, and Purchase of Christ,271 with a State of Blessedness to an endless Eternity. Indeed this Eternity is not a Meditation suitable to the Man I am talking of, ’tis a sublime Thought, which his bloated Imagination has never descended to, or engage’d in; and when it comes, he is like to have as l­ ittle Comfort of it, as he has had Thought about it. This Thought of Eternity raises new Ideas in my Mind, and I cannot go for­ ward without a Digression upon so impor­tant a Subject; if the Reader approves the Thought, he w ­ ill not quarrel about its being a Digression. ETERNITY. Hail mighty Circle,272 unconceived Abyss, Center of Worlds to come, and Grave of this: ­Great Gulph of Nature in whose mighty Womb, Lyes all that ­Thing call’d Past, that nothing call’d to come. Ever and never, both begun in thee, The weak Description of Eternitie, 269. Equality] See OED 3b. In ­t hings: Due proportion, proportionateness. 270. judged . . . ​according to our Works] Defoe attacked the notion of “Works” as a pos­si­ble way to salvation in his New F ­ amily Instructor, 148, 219. ­There is no sign ­here of what Max Weber argued to be a sense of grace and justification that the successful cap­i­tal­ist felt, “that comforting assurance that the unequal distribution of the goods of this world was a special dispensation of Divine Providence, which in ­t hese differences, as in par­tic­u ­lar grace, pur­ sued secret ends unknown to men.” See The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 177. 271. Purchase of Christ] The sacrifice made by Christ in suffering on the cross. Purchase is used in the figurative sense of the OED 6b, “The action of obtaining something immaterial, as effort, suffering, or sacrifice, e­ tc.” The examples specifically pertain to Christ’s “purchase” for the sins of humanity. 272. Hail mighty Circle] This poem is influenced by the paradoxical poem “Upon Nothing” by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Eternity is ­imagined as a circular state embodying all the modes of time and as ambiguous in its own way as Rochester’s nothingness. But the poem ends with the promise of Heaven and eternal life.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

191

Meer Sounds which only can thy Being confess; For how should finite Words thee Infinite express. Thou art Durations modern Name,273 To be, or to have been, in thee are all the same.274 Thy Circle holds the pre-­existent State Of all that’s early, or that ­shall be late. Thou know’st no Past or F ­ uture; all in thee, Make up one Point, Eternity: And, if ­things mortal mea­sure t­ hings sublime, Are all one ­great Ubiquity of Time. To end, begin, be born, and dye, The Accidents of Time and Life, Are Nonsense in thy Speech, Eternity Swallows them all, in thee they end their Strife. In thee the Ends of Nature form one Line. And Generation with Corruption join. Ages of Life describe thy State in vain, Even Death itself, in thee, lives o’er again. Thy radiant Bright, unfaded Face, Shines over universal Space. All Limits from thy vast Extent must flee, Old Everlasting’s but a Point to thee275 Ten Everlastings, make, not one Eternitie. To thee t­ hings past, exist as ­things that are; And t­ hings to come, as if they ­were; Thou wast the first ­Great When, while ­there was yet No Where. Even Time itself ’s a ­little Ball of Space, Borrowing a Flame from thy illustrious Face, Which wheeling round in its own Circle burns, Rolls out from thy first Spring, and into thee returns.276

273. Durations modern Name] “Duration” is the term used by John Locke in his Essay Concerning H ­ uman Understanding (bk. 2:14). Locke had argued that our sense of time is essen­ tially spatial or dependent upon a “train of ideas.” 274. To be . . . ​same] Defoe plays with the notion that time is an illusion, that the past and the pre­sent coexist in “Eternity.” 275. Old Everlasting’s but a Point to thee] See Psalm 90:2: “Before the mountains ­were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” This entire psalm is devoted to the brevity of ­human time com­ pared to that of God. Defoe takes poetic license to dismiss “everlasting” as a ­human concept compared to God’s timelessness. 276. and into thee returns] Compare to Rochester’s “Flow swiftly into thee and in thee end.” Works, 48.

192

Ser ious R eflections

What we have been, and what we are, The pre­sent and the Time that’s past, We can resolve to nothing ­here, But what we are to be in thee, at last. Deeds soon s­ hall dye, however nobly done, And Thoughts of Men, like as themselves decay: But Time when to Eternity roll’d on, ­Shall never, never, never waste away. Years, Ages, Months, Weeks, Days, and Hours, Wear out, and Words to number them ­shall fail, One Endless all the wild Account devours, And thy vast Unit casts up all the Tale.277 Numbers as far as Numbers run Are all in thy Account but one, Or rather are thy Reck’ning just begun. Thou art the Life of Immortalitie, When Time itself drowns, and expires in thee. All the g­ reat Actions of aspiring Men, By which they build that trifling t­ hing call’d Fame, In thy Embrace lose all their Where, and When, Reserving not so much, as a meer empty Name. How vain are Sorrows of a h ­ uman State, Why mourn th’ Afflicted at their Fate? One Point, one Moment’s longer far Than all their Days of Sorrow s­ hall appear, When wrapt in Won­ders we s­ hall see, And mea­sure their Extent by thee. In vain are glorious Monuments of Fame, Which Fools erect t’immoralise a Name, Not half a Moment when compar’d with thee, Lives all their fancy’d Immortalitie. Start back my Soul! and with some Horror view, If with ­these Eyes thou can’st look thro’ 277. casts up all the Tale] The OED II.7 gives: “The number or amount made up or to be made up or accounted for; the number all told; the complete sum, enumeration, or list.” This may be seen as a commercial image, somewhat in keeping with the “spiritual bookkeeping” in which Crusoe engages in the first volume when balancing the advantages and disadvantages of his condition, but it need not refer to monetary transactions as in OED II.8. OED II.6 quotes Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year as writing of “An exact tale of the dead bodies,” and using “tale” in the neutral sense of a list or reckoning.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

193

Enquire what gives the Pain of Loss a Sting, Even Hell itself ’s a Hell, in no one other ­thing. Then with a Brightness on thy Face, An Emanation from that glorious Place; A Joy which no dark Cloud can over-­cast, And which, Eternity itself cannot out-­last. Reflect my Soul! Duration dwells on high, And Heaven itself ’s made Heaven, by blest Eternity.

But to the Purpose in Hand; for I have not done with this Man of Negatives yet: And now let us bring him more nearly and seriously to a Converse with the invis­ ible World: He looks into it with Horror and dreadful Apprehensions; as Fœlix, when St.  Paul278 reasoned of Temperance, Righ­teousness, and of Judgment to come. Fœlix, was a moral Heathen, that is to say, a Man of Negatives, like him I am speaking of. What was then the Case? he trembl’d; Pray, what is it reasonable to think Fœlix trembled at? if I may give my Opinion, who am but a very mean Expositor of Texts, it was this or something like it. Fœlix was a Phi­los­o­pher, as well as a Man of Power; and by his Wisdom, as also by his Reverence of the Gods, which at that Time was the Sum of Religion, had been a Man of Morals, a Man that had practic’d Temperance and Righ­teousness, as the Life which was unquestionably to be rewarded by the Powers above, with an Elysian Felicity;279 that is to say, according to the Roman Maxim, That the Gods ­were the Rewarders of Virtue.280 But when the blessed Apostle came to reason with Fœlix, how unlikely it was, that ­these Negatives should purchase our Happiness hereafter, he shew’d him, that the Gods could not be in Debt to us for the Practice of Virtue, which was indeed no more than living most suitable to our Reason, that a Life of Virtue and Temperance was its own Reward, by giving a healthy Body, a clear Head, a compos’d Life, &c. fitting the Man for all other worldly Enjoyments, adequate to his Reason, and his pre­sent Felicity as a Man: But eternal Happiness must come from another Spring, namely from the infinite unbounded Grace of a provok’d God, who having erected a righ­teous Tribunal, where ­every Heart should be searched, and where ­every Tongue would confess itself guilty, and stand self-­condemn’d. Jesus Christ, whom Paul preach’d, would separate such as by Faith and Repentance he had brought 278. Fœlix . . . ​St. Paul] See Acts 24:10–26. A ­ fter Ananias, the High Priest informed against Paul, accusing him of being a “pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition,” Felix, a Roman magistrate married to Drusilla, a Jew, listens to Paul’s preaching on “the resurrection of the dead . . . ​ righ­ teousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” Felix ­ trembles at this. Impressed with Paul, Felix f­ rees him temporarily. 279. Elysian Felicity] The belief, among the Greeks and Romans, that the virtuous dead might go the Elysian Fields or the “Elysium” where they would be eternally happy. See Tooke, Pantheon, 309–310. 280. Gods . . . ​Rewarders of Virtue] See Adam Smith, Moral Sentiments, pt. 3:5 for a repeti­ tion of this.

194

Ser ious R eflections

home, and united to himself by the Grace of Adoption,281 and on the Foot of his having laid down his Life a Ransom for them, had appointed them to Salvation. When poor Negative Fœlix heard of this, and that all his Philosophy, his Tem­ perance, and Righ­teousness, if it had been ten thousand Times as ­great, could weigh nothing, and plead nothing for him at that Judicature; and that he began to see the Justice and Reason of this; for Paul reasoned him into it; I say, when he saw this, he trembl’d indeed, as well he might, and as all negative ­People w ­ ill. What a strange Idea must that Pharisee have of God, who went up with the Pub­ lican to the T ­ emple to pray: ’Tis observable, he went with a good Stock of Assurance in his Face, that could come to the Altar, as he did, not to offer any Sacrifice; we ­don’t find he carry’d any Offering, or bespoke the Priest to make any Attonement; he wanted no Priests to make any Confession to: Good Man, as he thought he was, he had no Sins to confess; he rather came up to the Altar to even Accounts with Heaven; and like the other Man in the Gospel,282 tell God, that he had fulfill’d the ­whole Law, and had done all t­hose t­hings that w ­ ere commanded, even from his Youth; so, as before, he only pulled off his Hat to his God, and let him know, that ­there was nothing between them at pre­sent, and away he goes about his Business. But the poor Wretch,283 whom he despis’d, and whom he had left ­behind him, for he durst come no farther, acted quite another Part. He had at first indeed, in Sence of his Duty, resolv’d to go up to the T ­ emple; But when he saw the Splendor and Majesty of God represented by the Glory of that elevated Building; I say, when he saw that, tho’ a ­great Way off,, and then look’d into his own Heart, all his negative Confidences failing him, and a Sense of miserable Circumstances com­ ing upon him, he stops short, and with a Blow of Reflection and perfectly unmixt with any of the Pharisees Pride, he looks down in Humility, but lifts up his Heart in a penitential Faith, with a Lord be merciful to me a Sinner.284 ­Here was Faith, Repentance, Duty, and Confession, all conjoin’d in one Act, and the Man’s Work was done at once, he went away justified;285 when the negative Pharisee went home, the same-­self vain Wretch, he came out with God I thank thee in his Mouth, and a Mass of Pride in his Heart, that nothing could convince. 281. Grace of Adoption] For the image of the followers of Jesus as ­adopted sons, see Galatians 4:4–5 and Ephesians 1:5. 282. other Man . . . ​Gospel] See Matthew 19:21–30, involving the story of a wealthy young man who asks how he may gain “eternal life.” Jesus recites a number of the commandments. The young man says that he has indeed obeyed the commandments and asks, “what lack I yet?” Jesus then tells him to give his riches to the poor. At this, the young man leaves in a sorrowful mood. Jesus then preaches against worldly wealth, stating that t­ hose who give up all to follow him and his teachings ­w ill reap a ­great reward in heaven. For other versions, see Mark 10:17–31; Luke 18:18–30. Defoe moves easily between this parable and the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, since they are almost joined in Luke 18. 283. poor Wretch] The Publican of whom the Pharisee expresses his contempt in his prayer. See Luke 18:11–13. 284. Lord . . . ​Sinner] The italics ­here indicate a quotation. The King James version has “God” instead of “Lord.” 285. he . . . ​justified] Defoe is prob­ably quoting from memory ­here. Luke 18:13 has “I tell you this man went down to his h ­ ouse justified.”

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

195

In what glorious Colours do the Scriptures upon all Occasions represent t­ hose two Hand in Hand Graces, Faith and Repentance? ­There is not one Mention of Faith in the ­whole Scripture, but what is recommending some Way or other to our Admiration, and to our Practice; ’tis the Foundation and the Top-­stone of all Reli­ gion, the Right-­hand to lead, and the Left-­hand to support, in the ­whole Journey of a Christian, even thro’ this World, and into the next: In a Word, ’tis the Sum and Substance of the Gospel Foundation. Religion seems to have been founded upon three Establishments286 in the World; in all which the Terms of Life are laid down at the End of our Ac­cep­tance of it. The First Establishment was with Adam in Paradise; the Terms of which ­were, Forbear and Live. The Second Establishment was with the ­Children of Israel, in the giving of the Law; the Terms of which w ­ ere, Do and Live. The Third Establishment is that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the Terms of which are, Believe and Live. So that in a Word, Faith is the Substance and Fulfilling of Gospel Religion, the Plan of Righ­teousness, and the ­great Efficient287 of eternal Life. Let me break out ­here upon this glorious Subject, and p ­ ardon the Excursion, I entreat you. FAITH:288 HAil Mystick!289 realizing Vision Hail! Heavens duplicate, Eternity’s Entail;290 GOD’s Representative to hand us on, And for us claim a Station near his Throne. Not the eternal Battlements of Brass, Gates,291 a ­whole Hell of Dev­ils could never pass; 286. three Establishments] The three stages correspond to the duties of Adam ­a fter being expelled from Eden: the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai; the crucifixion; and the subsequent promise of eternal life to humanity through belief in Jesus along with faith and repentance. In the first, Adam disobeyed God’s command to refrain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge. In the second, the Israelites ­were seen as disobeying God’s Commandments, a frequent theme of lamentation among the biblical prophets. 287. Efficient] “The course which makes effect be what they are.” The OED maintains that the use of this word in the form of a noun is obsolete but that it was very common in the seven­ teenth ­century. 288. FAITH] Another poem by Defoe. This mixture of poetry and prose is similar to the practice of his teacher at the Newington Green Acad­emy, Charles Morton. 289. Mystick] Having personified or made Faith into an allegorical figure, Defoe addresses it as clothed in its mystical significance. See OED. 290. Eternity’s Entail] Defoe imagines faith as involving a firm promise of “a Station near his Throne.” The primary meaning given by the OED for an entail has to do with the settlement of a landed estate “so that it cannot be bequeathed at plea­sure by any one possessor.” But OED 2 gives a figurative meaning as “The transmission of an inalienable inheritance of qual­ ities, conditions, obligations, e­ tc.” 291. Battlements of Brass, / Gates] At the end of Paradise Lost, Milton imagines Adam and Eve led out through the east gate of Eden, and in the second book (2:645–646), he describes the gates of hell as “thrice threefold the Gates; three folds w ­ ere Brass, / Three Iron, three of

196

Ser ious R eflections

Not Angels, not the bright seraphick Train,292 Which drove out Adam from the Sacred Plain: Not all the Flaming Swords293 Heaven ever drew. ­Shall shut thee out, or intercept thy View. Boldly thou scal’st the Adamantin Wall, Where Heaps of fainting Suppliants fall, Where Doubt has thousands and ten thousands slain, And Hypocrites knock hard in vain. Soaring above the dark Abyss of Fear, Quite out of Sight, ­behind, thou leav’st Despair, Who fainting, and unable to keep Pace, Gives up the Prize, gives out the Race, Faints by the Way, and Fainting cries, I ­can’t, and so, for Fear of D ­ ying, dies.294 While thou, on Air of Hope, fanning thy Wings, With gentle Gales of Joy, from whence Assurance295 springs,

Adamantine Rock.” Prob­ably borrowing from Milton, Defoe, in his Jure Divino (bk. 10, p. 15) has heaven guarded with an “Adamantine Gate, / With Bars of Brass” just barely able to keep out the sin of avarice. Another pos­si­ble source for this imagery is Ovid’s Metamorphosis. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 29, Defoe quoted Ovid on the attempt of the Titans “to scale the Adamantine wall, and break open the gates of Heaven.” 292. seraphick Train] Genesis 3:24 mentions the Cherubims who ­were placed as guardians. John Milton is a l­ittle more specific in Paradise Lost (12:643–644), describing the descent of the cherubim and the specific presence of the Archangel Michael: “Wav’d over by that flam­ ing Brand, the Gate / With dreadful ­Faces throng’d and fiery Arms.” 293. Sacred Plain . . . ​Flaming Swords] God “drove out” Adam along with Eve from the Gar­ den of Eden and to prevent his return by placing a flaming sword to bar him from returning. See Genesis 3:24. ­ ying, dies] Defoe often expressed his contempt for the person who responds to 294. Fear of D challenges by falling into inaction and despair. In his introduction to Jure Divino, discussing the qualities in humankind that drives them to become tyrants, he wrote: Courage exalts his Soul above his Sphere, And the next Hour he hangs himself for Fear: To Day insults with high Blaspheming Breath, To Morrow strives to die for fear of Death. (Introd., ll. 118–121) In his Review for 17 May 1712 (8:722), Defoe remarked, “I have not more Contemptible Thoughts of . . . ​a ny Brute, than I have of a Man, whom I see . . . ​soon dejected. . . . ​He is the most Soul-­less, dispirited Th ­ ing in the World, and is fit for nothing but to despair, and per­ haps, at last, die for fear of Death.” And in The ­Family Instructor (Tegg, 15:381), he wrote, “What they call true courage consists in sustaining the mind ­under the most pressing afflic­ tions, and passive valour is the greatest extreme of true magnanimity; whereas he that destroys himself is a coward, and dies for fear of the bitterness of life.” Passages of this kind abound in Defoe’s writings. 295. Assurance] This was a significant term in seventeenth-­century theology. See, for exam­ ple, Anthony Burgess, Spiritual Refining: or, A Treatise on Grace and Assurance (London, 1652). The opening sermons treats the assurance of grace and how it improves life by afford­ ing a certainty of salvation. Subsequent sermons treat the self-­examination that provides this certainty.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

197

Mount’st on, and passing all th’ Ætherial Bounds, Thy Head with beatifick Rapture crowns. ­ reat Pi­lot of the Soul, who goes before G The Dangers of the dreadful Voyage296 t’explore, Enters the very Place, and when ’tis ­there, Sends back Expresses to support us ­here, Negotiates Peace, gains the ­great Pledge of Love, And gets it ratify’d above. With awful Confidence at Heaven’s high Throne, It rather humbly claims than meerly prays. Pleads promises, and calls them all its own, And trusts to have, even then, when Heaven denyes. On Earth what Won­ders has it wrought! Rather what Won­ders has it not? ’That parted Rivers,297 dry’d up Seas,298 Made Hills of ­t hose, and Walls of ­t hese. And if to this ­great Mountain it should say, Move off, O Hill, and roll to yonder Sea,299 The Sea and Mountain too must both obey. If t­ owards Heaven it looks, ’tis ne’r in vain, From thence ‘t has brought down Fire, ‘t has brought down Rain300 And thither it ascends in Flame again. Its Influence is so vigorous and intense, It peirces all the Negatives of Sense. ­Things quite invisible to Sight, it sees ­Things difficult performs with Ease: ­Things imperceptible to us it knows, ­Things utterly impossible it does: 296. Dangers . . . ​dreadful Voyage] The journey from this world to a ­f uture life. 297. parted Rivers] God parts the River Jordan, allowing the c­ hildren of Israel to pass over. See Joshua 7–14. Elijah does the same in 2 Kings 2:8. 298. dry’d up Seas] An allusion to the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14:21. 299. Mountain . . . ​Sea] A probable allusion to Psalm 114  in which, at the departure from Egypt, the sea is seen as fleeing and the mountains to skip “like rams.” As in Defoe’s poem, the speaker mockingly asks the mountains and the sea why they should behave in such a manner. The answer exalts the power of “the God of Jacob.” 300. brought down Fire . . . ​Rain] When Ahaziah, the king, received news from the prophet Elijah predicting his death, he sent a captain with fifty men to bring him, but Elijah told the captain, “If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And t­ here came down fire from heave, and consumed him and his fifty.” See 2 Kings 1:10. In the ninth chapter of Exodus, the Lord afflicts Egypt with plagues when Pharoah refuses to ­free the Israelites, and in Exodus 9:18, he tells Moses: “Behold, to morrow about this time I ­will cause it to rain a very grievous hail,” which destroys all the h ­ umans and ­cattle in the fields. It is accompanied by thunder and a fire that “ran along upon the ground” (Exodus 9:23).

198

Ser ious R eflections

­Things unintelligible it understands, ­Things high (superior to itself) commands, ­Things in themselves unnatural reconciles, Weakness to Strength, and to its Sorrows smiles. Hopes against Hope, and in Despair’s resign’d, And Spight of Storms without, it calms the Mind. Say unborn Lamp, what feeds thy Flame,301 In all Va­ri­e­ties the same? What Wonder-­working-­hand thy Power supplies Nature and Reason’s just Surprize. Nature and Reason join thee Hand in Hand, And to thy just Dominion stoop the Mind: But neither can thy Workings understand, And in thy Swifter Pace thou leav’st them both ­behind. ’Twas from thy Motion fortify’d by thee, Peter ask’d Leave to walk upon the Sea,302 When his G ­ reat Lord said Come, and Faith said Go! What Heart could fear? What Coward Tongue say No? Boldly he stept upon the flowing Wave, And might ha’ march’d thro’ Fire, or thro’ the Grave, While he stood by, who had the Power to save: But as soon as Peter lost his Hold of thee, He sunk like Lead into the Sea. All thy Magnetic Power disperst and gone, The heavenly Charm was broke, and Peter quite undone; And had not Help been just at Hand, Peter had gone the nearest Way to Land.303 Made up of Won­ders, and on Won­ders fixt Of contradicting Qualities thou’rt mixt. Small as a Grain, yet as a Mountain ­great,304 301. feeds thy Flame] Perhaps an allusion to the apocryphal Book of Maccabees and the burn­ ing of the lamps seemingly without oil for eight days. On the other hand, Defoe seldom if ever alluded to the apocrypha. 302. Peter . . . ​Sea] For this story of Jesus walking on the sea and Peter’s failed attempt to do the same, see Matthew 14:22–32. Jesus catches him and says, “O thou of ­little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” 303. nearest Way to Land] In other words, he would have died. This has a colloquial quality not uncommon in Defoe’s poetry. He seems to be echoing the title of his most infamous pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, a work in which the solution proposed involves deaths by executions. 304. Small . . . ​­great] This line alludes to Jesus’s statement to his disciples, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye ­shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it s­ hall remove; and nothing ­shall be impossible unto you.” See Matthew 17:20.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

199

A Child in Growth, yet as a ­Giant strong; A Beggar, yet above a King in State: Of Birth but short, yet in Duration long. How ­shall we reconcile thee to our Sence? ­Here thou wouldst pass for meer Impertinence. Thy teazing Nature would thy End defeat, So ­Humble, and yet so Importunate. See the ­great Test of Faith, the greatest sure, That Heaven e’er put a Mortal to endure. She cry’d, she beg’d, nay she believ’d, and pray’d, Yet long neglected, and as long deny’d; At last, if commanded to Despair, She’s almost told it was not in his Power, That she was out of his Commission plac’t, Shut out by Heaven, by Race accurst. Woman! I am not sent to thee! Woman! thou hast no Share in me! Was ever Creature born, but this could hear, Such Words proclaim’d from Heaven, and not Despair. But still she prays, adheres, petitions, cries, And on the Hand that thrusts her back relies: Till mov’d, as ‘t­were with her Impertinence, He calls her Dog, and challenges her Sence, To tell her, ­whether such as she are fed, With Food appropriate, or the Houshold Bread. But all was one; her Faith so often try’d Too strong to fail, too firm to be deny’d: She follows still, allows her out-­cast State, The more thrust off, the more importunate: ­Every Repulse she meets, revives her Prayer, And she builds Hope, ­because she’s bid Despair: He calls her Dog, she calls her self so too, But pleads as such the Fragments that are due. The Case so doubtful, the Repulse so long, Her Sex so weak, and yet her Faith so strong, Heaven yields! The victory of Faith’s obtain’d, And all she ask’d, and all she sought for, gain’d.305 305. Test of Faith . . . ​gain’d] This is a poetically i­magined version of the story concerning Jesus and the ­woman of Canaan (Matthew 22–28). The ­woman comes to Jesus and asks him to cure her ­daughter who is “grievously vexed with a devil.” Jesus ignores her request and only ­a fter his disciples, annoyed by her cries, insist that he “Send her away” does Jesus address her directly. Jesus tells her that he is only sent “unto the lost sheep of the ­house of

200

Ser ious R eflections

Mysterious Flame! tell us from whence Thou drawst that Cleaving Confidence. That strange, that irresistible Desire, That with such Magic Force sets all the Soul on Fire; By which thou can’st to Heaven itself apply, In Terms, which Heaven itself can not deny. A Power so g­ reat, an Influence so sure, Not Heaven itself, the Wrestlings can endure. See how the struggling Angel yields the Day, When Jacob’s Faith bids Jacob pray. Let me alone, the heavenly Vision cries, No, no, says conquering Faith, never without my Prize. Heaven yields! Victorious Fath prevail’d,306 And all the Blessings ask’t for, he entail’d.307 Blest ­humble Confidence that finds the Way, To know we ­shall be heard before we pray; Heaven’s High Insurance Office,308 where we give, The Premium Faith, and then the Grant receive. Stupendous Gift! from what strange Spring below, Can such a super­natural Product flow? From Heaven, and Heaven alone it must derive; For Heaven alone can keep its Flame alive. No Spring below can send out such a Stream, No Fire below emit so bright a Flame Of Nature and original Divine, It does all other Gifts of Heaven out-­shine. Israel” and not for this ­woman who comes from around Tyre and Sidon. He adds that to help her would be like taking the bread from c­ hildren and “cast it to the dogs”; turning the insult, she tells him that even dogs eat the crumbs from their masters’ t­ able. At this, Jesus announces, “O ­woman, g­ reat is thy faith,” and cures the ­woman’s ­daughter. Defoe dramatizes the ­woman’s insistence and refusal to be denied her request. 306. Wrestlings . . . ​prevail’d] The story of Jacob’s wrestling with an angel and not only pre­ vailing but winning a blessing is in Exodus 32:24–30. 307. entail’d] For a general definition of entail in relation to society in this volume, see chap­ ter 2, notes 188–195. In a religious sense as a firm promise of eternal life, see chapter 4, note 290 in this volume. As used ­here, it refers to the blessing given by the angel to Jacob, who gives Jacob the new name Israel and who speaks of Jacob’s “power with God,” a power that is passed on to his descendants. 308. Heaven’s High Insurance Office] The combination of mercantile imagery and what amounts to the kind of metaphysical conceit used in En­glish poetry of the seventeenth c­ entury borders on the absurd. Whereas John Donne’s famous compass image (in “A Valediction For­ bidding Mourning”) gave a concrete if absurd image of a love that may bend but is always con­ nected with the lover, Defoe’s insurance office, with its grants and premiums, seems bathetic, lowering the exalted subject of faith by comparing it to a commercial transaction. For a discus­ sion of con­temporary rules about insurance, see Jacob, A New Law Dictionary, sig. 5K–5Kv.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

201

Thou art the Touch-­stone of all other Grace, No Counterfeits can keep thy Pace. The weighty Standard of our best Desires, The true Sublime, which ­every Breast inspires, By thee we rise to such a Height of Flame, As neither Thought can reach, nor Language name, Such as St. Paul himself could hardly know, ­Whether he ­really was alive or no: When cloth’d in Raptures lifted up by thee, He saw by Faith, what none without it see.309 Just Heaven, that in thy Vio­lence310 delights, And easily distinguishes thy Flights From the thin Out-­side Warmth of Hypocrites, Approves, accepts, rewards, and feeds thy Flame, And gives this glorious Witness to thy Fame, That all our Gifts are hallow’d by thy Name.311 By thee our Souls on Wings of Joy ascend, Climb the third Heaven,312 an Entrance ­there demand, As sure ­those Gates to thee ­shall open wide, As without thee we’re sure to be deny’d. No Bars, no Bolts; no flaming Swords313 appear, To shock thy Confidence, or more thy Fear.

309. without it see] For Saint Paul’s conversion experience that literally knocks him down, see Acts 9:1–9 and 22:6–11. 310. Heaven . . . ​Vio­lence] Prob­ably an allusion to Matthew 11:12  in which Jesus speaks of John the Baptist as a g­ reat prophet. He then states, “And from the days of John the Baptist ­until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth vio­lence, and the violent take it by force.” 311. Gifts are hallow’d by thy Name] Th ­ ere is an obvious allusion to the Lord’s Prayer, Mat­ thew 6:9–13, but “thy Name” seems to apply h ­ ere to faith and not to the “­Father” addressed in Matthew’s formula for prayer. 312. third Heaven] Prob­ably remarking on his own mystical conversion experience, Saint Paul comments on a man “caught up to the third heaven.” See 2 Corinthians 12:2. The notion of levels in Heaven was part of early Jewish mystical thought. 313. flaming Swords] Crusoe uses this image at the beginning of this poem (see chapter 4, notes 298–293 in this edition) where it had the same purpose. The sword was intended to keep Adam out of the Garden of Eden ­a fter the Fall. ­Here, it ­w ill not keep faith with all its powers from entering heaven. In ­later writings, Defoe gave the angel who appears to Balaam and his ass a “flaming” sword. He may have thought of it as a generic weapon for angels, though in Genesis 3:24 the flaming sword is not necessarily wielded by an angel. However, Defoe was hardly alone in this iconographical imagery. He mentions the sword held by the angel hovering over Jerusalem, threatening the city’s destruction (1 Chronicles 21:15), and this was frequently depicted by contemporaries as a flaming sword in scenes involving a city threatened by plague. See Numbers 22:23, 31; and Defoe, Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 21, 147.

202

Ser ious R eflections

To thee the Patent 314 Passage always ­free, Peter himself receiv’d the Keys315 from thee; Or which we may conceive with much more Ease, Thou art thy self the Gate, thy self the Keys. Thine was the fiery Chariot,316 thine the Steeds, That fetch’t Elijah from Old Jordan’s Plains; Such a long Journey, such a Voiture317 needs, And thou the steady Coach-­man held the Reins. Thine was the wondrous Mantle318 he threw down, By which successive Miracles319 ­were wrought; For ’Twas the Prophets Faith, and not his Gown, Elisha so importunately sought. Bright Pole-­Star of the Soul for ever fix’t, The Mind’s sure Guide, when anxious and Perplex’t; When wandring in the Abyss of Thoughts and Cares, Where no Way out, and no Way in, appears, When Doubt and Horror, the Extreams of Fear, Surround the Soul, and prompt her to Despair. Thou shin’st aloft, openst a Gleam of Light, And show’st all Heaven to our Sight, Thou guil’dst the Soul with suddain Smiles and Joy, And Peace, that Hell itself can ne’er destroy.

If all this be to be said, and all indeed but a Poetical Trifle upon this exalted Subject, What is become of our Negative Christian in all this? Th ­ ere is not a Word of Negative Religion in all the Description of Faith, any more than t­here is of Faith in all our Negative Religion. Now let us follow this poor Negative Wretch to his Death-­bed, and ­t here hav­ ing very ­little other Notion of Religion; for ’tis the Fate of t­ hose that trust to their Negatives, to have l­ittle e­ lse in their Thoughts: If a good Man come to talk with 314. Patent] “Open, easily entered, allowing f­ree passage.” The OED (6a) lists this usage as obsolete. 315. Peter . . . ​Keys] Jesus states (Matthew 16:18–19) that Peter ­w ill be the “rock” upon which he ­w ill build his church, and “I ­w ill give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” 316. fiery Chariot] See 2 Kings 2:11 for the “chariot of fire” that carries Elijah to Heaven: “And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, ­there appeared a chariot of fire, and h ­ orses of fires, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” 317. Voiture] The French “Voiture” or carriage is a bit of wit on Defoe’s part, though the OED shows that it had been anglicized as early as 1698 and gives a figurative use of the word from Defoe’s A New Voyage Round the World. 318. Mantle] When Elijah is taken up to Heaven, his mantle falls from him and is taken up by the prophet Elisha. See 2 Kings 2:13. 319. successive Miracles] For miracles wrought by Elisha a­ fter he assumes the mantle of Eli­ jah, see 2 Kings 2:14–24.

C h a p t e r 4 /A n E s s ay o n t h e p r e ­s e n t S tat e o f   R e l i g i o n

203

him, if he talks out of that Way, he puts him all into Confusion; for if he cannot swim upon the Bladders of his Negatives, he drowns immediately, or he bouys himself up above your Reproofs, and goes on as before: He is a ­little like the Polish Captain Uratz, who was executed for the Murther of Mr. Thynne,320 who, when they talk’t to him of Repentance, and of Jesus Christ, said, he was of such and  such a F ­ amily, and he hop’d God would have some Re­spect to him as a Gentleman. But what must a poor Minister do who being fill’d with better Princi­ples, prays for this vain glorious Man? Must he say, Lord accept this good Man, for he has been no Drunkard, no Swearer, no debauch’d Person; he has been a just, a chari­ table Man, has done a ­great deal of Good among his Neighbours, and never wil­ fully wrong’d any man; he has not been so wicked as it is the Custom of the Times to be; nor has he shewn bad Examples to ­others; Lord be merciful to this excellent good Man? No, no, the poor sincere Minister knows better ­things; and if he prays with him, he turns him quite in-­side-­out, represents him as a poor mistaken Creature, who now sees, that he is nothing, and as nothing in himself, but casts himself entirely, as a miserable lost Sinner, into the Arms of a most merciful Saviour, praying to be accepted on the Merits of Jesus Christ, and no other; so that ­t here’s all his Negative Bottom unravell’d at once; and if this is not his Case, it must be worse.

320. Polish . . . ​Mr. Thynne] Defoe told this story throughout his c­ areer as a writer, from The Poor Man’s Plea, Shakespeare Head ed., 11, of 1698 to one of his last works, the never entirely finished Compleat En­glish Gentleman, 30–31, which gave details about the gun “loaden with 7 bullets” that killed Thomas Thynne. The murder occurred on 12 February 1682 and was almost certainly instigated by Count Königsmarck, who had been disappointed ­a fter Thynne had succeeded in marrying the ­w idow of Lord Ogle, whom Königsmarck had also courted. The Count was found not guilty, but the person who fired the shot, George Borosky, along with two accomplices, Christopher Vratz and John Stern, ­were executed on 10 March 1682. On the way to his execution, Vratz was reported to have said that he was not concerned ­because he believed “God would deal with him like a Gentleman.” Thynne was a staunch Whig and, in addition to the story’s importance as an example of Defoe’s Christian egalitari­ anism, it had a po­liti­cal side as well. See The Tryal and Condemnation of George Borosky . . . ​, Christopher Vratz, and John Sterne (London, 1681).

Chapter 5

•

Of listning to the Voice of PROVIDENCE WE are naturally backward to inform our selves of our Duty to our Maker, and to our selves; ’tis a Study we engage in with ­great Reluctance, and ’tis but too agree­ able to us, when we meet with any Difficulty which we think gives us a just Occa­ sion to throw off any farther Enquires of that kind. Hence I observe the wisest of Men often run into M ­ istakes about the ­Things, which speaking of Religion we call Duty, taking up slight Notions of them, and believing they understand enough of them; by which they rob themselves of the Advantage, as well as Comfort of a farther search. Or on the other hand, taking up with the general Knowledge of religious Princi­ples, and the common Duties of a Christian Life, are satisfy’d with knowing what they say is sufficient to carry them to Heaven, without enquiring into ­t hose ­Things which are helpful and assis­ tant to make that strait Path easy and pleasant to themselves; and to make them useful to o ­ thers by the Way. Solomon was quite of another Opinion, when he bid us cry a­ fter Knowledge, and lift up our Voice for Understanding; dig for her as for Silver, and search for her as for hid Trea­sure. It is certain h ­ ere that he meant religious Knowledge; and it is explained in the very next Words, with an encouraging Promise to t­hose that ­shall enter upon the Search. (viz.) Then shalt thou understand the Fear of the LORD, and find the Knowledge of GOD.1 I am of Opinion that it is our unquestioned Duty, to enquire ­after ­every ­Thing in our Journey to the eternal Habitation, which God has permitted us to know, and thus to raise Difficulties in the Way of our just search into divine Discoveries is to act, like Solomon’s Sluggard,2 who saith, ­There is a Lion without, I ­shall be 1. Solomon . . . ​GOD] Solomon was often viewed as the author of Proverbs. This passage occurs at Proverbs 2:2–4 and is slightly dif­fer­ent at the beginning: “Yea, if thou criest ­a fter knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid trea­sures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of GOD.” 2. Solomon’s Sluggard] The biblical text of Proverbs 22:13 begins “The slothful man saith. . . .”

205

206

Ser ious R eflections

slain in the Streets, Prov.xxii.13. that is, he sits down in his Ignorance repuls’d with imaginary difficulties, without making one Step in the search ­after the Knowl­ edge, which he o ­ ught to dig for, as for hid Trea­sure. Let us then be encourag’d to our Duty; let us boldly enquire ­after ­every ­Thing that God has permitted us to know; I grant that secret Th ­ ings belong to God, and I shail ­labour to keep my due Distance. But I firmly believe, that t­here are no secret ­Things belonging to God, and which as such we are forbidden to enquire into, but what also are so preserv’d in Secrecy, that by all our Enquiries we cannot arrive to the Knowledge of them; and it is a most merciful, as well as wise Dispen­ sation, that we are only forbid enquiring ­after ­these ­Things which we cannot know; and that all ­those ­Things are effectually lock’d up from our Knowledge, which we are forbidden to enquire into. The Case is better with us, than it was with Adam. We have not the Tree of Knowledge first planted in our View, as it ­were tempting us with its Beauty, and within our Reach, and then a Prohibition upon Pain of Death: But blessed be God, we may eat of all the Trees in the Garden; and all t­ hose of which we are not allow’d to take, are plac’d both out of our Sight, and out of our Reach. I am making Way ­here to one of the Trees of sacred Knowledge, which tho’ it may grow in the thickest of the Wood, and be surrounded with some Briars and Thorns, so as to place it a ­little out of Sight; yet I hope to prove, that it is our Duty to taste of it: and that the Way to come at it, is both practicable and plain. But to wave the Allegory, as I am entring into the nicest Search of divine ­things, that perhaps the ­whole Scheme of Religion directs us to; ’tis absolutely necessary at our Entrance, if pos­si­ble, to remove e­ very Difficulty, explain e­ very Princi­ple, and lay down e­ very Foundation so undeniably clear, that nothing may appear dark or mysterious in our first Conceptions of t­ hings; no Stumbling-­block lye at the Threshold, and the ­humble Reader may meet with no Repulse from his own Apprehensions, of not understanding what he is g­ oing to read. Listening to the Voice of Providence, is my Subject: I am willing to suppose in the first Place, that I am writing to ­t hose who acknowledge the two ­grand Princi­ ples upon which all Religion depends. 1. That t­ here is a God, a first g­ reat moving Cause of all t­hings, an eternal Power, Prior, and consequently Superior to all Power and Being. 2. That this eternal Power, which I call God, is the Creator and Governour of all ­t hings, viz. of Heaven and Earth. To avoid ­needless Distinctions concerning which of the Persons in the God-­ head, are exercised in the creating Power, and which in the governing Power. I offer that glorious Text, Psalm xxxiii. 6. as a Repulse to all such cavilling Enqui­ ries, where the ­whole Trinity3 is plainly entitled to the ­whole creating Work, by

3. Psalm xxxiii.6 . . . ​Trinity] “By the word of the Lord ­were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” His interpretation is in line with Matthew Poole’s Annotations upon the Holy Bible, 2 vols. (London, 1700), 1: sig. [Wwww1–­Wwww1v], who sees “all the persons of the Trinity, Jehovah, the F ­ ather, and the Word, and the Spirit” in this verse, interpreting Christ as the “word of the Lord” and the Holy Ghost as “the breath of his

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

207

the Word (God the Son) of the Lord (God the ­Father) ­were the Heavens made, and all the Hosts of them, by the Breath (God the Holy Ghost) of his Mouth. Having thus presupposed the Belief of the Being, and the creating Work of God, and declar’d, that I am writing to such only, who are ready to own, they believe that God is, and that he created the Heaven, and the Earth, the Sea, and all that in them is. I think I need not make any Preamble, to introduce the following Propositions, viz. 1. That this Eternal God guides by his Providence the ­whole World, which he has created by his Power. 2. That this Providence manifests a par­tic­u­lar Care over, and Concern in the governing and directing Man, the best and last created Creature on Earth. Natu­ral Religion proves the first, reveal’d Religion proves the last of t­hese beyond Contradiction. Natu­ral Religion intimates the Necessity of a Providence guiding and governing the World, from the Consequence of the Wisdom, Justice, Prescience, and Goodness of the Creator. It would be absurd to conceive of God exerting infinite Power to create a World, and not concerning his Wisdom, which is his Providence, in guiding the Operations of Nature, so as to preserve the Order of his Creation, and the Obedi­ ence and Subordination of Consequences and C ­ auses throughout the Course of that Nature, which is in Part the inferior Life of that Creation. Reveal’d Religion has given such a Light into the Care and Concern of this Providence in an especial Manner, in and over that Part of the Creation call’d Man, that we must likewise deny Princi­ples, if we enter into dispute about it. For him the Peace of the Creation is preserv’d, the Climates made habitable, the Creatures subjected and made nourishing, all vegetative Life made medicinal; so that indeed the ­whole Creation seems to be entail’d upon him, as an Inheri­ tance, and given to him for a Possession, subjected to his Authority,4 and gov­ erned by him, as Viceroy to the King of all the Earth; the Management of it is given to him as Tenant to the ­great Proprietor, who is Lord of the Mannor, or Landlord of the Soil And it can not be conceiv’d, without ­great Inconsistency of Thought, that this World is left entirely to Man’s Conduct 5 without the supervis­ ing Influence and the secret Direction of the Creator. This I call Providence, to which I give the w ­ hole Power of guiding and direct­ ing of the Creation, and managing of it, by Man who is his Deputy or Substitute, and even the guiding, influencing, and over-­ruling Man himself also.

mouth.” In viewing the Psalms in this Christological manner, Defoe assumes that Jewish commentators ­were blind to what he considers to be the clear meaning of the text. 4. Creatures subjected . . . ​Authority] This is based on Genesis 1:28–30, where God gives Adam “dominion.” 5. left . . . ​Man’s Conduct] Defoe is directing his argument against ­t hose deists who argued that although ­t here was a God who had created the earth, he had left it to work by natu­ral laws and did not interfere with the daily workings of ­t hose laws.

208

Ser ious R eflections

Let critical Annotators enter into specifick Distinctions of Providence, and its Way of acting, as they please, and as the Formalities of the School-­men direct. The short Description I s­ hall give of it is this, That it is that Operation of the Power, Wisdom, Justice, and Goodness of God, by which he influences, governs, and directs, not only the Means, but the Events of all t­ hings, which concern us in this World. I say, it is that Operation, let them call it what they w ­ ill, which acts thus; I am noway concern’d to shew how it acts, or why it acts thus and thus in par­tic­u ­lar; we are to reverence its Sovereignty, as it is the Fin­ger of God6 himself, who is the sovereign Director, and we are to observe its Motions, obey its Dictates, and listen to its Voice,7 as it is, and ­because it is particularly employ’d for our Advantage.8 It would be a very proper and useful Observation ­here, and might take up much of this Work, to illustrate the Goodness of Providence, in that it is, as I say, particularly employ’d for the Advantage of Mankind: But, as this is not the main Design, and ­w ill come in naturally in ­every Part of the Work I am upon, I refer it to the common Inferences, which are to be drawn from the Particulars, as I go on. It is indeed the most rational Foundation of the w ­ hole Design before me; ’tis therefore that we should listen to the Voice of Providence, ­because it is principally determin’d, and determines all other t­ hings for our Advantage. But I return to the main Subject, The Voice of Providence, the Language or the Meaning of Providence. Nothing is more frequent, than for us to ­mistake Providence, even in its most vis­i­ble Appearances: How easy then must it be, to let its ­silent Actings, which per­ haps are the most pungent and significant, pass our Observations. I am aware of the Error many fall into, who determining the universal Cur­ rency of Events to Providence, and that not the minutest t­hing occurs in the Course of Life, but by the par­tic­u ­lar Destination9 of Heaven, by Consequence entitle Providence to the Efficiency of their own Follies; as if a Person, presuming 6. Fin­ger of God] Perhaps the best known use of this phrase comes in Exodus 31:18 and Deu­ teronomy 9:10, where it refers to God’s writing on the tablets of the ten commandments. Poole (Annotations, 1:sig. Gg4v) states that this means “Immediately and Miraculously, which was done not only to produce the greater reverence to the Law, but also to signify that it was the work of God alone to write the Law upon the ­Tables of mens hearts.” Although this phrase is occasionally used in the Old and New Testaments simply to assert God’s power, this par­tic­u ­lar passage has the aura of God’s immediate presence. 7. listen to its Voice] Although God is seen as the “sovereign Director” (151:14), his presence was usually to be apprehended in the workings of nature or “second c­ auses.” In some sense, then, nature represented a kind of code, and the ability to interpret the signs of Providence in nature was indicative of grace. For a discussion of this, see Douglas Patey, Probability and Literary Form (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 8. listen . . . ​Advantage] Defoe repeats the word “Advantage” three times in rapid succession over three paragraphs. Although he argues that his main intention is to exhort his readers to awe and admiration at the presence of God, he also appeals to the ways in which an attention to the signs of God’s presence in nature may enable us to respond to events in a more moral and religious way and possibly gain entrance into heaven. 9. Destination] Used h ­ ere in the sense of “the action of designing, appointing, foreordaining, or setting apart to a par­tic­u ­lar use, purpose, or end.” See OED 1.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

209

to smoke his Pipe in a Magazin of Gun-­Powder, should reproach Providence with blowing up the ­Castle, for which indeed he ­ought to be hang’d; or a Man leaving his House or Shop open in the Night, should charge Providence with appointing him to be robb’d, and the like: Nay, to carry it farther, e­ very Murtherer or Thief may allege Providence,10 that determines and directs ­every ­thing, directed him to such Wickedness; whereas Providence itself, notwithstanding the Crimes of Men, is actively concern’d in no Evil. But I pass all t­ hese ­t hings; the Subject I am treating upon, is of another Nature: The Design h ­ ere, is to instruct us in some par­tic­u ­lar ­t hings relating to Providence and its Government of Men in the World, which it w ­ ill be worth our While to observe, without enquiring how far it does or does not act in other Methods. ­There is, ’tis true, a Difficulty to shake off all the wry Steps, which ­People take to amuse themselves about Providence; and for this Reason, I take so much Pains at first to avoid them: Many Men entitle Providence to ­things, which it is not concern’d about, speaking abstractedly; but, which is a much worse Error, many also take no Notice of ­t hose t­ hings, which Providence particularly, and even in a very remarkable Manner, distinguishes it self by its Concern in. If Providence guides the World, and directs the Issues and Events of t­ hings, if it commands ­causes, and forms the Connection of Circumstances in the World, as no Man, that owns the Princi­ples mentioned above, w ­ ill deny: And above all, if the general Scope of Providence, and of the Government of the World by its Influ­ ence, be for our Advantage; then it follows necessarily, that it is our Business, and our Interest, to listen to its Voice. By Listning to the Voice of Providence, I mean, to study its Meaning in ­every Circumstance of Life, in e­ very Event; to learn to understand the End and Design of Providence in ­every ­t hing that happens, what is the Design of Providence in it, respecting our selves, and what our Duty to do upon the par­tic­u ­lar Occasion that offers. If a Man w ­ ere in Danger of drowning in a shipwreck’d Vessel,11 and Prov­ idence presented a Boat coming ­towards him, he would scarce want to be told, that it was his Business to make Signals of Distress, that the P ­ eople in the said Boat might not pass by ignorant of his Condition, and give him no Assistance; if he did, and omitted it, he would have ­little Cause to concern Providence in his Ruine. ­There is certainly a Rebellion against Providence, which Heaven itself w ­ ill not always concern itself to over-­rule; and he that throws himself into a River to drown himself, he that hangs himself up to a Beam, he that shoots himself into the head with a Pistol, ­shall die in Spite of all the Notions of Decree, Destiny, 10. allege Providence] As in passages ­earlier in this text (see chapter 4, note 229 in this edi­ tion), in this passage, Defoe rejects what he sometimes called a “Turkish” idea of fate and predestination. 11. shipwreck’d Vessel] This seems to recall events from the beginning of The Farther Adventures, when Crusoe, on the way back to his island, encounters some ships with crews and passengers who need rescuing. Both the crews and passengers aboard the ship that catches fire and ­t hose on the ship damaged by storms fire guns as signals of distress.

210

Ser ious R eflections

Fate,12 or what ever we weakly call Providence; in such Cases, Providence ­will not always concern itself to prevent it; and yet ’tis no Impeachment of the Sover­ eignty of Heaven, in directing, decreeing, and governing all Events in the World. Providence decrees, that Events s­ hall attend upon C ­ auses in a direct Chain, and by an evident Necessity, and has doubtless left many Powers of Good and Evil, seemingly to our selves, and, as it ­were, in our Hands, as the natu­ral Product of such C ­ auses and Consequences, which we are not to limit, and cannot expressly determine about, but which we are accountable for the good or evil Application of; other­w ise we ­were in vain exhorted and commanded to do any good ­t hing, or to avoid any wicked one: Rewards and Punishments would be incongruous with sovereign Justice; and Promises, and Threatnings, be perfectly unmeaning useless ­t hings, Mankind being no f­ ree Agent to himself, or entrusted with the necessary Powers, which ­t hose Promises and Threatnings imply. But all t­ hese ­t hings are out of my pre­sent Enquiry; I am for freely and entirely submitting all Events to Providence; but not to be supinely and unconcernedly passive, as if t­ here was nothing warning, instructing, or directing in the Premoni­ tions of God’s Providence; and which he expected we should take Notice of, and take Warning by. The prudent Man forseeth the Evil, and hideth himself:13 How does he forsee it, since ’tis not in Man to direct himself? Th ­ ere are Intimations given us, by which a prudent Man may sometimes forsee Evil, and hide himself; and I must take ­these all out of the Dev­il’s Hands, if pos­si­ble, and place Provi­ dence at the Head of the invisible World, as well as at the Helm of this World; and tho’ I abhor superstitious and sceptical Notions of the World of Spirits,14 of which I purpose to speak hereafter, e­ ither in this Work, or in some other by itself; I say, tho’ I am not at all a Sceptick, yet I cannot doubt, but that the invisible Hand of Providence, which guides and governs this World, does with a secret Power like­ wise influence the World, and may, and I believe does, direct from thence s­ ilent Messengers on many Occasions, w ­ hether sleeping or waking, w ­ hether directly or indirectly, ­whether by Hints, Impulses, Allegories, Mysteries,15 or other­wise, we 12. Decree, Destiny, Fate] ­Here Defoe uses ­these words in a negative sense as he does the word fortune or fate. Thus in Jure Divino, bk. 7, p. 25, he describes how tyrants ­were trans­ formed into false gods: For Providence, their Fortune they create, And mock Immutable Decrees with Fate. In this passage “Decrees” is used with a favorable connotation. 13. The prudent Man . . . ​himself ] Proverbs 22:3 and 27:12 begin with “A” rather than “The.” Both continue, “but the ­simple pass on, and are punished.” 14. invisible . . . ​World of Spirits] Defoe’s belief in divine intervention in h ­ uman life through invisible spirits was not uncommon at the time. Although the Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne, 15 (1721), 441, that reviewed the three volumes of Robinson Crusoe, found a degree of religious “Paradoxe” in Serious Reflections, even Joseph Addison, the major force ­behind The Spectator, held such beliefs. And the deist Charles Blount remarked, “for ­ought we know ­every place is full of invisible Spirits which like the Wind are unseen, yet vis­i­ble in their Effect and Operation.” See Anima Mundi (London, 1679), 48. 15. Hints, Impulses, Allegories, Mysteries] See chapter 5, notes 58 and 59 in this volume. He expands this lists to include “Notices, Omens, Dreams, voices, Hints, Forebodings, Impulses.” Defoe regards all of ­these as pos­si­ble connections to the world of spirits. As

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

211

know not; and does think fit to give us such Alarms, such previous and par­tic­u ­lar Knowledge of t­ hings, that if listen’d to, might many Ways be useful to the prudent Man to foresee the Evil, and hide himself. The only Objection, and which I can see no Method to give a Reason for, and no Answer to, is, Why, if it be the Work of Providence, t­ hose t­ hings should be so imperfect,16 so broken, so irregular, that Men may ­either never be able to pass any right Judgment of them, as is sometimes the Case, or make a perfect Judgment of them, which is often the Case, and so the End of the Intimation be entirely defeated, without any Fault, Neglect, or Omission of the Man. This we can no more account for, than we can for the Hand-­writing upon the Wall at the ­great Feast of Belshazzer,17 viz. why it was written in a Character, which none could understand; and which, if the Prophet had not been found, had perhaps never been known, or at least, not till the King’s Fate, which was even then irretrievable, had been over. This, indeed, we cannot account for, and can only say, ’tis our Duty to study ­t hese ­t hings, to listen to the Voice of them, and obey their secret Dictates, as far as Reason directs,18 without an over superstitious Regard to them, any more than a Douglas Patey suggests in his Probability and Literary Form, the believing Christian was supposed to be capable of reading such signs. On the other hand, in Congreve’s Love for Love (1695), the character of Foresight was mocked for his obsession with what he thought to be omens. Although Defoe includes “voices” in this ­later list, he was fond of quoting a line of poetry to the effect that “Spirits without the helps of voice converse.” Most of ­t hese commu­ nications with the spiritual world are ­silent. 16. Why . . . ​so imperfect] Defoe raised this same question in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 163. Admitting that it was difficult to answer such a question, Defoe suggested, “it may be resolv’d into this, that the Fault seems to be our own, that we do not give due attention to such notice, as might be sufficient to our Deliverance.” He then offered the example of a camp attacked by the e­ nemy. If the sentry’s warning shots fail to stir the rest of the camp to action, it is not his fault. 17. Hand-­w riting . . . ​Belshazzer] Chapter 5 of Daniel tells the story of how, while drinking from the golden vessels that had been taken from the T ­ emple in Jerusalem, Belshazzar sees a hand writing on the wall of his palace in a language that none of the “magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers” in the palace are able to interpret. Daniel is called and reads the inscription, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,” as meaning that God had weighed the kingdom of Belshazzar, found it wanting, and de­cided to give it to the Medes and the Per­ sians ­under Darius. 18. as Reason directs] Defoe tries to avoid the “superstitious” extreme satirized by Congreve in the character of Foresight and arrive at what he considers to be a balanced position. Thus, in discussing the ­matter of a volume of prophecies from a Highlander who was often believed to have what was called “second sight,” Defoe, in his Review of 12 August 1712 (9:7), suggested “Neither as I believe, ­w ill any Wise Man, wholly reject such ­Things, any more than they ­w ill too much depend upon them.” He then remarked that “neither am I apt to be Enthusiastic or a Dreamer of Dreams.” Since Defoe was in fact the “Highlander” who wrote a series of prophecies from 1711 to 1715, beginning with The British Visions and ending with The Second-­ Sighted Highlander, the prob­lem is hardly ­simple. They contain an ele­ment of mockery, yet in the issue of the Review quoted, Defoe used the Highlander’s prediction of a plague to urge an end to the po­liti­cal divisions of the nation. Did Defoe, on some level, think that anything that came into his imagination might be the genuine material of prophecy? Or did he view such a medium as a method of making statements about British and Eu­ro­pean politics? Or was he completely cynical, continuing the series ­because it made money for him and for his

212

Ser ious R eflections

total Neglect, leaving the Reason of Providence’s acting thus, to be better under­ stood hereafter. But to describe a l­ittle what I mean by Listening to the Voice of Providence; it is the Reverse of the supine stupid Man, whose Character I ­shall come to by and by. The Man I would recommend, lives first in a general Belief, that Providence has the supreme Direction of all his Affairs, even of his in par­tic­u ­lar, as well as ­t hose of the World; that ’tis his Mercy that it is so, that ’tis the Effect of an infi­ nitely wise and gracious Disposition from above, that he subsists; and that ’tis not below the Dignity any more than ’tis remote from the Power of an infinite, wise, and good Being, to take Cognizance of the least t­ hing concerning him. This in the Consequence obliges him to all I say, for to him who firmly believes, that Providence stoops to concern itself for him, and to order the least Article of his Affairs, it necessarily follows, that he should concern himself in e­ very t­ hing that Providence does, which comes within his Reach, that he may know w ­ hether he be interested in it or no. If he neglects this, he neglects himself; he abandons all Concern about himself, since he does not know, but that the very next par­tic­u ­lar Act of Providence, which comes within his Reach to distinguish, may be interested in him, and he in it. It is not for me to dictate h ­ ere to any Man, what par­tic­u­lar ­t hings, relating to him, Providence is concern’d in, or what not; or how far any Incident of Life is or is not the par­tic­u­lar Act and Deed of the Government of Providence: But as it is the receiv’d Opinion of ­every good Man, that nothing befalls us without the active or passive Concern of Providence in it; so it is impossible this good Man can be unconcern’d in what­ever that Providence determines concerning him. If it be true, as our Saviour himself says, That not a Hair falls from our Heads without the W ­ ill of our heavenly ­Father,19 then not a Hair o ­ ught to fall from our Heads, without our having our Eyes up to our heavenly F ­ ather in it. I take the Text in its due Latitude, namely, that not the minutest Incident of Life, befalls us without the active ­Will of our ­Father directing it, or the passive ­Will of our F ­ ather suffering it, so I take the Deduction from it in the same Lati­ tude; that nothing of how mean a Nature soever can befal us, but we ­ought to have our Eyes up to our heavenly F ­ ather in it, be resign’d to him in the Event, and sub­ jected to him in the Means; and he that neglects this, lives in Contempt of Provi­ dence, and that in the most provoking Manner pos­si­ble. I am not answerable for any Extremes ­t hese ­Things may lead weak ­People into; I know some are apt to entitle the Hand of God, to the common and most ridicu­ publisher, John Baker, who published all of them? That they w ­ ere profitable and a good method of spreading po­liti­cal propaganda are certain. And that Defoe could often reveal a strange mixture of cynicism and belief is equally certain. 19. That not a Hair . . . ​­Father] “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them ­shall not fall on the ground without your ­Father. But the very hairs of your head are all num­ bered.” Matthew 10:29–30. Defoe attempts to make the biblical text easier to understand. In Col­o­nel Jack, 2 vols., Shakespeare Head edition, 205, he changes it to: “That not a hair of our head ­shall fall to the Ground without his Permission.”

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

213

lous Trifles in Nature; as a religious Creature, I knew, seeing a B ­ ottle of Beer being over ripe burst out, the Cork fly up against the Ceiling, and the Froth follow it like an Engin,20 cried out, O! the Won­ders of Omnipotent Power: But I am represent­ ing, how a Christian with an awful Regard to the Government of Providence in the World, and particularly in all his own Affairs, subjects his Mind to a constant Obedience to the Dictates of that Providence, gives an h ­ umble Preference to it in all his Conclusions, waits the Issues of it with a chearful Resignation; and in a Word listens carefully to the Voice of Providence, that he may be always obedient to the heavenly Vision. ­W hether this divine Emanation21 has any Concern in the Notices, Omens, Dreams, Voices, Hints, Forebodings, Impulses, &c. which seem to be a kind of Communication with the invisible World, and a Converse between the Spirits embodied and t­ hose unembodied,22 and how far without Prejudice to the Hon­ our and our Reverence of Providence, and without Danger of Scepticism, and a kind of radicated Infidelity,23 ­t hose ­Things may be regarded, is a nice and difficult ­Thing to resolve, and I ­shall treat of it by it self. It has been the Opinion of good Men of all Ages, to say how far they are to be depended upon, that such ­Things are not to be totally disregarded, I am not to take upon me, How far they may or may not be concerned in the Influence of Providence, I also dare not say: But as the Verity of Astronomy is evidenced by the Calculation of Eclipses, so the Certainty of this Communication of Spirits is established by the Concurrence of Events with the Notices they sometimes give; 20. Engin] Engine. Prob­ably used ­here in the sense of a gun or piece of ordinance. See OED 5. The passage is grammatically confusing, but Defoe seems to have intended to have com­ pared the “over ripe” beer ­bottle to the gun or a piece of ordinance, not the way in which the cork burst from the b ­ ottle. As a dealer in wines and liquors, Defoe prob­ably had an opportu­ nity to witness this phenomenon for himself. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 69, Defoe wrote of the soul as breathed into the body of Adam, as “a kind of an extraordinary heavenly and divine Emanation.” 21. divine Emanation] A reference to the “Voice of Providence” in the previous paragraph. The OED provides a general definition as “The pro­cess of flowing forth, from anything as a source,” and then provides a lengthy theological definition: “often applied to the origination of created beings from God . . . ​as deriving its existence from the essence of God, and not from an act of creation out of nothing.” Defoe suggests that the voice of Providence as ema­ nating from God is always t­ here to be heard. He used the word in a more traditional sense in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 69, where he wrote of the soul, as breathed into the body of Adam by God, as “a kind of an extraordinary heavenly and divine Emanation.” 22. Spirits embodied . . . ​unembodied] The “embodied” spirits are ­those spirits within the body of humankind. The “unembodied” spirits are ­t hose that belong to the spirit world and invisible to ­human sight. Defoe denied that ­t hese spirits ­were the souls of the dead. Rather they ­were a being somewhat lower than angels. In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 37, he discussed ­t hese “unembodied spirits.” They belonged to a group he identi­ fies as a “­middle Class of Spirit.” They are “neither Angelick-­Heavenly, or Angelick-­Infernal; But Spirits inhabiting the Invisible Spaces, and allow’d to act and appear ­here, ­under express and greatly strain’d Limitations, . . . ​a nd of which much more may still be said.” 23. radicated Infidelity] A deeply rooted sense of disbelief. The OED lists this word as rare and includes this passage from Serious Reflections among its examples. This passage, along with the preceding paragraphs, attempts to strike a balance between excessive credulity and excessive skepticism.

214

Ser ious R eflections

and if it be true, as I must believe, that the Divine Providence takes Cognisance of all ­Things belonging to us, I dare not exclude it from having some Concern, how much I do not say, in ­t hese ­Things also: But of this in its Place. Whenever Providence discovers any t­ hing of this Arcanum, I desire to listen to the Voice of it; and this is one of the ­Things I recommend to ­others: Indeed I would be very cautious, how I listen to any other Voices from that Country, than such as I am sure are conveyed to me from Heaven for my better understanding the w ­ hole Mystery. If then we are to listen to the Voice of Nature, and to the Voices of Creatures, viz. to the Voice of the invisible Agents of the World of Spirits24 as above, much more are we to listen to the Voice of God. I have already hinted that he that made the World, we are sure guides it, and his Providence is equally wonderful as his Power: But nothing in the ­whole Course of his Providence is more worthy our Regard, especially as it concerns us his Creatures, than the ­silent Voice, if it may be allowed me to call it so, of his man­ aging Events and ­Causes;25 he that listens to the Providence of God, listens to the Voice of God, as he is seen in the Won­ders of his Government, and as he is seen in the Won­ders of his Omnipotence. If then the Events of Th ­ ings are his, as well as the ­Causes, it is certainly well worth our Notice, when the Sympathy26 or Relation between Events of Th ­ ings and their C ­ auses, most eminently appears; and how can any Man, who has the least Inclination to observe what is remarkable in the World, shut his Eyes to the vis­i­ble Discovery, which ­t here is in the Events of Providence, of a supreme Hand guiding them; for Example, when vis­i­ble Punishments follow vis­i­ble Crimes, who can refrain confessing the apparent Direction of supreme Justice? When Concur­ rence of Circumstances27 directs to the Cause, Men that take no Notice of such 24. Voice of Nature . . . ​Spirits] ­Here a reference to the calculations that may be made in astronomy that provide exact times when ­there may be an eclipse or the appearance of a comet. Defoe was impressed by the ability of con­temporary scientists to predict the eclipse of 1715. He tries to link up the ability of the scientists to proj­ect into the f­ uture with the predic­ tions of what he calls “the Voices of the invisible Agents of the World of Spirits.” 25. Events and ­Causes] The Boyle Lectures, which began with Richard Bentley in 1692, ­were devoted to arguing the presence of God as revealed in the nature that he was supposed to have created. They often appealed to the vastness of the universe as advanced in the theories of Isaac Newton. At the end of his Principia, Newton had envisioned God ordering the uni­ verse. Although they did not ignore Revelation, the Boyle lecturers tended to emphasize natu­ral ­causes and a universe run in an orderly fashion. With his emphasis on a spirit world, Crusoe, for all his caution, falls on the side of ­t hose who saw God’s presence in the world to be more immediate than many of his contemporaries. 26. Sympathy] OED 1a: “A (real or supposed) affinity between certain ­things, by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence, affect or influ­ ence one another (esp. in some occult way), or attract or tend ­towards each other.” The OED classifies this as rare or obsolete. 27. Concurrence of Circumstances] Concurrence is used ­here not in the OED 2 sense of “occurrence together in time, of events or circumstances; coincidence; a juncture,” but rather in the sense of a sympathy between events that suggests a spiritual significance. For example, Crusoe, in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures (ed. J. Donald Crowley [Lon­ don: Oxford University Press, 1972], 138), remarks that “­t here was a strange Concurrence of

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

215

remarkable Pointings of Providence, openly contemn Heaven, and frequently stand in the Light of their own Advantages. The Concurrence of Events, is a Light to their ­Causes, and the Methods of Heaven in some Th ­ ings, are a happy Guide to us to make a Judgment in o ­ thers; he that is deaf to ­these ­Things, shuts his Ears to Instruction, and like Solomon’s Fool,28 hates Knowledge. The Dispositions of Heaven to approve or condemn our Actions, are many of them discovered by Observation; and ’tis easy to know, when that Hand of Provi­ dence opens the Door for, or shuts it against our Mea­sures, if we w ­ ill bring C ­ auses together, and compare former ­Things with pre­sent, making our Judgment by the ordinary Rules of Heaven’s dealing with Men. How, and from what Hand come the frequent Instances of severe Judgment, following rash and hellish Imprecations? when Men call29 for God’s Judgment; and Providence, or Justice, rather obeys the Summons and comes at their call: A Man calls God to Witness to an Untruth, and wishes himself struck dumb, blind, or dead if it is not true; and is struck dumb, blind, or dead; is not this a Voice, does not Heaven with the Stroke, cry Castigo te,30 Be it to thee as thou hast said:31 He Days, in the vari­ous Providences which befel me; and which if I had been superstitiously inclin’d to observe Days as Fatal or Fortunate, I might have had Reason to have look’d upon with a g­ reat deal of Curiosity.” Crusoe then lists a number of significant parallel dates in his life, suggestive of the guiding hand of Providence. Even more intent on tracing what John Aubrey and other contemporaries called “Fatality” or “Fatalities” was Defoe’s Cavalier, who included a “Fatality of Times, Places and Actions” at the end of his work. See Memoirs of a Cavalier, ed. James Boulton (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 272–277; and John Aubrey, Miscellanies, in Three Prose Works, ed. John Buchan-­Brown (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 7–24. 28. Solomon’s Fool] See Proverbs 1:22: “How long, ye ­simple ones, ­w ill ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?” 29. severe Judgment . . . ​call] Examples of characters being subjected to the judgment of Providence ­a fter making “rash” or “hellish” statements abound in Defoe’s writings. Perhaps the most famous are the mockers in A Journal of the Plague Year, who are visited by God’s judgment. In his early manuscript, “Historical Collections” ([p. item 3]), Julian the Apostate dies on the parallel day and hour ­a fter he mocked Christ as a mere carpenter. Leviticus 27 lays out the rules regarding vows. And the best example of a rash vow in the Old Testament is that of Jephthah (Judges 11:29–40), who, if he wins a victory over the forces of Ammon, vows to sacrifice the first person he meets on coming to his home. The first person turns out to be his ­daughter. Jephthah’s d ­ aughter accepts her fate, which is e­ ither a literal ­human sac­ rifice or taking a vow of eternal virginity. Both Jewish and Christian commentators blame Jephthah for his folly and see the sacrifice of his d ­ aughter as unnecessary and against biblical injunctions. In the New Testament, Jesus (Matthew 5:33–37) protests against any type of swearing or vows, stating that saying anything but yes or not, “for whatsoever is more than ­t hese cometh of evil.” In his essay on “Rash Vows” (Nine Cases of Conscience [London, 1678], 114–130), Robert Sanderson argued that a vow against a d ­ aughter who marries despite the ­father’s prohibition may be regarded as “rash,” against the practice of mercy, and hence a vow that may be put aside. 30. Castigo te] I punish you. Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, 2 vols. [Wesleyan: Wesleyan Univer­ sity Press, 1975], 1:137) mentions this as a formula for punishment, as in “I chastise thee not out of hatred but out of love.” ­Here, however, the chastisement comes from defying God. 31. Be it . . . ​a s thou hast said] Prob­ably an allusion to Isaiah 47. Isaiah warns the ­woman of Babylon, who trea­sures her uniqueness and feels no evil ­w ill befall her. He tells her that evil

216

Ser ious R eflections

must be deaf who cannot hear it, and worse than deaf that does not heed it; such Executions from Heaven are in Terrorem,32 as Offenders among Men are pun­ ished as well for Example to o ­ thers, as to prevent their ­doing the like again. Innumerable Ways the merciful Disposition of Providence takes to discover to us, what he expects we should do in difficult Cases, and doubtless then, it expects at the same Time we should take Notice of t­ hose Directions. We are short-­sighted Creatures33 at best, and can see but a l­ ittle Way before us, I mean as to the Events of ­Things;34 we o ­ ught therefore to make use of all the Lights and Helps we can get; t­ hese if nicely regarded, would be some of the most considerable to guide us in many difficult Cases. Would we carefully listen to the Concurrence of Providence,35 in the several Parts of our Lives, we should stand in less need of the more dangerous Helps of Visions, Dreams, and Voices, from less certain Intelligences.36

­ ill eventually strike her: “For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None w seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou has said in thine heart, I am, and none e­ lse beside me. Therefore ­shall evil come upon thee.” She consults with her astrologers but they too ­w ill be punished: “Thus ­shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured.” The phrase “be it unto thee” is used in the New Testament (Matthew 8:13, 15:28), but in t­hese passages it has a favorable connotation, alluding to the miracles per­ formed by Jesus. 32. in Terrorem] In fear or intended to terrify. In several places Defoe wrote of punish­ ments that ­were intended to frighten both the victim and spectators. Thus in his Commentator (1 July 1720) he discussed “ignominious Punishments” for certain crimes that would “operate more in Terrorum, for the deterring the boldest Adventurers from committing ­t hose Crimes, even more than they are now deterr’d by Death and the Gallows.” And in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 155, he wrote of the frightening image of the devil created by “old Witches and Sorcerers, who created the ignorant World with a Dev­il of their own making, set forth, in terrorem, with Bat’s Wings, Horns, cloven Foot, long Tail, fork’d Tongue, and the like.” 33. short-­sighted Creatures] Defoe uses the same phrase below and in his Commentator for 20 May 1720. Insofar as it reflects the limitations on h ­ uman perception and knowledge, a pos­si­ble source is John Locke’s Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding, 1:347, in which that author speaks of the “state of ignorance” in which h ­ umans find themselves. In this context, he speaks of ­humans as “short-­sighted creatures.” 34. Events of ­Things] What ­w ill occur in the f­ uture. Several of the definitions provided by the OED have the suggestion of ­future events. OED 2c quotes The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures ­under the definition of “the course of events”: “1719 DE FOE Crusoe (1840) I. xiv. 238, I resolved to put myself upon the watch to see them . . . ​a nd leave the rest to the event.” Crusoe is contemplating capturing one of the cannibals and using him as a pi­lot to escape from the island. This seems to imply futurity as does definition 3.a. “That which follows upon a course of proceedings; the outcome, issue; that which proceeds from the operation of a cause; a consequence, result.” 35. Concurrence of Providence] See chapter 5, notes 27 and 29 in this volume. Providence as contrasted with dreams, visions, and what he calls “Voices” amounts to a reading of nature and natu­ral events with an eye and ear to God’s presence and his messages. Defoe wrote in his Review of 9 July 1706, of his belief that “Providence often directs the Times and Connec­ tions of ­t hose, other­w ise natu­ral ­Causes to concur in such a manner, as may point out to us his Meaning and guide us to understand it.” 36. Intelligences] Types of information. See the OED 7a: “Knowledge as to events, communi­ cated by or obtained from another; information, news, tidings.”

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

217

A Gentleman of my Acquaintance, being to go a Journey into the North, was twice taken very ill the Day he had appointed to begin his Journey, and so was oblig’d to put off g­ oing; this he took for a Direction from Heaven, that he should not go at all; and in very few Days ­after, his Wife was taken sick and died, which made it absolutely necessary for him, to be at Home, to look ­after his Affairs, and had he gone away before, must certainly have been obliged to come back again. The Romans had certainly the Foundation of this Princi­ple, in their prudent Observation of Days37 and Circumstances of Days; nor is Scripture it self void of the like, but rather points out to the Observation, particularly that of the C ­ hildren of Israel, who a­ fter 430 Years ­were expired from their coming into Egypt, Even in the self-­ same Day departed they thence, Exod. 12, 41, 42. This is the Day, that remarkable Day,38 several other Scriptures mention periodical Times, dies Infaustus,39 the Prudent ­shall keep Silence in that Time; for it is an evil Time.40 We find Providence stoops to restrain not the Actions of Men only, but even its own Actions to Days and Times; doubtless for our Observation, and in some ­Things for our Instruction; I do not so much refer to the Revolutions of Th ­ ings and Families on par­tic­u ­lar Days, which are therefore by some P ­ eople called lucky and unlucky Days, as I do to the observing, how Providence c­ auses the Revolu­ tions of Days, to form a Concurrence41 between the Actions of Men, which it does not approve or does approve, and the Reward of t­ hese Actions in this World; by which Men may if they think fit to distinguish, and observe right upon them, see the Crime or Merit of ­t hose Actions in the divine Resentment, may read the Sin in the Punishment,42 and may learn Conviction from the Revolution of Cir­ cumstances in the Appointment of Heaven. 37. Romans . . . ​Days] The Romans w ­ ere deeply involved in ­matters of fortune. Astrology, which became extremely popu­lar, reckoned the good and evil attached to individual days and even hours. See Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Lit­er­a­ture and Antiquities, ed. Harry Peck (New York: American Book Com­pany, 1923), 1:145–146, 255, 651–652. 38. remarkable Day] In pointing to the parallel made in Exodus between the day of coming into and leaving Egypt 430 years l­ater, Defoe reveals an interest that manifested itself, per­ haps most notably, in the list of parallel dates of some major historical events associated with the civil wars of the seventeenth c­ entury at the end of his Memoirs of a Cavalier, ed. James Boulton (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 272–276. He also remarked in his Review (2 July 1706 [3:314–5]) on what he called the “concurring Circumstances,” “Harmony of Cir­ cumstances,” and “Critical connections of Time,” involved in victories such as t­hose at Ramillies on 23 May 1706, expanding his discussion to the parallel dates involved in the Glo­ rious Revolution. He added, “I have collected ­t hese Coherences back to the Beginning of the Reformation in ­England, and could fill 2 or 3 of t­ hese Papers with but a few of them.” 39. dies Infaustus] Unlucky day. 40. an evil Time] The Bible frequently speaks of evil days or a time of evil. See, for example, Amos 15:13: “Therefore the prudent ­shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.” See also Psalms 37:19; Ephesians 5:16. 41. Concurrence] ­Here as OED 4: “Accordance, agreement; assent, consent.” 42. read the sin . . . ​punishment] Defoe expressed this sentiment in vari­ous works. The terri­ ble death of the alienated son in the first volume of The ­Family Instructor is a good example of this. He used this phrase several times in his Pre­sent State of the Parties in ­Great Britain (1712), 13, “I cannot omit to observe, how just the Retaliation of Heaven are, even in Directing the Injustices and Ingratitude of Men, so as they may read their Sin in their Punishment, and

218

Ser ious R eflections

I have seen several Collections of such Th ­ ings made by private Hands, some relating to ­Family Circumstances, some to Public; also in the unnatural Wars in ­England,43 between the King and the Parliament, I have heard many such ­t hings have been observ’d: For Example, the same Day of the Year and Month, that Sir John Hotham44 kept out Hull against King Charles the 1st, and refused him Entrance, was the same Sir John Hotham put to Death, by the very Parliament that he did that Exploit for; that King Charles himself was sentenced to die, by the high Court of Justice, as it was then called, the same Day of the Month, that he sign’d the Warrant for the Execution of the Earl of Strafford,45 which as it was then said by some of his Friends, was cutting off his own Right-­hand. The same Day that King James the 2d came to the Crown against the design of the Bill of Exclusion,46 the same Day he was voted Abdicated by Parliament, and the Throne fill’d with the Prince of Orange and his Princess.47 ­These, or such as ­t hese, seem to be a kind of ­silent Sentence of Providence upon such Actions, animadverting upon them in a judicial Manner, and intimating plainly, that the Animadversion had a retrospect to what was passed, and ­t hose that listen to the Voice of Providence in such Th ­ ings, should at least lay them up in their Hearts. t­ hose who have dealt ungratefully and unjustly by their Benefactors frequently arrive to a Time . . . ​when they fall by the Ingratitude and Injustice of ­t hese they have most effectually Fear’d”; and 334, “a Man’s Sin is sometimes read in his Punishment.” 43. Collections . . . ​­England] See chapter 5, note 29 in this volume. 44. Sir John Hotham] See Defoe, Memoirs of a Cavalier, 274, which parallels the capture at Hull of Hotham (d. 1645) by the Parliamentary forces on 10 August, with his refusal to allow Charles I into that city. Defoe maintains that Hotham “drew the first Blood in that War.” Defoe had published his Memoirs of a Cavalier just a l­ ittle over two months e­ arlier and may have drawn from a larger list of parallel dates that he had compiled for his use, mentioned in his Review for 2 July 1706 (3:314–315). 45. King Charles . . . ​Strafford] “For King Charles the First; ’tis observable that the Charge against the Earl of Strafford, a ­t hing which his Majesty blamed himself for all the Days of his Life, and at the Moment of his last Suffering, was first read in the Lords House on the 30th of January, the same Day of the Month six Years that the King himself was brought to the Block.” For this and some other parallel dates associating Charles I and his adviser, Strafford (1593–1641), see Memoirs of a Cavalier, 273–274. 46. King James . . . ​Bill of Exclusion] A reference to the “Bill” that came out of the “Exclusion Crisis” (1679–1682), the lengthy attempt by some leaders in Parliament to keep James II from assuming the throne. Charles II overcame Parliament’s opposition in 1682 and began to prosecute Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, and other members of the opposition. Defoe opposed James II ­because of his Catholic faith and his authoritarian poli­ tics. A ­ fter the death of Charles II on 6 February 1685, James assumed the throne and, months ­a fter the Glorious Revolution, was officially replaced by William and Mary on 6 Febru­ ary 1689 by Parliament. The parallel dates seemed remarkable to Defoe, although James did not have his coronation u ­ ntil 23 April 1685 and the de facto rule of William and Mary had begun shortly a­ fter William’s successful invasion on 5 November 1688. 47. same Day . . . ​Princess] Defoe was thinking of 6 February 1685, the death day of Charles II and the same day in 1689, when Parliament declared that James had vacated the throne and appointed William and Mary as joint sovereigns. The official date of their assuming power, however, was 13 February 1689.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

219

Eminent Deliverances in sudden Dangers are of the most significant kind of Providences, and which accordingly have a loud Voice in them, calling upon us to be thankful, to that blessed Hand, that has been pleased to spare and protect us. The Voice of such signal Deliverances, is frequently a just Call upon us to Repen­ tance and looks directly that Way; often ’tis a Caution against falling into the like Dangers we w ­ ere exposed to, from which nothing but so much Goodness could deliver us again. In how many Occasions of Life, if God’s Providence had no greater Share in our Safety than our own Prudence, should we plunge and pre­ cipitate our selves into all manner of Misery and Distress? and how often for want of listening to t­ hose Providences do we miscarry? Innumerable Instances pre­sent themselves to us ­every Day, in which the Provi­ dence of God speaks to us, in Th ­ ings relating to ourselves; in Deliverances to excite our Thankfulness, in Views of Dangers to awaken our Caution, and to make us walk wisely and circumspectly in e­ very Step we take; t­hose that are awake to t­ hese ­Things, and have their Ears open to the Voice of them, many Times reap the Benefit of their Instruction by being protected, while ­t hose who neglect them, are of the Number of the ­Simple, who pass on and are punished.48 To be utterly careless of ourselves in such Cases, and talk of trusting Provi­ dence, is a Lethargy of the worst Nature; for as we are to trust Providence with our Estates, but to use at the same Time, all Diligence49 in our Callings; so we are to trust Providence with our Safety, but with our Eyes open to all its neces­ sary Cautions, Warnings, and Instructions; many of which Providence is pleased to give us in the Course of Life, for the Direction of our Conduct, and which we should ill place to the Account of Providence, without acknowledging that they ­ought to be regarded, and a due Reverence paid to them upon all Occasions.

48. Number of the ­Simple . . . ​punished] “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth him­ self; but the ­simple pass on, and are punished.” Defoe repeats this quotation from Proverbs 22:3, which is itself repeated, with some variation in punctuation at Proverbs 27:12. 49. use . . . ​a ll Diligence] Defoe often quoted Aesop’s fable of Hercules and the Waggoner as he did in his Review of 2 February 1706 (3:60), where he transposed the story somewhat, hav­ ing Jupiter replace Hercules. The Waggoner accidentally drives his cart into a ditch. Instead of trying his utmost to lift the cart, the Waggoner prays to Jupiter to help him. Jupiter “bid him not stand Whining and Canting to him, but set his Shoulder to the Wheel.” He had shortened the fable in his ­later years, but it lay ­behind his warning in The Compleat En­glish Tradesman, 2:183, to the effect that “he that w ­ ill lie in a Ditch and pray, may depend upon it he ­shall lie in the Ditch and die.” The moral is similar to that of the proverb: “God helps t­ hose who help themselves.” In using this fable from Aesop, Defoe emphasizes individual action rather than what he would consider a weak reliance on Providence. Hence his expression “a Lethargy of the worst Nature” as applied to such be­hav­ior. Fi­nally, it should be remembered that this advice is still coming from Crusoe, who ­labors on his island as if his work ­were being supervised by a difficult to please overseer. For the fable “Of the Rustick and Hercules” along with an illustration of the cart, see Æsop’s Fables, trans. John Ogilby, introduction by Earl Miner (London, 1668; repr., Los Angeles, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1965), 101.

220

Ser ious R eflections

I take a general Neglect of t­ hese ­Things, to be a kind of practical Atheism,50 or at least a living in a kind of Contempt of Heaven, regardless of all that Share, which his invisible Hand has in the Th ­ ings that befal us. Such a Man receives good at the Hand of his Maker, but unconcerned at the very Nature or Original of it, looks not at all to the Benefactor: Again, he receives Evil, but has no Sense of it, as a judicial dispensing of Punishment from Heaven; but insensible of one or other, he is neither thankful for one, nor h ­ umble ­under the other, but stupid in both, as if he was out of God’s Care, and God himself out of his Thoughts; this is just the reverse of the Temper I am recommending, and let the Picture recommend it self to any according to its Merit. When Prince Vandemont commanded the confederate Army in Flanders, the same Campaign that King William was beseiging Namure,51 some Troops w ­ ere order’d to march into the flat Country ­towards Newport,52 in Order to make a

50. practical Atheism] Practical is used in this phrase in the sense of virtual. The OED 4 pro­ vides the following definition: “That is such in practice or conduct (as distinguished from belief or theory); that is such in effect, though not nominally or professedly so; so nearly the case that it can be regarded as so; virtual.” The first example the OED gives is from 1642: “T. FULLER Holy State V. vii. 387 In a word, if he was not a practicall Atheist, I know not who was.” It appears to have been common in religious treatises during the seventeenth ­century. For example, the phrase is used by Archbishop John Tillotson in “The Wisdom of Being Religious,” the first sermon of his Works, 3rd ed. (London, 1701), 1–33, a sermon that covers some of the same ground as Serious Reflections. The “practical Atheist” is a person who believes in the existence of a God but who conducts his life as if God did not exist. Til­ lotson spends most of his sermon on what he calls “speculative” Atheism, or vari­ous argu­ ments against the existence of God, particularly t­ hose who follow Aristotle’s argument that the world has existed from eternity and ­those who follow the arguments of Epicurus. His brief discussion of “practical Atheism” concludes that it would be the “highest madness” (26) to acknowledge the existence of God and yet live as if God did not exist. Such a person, he argues, is a good candidate for an insane asylum. Defoe had used the phrase ­earlier in his Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy. In his role as the anonymous editor of the letters, he creates some imaginary critics who may disapprove of letters such as ­those of Mahmut and counterattacks by speaking of ­t hose who, “while yet they concern themselves to hear the Deity of our blessed Lord insulted e­ very Day in publick, by t­ hose who call them­ selves Believers, and even the Being of a God denied by a much worse Infidelity than that of a Mahometan” (vi) pretend to be offended by the views of the Turkish Spy. Having dismissed such hypocrites, he then uses the religious be­hav­ior of the followers of Islam to attack the be­hav­ior of Christians: “It is an Observation not unworthy the Remark of our Arabian, and may be very useful to t­hose who read him (viz.) that the practical Atheism, so rife in the World in this Age, is a Sin engrossed among Christians; that the Mahometans know nothing of it; and that it is not heard of among the Mussulmans, that any Man should arrive to that Degree of hardness in Crime, as to deny the Being of a God, whose Glory the Light of nature so evidently reveals” (vi–­v ii). See also Defoe’s The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 20, for another use of “practical Atheists.” 51. Vandemont . . . ​Namure] This would be Charles Henri de Lorraine, Prince de Vaudemont (1649–1723), who served ­under William III. His achievement in drawing off the French army made pos­si­ble William’s success at Namur. The siege of Namur took place from July 1695 to 1 September 1695, when the city surrendered. It was William’s greatest victory. For a con­ temporary account of Vaudemont’s actions, see Captain George Carleton, Memoirs of an En­glish Officer (London, 1728), 54–57. In the original text it is spelled “Vandemont.” 52. Newport] Nieuport in modern Belgium.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

221

Diversion, and draw down the Count de Montal,53 who commanded a flying Body about Menin,54 and to keep him from joyning the Duke de Villeroy,55 who com­ manded the main Body of the French Army. The Soldiers ­were order’d upon Pain of Death not to stir from their Camp, or to plunder any of the Country ­People; the Reason was evident, ­because Provisions being somewhat scarce, if the Boors w ­ ere not protected they would have fled from their Houses, and the Army would have been put to g­ reat Straits, being just entred into the Enemies Country. It happened that five En­glish Soldiers straggling beyond their Bounds w ­ ere fallen upon, near a Farm-­House, by some of the Country P ­ eople (for indeed the Boors w ­ ere oftentimes too unmerciful to the Soldiers)56 as if they had plunder’d them, when indeed they had not: The Soldiers defended themselves, got the better, and kill’d two of the Boors; and being, as they thought, justly provok’d by being first attack’d, they broke into the House, and then used them roughly enough indeed. They found in the House a ­great Quantity of Apples, the ­People being fled had left them in Possession, and they made no Haste to go away, but fell to work with the Apples; and heating the Oven put a ­great Quantity of Apples into the Oven to roast. In the mean Time the Boors, who knew their Number to be but five, and had got more Help on their Side, came down upon them again, attack’d the House, forced their Way in, master’d the En­glishmen, kill’d two, and took a third, and barbarously put him into the Oven, which he had heated, where he was smother’d to Death; it seems it was not hot enough to burn him. The other two escaped, but in coming back to the Camp, they w ­ ere immedi­ ately apprehended by the Provosts, and brought to a Court Martial, where they ­were sentenc’d not for Plundering, for that did not appear, but for being out of the Bounds appointed by the general Order, as above. When the Sentence came to be exectued, the General was prevail’d upon to spare one of them, and to order them to cast Lots for their Lives. This, as it is known is usually done by throwing Dice upon a Drumhead;57 and he that throws

53. Count de Montal] Charles de Montsaulin, Comte de Montal. 54. Menin] Modern Menem. At the time a fortified town in Flanders or modern Belgium. It is situated on the river Lys (Leie) southwest of Courtrai and north of Lille in France. 55. Duke de Villeroy] For a brief account of this action, see Stephen Baxter, William III (Lon­ don: Longmans, 1966), 328–329. Baxter praises Vaudemont’s maneuvering as “a glorious affair.” 56. Boors . . . ​Soldiers] The “boors” ­were the country ­people. For a discussion of the relation­ ship between the soldiers and the ­people of the Low Countries during the seventeenth ­century, see David Kunzle, From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550– 1672 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 57. Lots . . . ​Dice . . . ​Drumhead] Such a mode of drawing lots for who would be punished was not an uncommon military practice during the seventeenth ­century. The logs of the regiments at Tangier have been preserved, and they rec­ord that on 8 September 1663, draw­ ing lots by casting dice on a drumhead was indeed used. We have not found the exact sources of Defoe’s story.

222

Ser ious R eflections

highest or lowest, as is appointed before is to die; at this time he that threw lowest was to live. When the Fellows w ­ ere brought out to throw, the first threw two Sixes, and fell immediately to wringing his Hands, crying he was a dead Man; but was as much surprize’d with Joy, when his Comrade throwing, t­ here came up two Sixes also. The Officer appointed to see Execution was a l­ ittle doubtful what to do, but his ­Orders being positive, he commanded them to throw again; they did so, and each of them threw two Fives; the Soldiers that stood round shouted, and said neither of them was to die: The Officer being a sober thinking Man, said it was strange, and look’d like something from Heaven, and he would not proceed without acquaint­ ing the Council of War, which was then sitting; they consider’d a while, and at last ordre’d them to take other Dice and to throw again, which was done, and both the Soldiers threw two Fours.58 The Officer goes back to the Council of War, who ­were surpriz’d very much, and looking on it as the Voice of Heaven, respited the Execution till the General was acquainted with it. The General sends for the Men and examines them strictly, who telling him the ­whole Story, he ­pardon’d them with this Expression to ­t hose about him, I love, says he, in such extraordinary Cases to listen to the Voice of Providence.59 While we are in this un-­inform’d State, where we know so ­little of the invisible World, it would be greatly our Advantage, if we knew rightly, and without the Bondage of Enthusiasm and Superstition, how to make use of the Hints given us from above, for our Direction in ­Matters of the greatest Importance. It has pleased God very much to streighten the special and par­tic­u ­lar Direc­ tions, which he gives to Men immediately from himself; but I dare not say, they are quite ceased; we read of many Examples in Scripture, how God spake to Men by Voice immediately from Heaven, by Appearance of Angels, or by Dreams and

58. threw two Fours] This seems to violate the laws of probability. ­There was considerable interest at the time in laws of probability and chance, particularly concerning gambling. In his survey, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1–10, Ian Hacking begins his study with the ancient fascination for calculating the chances in the game of dice, but locates the beginning attempt at a scientific discussion of the prob­lem with Blaise Pascal. In Hacking’s account, dice continued to figure in arguments about prob­ ability and chance. For some works on chance available in En­glish in Defoe’s time, see John Arbuthnot’s Of the Laws of Chance, or a Method of Calculation of the ­Hazards of Game (Lon­ don, 1692), mainly a translation of Christian Huygen’s De ratiocinii in ludo aliae; and Abra­ ham de Moivre, The Doctrine of Chances: or, A Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play (London, 1718). As economic prob­lems involved in annuities and insurance came to rely on probability, some kind of system seemed desirable on a more practical level. In his preface, Arbuthnot discusses vari­ous types of areas in which calculating probability might be valuable. And in a section called “Of Raffling,” 63–77, he tries to work out the odds at playing dice. 59. Voice of Providence] What seems to be a violation of the laws of probability is taken to be what Aubrey might have called an “omen,” but Defoe appears to consider the numerical aspects of dice a more respectable sign of Providence than what he describes below (226:36– 37) as “Omens, flying of Birds, Voices, Predictions.” See Miscellanies, in Three Tracts, 27–31.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

223

Visions of the Night, and by all ­t hese not in Public and more extraordinary Cases only, but in private, personal, and f­ amily Concerns. Thus God is said to have appeared to Abraham, to Lot, and to Jacob;60 Angels also have appeared in many other Cases, and to many several Persons, as to Manoah, and his Wife,61 to Zachariah,62 to the Virgin Mary,63 and to the Apostles; ­others have been warned in a Dream, as King Abimelech, the false Prophet Balaam, Pontius Pilate’s Wife, Herod, Joseph, the Apostles64 also, and many ­others. We cannot say, but t­ hese and all other miraculous Voices, the prophetic Mes­ sages prefac’d boldly by the Ancients, with thus saith the Lord are ceas’d, and as we have a more sure Word of Prophesy65 handed to us by the Mission of Gospel Ministers; to which the Scripture says, We do well that we take heed; and to whom our blessed Lord has said, Lo, I am with you to the End of the World:66 I say, as we have this Gospel back’d with the Spirit and Presence of God, we are no Losers, if we observe the Rule laid down, viz. that we be obedient to the heavenly Vision,67 for such it is, as well as that of the Apostle Peter’s Dream of the Sheet let down from Heaven.68 I mention this to pay a due Reverence to the Sufficiency of Gospel Revelation, and to the guiding of the Spirit of God, who in spiritual Th ­ ings is given to lead us into all Truth,69 nor would I have any Th ­ ing, which I am g­ oing to say, tend to lessen ­t hese ­great Efficients of our eternal Salvation. 60. God . . . ​appeared to . . . ​Jacob] God appeared to Abraham frequently, sometimes speak­ ing to him directly, sometimes in a vision. See, for example, Genesis 12:1, 17:1. Lot is visited by angels in Sodom, who warn him of the destruction of the city in Genesis 19:1–23. Jacob com­ municates with God in Genesis 35:1. 61. Manoah . . . ​Wife] In chapter 13 of Judges an angel appears to Manoah and his wife, prom­ ising them a child who was named Samson. 62. Zachariah] Zacharias. See Luke 1:5–25. 63. Virgin Mary] See, for example, Luke 1:26–38. 64. warned in a Dream . . . ​Apostles] Abimelech (Genesis 20:3) was warned in a dream against touching Abraham’s wife Sarah. God appears to Balaam twice in dreams (Numbers 22:9–12, 20). Pontius Pilate’s wife (Matthew 27:19) warns her husband against punishing Jesus b ­ ecause she “suffered many ­t hings this day in a dream b ­ ecause of him.” The story of Herod is surrounded by dreams: Joseph is warned that Herod plans the destruction of Jesus; the wise men from the East are warned in dreams not to return to Herod; and ­a fter Herod died, Joseph was told in a dream that he could return to Israel. Although Herod is described as consulting with priests, no mention is made of his dream. However ­t here appears to have been an extrapolation of the story to give Herod a dream as well. See Matthew 2:1–20. When, at Pentecost, in Jerusalem, vari­ous p ­ eople began speaking in tongues, Peter (Acts 2:17), quot­ ing the prophet Joel, said that t­ here ­w ill come a time when “your young men ­shall see visions and your old men ­shall dream dreams.”. 65. sure . . . ​Prophesy] See 2 Peter 1:19: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; where­ unto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, u ­ ntil the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.” 66. Lo . . . ​World] See Mathew 28:20. This is Matthew’s final injunction to t­ hose g­ oing out to preach the gospel. 67. obedient . . . ​heavenly Vision] See Acts 26:19. Paul tells this to Agrippa. 68. Peter’s Dream . . . ​Heaven] See Acts 10:9–20. 69. lead us into all Truth] See John 16:13: “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he ­w ill guide you into all truth.”

224

Ser ious R eflections

But I am chiefly upon our Conduct in the inferior Life, as I may call it; and in this, I think, the Voice of God, even his immediate Voice from Heaven, is not entirely ceased from us, though it may have changed the Mediums of Communication. I have heard the Divines tell us by Way of Distinction, that ­t here is a Voice of God in his Word, and a Voice of God in his Work;70 the latter I take to be a sub­ ject very awful and very instructing. This Voice of God in his Works, is ­either heard in his Works which are already wrought, such as of Creation, which fill us with Won­der and Astonishment, Admiration and Adoration; When I view the Heavens, the Work of thy Hands, the Moon and the Stars which thou hast made, then I say, What is Man,71 &c. Or 2. His Works of Government and Providence, in which the infinite Variety affords a pleasing and instructing Contemplation; and it is without Question, our Wisdom and Advantage to study and know them, and to listen to the Voice of God in them: For this listening to the Voice of Providence, is a Th ­ ing so hard to direct, and so ­little understood, that I find the very Thought of it is treated with Contempt,72 even by many pious and good P ­ eople, as leading to Superstition, to 73 Enthusiasm, and vain Fancies, tainted with the Melancholly, and amusing the Mind with the Vapours74 of the Head. It is true, an ill Use may be made of ­t hese ­Things, and to tye ­People too strictly down to a Rule, where their own Observation is to be the Judge, endangers the ­running into many foolish Extreams, entitling a distemper’d Brain, too much to

70. Voice of God . . . ​Word . . . ​Work] The emphasis h ­ ere is not so much on the Bible as on reading God’s intention in the often “awful” evidence of “awful” events such as violent storms, plagues, and earthquakes. In his commentary on Exodus 4:8, in which God is instructing Moses about the miraculous “signs” he ­w ill show Pha­raoh to ­f ree the ­Children of Israel, he speaks of the “voice” of the signs. Poole (Annotations, 1:sig. L4v) interprets this as meaning “that God’s works have a voice to speak to us, which we must diligently observe.” 71. When . . . ​Man] Psalm 8:3–4. Defoe was prob­ably quoting from memory. The original is: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fin­gers, the moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” 72. treated with Contempt] Defoe may have been thinking specifically of Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704, 1710), a direct attack on the type of enthusiasm that Swift associated with the Dissenters. Swift depicted the operation of religion among the groups led by his Jack (Calvin) as a form of madness. 73. Fancies] The OED 3 gives the definition as “Delusive imagination; hallucination” and quotes Defoe’s System of Magick, in which it is associated with an hallucinatory dream state. Imagination in such a definition is not the creative force associated with the Romantic poets, but a form of delusion. 74. Vapours] The OED provides two related definitions: “3. pl. a. In older medical use: Exha­ lations supposed to be developed within the organs of the body (esp. the stomach) and to have an injurious effect upon the health. b. A morbid condition supposed to be caused by the presence of such exhalations; depression of spirits, hypochondria, hysteria, or other ner­vous disorder. Now arch. (Common c1665–1750).” In his Tale of a Tub, Swift specifically identified such “exhalations” as rising from the sexual organs, causing a confusion between religious inspiration and sexual desire. Defoe had read Swift’s work carefully before writing his own Consolidator in 1705.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

225

the Exposition of the sublimest ­Things; and tacking the awful Name of Provi­ dence to ­every fancy of their own. From Hence I think, too much proceeds the extraordinary (Note, I say, Extraordinary) Homage paid to Omens, flying of Birds, Voices, Noises, Predictions,75 and a thousand foolish ­Things, in which I ­shall endeavour to state the Case fairly between the Devil and Mankind: But at pre­sent I need say no more ­here, than that they have nothing to do with the Subject I am now upon, or the Subject I am upon with them. But as my Design is serious, and I hope pious, I ­shall keep strictly to the Expo­ sition I give of my own Meaning, and meddle with no other. By the Voice of Providence therefore, I s­ hall confine myself to the par­tic­u ­lar Circumstances incident and accident which e­ very Man’s Life is full of, and which are in a more extraordinary manner, said to be peculiar to himself or to his ­Family. By listening to them, I mean, making such due Application of them to his own Circumstances, as becomes a Christian, for Caution in his Conduct, and all man­ ner of Instruction, receiving all the Hints as from Heaven, returning all the Praise to, making all the Improvement for, and reverencing the Sovereignty of his Maker in e­ very Th ­ ing, not disputing or reproaching the Justice of Providence; and which is the main Th ­ ing I aim at, taking such Notice of the several Providences, that happen in the Course of our Lives, as by one Circumstance to learn how to behave in another. For Example, supposing from my own Story,76 When a young Fellow broke from his Friends, trampled upon all the wise Advices, and most affectionate Per­ swasions of his F ­ ather, and even the Tears and Entreaties of a tender M ­ other,77 and would go away to Sea; but is check’d in his first Excursions by being Shipwreck’d, and in the utmost Distress sav’d by the Assistance of another Ship’s Boat, seeing the Ship he was in, soon ­after sink to the Bottom; ­ought not such a young Man to have listened to the Voice of this Providence, and have taken it for a Summons to him; that when he was on Shore, he should stay on Shore, and go back to the Arms of his Friends, hearken to their Council, and not precipitate himself into farther Mischiefs; what Happiness might such a prudent Step have 75. Omens . . . ​Predictions] Defoe may have had in mind John Aubrey’s Miscellanies, which included such supposed signs of spiritual presence in the world as voices and noises. In his System of Magick, 191, Defoe tended to associate an uncritical belief in such signs as both pagan and associated with the devil, including “divination, enchantment, conjuration, apparition, vision, dream, familiar spirits, observing times, observing seasons and flying of birds, entrails of beasts, and the like.” Yet in Serious Reflections he goes on to discuss a “dis-­ regard of Omens” (228:15) as a refusal to listen to Providence. In ancient Rome, the flight pattern of birds was considered one way of foretelling the ­future. See ­under “Augury,” in William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murray, 1875), 174–179. 76. Tears . . . ​tender ­Mother] In The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, the m ­ other does not appear very sympathetic or “tender” when he tries to enlist her help in persuading his ­father that “­going to Sea” would be a good ­career choice. 77. my own Story] What follows in this paragraph is a summary and interpretation of the beginning of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures from a providential standpoint.

226

Ser ious R eflections

procured, what Miseries and Mischiefs would it have prevented in the rest of his unfortunate Life. An Acquaintance of mine, who had several such Circumstances befel him, as ­those which I am inclin’d to call Warnings, but entirely neglected them, and laugh’d at ­t hose that did other­w ise, suffered deeply for his dis-­regard of Omens; he took Lodgings in a Village near the City of London, and in a House, where ­either he sought bad Com­pany, or at best could meet with l­ittle that was good. Providence that seemed to animadvert upon his Conduct, so ordered it that something or other mischievous always happened to him t­here, or as he went thither; several Times he was robbed on the Highway ­going thither, once or twice taken very ill, at other Times his Affairs in the World went ill, while he diverted himself t­ here; several of his Friends caution’d him of it and told him, he o ­ ught to consider that some superior Hand seemed to hint to him, that he should come ­t here no more; he slighted the Hint, or at least neglected it a­ fter some Time, and went to the same Place again: But was so terrified with a most dreadful Tempest of Thunder and Lightning, which fell as it w ­ ere more particularly upon that Part of the Country than upon ­others; that he took it as a Warning from Heaven, and resolv’d not to go t­ here again, and some Time a­ fter a Fire destroyed that House, very few escaping that ­were in it. It would be an ill Account we should give of the Government of divine Provi­ dence in the World, if we should argue, that its Events are so unavoidable, and ­every Circumstance so determined, that nothing can be altered;78 and that there­ fore t­hese Warnings of Providence are inconsistent with the Nature of it. This besides that I think it would take from the Sovereignty of Providence, and deny even God himself the Privilege of being a ­free Agent, it would also so contradict the Experience of e­ very Man living, in the Va­ri­e­ties of his respective Life, that he should be unable to give any Account for what End many Th ­ ings, which Provi­ dence directs in the World, are directed, and why so many ­Things happen which do happen; why are Evils attending us so evidently foretold, that by ­t hose Fore-­ tellings they are avoided, if it was not determined before that they should be avoided, and should not befal us? ­People that tye up to all Events and ­Causes, strip the Providence of God which guides the World of all its Superintendency, and leave it no room to act a as a wise Disposer of Th ­ ings.

78. nothing can be altered] H ­ ere, as elsewhere, Defoe argues that an overly strict interpreta­ tion of predestination, as offered by John Calvin and many Presbyterian divines, would deny God the “Privilege of being a ­free Agent” (229:9–10). In his Tale of a Tub, 192–194 (section xi), Swift had Jack, his version of a Presbyterian, keep his eyes closed as he walked, and if he hit his head or fell, he would blame it on predestination. Without quite so much ridicule but an equal rejection of the idea, Defoe, in his Consolidator, 37, had his moon voyager comment, “­Here ’tis plainly prov’d, That Predestination is, in spight of all Enthusiastick Pretences so intirely committed into Man’s Power, that whoever pleases to hang himself to Day, ­won’t Live till to Morrow; no, though Forty Predestination Prophets ­were to tell him, His time was not yet come.”

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

227

It seems to me that the immutable Wisdom and Power of the Creator, and the Notion of it in the Minds of Men, is as dutifully preserved, and is as legible to our Understanding, though t­here be a Hand left at Liberty to direct the Course of natu­ral ­Causes and Events; ’Tis sufficient to the Honour of an immutable Deity, that for the common Incidents of Life, they be left to the Disposition of a daily Agitator,79 namely, divine Providence, to order and direct them as it ­shall see good, within the natu­ral Limits of Cause and Consequence. This seems to me a much more rational System, than that of tying up the Hands of the supreme Power to a Road of ­Things, so that none can be acted or permitted,80 but such as was so appointed before to be acted and permitted. But what, if a­ fter all, we ­were to sit down and acknowledge, that the immuta­ bility of God’s Being, and the Unchangeableness of his Actings, are not easy to be comprehended by us, or that we may say we are not able to reconcile them with the infinite Variation of his Providence, which in all its Actings seems to us to be at full Liberty to determine anew, and give Events a turn this Way or that Way, as its Sovereignty and Wisdom, ­shall direct; does it follow, that ­t hese ­Things are not reconcileable, b ­ ecause we cannot reconcile them? why should we not as well say, nothing of God is to be understood, b ­ ecause we cannot understand it? or that nothing in Nature is intelligible, but what we can understand?81 Who can understand the Reason, and much less the Manner of the Needle tending to the Pole, by being touch’d with the Loadstone, and by what Operation the magnetic Vertue82 is conveyed with a Touch? why that Vertue is not commu­ 79. Agitator] The OED notes that, as a noun, this word was mainly used for the agents acting on behalf of the army between 1647 and 1649 and refers the researcher to the verb, agitate. ­There it suggests both the physical act of moving and actuating and the m ­ ental power ­behind such actions. Its use to describe God’s presence in the universe is best encountered several de­cades a­fter the publication of Serious Reflections in James Thomson’s The ­Castle of Indolence: What, but eternal never-­resting Soul, Almighty Power, and all-­directing Day; By whom each Atom stirs, the Planets roll; Who fills, surrounds, informs, and agitates the Whole? (XLVII:6–9) ­ astle of Indolence and Other Poems, ed. Alan Dugald McKillop (Lawrence: Uni­ In The C versity of Kansas Press, 1961), canto 2, stanza 47. 80. Road of ­Things . . . ​permitted] If the concept of action might be added, “Road” is prob­ ably being used in the OED 6b sense of “a ­limited range of thought or discourse,” and not in the neutral sense (OED 4b) of an “ordinary line of communication.” The OED classifies the sense of “Road” as embodying limitation as obsolete ­a fter the seventeenth ­century, but Defoe is stressing the folly of limiting the power of God. For a fuller discussion of Defoe’s objec­ tions to predestination, see chapter 5, note 78 in this volume. 81. Nature . . . ​understand] Having dismissed the religious doctrine of predestination, Defoe is about to turn to scientific discoveries and the possibility that such knowledge may provide explanations of natu­ral laws that may eliminate the necessary existence of God, as indeed happened ­a fter the ­middle of the nineteenth ­century. 82. Loadstone . . . ​magnetic Vertue] For a discussion of the magnet, or loadstone, in terms of its “vertues,” see David Barlow, Magnetical Advertisements (London, 1618), sig. A2–­B1; and Sir Kenhelm Digby, Two Treatises (London, 1645), 232–234. William Gilbert (On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies and on the G ­ reat Magnet the Earth, trans. P. Fleury Mottelay [Ann Arbor: Edwards ­Brothers, 1941], esp. 122–126) conceives of the earth itself as a loadstone. Defoe’s

228

Ser ious R eflections

nicable to other Metals, such as Gold, Silver, or Copper, but to Iron only? what Sympathetic Influence83 is ­there between the Stone and the Star,84 or the Pole? why tending to that Point in the ­whole Arch,85 and not to any other, and why face about to the South Pole as soon as it has past the Equinox?86 yet we see all ­t hese ­Things in their Operations and Events, we know they must be reconcileable in Nature, though we cannot reconcile them, and intelligible in Nature, though we cannot understand them: Sure it is as highly reasonable then for us to believe, that the vari­ous Actings of Providence, which to us appear changeable; one Decree, as it w ­ ere, reversing another, and one Action superseding another, may be as recon­ cilable to the Immutability of God,87 and to the Unchangeableness of his Pur­ poses, tho’ we cannot understand, how it is brought to pass, as it is to believe, that se­lection of the compass, which Barlow called “the most admirable and vseful instrument of the w ­ hole world” (66), to illustrate his point was not accidental. In his History of the Several Improvements of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, in the Several Arts and Sciences (London, 1727), 250–60, he credited the invention of the compass with the creation of what for him was the modern world. 83. Sympathetic Influence] The OED refers this notion to early concepts of sympathy: “1. a. A (real or supposed) affinity between certain ­t hings, by virtue of which they are similarly or correspondingly affected by the same influence, affect or influence one another (esp. in some occult way), or attract or tend t­owards each other. Obs. exc. Hist. or as merged in other senses.” Defoe’s vocabulary of “Sympathetic Influence” and “Vertue” (OED 9d: “worth or efficacy of any kind”) belongs to the seventeenth c­ entury and not to the experiments of Rob­ ert Boyle detailed in John Harris’s Lexicon Technicum, sig. 5D3v–5D4v. Thus when David Barlow, a follower of William Gilbert, asks his reader to think of the loadstone with its north and south poles as a “­little earth” (55), he was thinking in terms of a sympathetic connection. For a similar treatment of the concept of sympathy in relation to the magnet, see Sir Thomas Browne’s discussion of magnetism in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, in Works, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, 4 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 2:115. On the other hand, Harris concludes his discussion: “From all which Experiments, ’tis plain (as Mr. Boyle concludes) That Magnetism doth much depend upon Mechanical Princi­ples. As also That, ­t here is such a ­Thing as the Magnetism of the Earth; or that ­t here are Magnetical Particles, which continu­ ally are passing from Pole to Pole.” Harris quotes Isaac Newton to the effect that magnetism was dif­fer­ent from gravity, correcting William Gilbert’s beliefs on this subject. Defoe did not come to an understanding and praise of the scientific discoveries of Boyle and Newton ­until his History of the Several Improvements of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, in the Several Arts and Sciences (London, 1727), 238, and this time he discussed magnetism by quot­ ing Harris’s work. 84. Star] For a discussion of finding true north by the use of the “Arctic pole-­star” and other stars, see Gilbert, On the Loadstone, 262. Unlike Sir Thomas Browne, Gilbert does not speak of “sympathy” between the stars and the bodies. 85. Arch] Sir Thomas Browne writes, “The variation of the Compass is an Arch of the Hori­ zon intercepted between the true and the Magnetized Meridian; or more plainly a deflexion and siding East of the true Meridian. The true Meridan is a major Circle passing through the Poles of the World, and the Zeneth or Vertex of any place, exactly dividing the East from the West.” Works, 2:96. For an illustrative diagram, see Gilbert, On the Loadstone, 294. 86. Equinox] Equator. The OED 3 provides the obsolete meaning contained in the “equinoctial line” or equator. The shift in the poles of the loadstone in passing the equator fascinated early scientists. 87. Immutability of God] Having argued that no one understands the ways in which magne­ tism works, Defoe moves to the argument often employed by ­t hose contemporaries using the meta­phor of the G ­ reat Chain of Being. What appears changeable to h ­ uman beings, with their ­limited perception and understanding, may in fact be part of God’s permanent plan.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

229

t­here is a Reason to be given for the Agreement and simpathetick Correspon­ dence between the Magnet and the Pole, tho at pre­sent the Manner of it is not discover’d, and cannot be understood. If then the Hand of divine Providence has a spontaneous Power of acting, and directed by its own Sovereignty, proceeds by such Methods, as it thinks fit, and as we see daily in the Course of ­human ­t hings: Our Business is to converse with the acting Part of Providence, with which we more immediately have to do, and not confound our Judgment with ­t hings which we cannot fully comprehend, such as the Why, to what End, and the how in what Manner, it acts so and so. As we are then conversant with the immediate Actions of divine Providence, it is our Business to study it as much as may be in thar Part of its Actings, wherein it is to be known; and this includes the s­ ilent Actings of Providence, as well as t­ hose which are more loud, and which being declar’d, speak in publick. ­There are several ­silent Steps, which Providence takes in the World, which summon our Attention; and he that ­w ill not listen to them, ­shall deprive himself of much of the Caution and Council, as well as Comfort, which he might other­ wise have in his Passage thro’ this Life, particularly by thus listening to the Voice, as I call it, of Providence, we have the Comfort of seeing, that r­ eally an invisible and power­f ul Hand is employ’d in, and concern’d for our Preservation and Pros­ perity in the World; And who can look upon the manifest Deliverances which he meets with in the infinite Variety of Life, without being convinc’d that they are wrought for him without his own Assistance, by the wise and merciful Disposi­ tions of an invisible and friendly Power. The bringing good Events to pass by the most threatning C ­ auses, as it testifies a Power that has the Government of C ­ auses and Effects in its Hand, so it gives a very convincing Evidence of that Power, being in good Terms with us; as on the contrary, when the like Providence declares against us, we ­ought to make a suit­ able Use of it another Way, that is to say, take the just Alarm, and apply to the necessary Duties of Humiliation and Repentance. ­These t­ hings may be jested with by the Men of Fashion;88 but I am supposing myself talking to Men that have a Sense of a ­f uture State, and of the Oeconomy89 of an invisible World upon them, and neither to Atheists, Scepticks, or Persons indifferent, who are indeed near of Kin to them both. As ­t here are just Reflections to be made upon the vari­ous Conduct of Provi­ dence in the several Passages of Man’s Life, so t­ here are infinite Circumstances, in which we may furnish our selves with Directions in the Course of Life, and in the most sudden Incidents, as well to obtain Good, as avoid Evil. Much of the Honour due to the Goodness of Providence, is unjustly taken away from it, by Men that give themselves a Loose in a general Neglect of t­ hese 88. Men of Fashion] Defoe prob­ably has in mind con­temporary Deists such as John Toland (1670–1722) and Anthony Collins (1676–1729). In describing them in this manner, Defoe was being sarcastic. 89. Oeconomy] Economy in the sense of having to do with the divine administration of the world. See OED.

230

Ser ious R eflections

t­ hings: But that which is still more absurd to me is, that some Men are obstinately resolv’d against paying the Homage of their Deliverances to their Maker, or pay­ ing the Reverence due to his Terrors, in any t­ hing that befalls them ill, where it ­ought to be paid, that they ­w ill give all that Honour to another. If it was well, they tell you, they know not how, but so it happen’d, or it was so by good Chance, and the like. This is a Sort of Language I cannot understand: It seems to be a felonious Thought in its very Design, robbing Heaven of the Honour due to it, and listing our selves in the Regiment of the Ungrateful. But this is not all, for one Crime leads on to another, if this Part is Felony or Robbery, the next is Treason, for resolving first to deny the Homage of good or evil Events to God from whose Hands they come, they go on and pay it to the Devil, the E ­ nemy of his Praise, and Rival of his Power. Two of ­t hese Wretches travell’d a l­ ittle Journey with me some Years ago; and in their Return, some Time ­after I was gone from them, they met with a very dif­fer­ ent Adventure, and telling me the Story, they express’d themselves thus, They ­were riding from Huntington ­towards London, and in some Lanes betwixt Hun­ tington and Caxton,90 one happen’d by a Slip of his Horse’s Foot, which lam’d him a ­little, to stay about half a Mile ­behind the other, was set upon by some Highway-­ men, who robb’d him, and abus’d him very much; the other went on to Caxton, not taking Care of his Companion, thinking he had stay’d on some par­tic­u­lar Occasion, and escap’d the Thieves, they making off cross the Country t­ owards Cambridge. Well, says I to the first, How came you to escape? I don’t know not I, says he, I happen’d not to look b ­ ehind me, when his Horse stumbl’d and I went forward, and by good Luck, adds he again, I heard nothing of the ­Matter; ­here was, it happen’d, and by good Luck, but not the least Sense of the Government of Provi­ dence in this Affair, or its Disposition for his Good, but an empty Idol of Air, or rather an imaginary nonsensical Nothing, an Image more inconsistent than t­ hose I mention’d among the Chinese; not a Monster indeed of a frightful Shape, and ugly Figure, loathsome and frightful, but a meer Phantasm, an Idea, a None-­ Entity, a Name without being a miscall’d, unborn, nothing, hap, luck, Chance, that is to say, a Name put upon the Medium, which they set up in their Imagina­ tion, for Want of a W ­ ill to acknowledge their Maker, and recognize the Goodness which had particularly preserv’d him. This was the most ungrateful Piece of Folly, or to speak more properly, the maddest and foolishest Piece of Ingratitude that ever I met with. Well, if this was foolish and preposterous, the other was as wicked and detest­ able: For when the first had told his Tale, I turn’d to the other, and ask’d him, 90. Huntington and Caxton] Huntingdon is about eighty miles northwest of Cambridge. Caxton is about sixty miles directly west of Cambridge and on a direct road to Huntingdon. This area may have been well known for the robberies committed ­t here, since in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 58, Defoe remarked that this was the place where the famous highway robber James Hind, who was executed in 1652, committed many of his rob­ beries. It was also the place where Hind encountered a spirit who left a warning for him of his impending end if he did not cease his robberies.

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

231

What was the ­Matter? Why! How came this to pass? said I, why this Disaster has fallen all upon you? How was it? Nay, says he, I ­don’t know, I was a ­little ­behind, and my Horse chanc’d to slip, and lame himself, and he went forward, and left me; and as the Devil would have it, ­t hese Fellows came cross the Country, and chopt91 upon me, &c. ­Here was first Chance, the same Mock-­Goddess, as before, lam’d his Horse, and next, the Devil order’d the Highway-­men to chop upon him that Moment. Now, tho’ it may be true, that the Highway-­men ­were even by their Employment ­doing the Dev­il’s Office of ­going to and fro, seeking whom they might plunder;92 yet ’twas a higher Hand than Satan’s, that deliver’d this poor blind Fellow into their Power. We have a plain Guide for this in Scripture Language, in the Law of Man-­ slaughter,93 or Death, as we call it foolishly enough, by Misadventure94 it is in the 21 Exod. 13. in the Case of casual killing a Man, it is express’d thus, If a Man lye not in Wait, but God deliver him into his Hand. This was not to be accounted Mur­ ther, but the Slayer was to fly to the City of Refuge.95 ­Here it is evident, that God takes all t­ hese Misadventures into his own Hand; and a Man kill’d by Accident, is a Man whom God has deliver’d up, for what End in his Providence is known only to himself, to be kill’d in that Manner, perhaps vindictively, perhaps not. With what Face can any Man say, this was as the Devil would have it, or as bad Luck would have it, or it happen’d, or chanc’d, or fell out; all which are our s­ imple

91. chopt] seized. The OED 4 and 4b gives it as a word taken from hunting: “To seize upon (prey) before it has time to get fairly away from cover.” The parallel between the highwaymen hunting for their prey and the hunter should be obvious. 92. Dev­il’s Office . . . ​plunder] See Job 1:7: “And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From g­ oing to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” See also 1 Peter 5:8: “Be sober, be vigilant; ­because your adver­ sary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.” Defoe com­ bines the two passages. 93. Law of Man-­slaughter] The passage of Exodus (21:13) is one of ­t hose that follows the Ten Commandments making amplifications on the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” 94. Death . . . ​by Misadventure] OED 2 provides as a l­egal definition: “Fatal mishap or mis­ fortune. Now chiefly in death by misadventure n. death caused accidentally, with or without the involvement of an (innocent) second party; similarly hom­i­cide by misadventure (chiefly U.S.).” Defoe’s allusion to Exodus 21:13 is ambiguous: “And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I ­w ill appoint thee a place whither he ­shall flee.” But the kind of accidental death depicted in Deuteronomy 19:5 fits the concept of manslaughter or death by misadventure. 95. City of Refuge] Defoe made this a theme in the first of his early Meditations, composed at the end of 1681. “Fleeing For Refuge To The hope Sett before us” began: In Misadvertant Slaughters We are Told Cittyes of refuge ­Were Prepar’d of Old; Thither He Fled who gave Unwilling Fate, A guilt Misshap did (Not Designe) Creat: (ll. 1–4) See Meditations, ed. George Healey (Cummington, MA: Cummington Press, 1946), 3–10. Three cities of refuge are mentioned in Deuteronomy 19:5, 7.

232

Ser ious R eflections

and empty Ways of talking of t­ hings that are order’d by the immediate Hand or Direction of God’s Providence. The Words last quoted from the Scripture of God’s delivering a Man into another Man’s Hand to be killed unwillingly, are fully explained in another Place, Deut. xix. 5. As when a Man goeth into the Wood with his Neighbour, to hew Wood, and his Hand fetches a Stroke with the Ax to cut down the Tree, and the Head slippeth from the Helve, and lighteth upon his Neighbour, that he die; he ­shall flee unto one of ­those Cities, and live. The wicked thoughtless Creature, I have just mentioned, whose Horse fell lame, and stopt his Travelling, till he might come just in the Way of ­t hose Thieves, who it seems w ­ ere crossing the Country, perhaps upon some other Exploit, o ­ ught to have reflected, that Providence, to chastise him, and bring him to a Sense of his Dependance upon, and being subjected to his Power, had directed him to be sepa­ rated from his Companion, that he might fall into the Hands that robb’d and abus’d him; and the other had no less Obligation to give Thanks for his Deliver­ ance: But how contrary they acted in both Cases, you have heard. We have had abundance of Collections, in my Remembrance, of remarkable Providences,96 as they are call’d; and many ­People are forward to call them so: But this does not come up to the Case in Hand. Tho’ contemning Providence, and giving the Homage due to it, as above, to the Devil, or to Chance, Fate, and I know not what Embrio’s of the Fancy 97 are impi­ ous; yet ­every one that avoids this Evil, does not come up to the par­tic­u­lar Point I am speaking of; for t­ here is a manifest Difference between acknowledging the Being and Operations of Providence, and listning to its Voice, as many P ­ eople acknowledge a God, that obey none of his Commands, and concern themselves in nothing of their Duty to him. To listen to the Voice of Providence, is to take strict Notice of all the remark­ able Steps of Providence, which relate to us in par­tic­u ­lar, to observe, if ­there is nothing in them instructing to our Conduct; no Warning to us for avoiding some Danger; no Direction for taking some par­tic­u­lar Steps for our Safety or Advan­ tage; no Hint to remind us of such and such t­hings omitted; no Conviction of something committed; no vindictive Step, by Way of Retaliation, marking out the Crime in the Punishment; You may easily observe the Differences between the Directions and Warnings of Providence, when duly listned to, and the Notices of Spirits98 from an invisible World, viz. that ­t hese are dark Hints of Evil, with very 96. Collections . . . ​remarkable Providences] Defoe may have been thinking of Matthew Poole’s and William Turner’s encyclopedic Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences (1697); but since the discussion involved murder, he may also have had in mind such works as John Reynolds’s extremely popu­lar Triumphs of Gods Revenge against the Crying and Execrable Sinne . . . ​of Murther (1635). 97. Embrio’s of the Fancy] Embryo ­here is used in the sense of a rudimentary idea without real shape or development. See OED. 98. Notices of Spirits] H ­ ere Defoe puts himself in line with contemporaries who believed that reading signs of God’s “Providence” in the world was superior to the type of impulse that

C h a p t e r 5 /O f l i s t n i n g t o t h e V o i c e o f   P r o v i d e n c e

233

l­ ittle Direction to avoid it: But ­t hose Notices, which are to be taken from the Pro­ ceedings of Providence, tho’ the Voice be a Kind of ­silent or soft Whisper; yet ’tis generally attended with an Offer of the Means for escaping the Evil, nay, very often leads by the Hand to the very proper Steps to be taken; and even obliges us, by a strong Conviction of the Reason of it, to take t­ hose Steps. It is in vain for me to run into a Collection of Stories; for Example, where the Variety is infinite, and t­ hings vary as e­ very par­tic­u ­lar Man’s Circumstances vary: But as ­every Event in the World is manag’d by the Superintendency of Provi­ dence; so ­every Providence has in it some ­t hing instructing, some ­t hing that calls upon us to look up, or look out, or look in. ­Every one of t­ hose Heads are big with par­tic­u ­lar Explanations; but my Busi­ ness is not Preaching; I am making Observations and Reflections, let ­t hose make Enlargements who read it: In a Word, t­ here is scarce any par­tic­u ­lar Providence attends our Lives, but we ­shall find, if we give due Weight to it, that it calls upon us, ­either. 1. To look up, and acknowledge the Goodness of God in sparing us, the Bounty of God in providing for us, the Power of God in delivering and protecting us, not forgetting to look up, and acknowledge, and be h ­ umble ­under the Justice of God, in being angry with, and afflicting us. 2. Or to look out, and take the needful Caution and Warning given of evil approaching, and prepare e­ ither to meet or avoid it. 3. Or to look in, and reflect upon what we find Heaven animadverting upon, and afflicting us for, taking Notice of the Summons to repent and reform. And this is, in a Word, what I mean by Listning to the Voice of Providence.

might come from invisible spirits or from dreams. At the same time, in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 30, Defoe did suggest that we should be alert to what mes­ sages might be coming from good spirits: “­These imperfect Notices, I say, seem to proceed from some good and kind Being, which is near us, existing, tho’ out of our Knowledge, yet not so remote, but hat it is in Condition to see and know t­hings good or evil, which tho’ approaching, is yet out of our View, and which if we could take the s­ ilent Hint, it might be infinitely for our Advantage, but is able to do no more.” And just as Crusoe is attentive to his dreams, so the Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (161–163), Defoe tells a story about his own experience with a dream that warned him about the likelihood that he would be arrested if he continued his journey to London. William Lee ascribed to Defoe two letters to Mist’s Weekly Journal on 6 February and 13 February 1720, the first arguing against believ­ ing in warnings contained in dreams and giving explanations that based such dreams on remembered experiences, the second defending the importance of paying attention to dreams as messages from the world of spirits. See Lee, Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 2:193–199.

Chapter 6

•

Of the Proportion between the Christian and Pagan World I Have said something of this already in my Enquiry ­after the State of Religion in the World; but upon some Reflections which fell in my Way since, I think it may offer further Thoughts, very improving, as well as diverting. When we view the World geo­graph­i­cally, take the Plan1 of the Globe, and mea­sure it by Line, and cut it out into Latitude and Longitude, Degrees, Leagues, and Miles; we may see indeed that a pretty large Spot of the ­whole, is at pre­sent ­under the Government of Christian Powers and Princes, or u ­ nder the Influence of their Power and Commerce, by Arms, Navies, Colonies, and Plantations; or their Factories, Missionaries, Residences, &c. But I am loth to say we should take this for a Fulfilling the Promise made to the Messiah, that his Kingdom should be exalted above all Nations,2 and the Gospel be heard to the End of the Earth,3 I was ­going to say, and yet without any Prophaneness; that we hope God w ­ ill not put us off SO.4 I must acknowledge, I expect in the Fulfill­ ing of t­hese Promises, that the Time ­will come, when the Knowledge of God s­hall cover the Earth, as the ­Waters over the Sea, that the Church of God s­ hall be set open 1. Plan] Map. The OED equates the obsolete use of plan (­under plane 2b), “A chart, a map, a plan,” with plan 2a: “A drawing, sketch, or diagram of any object made by projection on a horizontal plane.” 2. Promise . . . ​Nations] An allusion to Isaiah 2:2: “And it ­shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s ­house ­shall be established in the top of the mountains, and ­shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations s­ hall flow unto it.” Defoe quotes this on the following page. In his notes to this passage, Matthew Poole (Annotations, 1:sig. 5V2) remarked on the messianic significance of this passage and argues that “Chist’s institutions w ­ ere to continue to the end of the world.” This passage is prob­ably echoed in Acts 2:39. 3. End of the Earth] As he often does, Defoe merges biblical passages. In this case, he blends the passage from Isaiah 11:9, “They ­shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth ­shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the ­waters cover the sea,” with Psalm 72:8, “He s­ hall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” 4. God . . . ​SO] Although he insists that his statement is “without any Prophaneness,” t­ here is a certain cheekiness in Crusoe’s insistence that he is holding God responsible for “the Fulfill­ ing” his messianic “Promises.”

235

236

Ser ious R eflections

to the four Winds, that the Mountain of the Lords House s­ hall be exalted above the Tops of the Mountains, and all the Nations ­shall flow into it,5 Isa. ii. 2. that is to say, that the Christian Religion, or the Profession of the Doctrine of the Messiah, ­shall be made national over the w ­ hole Globe, according to t­ hose Words, Matth. xxiv. 14.6 Mark xiii. 13.7 Luke xxiv. 17.8 But this may be a l­ittle too apocalyptical, or visionary for the Times; and ’tis no Business of mine, to enter upon the Interpretation of Scripture Difficulties, what­ever I may understand, or believe my self about them; but rather to make my Observations, as I have begun, upon t­ hings which now are, and which we have seen and know, let what is to come, be as he pleases, who has ordered t­ hings past, and knows what is to follow. The pre­sent Case is, to speak of the mathematical Proportion that ­t here is now to be observed upon the Plain of the Globe,9 and observe how small a Part of the World it is, where the Christian Religion has r­ eally prevail’d, and is nationally profess’d, I speak of the Christian Religion, where it is, as I call it, National, that is, in its utmost Latitude; and I do so, that I may give the utmost Advantage, even against my self, in what I am ­going to say; and therefore, when I come to make Deductions for the Mixtures of barbarous Nations, I ­shall do it fairly also. I have nothing to do with the Distinctions of Christians: I hope none w ­ ill object against calling the Roman Church, a Christian Church, in this Re­spect, and the Professors of the Popish Church, Christians; neither do I scruple to call the Greek Church Christian, tho’ in some Places so blended with Superstition, and barbarous Customs, as in Georgia, Armenia, and the Borders of Persia and Tartary; likewise in many Parts of the Czar of Muscovy’s Dominions, that (as before) the Name of Christ is ­little more than just spoken of, and literally known,10 without any material Knowledge of his Person, Nature, and Dignity; or of the Homage due to him as the Redeemer of the World.

5. Time ­w ill come . . . ​into it] This is partly a paraphrase and partly a quote from Isaiah 2:2: “And it s­ hall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s ­house ­shall be established in the top of the mountains, and s­ hall be exalted above the hills; and all nations ­shall flow unto it.” Almost the same passage appears in Isaiah 11:9: “. . . ​for the earth ­shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the ­waters cover the sea.” Compare Defoe’s version with that provided in chapter 6, note 2 in this volume. Defoe’s messianic interpretation of this pas­ sage from Isaiah is in line with Poole’s interpretation. The phrase “open to the four Winds” may allude to Revelations 7:1: “and ­after ­these ­things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.” Such an allusion may explain his sarcastic comment about his statement being “a ­little too apocalyptical or visionary for the Times.” 6. Matth. xxiv.14] “And the gospel of the kingdom ­shall be preached in all the world for a wit­ ness unto all nations; and then ­shall the end come.” 7. Mark xiii. 13] “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, ­w ill seek to enter in, and s­ hall not be able.” 8. Luke xxiv.17] This refers to the appearance of Jesus (­a fter his death) to the two Apostles at Emmaus and his expounding the meaning of the prophets before him before vanis­hing. 9. Plain of the Globe] Map. See chapter 6, note 1 in this volume. 10. literally known] Known by his name. The OED is not very helpful. It gives: “1. nonce-­uses. a. By the letters (of a name),” but provides only two examples from the sixteenth ­century.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

237

The Nations of the World then, where Christ is acknowledged, and the Chris­ tian Religion is profess’d nationally, be it Romish Church or Greek Church, or even the Protestant Church, including all the several Subdivisions and Denomi­ nations of Protestants, take them all as Christians, I say, t­hese Nations are as follow. 1. In Eu­rope; Germany, France, Spain, Italy, ­Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Muscovy, Poland, Hungary, Transilvania, Moldavia, and Walachia.11 2. In Asia, Georgia, and Armenia. 3. In Africa: No Place at all, the few Factories12 of Eu­ro­pe­an Merchants, only excepted. 4. In Amer­i­ca: The Colonies of Eu­ro­pe­ans only, as follow. 1. The Spaniards, in Mexico and Peru, the Coasts of Chili, of Cartagena,13 and St. Martha,14 and a small Colony at the Buenos Ayres on the Rio de la Plata. 2. The Portuguese, in the Brasils. 3. The British, on the Coast of Amer­i­ca, from the Gulph of Florida to Cape Britoon15 on the Mouth of the Gulph of St. Lawrence, or the g­ reat River of Canada,16 also a ­little in Newfoundland, and Hudsons Bay. 4. The French in the River of Canada, and the ­great River of Mississippi. 5. The En­glish, French, and Dutch, on the Islands call’d the Carribbees, &c. The chief Seat of the Christian Religion is at pre­sent in Eu­rope: But if we mea­ sure the Quarter of the World, we call Eu­rope upon the Plan of the Globe, and cast up the northern, frozen, and indeed unhabitable Part of it, such as Laponia,17 Petzora, Candora, Obdora, and the Samoiedes,18 with Part of Siberia, they are all Pagans, with the eastern unpeopl’d Desarts, bordering upon Asia, on the Way to China, and the vast Extent of Land on that Side, which tho’ nominally ­under the

11. Transilvania, Moldavia . . . ​Walachia] All of t­ hese countries would have been in the area of what is now Romania, though Moldavia is now a separate state. Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. Aaa3, Cccv and Hhh5) discusses all of them as parts of Hungary. 12. Factories] Trading posts. 13. Cartagena] A city on the coast of what is now Columbia. 14. St. Martha] Santa Marta is a city northeast of Cartagena in modern Columbia. 15. Cape Britoon] Cape Breton Island, part of Nova Scotia. 16. g­ reat River of Canada] The St. Lawrence River. Both terms w ­ ere common during Defoe’s life time. Defoe refers to it by both names in his General History of Discoveries and Improvements, 285, “the River of Canada or St. Lawrence.” 17. Laponia] Prob­ably Lapland, mainly the northern part of Scandinavia and the northwest section of Rus­sia. 18. Petzora . . . ​Samoiedes] ­These lands and p ­ eoples of Siberia w ­ ere claimed by Rus­sia. Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. Nn4) lists Petzorche or Petzora as being “North of Moscovy, ­towards the frozen Ocean.” This is the area called the Pechora Basin on modern maps. Obdora is prob­ably conceived of as the ­people around the Ob’ or Oby river in Siberia. On the map in the volume of Adam Olearius (The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors Sent by Fredeick Duke of Holstein to . . . ​Muscovy, Tartary, Persia [London, 1662], 60–61), Obdara is west of the Ob’ and south of Nova Zembla. The Samoiedes ­were described as living on both sides of the river Ob.

238

Ser ious R eflections

Dominion of Muscovy, is yet all Pagan, even nationally so, u ­ nder no real Govern­ 19 ment, but of their own Pagan Customs. If we go from thence to the South, and take out of it the Eu­ro­pean Tartars, viz. of Circassia, the Crimee, and Budziack,20 if you go on, and draw a Line from the Crim Tartary 21 to the Danube, and from thence to the Adriatick Gulph, and cut off all the ­Grand Seignior’s Eu­ro­pe­an Dominions; I say, take this Extent of Land out of Eu­rope, and the Remainder does not mea­sure full two Thirds of Land in Eu­rope, u ­ nder the Christian Government, much of which is also Desart, and uninhabited, or at least, by such as cannot be call’d Christians, and do not con­ cern themselves about it, as particularly, the Swedish and Norwegean Lapland, the more eastern and southern Muscovy, beyond the Wolga,22 even to the Karakathay, and to the Borders of Asia on the Side of India; I say, taking in this Part, not above one half of Eu­rope is ­really inhabited by Christians. The Czar of Muscovy, of the Religion, of whose Subjects I have said enough, is Lord of a vast extended Country; and t­ hose who have measur’d it critically, say, his Dominions are larger than all the rest of Eu­rope; that is to say, that he pos­ sesses a full Half as much as Eu­rope; and in t­hose Dominions, he is Master of Abundance of Nations, that are Pagan or Mahotmetan, as in par­tic­u ­lar Circassia, being conquer’d by him, the Circassisan Tartars, who are all Mahometans, or the most of them, are his Subjects. However, since a Christian Monarch governs them, we must upon the Plan I laid down, call this a Christian Country; and that alone obliges me to give two Thirds of Eu­rope to the Christians. But this ­will bring another Account upon my Hands to ballance it, viz. That excepting this two Thirds, t­ here ­w ill not come one Christian to be accounted for in any of the other three Parts of the World, except Georgia and Armenia; as for Africa, t­ here is nothing to be mention’d on that Side: All the Christians that are on the Continent of Africk, consisting only of a few Merchants residing at the Coast Towns in the Mediterranean, as at Alexandria, ­Grand Cairo, Tunis, Tripoli, Algier, &c. The Factories of the En­glish and Dutch, on the Coast of Guinea, the Gold Coast, the Coast of Angola, and at the Cape of Good Hope; all which put together, as I have calculated them, and as they are calculated by a better Judg­ 19. own Pagan Customs] Quoting Olearius, Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. Sf5v–6), states that they had recently been converted to Chris­tian­ity, but in his History of Discoveries and Improvements, 199, Defoe disagrees, writing of the “Natives cleaving to Idolatry . . . ​as among the Samaidies and Petzoran it still remains.” The original religion of the Siberian tribes was based on the worship of aspects of nature such as mountains. 20. Circassia . . . ​Budziack] Crusoe is describing the area that is now southern Rus­sia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, from the west side of the Caspian Sea (Circassia) to the west side of the Black Sea where the Danube enters (Budziack). 21. Crim Tartary] This refers to the area around the Dnieper River where it enters the Black Sea. The Krim Tatars w ­ ere nomadic and warlike, and as Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary, suggests (sig. Aa6–6v), in 1571 they marched to and set fire to Moscow. They had recently allied themselves with the Turks and turned from Chris­tian­ity to Islam. 22. Wolga] Volga on modern maps. The g­ reat Rus­sian river that empties into the Caspian Sea.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

239

ment than mine, ­w ill not amount to 5000 ­People, excepting Christian Slaves in Sallee, Algier, Tunis, Tripoli, &c. which are not so many more. Amer­i­ca is throng’d with Christians, God wot,23 such as they are; for I must confess, the Eu­ro­pe­an Inhabitants of some of the Colonies ­t here, as well French and En­glish, as Spanish and Dutch, very ill merit that Name. Some Part of Amer­i­ca is entirely ­under the Dominion and Government of the Eu­ro­pe­an Nations; and having indeed destroy’d the Natives, and made desolate the Country, they may be said to be Christian Countries in the Sense, as above. But what Numbers do t­ hese amount to, compar’d to the Inhabitants of so g­ reat a Part of the World, as that of Amer­i­ca, which at least is three Times as big as Eu­rope, and in which are still vast extended Countries, infinite Numbers of ­People24 of Nations unknown, and even unheard of; which neither the En­glish, French, Spanish, or Portuguese have ever seen; Witness the populous Cities and innumerable Nations, which Sir Walter Raleigh met with in his Voyage up the g­ reat River Oroonoque;25 in one of which they talk of two Millions of P ­ eople, Witness the Nations infinitely populous, spread on both Sides the River de Amozones,26 and all the Country between t­hese two prodigious Rivers, being a Country abouve 400 Miles in Breadth, and 1600 Miles in Length, besides its 23. wot] Knows. Although not entirely out of use in Defoe’s time, it prob­ably had an archaic or biblical feel to it (for example, Genesis 21:26). 24. infinite Numbers of P ­ eople] The argument about vast numbers of p ­ eople in Amer­i­ca, many of whom ­were destroyed by their lack of immunity to the diseases brought by the Eu­ro­pe­a ns, has been put forward by a number of modern scholars. The con­temporary wit­ ness, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, mentioned disease as one of the contributing ­factors to the massive extinction of the population. The number has sometimes been put at twenty million, sometimes forty million. A summary may be found in Charles Mann, 1491 (New York: Knopf, 2005), 90–112, 126, 132–133, 281–284. See also Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of Amer­ i­ca, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 135–164; and Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies trans. Herma Briffault (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 68–82, 109–129. 25. Sir Walter Raleigh . . . ​Oroonoque] In his Discoverie of the large, rich, and beautifull Empire of Guiana (in Richard Hakluyt, The Princi­ple Navigations, 8 vols., Everyman Library ed. [London: Dent, 1926], 7:286–287, 290), Raleigh speaks of the huge numbers of ­people in Guiana, and he gives an account of Juan Martinez, who stated that it took two days to cross the city of Manoa or El Dorado to arrive at the palace of the “Inga.” Since con­temporary writers on po­liti­cal economy often equated numbers of p ­ eople with wealth, this is almost as impor­tant as the gold that Raleigh insisted existed in vast amounts in Guiana. In his History of the Principal Discoveries, 289–90, Defoe wrote that “some who have calculated upon the Accounts give by Texeira, Orelliana, Sir Walter Raleigh, and ­others, tell us, that if the rest of the Country is equally Populous, and as ­t here is reason to believe it is, ­t here must be more ­People in it than was in all that part of Amer­i­ca which the Spaniards subdued.” Since con­ temporary writers on po­liti­cal economy often equated numbers of ­people with wealth, this is as impor­tant as the gold that Raleigh insisted existed in vast amounts in Guiana. In his Manufacturer of 10 August 1720, Defoe issued a challenge to his readers as he asked why “no bold Undertaker follow’d the glorious Sir Walter Raleigh up the River of Amazon, the Rio Parano, and the ­Great Oroonoque where thousands of nations remain undiscover’d . . . ​a nd the infinite Numbers of the ­People exceeds all that has ever been conquer’d or discover’d in the American World.” 26. River de Amozones] Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. C1) calls what ­today is simply the Amazon, the “River of Amazons,” and Defoe was prob­ably consulting a Spanish Atlas at

240

Ser ious R eflections

Extent South even to the Rio Paraguay,27 and S.E. to the Brasils,28 a rich, fruit­ ful, and populous Country; and in which, by the Accounts given, ­t here must be more P ­ eople inhabiting at this Time, than in all the Christian Part of Eu­rope put together, being the Chief, if not the only Part of Amer­i­ca, into which the Spaniards never came, and ­whether the frighted ­People fled from them, being so fortify’d with Rivers and unpassable Bays and rapid Currents, and so inaccessible by the Number of Inhabitants, the Heat of the Climate, and the Mountains, Waterfals, and such other Obstructions, that the Spaniards durst never attempt to penetrate the Way. What are the Numbers of Christians in Amer­i­ca, put them altogether to the Inhabitants of t­ hese Parts of Amer­i­ca, besides the Northern Parts of Amer­i­ca not enquir’d into. But we are not calculating of ­People yet, but the Extent of Land, that the Chris­ tians possess, the British Colonies in the North, are by far the most populous even more than the Spaniards themselves, though the latter extend themselves over more Land. The British Colonies in the North of Amer­i­ca are supposed to contain Three Hundred Thousand Souls, including Nova Scotia, New ­England, New York, New Jersey, East and West29 Pensilvania, Mary­land, ­Virginia, and Carolina, and t­ hese lye extended upon the Coast from the Latitude of 32 Degrees, to 47, or there­ abouts, being about 750 Miles in Length; but then much of this is very thinly peopled, and the Breadth they lye West into the Country is l­ittle or nothing, 50 Miles or 60 Miles is in many Places the most; and except some Plantations in ­Virginia in Rapahanock, and James River in ­Virginia, occasioned by the ­great In-­ let of the Bay 30 t­here, and of the Rivers that fall into it. We can see nothing an the time. Much of this research on the distribution of religious beliefs went into his entirely secular section of Atlas Maritimus & Commercialis (1728). 27. Rio Paraguay] Defoe may have been thinking of a number of rivers in South Amer­i­ca that connect to each other as a single river. The Pilcomayo joins the Paraguay and flows into the Parana, which flows into the Rio de la Plata. Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary, speaks of this system as “one of the greatest Rivers of Amer­i­ca” (sig. Mm5). 28. S.E. to the Brasils] Bohun, Geo­g raph­i­c al Dictionary (sig. G2) had Brazil extending as far as thirty-­nine degrees south, thereby taking up large areas of modern Uruguay and Argentina. 29. New Jersey, East and West,] In the first edition, the lack of a comma ­a fter “West” seemed to refer to parts of Pennsylvania, but it was East and West Jersey that ­were separate colonies ­until 22 April 1702, when the two parts ­were united as New Jersey ­under the governance of Queen Anne. Although John Oldmixon, in his The British Empire in Amer­i­ca, 2 vols. (Lon­ don, 1708), 134–148, has a single section for “New-­Jersey,” his discussion is divided into sepa­ rate considerations of the east and west sections of the colony. Defoe seems to have thought of them along this division and describes them so in his Plan of the En­glish Commerce, 264. In his Atlas Maritimus, 291–292, he refers to them as “two Colonies East and West Jersey” and explains how, a­ fter the area was taken from the Dutch, it was divided by private ventur­ ers. Defoe describes the area as the “most flourishing as to its Cultivation, of all North Amer­ i­ca.” But Moll Flanders (327), who “naturally lov’d warm Weather,” considers “East and West Jersey” as too cold for her tastes. 30. Rapahanock . . . ​Bay] Both the Rappahannock and the James rivers flow into Chesapeake Bay.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

241

hundred Miles within that Land but waste and Woods, whose Inhabitants seem to be fled farther up into the Country from the Face of their Enemies the Christians. So that all this planting though so considerable, amounts to no more com­ pared to the Country itself, than a long narrow Slip of Land upon the Sea-­Coast, ­t here being very few En­glish Inhabitants planted any where above twenty Miles from the Sea, or from some navigable River, and even that Sea-­Coast itself very thinly inhabited, and particularly from New-­England to New York, from New-­ England North to Annapolis;31 from ­Virginia to Carolina; so that all this ­great Colony or Collection of Colonies, nay, tho’ we include the French at Canada, are but a Point, a Handful, compar’d to the vast Extent of Land lying West and North-­ West from them, even to the South-­Sea,32 an Extent of Continent full of innu­ merable Nations of P ­ eople unknown, undiscovered, never search’d into or indeed heard of, but from one another, much greater in its Extent than all Eu­rope. If we take the North Part of Amer­i­ca exclusive of all the Country, which the Spaniards possess, and which they call the Empire of Mexico; and exclusive too of what the En­glish and French possess on the Coast, and in the two Rivers of Canada and Mississippi as above, which indeed are but Trifles; the rest of that Coun­ try which as far as it has been travelled into, is found exceeding populous, is a ­great deal larger than all Eu­rope, though we have not reckoned the most Northern, Fro­ zen and almost unhabitable Part of it, where no End can be found, and where it is no doubt, but ­t here is a contiguous Continent with the Northern Part of Asia, or so near joyning, as to be only parted by a narrow Gulph and Streight of Sea,33 easily passed over both by Man or Beast, or e­ lse it would be hard to give an Account how Man or Beast came into that Part of the World;34 I say, this vast Continent full of P ­ eople, and no doubt, inhabited by many Millions of Souls, is all 31. North to Annapolis] Annapolis in Nova Scotia, sometimes called Annapolis Royal. Set­ tled by the French during the early seventeenth ­century and known as Port-­Royal, it was captured by British forces in 1710, during the War of the Spanish Succession, and renamed ­a fter Queen Anne. It was ceded to Britain by France as one of the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. 32. South-­Sea] The Pacific Ocean. The OED 3a gives this as an obsolete usage for the entire Pacific Ocean, but the context suggests the area off what is now the west coasts of Amer­i­ca and Canada and not, as would ­later be the case, the area of the Pacific south of the equator. 33. narrow . . . ​Streight of Sea] Defoe’s guess about the Bering Strait may have been based more on theology and con­temporary anthropology than geography, since that part of the Pacific had not yet been explored. In 1741, Vitus Bering sailed from Kamchatka and discov­ ered the straits that are now named for him. 34. how Man or Beast . . . ​World] The theory put forward ­here about the settling of Amer­i­ca from Siberia is approximately that accepted by modern anthropologists. One theory that Defoe put forward somewhat ­later had to do with the possibility that Amer­i­ca was settled by ­t hose fleeing from Carthage a­ fter the Roman conquest or that American civilization was the result of colonies established by Carthage and allowed to languish ­a fter the conquest. See his History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements (1727), 108, in which he argued that the civilization of Mexico, when it was encountered by Hernán Cortés, was “plainly related to the Cartha­ginian nation”; and his Plan of the En­glish Commerce (1728), 235, in which he cred­ ited the “indefatigable Cartha­ginians” with colonizing Amer­i­ca.

242

Ser ious R eflections

wrapt up in Idolatry and Paganism, given up to Ignorance and Blindness, wor­ shipping the Sun, the Moon, the Fire, the Hills their ­Fathers, and in a Word the Devil. As to the ­Thing we call Religion, or the Knowledge of the true God, much less the Doctrine of the Messiah, and the Name of Christ, they not only have not, but never had the least Intimation of it on Earth, or Revelation of it from Heaven, till the Spaniards came among them: Nay, and now Christians are come among them, ’tis hard to say, w ­ hether the Paganism is much abated, except by the infinite Rav­ ages the Spaniards made where they came, who rooted out the Idolatry35 by destroying the Idolaters, not by converting them; having cruelly cut off, as their own Writers affirm, above seventy Millions36 of ­People, and left the Country naked of its Inhabitants for many hundred Miles together. But what need we come to Calcuations for the pre­sent Time with Re­spect to Amer­i­ca, let us but be at the Trou­ble to look back a l­ittle more than a Hundred Years, which is as nothing at all in the Argument; how had the ­whole Continent of Amer­i­ca extended almost from Pole to Pole, with all the Islands round it, and peopled with such innumerable Multitudes of ­People, been as it ­were entirely abandoned to the Dev­il’s Government, even from the beginning of Time, or at least from the second Peopling the World by Noah37 to the 16th ­Century, when Ferdinando Cortez,38 General for the famous Charles the 5th,39 first landed in the Gulph of Mexico? We have heard much of the Cruelty of the Spaniards in destroying such Multi­ tudes of the Inhabitants ­t here, and of cutting off ­whole Nations by Fire and Sword: 35. rooted out the Idolatry] Defoe used almost the same words in his Review, 28 June 1711 (8:166–167) in describing Cortés’s conquest of Mexico: “Nor ­shall I meddle ­here with the Cruelty and Barbarity with which the Spaniards Treated the poor Natives of that Country, and which all Writers, nay, even some of their own, exclaim against. . . . ​Now was the time for him to secure the Possession; and which way could this be done, but by Rooting out the Inhabitan . . . ​[t]s?—­But pray forget not as you go, that I told you at first, you must set aside Humanity, Justice, and Chris­tian­ity out of it—­And what indeed has Meer Policy to do with any of t­ hese?” 36. own Writers . . . ​seventy Millions] The usual source for the “Black Legend” of Spanish cruelty in Amer­i­ca, to which Crusoe alludes in The Strange Surprizing Adventures, is Las Casas’s The Devastation of the Indies. See chapter 6, note 40 in this volume. 37. Second Peopling . . . ​Noah] See Genesis 6–10 for the story of Noah, the flood, and the repeopling of the earth through Noah’s offspring. 38. Ferdinando Cortez] More properly Hernán or Hernando Cortés. His dates are 1485–1547. ­A fter some difficulties departing from Cuba, he arrived at Tabasco on 12 March 1519, where ­a fter a victory in b ­ attle with the Indians, he claimed the land for the King of Spain. In his Jure Divino, bk. 2, p. 12, Defoe listed Cortés among the cruel “Men of Blood,” and in a foot­ note added that in conquering Mexico, he destroyed “all the Inhabitants with the utmost Cruelty and Barbarity, unpeopling ­whole Kingdomes.” Defoe estimated that in a single part of Mexico, Cortés had destroyed “5 Million of P ­ eople.” See also Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico 1517–1521, trans. A. P. Maudslay (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 47–52. 39. Charles the 5th] Defoe had an interest in Charles V (1500–1558), particularly his capture of Tunis and attempt to take Algiers in North Africa in 1535–1536. Defoe mentions him in sev­ eral works written during the 1720s. And much e­ arlier, in the issue of the Review mentioned above (28 June 1711 [8:166]), he also speaks of his familiarity with a “Life” of Charles V.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

243

But as I am for giving up all the Actions of Men to the Government of Providence, it seems to me, that Heaven had determined such an Act of Vengeance should be executed, and of which the Spaniards ­ were Instruments,40 to destroy t­hose ­People, who w ­ ere come up (by the Influence of the Devil, no Doubt) to such a dreadful height, in that abhorr’d Custom of ­human Sacrifies, that the innocent Blood cried for it, and it seemed to be a Time to put a Stop to that Crime, lest the very Race of P ­ eople should at last be extinct by their own Butcheries. The Magnitude of this may be guessed at, by the T ­ emple consecrated to the ­great Idol of Vistlipustli41 in the City of Mexico, where at the Command of Montezuma the Pagan Monarch, twenty thousand Men ­were sacrificed in a Year, and the Wall hung a Foot thick with clotted Blood,42 dashed in Ceremony against the Side of that Place on ­t hose Occasions. This Abomination God in his Providence, put an End to, by destroying ­t hose Nations from the Face of the Earth, bringing a Race of bearded Strangers upon them, cutting in Pieces Man, W ­ oman and Child, destroying their Idols, and even the Idolatry it self by the Spaniards; who, however wicked in themselves; yet ­were in this to be esteemed Instruments in the Hand of Heaven, to execute the divine Justice, on Nations, whose Crimes w ­ ere come up to a full Height, and that call’d for Vengeance. I make no doubt (to carry on this Digression a ­little farther) that when God cast out the Heathen,43 so the Scripture calls it, from before the Israelites, and the Iniquity of the ­People of the Land was full, Joshua, Moses, and the Israelites ­were tax’d with as much Cruelty44 and Inhumanity, in destroying the Cities, 40. Spaniards ­were Instruments] Las Casas saw such a view as essentially a delusion of the Spanish conquerors, but taking a providential view of history, Crusoe sees the Spanish, how­ ever awful they may have acted, as part of God’s general plan. The ostensible rationale of Cortés’s expedition was the conversion of the Indians to Chris­tian­ity. See Las Casas, Devastation of the Indies, 89. 41. Idol of Vistlipustli] For this Aztec God of War and the sacrifices made to him, see Fran­ cisco López de Gómara, The Pleasant Historie of the Conquest of the Weast India, trans. Thomas Nicholas (London, 1578; repr., New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles, 1940), 195, 205. In a footnote in Jure Divino, bk. 1, p.  13, giving expanded commentary on a list of gods wor­ shipped by the Americans at the time of the Spanish conquest, Defoe noted that Vislipustli “was the g­ reat idol of the Mexicans, to whom they offered h ­ uman Sacrifices; and to such a Height has the Devil brought his Dominion over ­t hose poor ­people, that in two years time, 20000 P ­ eople w ­ ere sacrific’d to this idol: The Walls of his T ­ emple ­were sprinkled two or three Inches thick on the Inside, with the Blood of t­ hese poor Creatures, who w ­ ere put to Death at his Altar.” Defoe expresses some doubts about the dependability of such accounts, but he notes that “­t hese Murthers ­were perpetrated with all sorts of Barbarous Torments, and hor­ rid, execrable Methods of Torture.” 42. clotted Blood] For descriptions of the massive amount of blood in the ­temples and the stench, see Diaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 218–220, 436; Martyr, De Orbe Novo, 2:118 (de­cade 5); and Gómara, Pleasant Historie, 203. Gómara, with his descrip­ tion of the “foote thicke of bloud” on the ground, is prob­ably Defoe’s most immediate source. Defoe gave a similar account in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 260. 43. cast out the Heathen] This is a direct quote from Psalms 78:55; 80:8. 44. Heathen . . . ​Cruelty] The book of Joshua is particularly replete with conquests and the slaughter of p ­ eoples. The destruction of Jericho (Joshua 6:21) is a good example.

244

Ser ious R eflections

killing Man, ­Woman, and Child; nay, even destroying the very ­Cattle, and Trees, and Fruits of the Earth, as ever the Spaniards ­were charg’d with in the Conquest of Mexico. This is apparent by the Terror that was spread upon the Minds of the ­People round about them, whereof thousands fled to other Parts of the World. That His­ tory tells us, that the first Builders of the City of Carthage, long before the Roman Times,45 or before the Fable of Queen Dido,46 ­were some Phenicians, that is to say, Canaanites,47 who flying for their Lives, got Ships and went away to Sea, planting themselves on the Coast of Africk, as the first Place of Safety they arriv’d at, and to prove this a Pillar of Stone, was found not far from Tripoli, on which was cut in Phenician Characters, t­ hese Words, We are of ­those who fled from the Face of Joshua the Robber.48 The Cruelties of the Israelites, in destroying the Nations of the Land of Canaan, was commanded from Heaven; and therein Joshua was justify’d49 in what was done. The Cruelties of the Spaniards, however abohorr’d by us, was doubtless an 45. Carthage . . . ​before . . . ​Roman Times] During the years 268–241, 219–202, and 149–146 b.c.e., Rome fought three wars (known as the Punic Wars) against Carthage, its rival for control of the Mediterranean. A ­ fter its complete destruction, Carthage was revived as a Roman colony. Following its conquest by the Vandals, it was retaken in 533 c.e. by Belisarius for the Byzantine remnants of the Roman Empire. In 698 c.e., it was destroyed by the Arabs. Defoe viewed the Cartha­ginians and the Phoenicians as among ­t hose who might have led to the advancement of trade had they survived. See his History of the Principal Discoveries, 70. ­ aughter of Belus, the King of 46. Fable of Queen Dido] Legend had it that Dido was the d Tyre, a Phoenician. She fled Tyre ­a fter her ­brother, Pygmalion, murdered her wealthy hus­ band, Sychaeus. Appearing to her in a dream, Sychaes revealed the cause of his death and the location of his trea­sure. Dido took her riches and fled to the area around Carthage, where she used her wealth and cleverness to obtain a large area of land and founded the city of Car­ thage. In Virgil’s Aeneid ([Works], trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 2 vols., Loeb Library [Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951], 1:240–445 [books 1–4]), the hero, fleeing from the destruction of Troy, arrives in Carthage, where he becomes the lover of Dido. Pursuing his destiny, Aeneas departs for Italy, and Dido kills herself. ­ ere is prob­ably correct. Th ­ ose 47. Phenicians . . . ​Canaanites] The relationship sketched out h called Canaanites in the Old Testament w ­ ere merchants allied with the Phoenicians and who controlled much of the Mediterranean coast. For a con­temporary argument to this effect, see Theo­philus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1672), 1:bk. 1, 18–22. For Defoe’s interest in this subject and his belief that had Carthage not been conquered trade might have flourished throughout the world, see his History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, 44–46, 73–75, 100–106. He views Tyre as the center of the trading world at the time. 48. We . . . ​Robber] This is recorded in Procopius, History of the Wars, trans. H. B. Dewing, Loeb Library, 7 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 2:289 (4:ix.22). Defoe is likely to have found it in one of the many works he was reading for his section of Atlas ­ nder Tangier, sig. Commercialis & Maritimus (1728). See, for example, Bohun’s (1695) entry u Eee4v, where he ascribes this information to Procopius and states that it was inscribed on “an ancient Pillar . . . ​in the Phoenician Tongue.” Bohun’s version is slightly dif­fer­ent: “We are fled from Joshua the Son of Nun, a Robber.” Defoe also quotes this inscription in his History of the Principal Discoveries, 72. 49. Joshua was justify’d] At the beginning of the book of Joshua 1:1–11, God speaks directly to Joshua commanding him to be courageous and follow his instructions. He reminds Joshua of his promise to give the land to the ­people of Israel. The Lord continues to instruct Joshua in conquests that involved killing all of the ­enemy. See, for example, Joshua 10:40.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

245

Appointment of God, for the Destruction of the wickedest and most abominable ­People upon Earth. But this is all a Digression; I come to my Calculation: It is true, that the Spaniards, whom I allow to be Christians, have possess’d the Empires of Mexico and Peru: But a­ fter all the Havock they made, and the Millions of Souls they dismiss’d out of Life ­t here, yet the Natives are infinitely the Majority of the Inhabitants; and tho’ many of them are christianiz’d, they are ­little more than subjected, and take all the Spaniards, Christians, and all the Portuguese in the Brasils, all the En­glish and French in the North, and in a Word, all the Christians in Amer­i­ca, and put them together, they w ­ ill not ballance one Part of the Pagans or Mahometans in Eu­rope: For Example, take the Crim Tartars50 of Eu­rope, who inhabit the Bank of the Euxine51 Sea, they are more in Number than all the Christians in Amer­ i­ca; so that setting one Nation against the other, you may reckon that ­t here is not one Christian, or as if ­there ­were not one Christian in ­those three Parts of the World, Asia, Africa, and Amer­i­ca, except the Greeks of Asia. This is a just but a very sad Account of the small Extent of Christian Knowl­ edge in the World; and w ­ ere it consider’d, as it o ­ ught, would put the most power­ ful Princes of Eu­rope upon thinking of some Methods, at least to open a Way for the spreading Christian Knowledge. I am not much of the Opinion indeed, that Religion should be planted by the Sword: But as the Christian Princes of Eu­rope, however few in Number, are yet so superior to all the rest of the World in martial Experience and the Art of War, nothing is more certain than that, if they could unite their Interest, they are able to beat Paganism out of the World. Nothing is more certain than this, that would the Christian Princes unite their Powers, and act in Concert, they might destroy the Turkish Empire, and the Persian Kingdom, and beat the very Name of Mahomet out of the World. It is no Boast to say, That ­were ­t here no intestine Broils among us, the Chris­ tian Soldiery is so evidently superior to the Turks at this Time, that had they all join’d a­ fter the late Battel at Belgrade,52 to have sent 80000 Veteran Soldiers to have join’d Prince Eugene,53 and supply’d him with Money and Provisions by the Ports of the Adriatic Gulph, and the Archipelago,54 that Prince would in two or three Campaigns, have driven the Mahometans out of Eu­rope, taken Constantinople, and have overturn’d the Turkish Empire.55 50. Crim Tartars] See chapter 6, note 21 in this volume. 51. Euxine Sea] The Black Sea. 52. late Battel at Belgrade] Eugene’s victory over the Turkish army sent to relieve Belgrade occurred on 16 August 1717, and the city surrendered two days ­later. This had been preceded by Prince Eugene’s victories at Peterswardein on 5 August 1716 and at Banat on 12 October of the same year. 53. Prince Eugene] To many Britons, Prince Eugene (1663–1736) was a genuine hero ­a fter his victories in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1712). Whereas the En­glish general, the Duke of Marlborough, had been attacked for his supposed avarice and ambition, Prince Eugene’s reputation remained strong. 54. Archipelago] The Ægean Sea, between Greece and Asia Minor. 55. overturn’d the Turkish Empire] Although Prince Eugene had won impressive victories, his army had been outnumbered in t­ hese ­battles, and he had been fortunate. The deaths of

246

Ser ious R eflections

­ fter such a Conquest, ­whether might not the Christian Religion have spread? A The King of Spain56 with the same Ease would reduce the Moors of Barbary,57 and dispossess ­t hose Sons of Hell the Algerines, Tripolines, Tunizeens, and all the Mahometan Pyrates of that Coast, and plant again the antient Churches of Africk, the Sees of Tertullian,58 St. Cyprian,59 &c. Nay, even the Czar of Muscovy,60 an enterprizing and glorious Prince, well assisted and supported by his Neighbours, the Northern Powers,61 who together many of the leaders at Peterswardein and a fog at the defeat of the Turkish army coming to the relief of Belgrade had helped him. It is impossible not to think that in ­t hese pages the reader is being given the view of Crusoe, the enthusiast who exploded the Tatar’s idol and brought down the wrath of the Tatar nation upon his caravan, rather than a Defoe who knew how thoroughly Eu­rope was involved in “intestine Broils” (250:23–24). He certainly knew how much difficulty Peter the ­Great had experienced in his wars against the Turks. 56. King of Spain] During the past two years before 1720, Spain, ­under the direction of Car­ dinal Alberoni, had attempted to confront the other nations of Eu­rope and gain new territo­ ries. But Spain’s efforts to assert some degree of power in Eu­rope ­were quickly thwarted. 57. Moors of Barbary] Since Crusoe had been held as a slave in Salé (Sallee) in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, his attack on the Barbary pirates may be assumed to have a degree of personal involvement. 58. Tertullian] See chapter 6, note 59 in this volume. 59. Sees of Tertullian, St.  Cyprian] Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus’s dates are approximately 160–230 c.e. He converted to Chris­tian­ity around 190 c.e., became a Presby­ ter of the orthodox Catholic Church, but around 207 withdrew from the Church to lead a small Montanist group in Carthage. He wrote vari­ous defenses of Chris­tian­ity during the persecutions that took place in the reign of Lucius Septimius Severus (193–211 c.e.). Saint Cyprian (ca. 200–258 CE), whose full name was Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, was Bishop of the Church at Carthage (ca. 248). He was beheaded at Carthage ten years l­ ater on 14 Septem­ ber 258 CE. ­ reat (Pyotr Alekséyevich Romanov), lived 60. Czar of Muscovy] Peter I, known as Peter the G from 1672 to 1725. He became ruler of Rus­sia with his b ­ rother Ivan in 1682, and ruled alone ­a fter Ivan’s death in 1696. The opening of Defoe’s Consolidator, 1, expressed his admiration for Peter, whom he viewed as increasing his “Power” and helping to enrich and to polish his “Unpolite ­People.” Defoe saw him as advancing his nation in “War and Trade,” and went on to praise him for modernizing his army. He speculated in his Review (14 February  1706 [3:80]) that Eu­rope would eventually regret having taught Peter the arts of war. He had been defeated by Charles XII of Sweden at the ­Battle of Narva in 1700, but won a resounding vic­ tory over Charles XII at the ­Battle of Poltava in 1709. On the other hand, he was defeated resoundingly by the Turks in 1710. He expanded his control over Siberia, but the notion that he might join with the Swedes in a march across Siberia to win a victory over the Chinese seems a utopian scheme hatched in the mind of the enthusiastic Crusoe. In the Review of 6 March 1707 (4:46), he wrote of the difficulty of fighting in Rus­sian terrain: “War is at an End when you come to Woods and Wildernesses.” 61. Northern Powers] Sweden had been the dominant force in Scandinavia u ­ ntil Charles XII was defeated by Rus­sian forces at the B ­ attle of Poltava in 1709. During the seventeenth ­century the “Swedish Discipline” of its soldiers ­under the command of Gustavus Adolphus became a focal point of militant Protestantism. In the Review of 15 July 1704 (1:165), Defoe wrote of Gustavus Adolphus as having “an Army of old iron-­faced Swedes, as hard as the Ice they march’d on,” and in 1720 devoted the first half of his Memoirs of the Cavalier to a glori­ fication of the Swedish monarch. But in 1718 his descendant, the amazingly heroic Charles XII, died in b ­ attle, leaving his nation in financial ruin. The notion that Sweden would be ready for a military operation that would join them with their ­enemy, Peter the ­Great’s Rus­ sia, in an adventure such as Crusoe proposes was close to impossible.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

247

are Masters of the best Soldiery in the World, would not find it impossible to march an Army of 36000 Foot and 16000 Horse, in Spite of waste and unhospi­ table Desarts, even to attack the Chinese Empire;62 who, notwithstanding their infinite Numbers, pretended Policy and ­great Skill in War, would sink in the Operation: And such an Army of disciplin’d Eu­ro­pe­an Soldiers, would beat all the Forces of that vast Empire, with the same (or greater) Ease, as Alexander with 30000 Macedonians destroy’d the Army of Darius,63 which consisted of 68000 Men. And let no Man ridicule this Proj­ect, on Account the March which I know they ­will call 3000 Miles and more: While ­t here is no Obstruction, but the Length of the Way, it is not so difficult as some may imagine; ’tis far from impossible, to furnish sufficient Provisions for the March,64 which is indeed the only Difficulty that carries any Terror in it. Such a Prince as the Czar of Muscovy65 cannot want the Assistance of innu­ merable Hands for the Amassing, or Carriage for conveying to proper Magazines, sufficient Stores of Provisions, for the maintaining a select chosen Body of Men to march over the Desarts; for in the ­grand March, no useless Mouths should be found to feed. Why then should not the Christian Princes think it a Deed of Compassion to the Souls of Men, as well as an h ­ umble Agency to the Work of Providence, and to the Fulfilling the Promises of their Saviour, by a moderate, and as far as in them lyes, a bloodless Conquest, to reduce the w ­ hole World to the Government of Christian Power, and so plant the Name and Knowledge of Christ Jesus among the Heathens and Mahometans? I am not supposing, that they can plant real Reli­ gion in this manner; the Business of Power, is to open the Way to the Gospel of 62. attack the Chinese Empire] In The Farther Adventures, Crusoe comments on the ease with which a con­temporary Eu­ro­pean army might defeat China. He noted that Eu­ro­pean artillery would make short work of the ­Great Wall. The Jesuit, Louis Le Comte, a genuine admirer of China and its civilization, had made similar statements. See Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations . . . ​Made in a Late Journey through the Empire of China (London, 1698), 73. ­ reat (356–323 b.c.e.) fought several b ­ attles with 63. Alexander . . . ​Darius] Alexander the G Darius III or Darius Codomannus (ca. 380–330 b.c.e.). One possibility is the ­battle of Issus, fought in November 333 b.c.e., but Defoe was prob­ably thinking of the ­battle at Gaugamela (331 b.c.e.), where Alexander completely defeated the army of Darius, though it was much larger than his own. In his “Historical Collections” (p. 28, item 71), Defoe spoke of Darius’s “­great Army of a Million of Men.” Plutarch devoted several pages to the ­battle at Gaugamela. See Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Library, 11 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer­ sity Press), 7:315–327 (31:1–33:5). 64. Czar of Muscovy] One of the prob­lems with fighting amid the barren steppes of Rus­sia involved being able to have adequate supplies of w ­ ater and food. Peter the G ­ reat’s campaigns against the Turks often found­ered on precisely this difficulty. See Defoe?, An Impartial History of the Life and Actions of Peter Alexowitz, the Pre­sent Czar of Muscovy (London, 1723), 328–329; and Robert Massie, Peter the ­Great (New York: Knopf, 1980), 826. 65. sufficient Provisions . . . ​March] In The Farther Adventures, Crusoe had journeyed with a caravan from China, through Siberia, and into Rus­sia, but what a caravan might accomplish a fully equipped army of the period would likely find close to impossible.

248

Ser ious R eflections

Peace,66 the Servants of the King of the Earth are to fight, that the Servants of the King of Heaven may preach. Let but an open Door be made for the preaching of the Word of God, and the Ministers of Christ be admitted, if they do not spread Christian Knowledge over the Face of the Earth, the Fault w ­ ill be their’s. Let but the military Power reduce the Pagan World, and banish the Devil and Mahomet67 from the Face of the Earth, the Knowledge of God be diligently spread, the Word of God duly preach’d, and the ­People meekly and faithfully instructed in the Christian Religion; the World would soon receive the Truth, and the Knowledge of divine ­Things would be the Study and Delight of Mankind. I know, some nice and difficult P ­ eople would object h ­ ere, how are the pre­sent Body of Christians, as you call them, qualified to convert the Pagan and Maho­ metan World, when they are not able to ­settle the main Point, viz. What the Christian Religion is, Or, what they would convert them to? That Chris­tian­ity is subdivided into so many Parts, and par­tic­u­lar Princi­ples, the ­People so divided in their Opinion; and that which is still worse, ­t here is so ­little Charity68 among the several Sorts, that some of them would rather side with Mahomet69 against their Neighbours, than assist to propagate that par­tic­u ­lar Doctrine in Religion, which they condemn. Thus the Members of the Protestant Faith would make it a Point of 66. Gospel of Peace] Although Crusoe is speaking as an enthusiast, it is doubtful that Defoe would have seen the irony of this phrase despite its presence in the midst of passages advo­ cating war on a vast scale. 67. Devil and Mahomet] If this renewal of a Christian crusade seems somewhat bizarre, it may be pointed out that during the Iraq War, which began in 2002, ­t here ­were commentators on tele­v i­sion who advised that the United States o ­ ught to conquer the ­Middle East and force Chris­tian­ity upon the inhabitants. 68. Chris­tian­ity . . . ​­little Charity] During 1719 and 1720 disputes arose at Heidelberg between Protestants and Roman Catholics that embroiled George I, as Elector of Hanover, in a dis­ pute that, as one historian has argued, might have started the equivalent of the Thirty Years’ War. See Penfield Roberts, The Quest for Security 1715–1740 (New York: Harper & Row, 1947), 61–62; and Karl Borgmann, Der Deutsche Religionstreit der Jahre 1719/20 (Berlin: Verlag für Staatswissenschaften und Geschichte, 1937), 33–44. 69. side with Mahomet] Perhaps a reference to Imre Thököly or as he was usually known in ­England, Count Teckley or Teckeley. During the 1670s and 1680s, Teckley led the Protestants in Hungary against the Austrians and sometimes allied his forces with the Ottoman Empire. ­There was much debate among the Dissenters in ­England at the time as to ­whether they should be sympathetic to Teckley or not. In a series of Reviews from 26 September  1704 (1:250) to 7 October  1704 (1:261), Defoe criticized Teckley’s embrace of the Turks as allies against the Catholic Austrians. Defoe remarked, “I am forced to say the Protestants w ­ ere the first Christians that ever call’d in the help of Mahomet to Establish the Christian Religion, that ever spread the half Moon and the Cross both of a side, and fought one Devil to thrust out another” (1:250). He described the visit made by Teckley to the Bassa of Buda and how Teckly seemed to embrace Islam. Indeed the Turks officially recognized Teckley as a vassal king. But he was on the wrong side of history. A ­ fter the defeat of the Turkish forces at the Siege of Vienna on 12 September 1683, the power of the Ottoman Empire declined gradually as Eu­ro­pean forces won victory ­a fter victory and Austrian dominance of the area drove out the Protestant re­sis­tance. See the broadside ­Great News from Count Teckely (London, 1684); David Ogg, Eu­rope in the Seventeenth ­Century (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1946), 489–497; and Frederick Nussbaum, The Triumph of Science and Reason 1660–1685 (New York: Harper & Row, 1953), 240–242.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

249

Princi­ple, not to supporr or propagate the Interest of Popery in such a Conquest as this: And again, the Catholicks would as much make it a Duty on them to root out Heresy, so they call the Protestant Doctrine, as they would root out Paganism and the Worship of Dev­ils. I would not answer for some Protestants, that they would not be of the same Mind as to par­tic­u ­lar Divisions among Protestants: The Difference among some Opinions is such, and their Want of Charity one to another, sets them as such Variance, that if they do not censure one another for Devil-­Worshippers, yet we know they frequently call some of the opposite Princi­ples, Doctrines of Dev­ils; and persecute one another with as much Fury, as ever the Heathen persecuted the Primitive Churches. Witness the Vio­lences which have reign’d between the Episcopal and Presby­ terian Parties, in the North of Ireland,70 and in Scotland, which has so often broken out into a Flame of War,71 and that Flame been always quench’d with Blood. Witness the frequent Persecutions, Wars, Massacres,72 and other cruel and unnatural ­Doings, which have been in ­these Parts of the World among Chris­ tians, the Effect of a mistaken Zeal for the Christian Religion; which as it was not planted by Blood and Vio­lence, so much less can Christians justify the Endeav­ ours to erect this or that Opinion in it, by the Ruine and Blood of their Brethren. But this is far from being a Reason, why we should not think it our Duty to subdue the barbarous and idolatrous Nations of the World; in Order to suppress the Worshipping the Devil, who is the ­Enemy not only of God, and of all true Religion in the World, but who is the ­great Destroyer and ­Enemy of Mankind,73 70. Vio­lences . . . ​North of Ireland] ­There was considerable sectarian vio­lence in Ireland in 1689, but from the standpoint of the Protestants in Northern Ireland, the most famous vio­ lence occurred in 1641, when, according to one sermon, 154,000 Protestants ­were killed. See John Ramsay, A Sermon Preach’d to the Protestants of Ireland Now in London . . . ​October 23. 1713. Being the Day Appointed by an Act of Parliament in IRELAND, for the Deliverance of the Protestants of that Kingdom, from the Bloody Massacre begun by the Irish Papists, on the 23d of October, 1641, 5th ed. (London, 1714); and A Faithful History of the Northern Affairs of Ireland: From the Late K. James Accession to the Crown to the Siege of Londonderry (London, 1690). 71. Scotland . . . ​Flame of War] For Defoe’s commentary on religious strife in Scotland, see his An Historical Account of the B ­ itter Sufferings, and Melancholy Circumstances of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, ­Under the Barbarous Usage and Bloody Persecution of the Presbyterian Government (London, 1707). Defoe’s title is satiric. He depicted the sufferings of the Presbyterians at the hands of the Episcopal party. 72. Persecutions, Wars, Massacres] The persecution of the Protestant Huguenots in France by Louis XIV, culminating in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and the flight of refugees to ­England, would have been part of Defoe’s youthful experiences. The most famous massacre of Protestants was the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre that started on the eve­ ning of 23 August 1572 and lasted three weeks. The Thirty Years’ War that lasted from 1618 ­until 1648 began, more or less, as a religious war pitting Catholics against Protestants. The brutal sacking of Magdeburg on 20 May 1631, with its massacre of the population, left a deep impression on Defoe. 73. ­Enemy of Mankind] See Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726) for a full development of this theme.

250

Ser ious R eflections

and of his f­ uture or pre­sent Felicity; and whose Business is always to the utmost of his Power to involve and retain them e­ ither in Ignorance, or in Error. I distinguish between forcing Religion upon P ­ eople, or forcing them to enter­ tain this or that Opinion of Religion; I say, I distinguish between that, and open­ ing the Door for Religion to come among them: The former is a Vio­lence indeed, inconsistent with the Nature of Religion it self, whose Energy prevails and forces its Way into the Minds of Men, by another Sort of Power; Whereas the latter is removing a Force unjustly put already upon the Minds of Men by the Artifice of the Devil, to keep the Christian Religion out of the World; so that indeed I pro­ pose a War not with Men, but with the Dev­il; a War to depose Sathan’s infernal Tyranny in the World, and set open the Doors to Religion, that it may enter if Men w ­ ill receive it; if they ­w ill not receive it, be that to themselves. In a Word, to unchain the W ­ ills of Men, set their Inclinations f­ ree, that their Reason may be at Liberty to influence their Understandings, and that they may have the Faith of Christ preach’d to them; ­whether they ­will hear or forbear, I say, as above, is no Part of the Question, let the Christian Doctrine and its spiritual Enemies alone to strug­gle about that: I am for dealing with the Temporalities of the Devil, and deposing that h ­ uman Power which is armed in the Behalf of obsti­ nate Ignorance, and resolute to keep out the Light of Religion from the Mind. I think this is a lawful and just War,74 and in the End, kind both to them and their Posetrity: Let me bring the Case home to our selves. Suppose neither Julius Cesar or any of the Roman Generals or Emperors,75 had cast their Eyes t­owards Britain for some Ages, or till the Christian Religion 74. lawful and just War] During the seventeenth ­century, writers on natu­ral law, especially Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, attempted to lay down rules for what might be consid­ ered a “just War.” This usually consisted of a war of self-­defense, and Grotius disallowed fear of being attacked as equivalent to an a­ ctual attack. ­Under unjust wars, he had such headings as “An unjust cause of war, also is the desire to rule ­others against their ­will on the pretext that it is for their own good” and “An unjust casue of war is also the desire to fulfil prophecies without the command of God.” Crusoe’s unprovoked religious crusade would not meet such clas­ sifications. Defoe’s position would be closer to the arguments put forward in Franciscus de Vitoria’s De Indis et De ivre belli relectiones, which partly justified the wars of the Spanish against the natives of Amer­i­ca, while arguing for fair treatment of the natives. Although he maintains that “Difference of religion is not a cause of just war,” he allows for war if it involves preaching the gospel to other nations, and he seems to allow for wars against the Turks. On the other hand, Defoe may have been thinking purely in biblical terms, especially the commands laid down by God to Joshua, though Defoe’s insistence that t­ here be no forced conversion seems far milder by comparison. See Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, trans. Fran­ cis Kelsey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 551, 555 (2: xii, xv); and Franciscus de Victoria, De Indis et de jure belli relectiones, ed. Ernest Nys, trans. John Bate (Buffalo: William Hein, 1995), 156–158, 170. For Victoria’s attitudes, see Justus van der Kroef, “Francisco de Victoria and the Nature of Colonial Policy,” Catholic Historical Review 35 (1949): 129–162. 75. Julius Cesar . . . ​Roman Generals or Emperors] Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.) invaded ­England in 55 b.c.e. ­There was another invasion the following year, and between that year and 43 c.e. t­ here was a growing Roman influence in Britain. In 43 c.e., during the reign of Claudius, ­t here was a full-­scale invasion led by Aulus Plautinus. A revolt was led by Caracta­ cus in 51 c.e., but he was defeated and brought to Rome. The complete conquest came ca. 75–77 c.e. Julius Agricola, who had subdued new sections of Britain, was put in place as the

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

251

had spread over the ­whole Roman Empire. ’Tis true, the Britains might at last have received the Christian Faith in common with the rest of the Northern World; but they had yet layn above 300 Years longer in Ignorance and Paganism, than they did; and some hundred thousands of P ­ eople, who prov’d zealous Christians, nay even Martyrs for the Christian Doctrine, would have dy’d in the profess’d Paganism of the Britains.76 Now ’tis evident, the Invasion of the Romans was an unjust, bloody, tyrannical Assault upon the poor Britains, against all Right and Property, against Justice and Neighbourhood, and meerly carry’d on for Conquest and Dominion. Nor indeed had the Romans any just Pretence of War; yet God was pleased to make this Vio­ lence be the kindest ­Thing that could have befallen the British Nation, since it brought in the Knowledge of God among the Britains, and was a Means of reduc­ ing a heathen and barbarous Nation to the Faith of Christ, and to embrace the Messias. Thus Heaven serves it self of Mens worst Designs, and the Avarice, Ambition, and Rage of Men, have been made Use of to bring to pass the glorious Ends of Providence, without the least Knowledge or Design of the Actors: Why then may not the g­ reat Undertakings of the Princes of Eu­rope, if they could be brought to act in Concert, with a good Design to bring all the World, to open their Doors to the Christian Religion, and by Consequence their Ears? I say, why may not such an Attempt be blessed from Heaven with so much Success, at least as to make Way for bringing in nominal Chris­tian­ity among the Nations? For as to obliging the ­People to be of this or that Opinion afterward, that is another Case. ­There is a g­ reat Pother made in the World among the several Denominations of Christians about Coertion, erecting a Church, and compelling Men to come in; that is to say, one Sort of Christians persecuting another Sort of Christians, to make them worship Christ their Way, as if Christ had no Sheep but one Fold.77 I distinguish much between using Force to reduce Heathens and Savages to Chris­tian­ity, and using Force to reduce t­ hose that are already Christians, to be of this or that Opinion; I w ­ ill not say but a War might be very just, and the Cause be

ruler of what was now a Roman province. See Laurence Echard, The Roman History, 5 vols. (London, 1724), 2:119–231. 76. Britains] Legend has it that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain ca. 70 c.e. and estab­ lished a church at Glastonbury. The best that can be said in this re­spect is that ­t here may have been some early Christian influence in Britain, that ­t here is some evidence of Chris­tian­ity in the second c­ entury, and that it seemed well established by the fourth c­ entury, despite wide­ spread archaeological evidence of the continued worship of pagan gods in Britain. See Shep­ pard Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britian, 3rd ed.(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), 321–323. 77. no Sheep but one Fold] See John 10:16: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they ­shall hear my voice; and ­t here ­shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” Jesus has been comparing himself to the “good shepherd” who knows his flock. Defoe uses this passage to argue that many branches of Chris­tian­ity might have a justifiable set of beliefs. But it was sometimes used against the Dissenters as implying that the Church of ­England was the “one fold” intended.

252

Ser ious R eflections

righ­teous, to reduce the Worshippers of the Pagods of India,78 to the Knowledge and Obedience of Chris­tian­ity, when it would be a horrible Injustice to commence a like War, to reduce even a Popish Nation to be Protestant. But my propos’d War does not reach so far as that neither; for tho’ I would have a Nation of Pagans conquer’d, that their Idols and ­Temples might be destroy’d,79 and their Idol Worship be abolish’d; yet I would be very far from punishing and persecuting the ­People for not believing in Christ: For if we believe that Faith, as the Scripture says is the Gift of God,80 How can we upon any Chris­ tian Foundation, punish or persecute the Man for not exercising that which God had not given him. Hence, compelling Men to conform81 to this or that par­tic­u ­lar Profession of the Christian Religion, is to me impious and unchristian. And ­shall I speak a Word ­here of the unhappy Custom among Christians, of reviling one another with Words, on Account of differing Opinions in Religion: It was a Part of Apocryphal Scripture, taken from one of the traditional Sayings of the Rabbies,82 Thou shalt not mock at the Gods of the Heathens: But Ribaldry, Satyr, and Sarcasms, are the Usage we give one another ­every Day on the Subject of Religion; as if Slander and the Severities of the Tongue, w ­ ere not the worst kind of Vio­lence in ­Matters of the Christian Religion. In a Word, I must acknowledge, if I am to speak of Reproach in general, I know no worse Persecution than that of the Tongue; Solomon says, ­There are that speak, like the piercing of a Sword;83 and King David was so sensible of the Bitterness of the Tongue, that he is full of Exclamations upon the Subject; among the rest, he

78. Pagods of India] Idols or images of a god in South and Southeast Asia. See OED. 79. Idols . . . ​destroy’d] Once more this is very much Crusoe in the character he established in The Farther Adventures as the hater and destroyer of idols. 80. Faith . . . ​Gift of God] See Ephesians 2:8: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” 81. compelling Men to conform] In his Review of 15 March 1709 (5:601), at a time when Prot­ estants from the Palatinate ­were coming to ­England, looking for a place to practice their religion, t­ here ­were ­t hose who proposed limiting the naturalization of foreign Protestants to ­t hose who would conform to the Church of ­England. Defoe answered, alluding to John 10:16, “Are ­t here no Protestants in the World but of the church of ­England? Or is the Church of ­England afraid of all the Protestants of Eu­rope but such as are of her own Opinion? Are ­t here no Sheep but of one Fold?” 82. Sayings of the Rabbies] Perhaps an allusion to the Pirke Avoth, or the Sayings of the ­Fathers, a collections of wisdom from a long line of rabbis. We have not been able to identify the par­tic­u ­lar saying: “Thou shalt not mock at the Gods of the Heathens.” However, this work was almost always accompanied by commentaries, and something like it might have been appended to Rabbi Akiba’s warning against “laughter and frivolity.” On the other hand, part of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 13b) states that “All kinds of mockery is forbidden, except mockery of idols.” See Pirke Avot, trans. Leonard Kravitz and Kerry Olitzky (New York: UAHC Press, 1993), 44 (3:13). 83. Solomon . . . ​Sword] See Proverbs 12:18: “­There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.”

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

253

says of his Enemies, They have compassed me about with Words of Hatred. He cloathed himself with Cursing like as with his Garment, Psalm cix. 3, 18.84 It is indeed remote from the Subject I am upon, to talk of this kind of unchari­ table Dealing, but as just Observations are never out of Season, it may have its Uses: Let no Man slight the Hint, tho’ it w ­ ere meant of Religion only, for that indeed is my pre­sent Subject; ­there is doubtless as severe a Persecution by the Tongue, as that of Fire and Faggot, and some think ’tis as hard to be born. I have never met with so much of this any where in all my Travels85 as in ­England, where the Mouths of the several Sects and Opinions are so effectually open against one another, that albeit common Charity commands us to talk the best of par­tic­u­lar Persons in their Failings and Infirmities; yet ­here, censuring, condemning and reproaching one another on Account of Opinions, is carried on with such a Gust, that lets e­ very one see nothing but Death and Destruction can follow, and no Reconciliation can be expected. I have liv’d to see Men of the best Light86 be mistaken, as well in Party as in Princi­ples, as well in Politicks as in Religion,87 and find not only Occasion, but even a Necessity to change Hands or Sides in both; I have seen them sometimes run into contrary Extremes, beyond their first Intention, and even without Design: Nay, in t­hose unhappy Changes, I have seen them driven into Lengths they never designed,88 by the firey Resentment of ­those whom they seem’d to have left, and whom they differ’d from; I have lived to see t­ hose Men acknowledge even publickly and openly, they w ­ ere wrong and mistaken, and express their 84. Psalm cix. 3, 18] In quoting from Psalm 109, Defoe omitted “also” as in: “They compassed me about also with words of hatred.” Verse 18 in full is: “As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like ­water, and like oil into his bones.” 85. all my Travels] As an introduction to a passage on po­liti­cal apostacy, Defoe shifts into his status as Crusoe. 86. Men of the best Light] Although this may be taken as a generalized assessment of the lack of charity during this period, it has par­tic­u ­lar relevance for Defoe himself, who had been attacked during 1710–1714 as a turncoat ­because he had continued to work for the govern­ ment when it changed from Whig to Tory. He continued to be attacked by Read’s Weekly Journal in a series of satires during 1717 that exposed his association with the Jacobite journal run by Nathaniel Mist. Shortly thereafter, the rumor that Defoe had died brought out a par­ ticularly lively but uncharitable image of Defoe’s shade descending into the underworld as an unprincipled writer willing to serve any cause. Defoe’s use of George Wither (260:3–22) as an example has to be seen as a partial attempt to deflect the notion that this was an autobio­ graphical confession. See Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fiction, 491, 503–504. 87. Religion] During Defoe’s lifetime, t­here had been a variety of persons who found a “Necessity” to change religion, from such figures as the Laureate, John Dryden, converting to Catholicism ­a fter James II took the throne in 1685, to figures such as William Sherlock (ca. 1641–1707), who was ridiculed for taking the oath to William and Mary at the last moment instead of joining the many clerics who became non-­jurors rather than take the oath. Defoe was not usually sympathetic to ­either, but ­here he is preaching a degree of tolerance and understanding. 88. Lengths . . . ​never designed] In some of his letters to Robert Harley at the height of acri­ mony between the Whigs and the Tories, Defoe was actually suggesting the punishment of Whigs, such as Richard Steele, for libel, even collecting statements from their writings that seemed to open them to ­legal prosecution. See Letters, 430–439.

254

Ser ious R eflections

Regret for being misled very sincerely; but I cannot say, I have liv’d to see the ­People, they have desir’d to return to, forgive or receive them: Perhaps, the Age I have lived in, has not been a proper Season for Charity, I hope Futurity ­will be furnish’d with better Christians, or perhaps ’tis appointed so, to illustrate the divine Mercy, and let Mankind see, that they are the only Creatures that never forgive. I have seen a Man in the Case I speak of, offer the most sincere Acknowl­ edgments of his having been mistaken, and this not in M ­ atters essential e­ ither to the Person’s Morals or Chris­tian­ity, but only in M ­ atters of Party, and with the most moving Expressions, desire his old Friends to forgive what has been pass’d; and have seen their Return, be mocking him with what they called a Baseness of Spirit, and a mean Submission: I have seen him expostulate with them, why they should not act upon the same Terms with a Penitent, as God himself not only prescribed, but yields to; and have seen them in Return, tell him, God might for­ give him if he pleased, but they would never; and then expose all ­t hose Offers to the first Comer in Banter and Ridicule: But take me right too, I have seen at the same Time, that to wiser Men it has been always thought to be an exposing them­ selves, and an Honour to the Person. I speak this too feelingly,89 and therefore say no more; ­there is a Way by Patience, to conquer even the universal Contempt of Mankind; and though two Drams of that Drug be a Vomit for a Dog,90 it is in my Experience the only Method; ­t here is a secret Peace in it, and in Time the Rage of men ­will abate, a constant steady adhering to Vertue and Honesty, and shewing the World, that what­ever M ­ istakes he might be led into, supposing them to be M ­ istakes, that yet the main Intention and Design of his Life, was sincere and upright; he that gov­ erns the Actions of Men by an unbias’d Hand, ­w ill never suffer such a Man to sink ­under the Weight of universal Prejudice and Clamour. I Robinson Crusoe, grown old in Affliction, born down by Calumny and Reproach, but supported from within, boldly prescribe this Remedy against uni­ versal Clamours and Contempt of Mankind; Patience, a steady Life of Vertue and 89. I speak this too feelingly] Such a personal confession seems to have much to do with Defoe’s life and ­little with that of Robinson Crusoe, despite the beginning of the next para­ graph that deliberately brings back Crusoe as the narrator. In 1715, Defoe had published his autobiographical Appeal to Honour and Justice Tho’ It Be of His Worst Enemies. His “Worst Enemies” undoubtedly found his explanations self-­serving. 90. two Drams . . . ​Dog] Speaking of the “universal Contempt of Mankind,” Defoe is saying that however awful it is to endure such contempt, patience is the only medicine that can help in any way. This sounds proverbial. Tilley does not have an exact match, but he does have “To endure anything ­because one cannot help it patience perforce is a medicine for a mad dog” (Dictionary, 112 [item P112]). This is essentially the meaning that Defoe gave it when he expressed almost the exact same sentiment in his Review for 3 July 1708 (5:167). Writing of the war in Europe—­how easily good ­t hings might be made to happen, how exasperating it was that nothing was being done, and how such events “double our Disappointment”—­ Defoe reluctantly advised “Patience”: “that Cardinal Vertue, that Sovereign Physick, tho’ the Learned say, that when forcibly apply’d, two Drams of it is a Vomit for a Dog; yet it is the best Restorative for a Nation to bring it to its Po­liti­cal Sences, that I know in this World.” A dram was one-­eighth of an ounce. A vomit was a medicine used to produce vomiting by way of a cure (Nathaniel Bailey, An En­glish Dictionary, 16th ed. [London, 1755], sig. 5Y2, Mm&Nnv).

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

255

Sobriety, and a comforting Dependance on the Justice of Providence, w ­ ill first or last restore the Patient to the Opinion of his Friends, and justify him in the Face of his Enemies; and in the mean time, w ­ ill support him comfortably, in despising ­t hose who want Manners and Charity, and leave them to be cursed from Heaven with their own Passions and Rage. This very Thought made me long ago claim a kind of Property in some good old Lines of the famous George Withers91 Esq; made in Prison in the Tower; he was a poetical Gentleman, who had in the Time of the Civil Wars in ­England, been unhappy in changing of Sides too often, and had been put into the Tower by ­every Side in their Turn; once by the King,92 once by the Parliament, once by the Army, then by the Rump,93 and at last again, I think, by General Monk;94 in a Word, what ever Side got up, he had the Disaster to be down, the Lines are thus: The World and I may well agree, as most that are offended; For I slight her, and she slights me, and t­ here’s our Quarrel ended, For Ser­vice done and love exprest, Tho’ very few regard it, My Country owes me Bread at least: But if I am debarr’d it, Good Conscience is a daily Feast, and Sorrow never marr’d it.95 91. George Withers] George Wither (1588–1667), a poet who wrote on religious and satiric themes, was imprisoned a number of times during his life, but more particularly for three years ­a fter the Restoration in 1660. Although he served ­under Charles I in the expedition to Scotland in 1639, he supported the side of Parliament ­a fter 1642. He was captured at Farnham while fighting for the Parliament by another poet, John Denham, fighting for Charles I. In releasing him, Denham was supposed to have said that as long as Wither lived he (Denham) would not be “the worst poet in ­England.” Wither wrote religious poems that ­were extremely popu­lar. See DNB, 21:730–739. 92. the King] Wither was imprisoned in 1614 at the Marshalsea, during the reign of James I (1603–1625), for some satirical verses. See J. Milton French, “George Wither in Prison,” PMLA 45 (1930): 959–66, esp. 959–960. 93. the Rump] The remnant of Parliament that served between 1642 and 1660. ­A fter Pride’s Purge in 1648, only eighty members ­were left. Wither was imprisoned for a year and a half in August 1646. See French, “George Wither in Prison,” 962, and Charles Hensley, The ­Later ­Career of George Wither (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 114. 94. General Monk] General George Monk, First Duke of Albemarle (1608–1670), was instru­ mental in returning Charles II to the throne of ­England in 1660. Wither had speculated about Monk’s intentions before the ­actual Restoration in Furor-­Poeticus (i.e.) Propheticus (London, 1660). Actually, Wither was put in Newgate in 1660. He continued to write works that ­were considered offensive by the government, and in 1662 he was removed to the Tower, where he was deprived of writing materials and paper. See French, “George Wither in Prison,” 963. 95. The World . . . ​it] Wither frequently addressed his relationship to the “World” (see, for example, An Improvement of Imprisonment [London, 1661], 54; and “To the Whole World in General,” Juvenilia [Menston: Scolar Press, 1970], 351). His attitude ­toward the world was: “I have not, I want not, I care not.” He even has an emblem before a work called Wither’s Motto:

256

Ser ious R eflections

But this Article of verbal Persecution, has hurried me from my Subject, which I must return to. I have spoken of a Proj­ect for the Czar of Muscovy, worthy of a Monarch, who is Lord of so vast an extent of Country, as the Rus­sian Empire96 reaches to; which is in Effect as I have said, much more than half Eu­rope, and consequently an eighth Part of the World. I have given my Thoughts how a War to open a Door for the Christian Religion may be justifiable, and that it has not the least Tincture of Persecution in it: If the Christian Princes of the World, who now spend their Force so much to an ill Purpose, in real Persecution, would join in an universal War against Paganism and Devil-­worship, the savage Part of Mankind would in one Age, be brought to bow their Knees to the God of Truth, and would bless the Enterprise it self in the End of it, as the best ­Thing that ever befel them: Nor could such an Attempt fail of Success, u ­ nless Heaven in Justice had determined to shut up the World longer in Darkness, and the Cup of their Abominations97 was not yet full: But I may venture to say, ­there would be much more Ground for such Christian Princes to hope and expect the Concurrence of Heaven in such an Undertaking, than in sheathing their Swords in the Bowels of their Brethren, and making an Effusion of Christian Blood upon ­every slight Pretence, as we see has been the Case in Eu­rope for above thirty Years past.98 Nec Habeo, Nec Careo, Nec Curo (London, 1621), sig. A1, with a globe of the world that he is spurning. This par­tic­u ­lar quotation is from “The Contented Man’s Mor[r]ice,” a section of the long poem, Speculum Speculativum: or, A Considering Glasse, Being an Inspection into the Pre­sent and Late Sad Condition of t­ hese Nations, published at the end of 1660. The larger poem is a plea to Charles II to avoid the kinds of injustices that brought about the rebellion of 1642. Defoe may have been quoting from memory, since he reverses the order of the stan­ zas. Once more, the poem is about his relationship to the “World,” but although the refer­ ence is clear, it does not appear in the stanza (25 of 27): Yet I and shee, may well agree, Though we have much contented; Upon as equal terms are we As most who have offended: For I sleight her, and she sleights me, And t­ here my quarrel ended. Defoe’s second stanza (13) is correct except for minor changes in spelling and punctua­ tion. See Wither, Miscellaneous Works, 6 vols. (New York: Franklin, 1967; reprinted from the Publications of the Spenser Society, vols. 12–13, 16, 18, 22, 24), 5:146–151 (ll. 4410–4571). 96. Proj­ect . . . ​Empire] ­Under Peter the ­Great ­t here was an effort at converting to Chris­tian­ ity the vast areas of Rus­sia, particularly in Siberia. An edict of 1714 commanded the district director to “seek out their seductive false gods and idols and burn them and destroy their heathen ­temples and build churches instead.” See Hughes, Rus­sia in the Age of Peter the ­Great, 353. 97. Cup of their Abominations] This is from Revelation 17:4, St. John the Divine’s vision of the Whore of Babylon as “having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthi­ ness of her fornication.” 98. Effusion . . . ​t hirty Years past] This would cover the period of the Nine Years’ War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the G ­ reat Northern War, and perhaps the vari­ous attempts in 1718–1719 to keep Spain’s Cardinal Alberoni in check. It is pos­si­ble that Defoe was using rela­ tively unrevised material from the reign of William III. If so, ­these dates might cover the wars waged thirty years before the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. But his discussion of the “uni­ versal Contempt of Mankind” ­toward him in this section makes this unlikely.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

257

I had intended to remark ­here, that as the Country possessed by Christians is but a Spot of the Globe, compared to the Heathen, Pagan, and Mahometan World; so the Number of real Christians among the Nations professing the Christian Name, is yet a more disproportioned Part, a mere Trifle, and hardly to be compar’d with the infinite Numbers of t­ hose who tho’ they call themselves Christians, yet know as l­ittle of God and Religion as can be imagin’d to be known, where the Word Christian is spoken of, and neither seek or desire to know more; in a Word, who know but ­little of God or Jesus Christ, Heaven or Hell, and regard none of them. This is a large Field, and being througly search’d into, would I doubt not, reduce the real faithful Subjects of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, to a much fewer Number than t­ hose of Mahomet; nay, than ­t hose of the Monarch of Germany;99 and make our Lord appear a weaker Prince, speaking in the Sense of Kingdoms, than many of the King’s of the Earth. And if it be true that the old King of France should say, That he had more loyal Subjects than King Jesus;100 I do not know, but in the Sense his Most Christian Majesty meant it, the ­Thing might be very true. But this Observation is something out of my pre­sent Road, and merits to be spoken of by itself. The Number of true Christians w ­ ill never be known on this Side the g­ reat Bar,101 where they s­ hall be critically separated. No po­liti­cal Arith­ metick 102 can make a Calculation of the Number of true Christians, while they

99. Monarch of Germany] The emperor of Germany at this time was the head of the Holy Roman Empire and invariably a Habsburg and the monarch of Austria. At this time he was Charles VI, who reigned from 1711 to 1740. Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. S2v) described Germany as a “vast Tract of Land” and the emperor as “not only the Head of Germany, but the first Prince in Christendom in Rank and Order, though not the most Power­f ul.” 100. old King of France . . . ​Jesus] We have not been able to find this exact reference. The king referred is prob­ably Louis XIV (1638–1715), who at his death was seventy-­seven. He was liter­ ally old at his death, but he was also old in the sense of “former,” since a­ fter his death France was u ­ nder a regency. The statement seems ambiguous. France was a populous nation, with close to twenty million ­people, but how many ­were “loyal Subjects” is difficult to say. In con­ text, Defoe seems to be arguing that the “real faithful Subjects of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ” might not be that many. The statement seems to involve a comparison between Louis XIV and Jesus, but this would not have been odd for Louis XIV, who seemed to believe that he had a direct connection with God. See Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen, trans. Anne Car­ter (New York: Vintage, 1972), 64. 101. ­great Bar] Used in the sense of the “bar” of justice, this being a reference to the Last Judg­ ment when Jesus was supposed to come to judge the entire world, both the dead and the liv­ ing. Belief in this is part of the Apostles’ Creed and derives from 1 Peter 4:5. The scene of judgment and the separation of t­ hose ­going to Heaven from t­ hose ­going to Hell was a central part of medieval art in the tympanums of Gothic cathedrals and in Re­nais­sance religious painting. 102. po­liti­cal Arithmetick] This method of economic analy­sis based on statistics was devel­ oped during the seventeenth ­century. It was most associated with Sir William Petty (1623– 1687), who used the term in the title of one of his books, although John Graunt (1620–1674) had already started drawing economic conclusions based on his analy­sis of the bills of mor­ tality. Defoe’s contemporaries sometimes associated his economic writings with the use of “po­liti­cal arithmetic,” and in some of his proposals in An Essay upon Proj­ects, he used this

258

Ser ious R eflections

live blended with the false ones, since it is not only hard, but impossible to know them one from another in this World. We ­shall perhaps be surprised at the last Day, to see some P ­ eople at the Right-­ hand of the righ­teous103 Judge, whom we have condemned with the utmost Zeal in our Opinions, while we ­were Con­temporary with them in Life; for Charity, as it is generally practised in this World, and mix’d with our h ­ uman Infirmities, such as Pride, Self-­opinion, and Personal-­prejudice, is strangely mis-­guided, and makes us entertain Notions of Th ­ ings and of P ­ eople, quite dif­fer­ent from what they ­really deserve; and ­t here is hardly any Rule to prescribe ourselves, except it be of the Text, In Meekness, e­ very one esteeming other better than themselves,104 which by the Way, is difficult to do. But though we ­shall thus see at the ­great Audit,105 a Transposition of Persons from the Station they held in our Charity, we ­shall only thereby see that our Judg­ ment was wrong; that God judgeth not as Man judgeth,106 and that we too rashly condemn, whom he has thought fit to justify and accept.107 Let then the Number of Christians be more or less, as he that makes them Christians determines, this is not for us to enter into, and this brings me back to what I said before, that though we cannot make Christians, we both can and may, and indeed o ­ ught to open the Door to Chris­tian­ity, that the Preaching of God’s methodology. Its use in the field of economics was obvious, but ­here Defoe points out the futility of using such a method for determining the number of “true Christians.” 103. Right-­hand of the righ­teous] In the scenes depicting the day of judgment in the sculp­ tures of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, the blessed are almost universally on the right and the damned on the left. This is also true of such paintings as Michelangelo’s g­ reat fresco in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, though the most vivid scenes of damnation are at the lower part of the painting. 104. In Meekness . . . ​themselves] “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing ­t hose that oppose themselves; if God peradventure ­w ill give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” 2 Timothy 2:24–25. 105. ­great Audit] The Day of Judgment when t­ here ­w ill be an accounting made of good deeds and bad deeds. This phrase was used by ­earlier writers. See, for example, Richard Allestree, The Gentleman’s Calling (London, 1660), 160. Defoe was to use it again in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 42. 106. God judgeth . . . ​judgeth] This sounds proverbial or biblical. Psalms 7:11 has “God jud­ geth the righ­teous, and God is angry with the wicked ­every day”; and Isaiah 11:3 provides “He ­w ill not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears.” Defoe’s phrasing was sometimes used in seventeenth-­century sermons. For example, Anthony Bur­ gess, in his Spiritual Refining, 2nd ed. (London, 1658), 307, warned, “Oh consider, That god judgeth not as man judgeth. He judgeth according to the inwards; he tryeth the heart and reins, and accordingly judgeth they actions which come thence.” 107. condemn . . . ​accept] In his Appeal to Honour and Justice, 235, Defoe suggested that the terrible reputation associated with his name and the accusations of his enemies would not reflect a heavenly judgment: “. . . ​a ll the Comfort I have is, that ­t hese men have not the last Judgment in their Hands, if they had, dreadful would be the Case of ­t hose who oppose them. But that Day ­w ill shew many Men and ­Things also in a dif­fer­ent State from what they may now appear in; some that now appear clear and fair, ­w ill then be seen to be black and foul; and some that are now thought black and foul, ­w ill then be approved and accepted.”

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

259

Word,108 which is the ordinary Means of bringing Mankind to the Knowledge of Religion, may be spread over the w ­ hole World. With what Vigour do we consult, and how do the labouring Heads of the World club together to form Proj­ects, and to raise Subscriptions109 to extend the general Commerce of Nations into ­every Corner of the World: But ‘twould pass for a B ­ ubble of all B ­ ubbles,110 and a Whimsy that none would engage in, if ten Millions should be asked to be subscribed, for sending a strong Fleet and Army to conquer Heathenism and Idolatry, and protect a Mission of Christians, to be employ’d in Preaching the Gospel to the poor Heathens, say it w ­ ere on the Coast of Cormandel, the Island of Ceylon and Country of Malabar,111 or any of the Dominions of the ­Great Mogul,112 and yet such an Attempt would not only be just, but infinitely advantageous to the P ­ eople who should undertake it, and to the ­People of the Country, on whom the Operation should be wrought.113 108. Preaching of God’s Word] In his ­Family Instructor, 1:29–30, Defoe has the f­ ather of the ­family instruct his child on this m ­ atter, saying, “. . . ​t he Scripture is the key of instruction; ­t here you are to learn how God is to be worshipped; how to perform your duty, and what it is  the Lord thy god Requires of thee: t­here you have an historical account of the w ­ hole world, . . . ​­t here you have the history of God’s church, from the beginning to the fullness of time, and the fulfilling of Old Testament types, and Old testament promisses: . . . ​a nd at last the ­whole doctrine of the gospel of truth, found upon the redemption purchased by Christ . . . ​ and the salvation of the world.” 109. Proj­ects . . . ​Subscriptions] The heated financial atmosphere caused by the South Sea Com­ pany in E ­ ngland and the Mississippi Com­pany in France created financial speculation in Eu­rope of a kind never seen before. It created numerous proposals for financial gain throughout Eu­rope. In ­England, the ­Bubble Act of 1720 was an attempt to control them, though it was mainly in the interest of the South Sea Com­pany. See John Carswell, The South Sea B ­ ubble (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), 155–157. See also chapter 6, note 110 in this volume. 110. ­Bubble of all ­Bubbles] Defoe was writing at the time of the approaching financial col­ lapse of the South Sea Com­pany in E ­ ngland and the Mississippi Com­pany in France. Although ­t here was ­little chance that the South Sea Com­pany would be able to meet expecta­ tions, the elaborate plan for the development of the vast territories to the west of the Missis­ sippi might have succeeded with enough imagination and energy. During the time that Defoe was writing Serious Reflections, he warned against the coming crash, viewing the inflation of stock in both enterprises as a sign of the coming disaster, but the complete col­ lapse had not yet occurred. Defoe treated “­Bubble” as a modish word. In his Commentator for 6 June 1720, writing on the “­Bubble Act,” he suggested that the attempt to control this economic phenomenon should be called an act “against Stock-­Jobbing Proj­ects,” for the sake of posterity’s understanding, but b ­ ubble has survived longer than Defoe thought. For a description of this historical moment in the collapse of the South Sea ­Bubble, see Carswell, South Sea B ­ ubble, 165–166. 111. Cormandel . . . ​Ceylon . . . ​Malabar] ­These are all places in the general area of the coasts of southern India, visited by Crusoe in The Farther Adventures. Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, is an island nation lying south of the tip of India. 112. Dominions of the ­Great Mogul] Sometimes known as Indostan, this area included mod­ ern Pakistan and northern India up to modern Bangladesh. See Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary, sig. Z1v-­Z2. 113. infinitely advantageous . . . ​w rought] Crusoe appears to indulge in the fancy, common to many colonizing nations, that the colonial power is bestowing a ­favor on the conquered nation by providing aspects of its “advanced” technology, civilization, or religion. This was one of the concepts dismissed by writers on natu­ral law such as Hugo Grotius.

260

Ser ious R eflections

In the occasional Discourses I had on this Subject, in Conversation with Men of good Judgment and Princi­ples, I have been often ask’d in what Manner I would propose to carry on such a Conquest as I speak of, and how it should answer the End; and that I may not be supposed to suggest a ­Thing impracticable in itself or for which no rational Scheme might be proposed; I s­ hall make a brief Essay, at the Manner, in which the Conquest I speak of should be, or o ­ ught to be carried on; and if it be considered seriously, the Difficulties and perhaps all the reasonable Objections might vanish in an Instant. I ­w ill therefore first, for the Purpose only, suppose that an Attempt was made by a Christian Nation, to conquer and subdue some Heathen or Mahometan114 ­People at a Distance from them, place the Con­ quest where, and among whom we w ­ ill: For Example, Suppose it was the ­great Island of Madagascar, or that of Ceylon, Borneo in the Indies, or t­ hose of Japan, or any other where you please. I would first suppose, the Place to be infinitely populous as any of t­ hose Coun­ tries, though they are Islands, are said to be; and ­because the Japonnese are said to be a most sensible sagacious P ­ eople, ­under excellent Forms of Government, and capable more than ordinarily of receiving Impressions, supported by the Argu­ ment and Example of a vertuous and religious Conqueror. For this Purpose you must grant me, that the Island or Islands of Japan ­were in a Situation proper for the undertaking, and that a power­f ul Eu­ro­pe­an Army being landed upon them, had in a g­ reat ­Battle or in divers B ­ attles, over-­t hrown all their Military Force, and had entirely reduced the ­whole Nation to their Power: As to go back to Examples, the Venetians had done by the Turks in the Morea in a for­ mer War,115 or as the Turks did in the Isles of Candia, Cyprus,116 and the like.117 The short Scheme for establishing the Government in t­ hose Countries should be this; First, As the War is pointed chiefly against the Kingdom of the Devil, in behalf of the Christian Worship, so no Quarter should be given to 114. Mahometen] Muhammad (570–632 c.e.) was the founder of Islam. The image of him as an impostor, in the sense of a deliberate trickster, rather than a genuine (or even a deluded) prophet, was typical among Christian writers. See Humphrey Prideaux, The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet (London, 1718). 115. Venetians . . . ​former War] In 1685 Venice attempted to wrest Morea or the Peloponnesus peninsula of Greece from the Turks, who had taken it in 1543. According to Bohun, Geo­ graph­i­cal Dictionary ([1695], 275), by 1687, the Venetians “­were intirely Possessed of it, by a wonderful Revolution.” In fact, Ottoman forces w ­ ere able to retake this area of Greece in 1715 and ­were able to maintain control ­until the nineteenth ­century. 116. Turks . . . ​Candia, Cyprus] Candia, or modern Crete, had been captured by the Turks in 1669. The Venetians took Cyprus in 1472 but w ­ ere defeated by the Turks in 1560. See Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary ([1695], 72, 106). This example of the success of Turkish military force does not seem to help Defoe’s argument. 117. the like] Defoe may have been thinking of Rhodes, which surrendered to Solyman the Magnificent in 1522. Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary ([1688] sig. Qq1v) described it as “one of the Bulwarks of Christendom against the Turks,” and since it represented one of the ­great defeats of the Christians, however bravely they fought, Defoe, given his subject m ­ atter, may have deliberately avoided naming it.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

261

Satan’s Administration; and as nothing e­ lse should willingly be treated with Vio­lence; so indeed no Part of the Dev­ils œconomy should have any Favour, but all the Idols should immediately be destroyed, and publickly burnt, all the Pagods and T ­ emples burnt, and the very Face and Form of Paganism and the Worship attending it, be utterly defaced and destroyed. Secondly, The Priests and dedicated Persons of ­every kind, by whatsoever Names or Titles known or distinguished, should be at least removed, if not destroyed. Thirdly, All the Exercise of profane and idolatrous Rites, Ceremonies, Worship, Festivals, and Customs, should be abolished entirely, so as by Time to be forgotten, and clean wiped out of the Minds, as well as out of the Practice of the ­People. This is all the Coertion I propose, and less than this cannot be proposed, ­ ecause though we may not by Arms and Force compel Men to be religious, b ­because if we do, we cannot make them sincere, and so by Persecution we only create Hypocrites; yet I insist that we may by Force, and that with the greatest Justice pos­si­ble, suppress Paganism, and the Worship of God’s E ­ nemy the Devil, and banish it out of the World; nay, that we o ­ ught to do it to the utmost of our Power: But I return to the Conquest. The Country being thus entirely reduced u ­ nder Christian Government, the Inhabitants if they submit quietly, ­ought to be used with Humanity and Justice; no Cruelty, no Rigour; they should suffer no Oppression, Injury, or Injustice, that they may not receive evil Impressions of the ­People that are come among them; lest entertaining an Abhorrence of Christians, from their evil Conduct, Cruelty, and Injustice, they should entertain an Abhorrence of the Christian Religion for their Sakes; as the poor Wretches the Indians in Amer­i­ca, who when they ­were talked to of the ­Future State, the Resurrection of the Dead, Eternal Felicity in Heaven, and the like, enquir’d where the Spaniards118 went ­after Death, and if any of them went to Heaven? and being answered in the Affirmative, shook their Heads, and desired they might go to Hell then, for that they ­were afraid to think of being in Heaven, if the Spaniards ­were ­t here. A just and generous Behaviour to the Natives, or at least to such of them as should show themselves willing to submit, would certainly engage them in their Interest, and accordingly would in a ­little while bring them to embrace that Truth, which dictated such just Princi­ples to ­t hose who espoused it. Thus Prejudices being removed, the Way to Instruction would be made the more plain, and then would be the Time for Gospel-­Labourers119 to enter upon the Harvest; Ministers should be instructed to teach them our Language, to exhort 118. Indians in Amer­i­ca . . . ​Spaniards] See Las Casas, Devastation of the Indies, 55, where this sentiment is credited to an Indian Chief named Hatney. 119. Instruction . . . ​Gospel-­Labourers] Just a few years ­a fter this utopian scheme of conver­ sion, George Berkeley, phi­los­o­pher and clergyman of the Church of Ireland, de­cided to go to

262

Ser ious R eflections

them to seek the Blessings of Religion and of the true God, and so gradually to introduce right Princi­ples among them at their own Request. From hence they should proceed, to teach all the young C ­ hildren the Lan­ guage spoken by them, who would then be their Benefactors, rather than Con­ querors, and a few Years wearing the old Generation out, the Posterity of them, and of their Conquerors, would be all one Nation. In Case any rejected the Instruction of religious Men, and adher’d obstinately to his Idolatry, and would not be reclaimed by gentle and christian Usage, suitable Methods are to be taken with such, that they might not make a religious Faction in the Country, and gain ­others to side with them, in order to recover their Lib­ erty, as they might call it to serve their own Gods, that is to say Idols; for it must be for ever as just, not to permit them to go back to Idolatry by Force, as it was to pull them from it by Force. By this kind of Conquest, the Christian Religion would be most effectually propagated among innumerable Nations of Savages and Idolaters, and as many ­People be brought to worship the true God, as may be said to do it at this Time in the w ­ hole Christian World. This is my Cruisado,120 and it would be a War as justifiable on many Accounts, as any that was ever undertaken in the World, a War that would bring Eternal Honour to the Conquerors, and an Eternal Blessing to the P ­ eople conquer’d. It w ­ ere easy now to cut out121 Enterprises of this Nature for other of the Princes of the World than the Czar of Muscovy;122 and I could lay very rational Schemes for such Undertakings, and the Schemes that could, if througly pursued never fail of Success: For Example, An Expedition against the Moors123 of Africa, by the French, Spanish and Italian Princes, who daily suffer so much by them, and the last of whom are at perpetual War with them; how easy would it be to t­ hose Pow­ ers to join in a Christian Confederacy,124 to plant the Christian Religion again in

the New World to pursue a similar goal of converting the Indians of Amer­i­ca. See John Wild, George Berkeley (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), 287–291, 308–328. 120. Cruisado] Crusade. Crusoe is punning on his name. 121. cut out] Plan. See OED 57.l (fig.). 122. Czar of Muscovy] See chapter 6, note 54 in this volume. 123. Expedition against the Moors] The Barbary pirates continually harassed shipping in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic west of Gibraltar. In The Strange Surprizing Adventures, Crusoe was taken by a ship from Salé (Sallee) and made a slave for two years. 124. Christian Confederacy] In fact, each nation insisted on dealing with the Barbary pirates separately, which, for the most part, meant paying a kind of “protection” money. This situa­ tion continued into the nineteenth ­century. Even the ­Battle of Algiers in 1816, led by Sir Edward Pellew, Lord Exmouth, did not entirely end piracy. For a balanced discussion of the economic basis of what was mainly a trade in slaves carried on by both the Christians and Muslims of North Africa, see Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970); Earle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003); and Richard Zacks, The Pirate Coast (New York: Hyperion, 2005). For a work that reflects a colonial viewpoint not very dif­fer­ent from that of Defoe, see Stanley Lane-­Poole, The Story of the Barbary Corsairs (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1890), esp. 186–188, 260.

C h a p t e r 6 /b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n a n d Pag a n W o r l d

263

the Nu­mid­i­an and Mauritanian Kingdoms;125 where was once the famous Church of Carthage, and from whence Thousands of Christians have gone to Heaven; the Harvest of the primitive L ­ abours of St.  Cyprian,126 But unchristian Strife was always a Bar against the Propagation of Christian Religion, and unnatural Wars carried on among the Nations I speak of, are made so much the Business of the Christian World, that I do not expect in our Time, to see the Advantages taken hold of, that the Nature of the Th ­ ing offers: But I am persuaded, and leave it upon Rec­ord as my settled Opinion, that one Time or other, the Christian Powers of Eu­rope, ­shall be inspired from Heaven for such a Work, and then the Easiness of subduing the Kingdom of Africa to the Christian Power, ­shall shame the Gen­ erations past, who had the Opportunity so often in their Hands, but made no Use of it. Note, In this Part of the Subject I am upon, I must acknowledge ­t here is a dou­ ble Argument for a War: 1. In Point of the interfering Interests, Eu­rope ­ought to take Possession of t­ hose Shoars, without which it is manifest her Commerce is not secured; and indeed, while that part of Africk bordering on the Sea, is in the Hands of Robbers, Pyrates cannot be secur’d: Now, this is a Point of undisputed Right, for a War-­Trade claims the Protection of the Powers to whom it belongs, and we make no Scruple to make War upon one another, for the Protection of our Trade, and it is allowed to be a good Reason why we should do so. Why then is it not a good Reason to make War upon Theives and Robbers? If one Nation takes the Ships belonging to another, we immediately reclaim the Prize from the Cap­ tors, and require of the Prince, that Justice be done against the Aggressor, who is a Breaker of the Peace; and if this is refused, we make War. But ­shall we do thus to Christians, and scruple to make a universal War for the rooting out a Race of Pyrates127 and Rovers who live by Rapin, and are continu­ ally employed like the Lions and Tygers of their own Lybia in devouring their Neighbours: This, I say, makes such a War not only just on a religious Account, but both just and necessary upon a civil Account. The War then being thus proved to be just on other Accounts, why should not 2. The Extirpation of Idolatry, Paganism, and Devil-­Worship, be the Consequence of the Victory. If God be allow’d to be the Giver of Victory, how can it be answered to him, that the Victory should not be made Use of, for the Interest and Glory of the God of War, from whom it proceeds? But ­t hese ­Things are not to be offered to the World, till higher Princi­ples work in the Minds of Men, in their making War and Peace, than yet seems to take up their Minds. 125. Nu­mid­i­an and Mauretanian Kingdoms] As of 42 c.e., Mauretania was fully incorpo­ rated into the Roman Empire and divided into Mauretania Caesariensis in the east and Mauretania Tingitana in the west. It included most of modern Morocco and the northern section of Algeria. Numidia included a small part of the coast to the east of Mauretania and then went southeast, reaching the Mediterranean and extending to the coast around the Khalij Surt in modern Lybia. Carthage was located in the area called Africa, in the subdivi­ sion Zeugitana. 126. St. Cyprian] See chapter 6, note 59 in this volume. 127. Race of Pyrates . . . ​Rapin] Rapine. See chapter 6, note 57 in this volume.

264

Ser ious R eflections

I was tempted upon this Occasion, to make an Excursion ­here, upon the Sub­ ject of the very light Occasions, Princes and Powers, States and Statesmen make use of, for the engaging in War and Blood one against another; one for being ill satisfied with the other, and another for preserving the Ballance of Power;128 this for nothing at all, and that for something next to nothing; and how ­little Concern the Blood that is necessarily spilt in t­ hese Wars produces among them: But this is not a Case that ­w ill so well bear, to be entred upon in a publick Manner at this Time. All I can add is, I doubt, no such Zeal for the Christian Religion, w ­ ill be found in our Days, or perhaps in any Age of the World, till Heaven beats the Drums itself, and the glorious Legions129 from above come down on Purpose to propa­ gate the Work, and to reduce the ­whole World to the Obedience of King Jesus;130 a Time which some tell us is not far off: But of which I heard nothing in all my Travels and Illuminations, no not one Word. FINIS.

128. Ballance of Power] During the period following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1712, t­ here had been a diplomatic strug­gle to avoid major wars. But this meant fine-­tuning the possessions that vari­ous Eu­ro­pean states had in Italy and working to keep the G ­ reat Northern War from spreading. In August 1718, when Spain, u ­ nder the leadership of Cardinal Alberoni, attempted to invade Sicily, British ships wiped out the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. Alberoni was dismissed in December  1719, and Spain signed the Qua­dru­ple Alliance that appeared to guarantee the stability of Eu­rope based on the princi­ple of the balance of power. Britain also sent fleets to the Baltic in 1719 and 1720, u ­ nder Sir John Norris, to persuade Peter the G ­ reat to make peace with Sweden, but George I was unwilling to use any major force against Rus­sia. The Treaty of Nystad in 1721 put an end to Rus­sia’s war against Sweden to Rus­sia’s ­great advantage, and George I lost some prestige through his failure to force Rus­sia to retreat from its demands. In Britain, much of the involvement in the Baltic seemed like Hanoverian poli­ tics rather than British politics. See Hatton, George I Elector and King, 232–233, 241–242; James Chance, George I and the ­Great Northern War (London: Smith and Elder, 1909), 398– 472; and Massie, Peter the ­Great, 732–743. 129. glorious Legions] The image of the Last Judgment has been suggested a number of times ­earlier (see, for example, chapter 6, note 105 in this volume). ­Here it is introduced as the only solution to Crusoe’s immodest proposal of a Christian crusade to conquer the entire world, not worldly history but history as part of God’s role in the world. 130. King Jesus] The image of Jesus as the “King of the Jews” is reported in Matthew 2:2 as the words of the Magi, though it is also used by his enemies as a form of mockery. But in Revela­ tion 21:1–27, he is supposed to return to earth to reign in a New Jerusalem. In passages of the Old Testament treating the coming of the Messiah, the language of his monarchy was com­ mon. Isaiah 9:7 has the Messiah reigning “on David’s throne and over his Kingdom.” See also Daniel 7:13–14.

—-1 —0 —+1

Figure 3. ​“Crusoe among the Planets,” frontispiece, Réflexions Sérieuses et Importantes de Robinson Crusoe, . . . ​avec Sa Vision du Monde Angélique. Amsterdam: Chez l’Honoré at Chatelain, 1721. Courtesy of the Hubbard Collection of Imaginary Voyages, Special Collections Library, Hatcher Gradu­ate Library, University of Michigan.

510-99807_ch01_4P.indd 265

21/02/22 9:43 PM

 A Vision of the Angelick World THEY must be much taken up with the Satisfaction of what they are already, that never spare their Thoughts upon the Subject of what they s­ hall be. The Place, the Com­pany, the Employment which we expect to know so much of hereafter, must certainly be well worth our while to enquire a­ fter ­here. I believe the main Interruptions which have been given to ­t hese Enquiries, and perhaps, the Reason why t­hose that have entred into them have given them up, and ­t hose who have not entred, into them, have satisfied themselves in the utter Neglect, have been the wild chimerick Notions,1 enthusiastick Dreams, and unsatisfying Ideas, which most of the Conceptions of Men have led them into, about ­t hese ­Things. As I endeavour to conceive justly of ­t hese ­Things, I ­shall likewise endeavour to reason upon them clearly, and, if pos­si­ble, convey some such Ideas of the invisible World to the Thoughts of Men, as may not be confused and indigested, and so leave them darker than I find them. The Locality of Heaven or Hell2 is no Part of my Search; t­ here is doubtless a Place reserv’d for the Reception of our Souls ­after Death; as ­there is a State of Being for material Substances, so t­ here must be a Place; if we are to BE, we must have a where; the Scripture supports Reason in it, Judas3 is gone to his Place,

1. wild chimerick Notions] In a similar speculation on what is beyond ­human experience, Defoe, in The Consolidator, 25, wrote of the prob­lems from without and within, “as wandring Errors, wild Notions, cloudy Understandings, and empty Fancies.” 2. Locality of Heaven or Hell] For a discussion of the growing doubts about the existence and specific location of hell during the seventeenth c­ entury, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 169–171; for attitudes among some of Defoe’s contemporaries, see Walker, Decline of Hell, 122–163. Among t­ hose tending to deism or a belief in universal salvation during the early eigh­teenth ­century, a localized and eternal hell became part of superstition. 3. Judas] Acts 1:25: “Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.” In Mat­ thew 27:3–5, Judas is described as hanging himself ­a fter his betrayal.

267

268

Ser ious R eflections

Dives in Hell lift up his Eyes, and saw Lazarus in Abraham’s Bosom;4 the Locality of Bliss and Misery seems to be positively asserted in both Cases. But ­t here is not so clear a View of the Com­pany as of the Place; it is not so easy to enquire into the World of Spirits, as it is evident that ­there are such Spirits,5 and such a World; we find the Locality of it is natu­ral, but who the Inhabitants are, is a Search of still a sublimer Nature, liable to more Exception, encumber’d with more Difficulties, and exposed to much more Uncertainty. I ­shall endeavour to clear up as much of it as I can, and intimate most willingly, how much I rejoyce in the Expectation, that some other Enquirers may go farther, ’till at last, all that Providence has thought fit to discover of that Part may be per­ fectly known. The Discoveries in the Scripture which lead to this, are innumerable; but the positive Declaration of it seems to be declin’d. When our Saviour walking on the Sea frighted his Disciples,6 and they cried out, what do we find terrify’d them? Truly, they thought they had seen a Spirit. One would have thought such Men as they, who had the Vision of God manifest in the Flesh,7 should not have been so much surpriz’d, if they had seen a Spirit, that is to say, seen an Apparition; for to see a Spirit, seems to be an Allusion,8 not an Expression to be us’d literally, a Spirit being not vis­i­ble by the Organ of ­human Sight. But what if it had been a Spirit? if it had been a good Spirit, what had they to fear? And if a bad Spirit, what would crying out have assisted them? When ­People cry out in such Cases, it is e­ ither for Help, and then they cry to ­others; or for Mercy, and then they cry to the Subject of their Terror to spare them. ­Either Way it was ­either the foolishest, or the wickedest ­Thing that ever was done by such grave Men as the Apostles; for if it was a good Spirit, as before; they had no Need 4. Dives . . . ​Abraham’s Bosom] The story of the poor beggar who barely manages to live off the scraps of the rich man but who goes to “Abraham’s bosom” a­ fter death while the rich man goes to “hell” is told in Luke 16:19–31. Dives is Latin for a wealthy man and became attached as a proper name in the ­Middle Ages. 5. evident . . . ​Spirits] In the opening chapter of his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 13–19, Defoe pointed to vari­ous biblical passages that gave “Testimony” to the fact that spirits can assume ­human shape and make themselves vis­i­ble to ­human beings, from God’s appearance to Adam in the Garden of Eden to the appearance of ­t hose he calls “Spir­ its” in the con­temporary world. On the other hand, in that work, he rejected the notion that ghosts w ­ ere the spirits of the dead returned to earth. 6. Saviour . . . ​his Disciples] Matthew 14:25–26. They exclaim, “It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.” 7. God . . . ​Flesh] This phrase is used in 1 Timothy 3:16. 8. See a Spirit . . . ​A llusion] If Defoe w ­ ere thinking in terms of the limitations placed on vision as well as the other senses by John Locke (Essay Concerning H ­ uman Understanding, 4.3. secs. 17 and 27) and our inability to “see” the “infinite sorts of Spirits” about us, he is making a similar argument for the inadequacy of our senses and h ­ uman knowledge in gen­ eral. We may perceive spirits, but the perception is not that of ordinary ­human vision. ­Under the OED 3 definition, “A symbolical reference or likening; a meta­phor parable, allegory,” is included a definition by Randle Cotgrave, “an alluding or applying one ­t hing into another.” This is what Defoe seems to think. He is not writing about allusion, as it exists in the form of a rhetorical figure in language, but a perception that is beyond ordinary ­human senses and particularly what he describes as “not vis­i­ble by the Organ of ­human Sight.”

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

269

to cry out; and if it was a bad one, who did they cry to? For ’tis evident they did not pray to God, or cross and bless themselves, as was afterwards the Fashion; but they cried out, that is to say, they e­ ither cried out for Help, which was g­ reat Non­ sense, to call to Man for Help against the Dev­il; or they cried to the Spirit they saw, that it might not hurt them, which was, in short, neither less, or more, than praying to the Devil. This put me in Mind of the poor Savages in many of the Countries of Amer­i­ca and Africa, who ­really instructed by their Fear, that is to say, by meer Nature, worship the Devil, that he may not hurt them. ­Here I must digress a l­ ittle, and make a Transition from the Story of a Spirit, to the strange Absurdities of Mens Notions at that Time; and particularly, of ­t hose upon whom the first Impressions of Christ’s Preachings ­were wrought, and if it be look’d narrowly into, one cannot but won­der what strange ignorant P ­ eople, even the Disciples themselves w ­ ere, at first; and indeed their Ignorance continued a ­great while, even to ­a fter the Death of Christ himself; witness the foolish Talk of the two Disciples ­going to Emaus.9 It is true they ­were wiser afterwards when they ­were better taught; but the Scripture is full of the Discoveries of their Igno­ rance; as in the Notions of sitting at his Right-­hand and his Left, in his King­ dom, ask’d for by Zebedee’s ­Children;10 no doubt but the good W ­ oman their ­Mother thought one of her Sons should be Lord Trea­sur­er11 ­there, and the t’other Lord Chancellor,12 and she could not but think ­t hose Places their Due, when she saw them in such Favour with him h ­ ere. Just so in their Notion of see­ ing a Spirit 13 ­here, which put them into such a Fright, and indeed they might be 9. foolish talk . . . ​Emaus] See Luke 24:13–31. The passage has Jesus appearing before two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus. Th ­ ere is nothing in the text to indicated that their talk was “foolish,” but Jesus does upbraid them: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” They do not perceive who he is since “their eyes ­were holden that they should not know him.” Defoe presumes that their way of telling the events of the cruci­ fixion is almost like a form of gossip and without conviction. Jesus dines with them, and ­a fter he blesses the bread, they are able to recognize him. Then “he vanished out of their sight.” In his commentary on this section, Poole, Annotations (2:sig. Zzz), much in the man­ ner of Defoe, stresses their folly and lack of belief. 10. sitting . . . ​Zebedee’s ­Children] Matthew 20:20–23, Mark 10:35–40. In Mark, the disciples make the request directly, but in Matthew the m ­ other of the Zebedee ­children, the disciples, James and John, makes such a request of Jesus and is rebuked by him. In his commentary on this passage, Poole, Annotations (2:sig. Ggg2–­Ggg2v) views the ­mother as having “some Car­ nal Notion of the Kingdom of Heaven.” And he sees the reaction of the other disciples to such a request as equally mistaken. He speculates that they had some notion of the “Superiority and Inferiority ­there amongst the Saints . . . ​or ­else they fancied a Secular Kingdom to be exercised by Christ on Earth a­ fter the Resurrection of the Dead.” Defoe treats such attitudes as an example of folly and does so in a somewhat irreverent manner. He sees the ­mother as overly fond and ­eager to get good positions for her sons. 11. Lord Trea­surer] During this period of British history, the Lord Trea­surer was equivalent to the modern Prime Minister. 12. Lord Chancellor] The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister. Among other ­matters, he is in charge of the functioning of the courts, and ­until 2005, he was the presiding officer of the House of Lords. 13. seeing a Spirit] Defoe returns to the reaction of the disciples on seeing Jesus walk on the sea. See Matthew 14:26: “It is a Spirit; and they cry out for fear.”

270

Ser ious R eflections

said, according to our dull Way of Talking, to be frighted out of their Wits;14 For had their Senses been in Exercise, they would ­either have rejoic’d in the Appear­ ance of a good Angel, and stood still to hear his Message, as from Heaven; or pray’d to God to deliver them out of the Hands of the Devil, on their supposing it, as above, to be a Vision from Hell. But I come to the Subject. It is evident that the Notion of Spirits, and their intermeddling with the Affairs of Men, and even of their appearing to Men, prevail’d so universally in ­t hose Ages of the World; that even God’s own ­People, who w ­ ere instructed from himself, believ’d it, nor is t­ here any Th ­ ing in all the Old Testament Institution to contradict it, tho’ many Th ­ ings to confirm it; such par­ ticularly, as the Law against what is call’d a familiar Spirit,15 which was esteem’d no better or worse than a conversing with the Devil, that is to say, with some of the evil Spirits of the World I speak of. The Witch of Endor,16 and the Story of an Apparition of an old Man personat­ ing Samuel,17 which is so plainly asserted in Scripture, and which the learned Opposers of t­ hese Notions have spent so much weak Pains to disturb our Imagi­ nations about, yet assure us, that such Apparitions are not inconsistent with Nature, or with Religion; nay, the Scripture allows this ­Woman to Paw waw,18 as the Indians in Amer­i­ca call it, and conjure for the raising this Spectre, and when it is come, allows it to speak a ­great prophetick Truth, foretelling the King in all its terrible Particulars what was to happen to him, and what did befal him the very next Day. 14. frighted out of their Wits] This was a favorite phrase for Defoe. He uses it often in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (ed. Kit Kincade, Stoke Newington Edition [New York: AMS Press, 2007], 196 and 227) to describe the reactions of vari­ous ­people to encounters with the super­natural. 15. Law against . . . ​Spirit] This is an allusion to Leviticus 20:6. God is supposed to be speak­ ing to Moses about vari­ous prohibitions and states, “And the soul that turneth a­ fter such as have familiar spirits, and a­ fter wizards, to go a whoring ­a fter them, I ­w ill even set my face against that soul, and ­w ill cut him off from among his ­people.” In his System of Magick, 220, Defoe traced the origin of dealing with a familiar spirit to King Manesseh (2 Chronicles 33:6). God punished him but then forgave him ­a fter he reformed. 16. Witch of Endor] Chapter 28:7–25 of 1 Samuel tells of how Saul seeks out a w ­ oman with a familiar spirit who dwells at Endor to learn what ­w ill happen in his coming ­battle with the Philistines. He asks her to bring up Samuel. Samuel tells him that God ­w ill deliver Israel into the hands of the Philistines and that both Saul and his son ­w ill die. 17. personating Samuel] Defoe interprets the appearance of Samuel as that of a spirit rather than the ghost of Samuel. However, Samuel demands (1 Samuel 28:15) “Why hast thou dis­ quieted me, to bring me up?” Poole, Annotations (1:sig. Ccc2v) argues that this is not the spirit of Samuel but rather the Devil in the shape of Samuel. In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 38–40, Defoe was to dismiss Poole’s conjecture on the grounds that the Devil was incapable of predicting the ­f uture but agrees with the notion that it was a spirit and not a ghost of Samuel. 18. Paw waw] For other discussions of witchcraft practiced by American Indians, see Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 264 and A System of Magick, 208. The modern spelling of this is ­ nder this word, “1. a. intr. Of North American Indians: to practise “powwow.” The OED has u a religious or magical ritual; to gather for a council or conference; to hold a powwow.”

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

271

­ ither this Appearance must be a good Spirit, or a bad; if it was a good Spirit, it E was an Angel,19 as it is express’d in another Place of the Apostle Peter, when he knock’d at the good P ­ eople’s Door in Jerusalem, Acts xii.15. and then it supports my Opinion of the Spirits unembodied conversing with, and taking Care of the Spirits embodied; if it was an evil Spirit, then they must grant God to be making a Prophet of the Devil, and making him personate Samuel to foretel ­Things to come; permitting Sathan to speak in the first Person of God’s own Prophet, and indeed to preach the Justice of God’s Dealing with Saul, for rejecting his Prophet Samuel; which in short, is not a ­little odd,20 putting the Spirit of God into the Mouth of the Devil, and making Sathan a Preacher of Righ­teousness. When I was in my Retirement,21 I had abundance of strange Notions of my seeing Apparitions t­ here, and especially when I happen’d to be abroad by Moon-­ shine, when ­every Bush look’d like a Man, and e­ very Tree like a Man on Horse-­ back; and I so prepossess’d22 my self with it, that I scarce durst look ­behind me for a good while, and ­after that durst not go abroad at all at Night; nay, it grew upon me to such a Degree at last, that I as firmly believ’d I saw several Times real Shapes and Appearances, as I do now ­really believe and am assur’d, that it was all Hypochondriack Delusion.23 But however, that the Reader may see how far the Power of Imagination may go, and judge for me ­whether I shew’d any more Folly and Simplicity than other Men might do, I’ll repeat some l­ittle Passages, which for a while gave me very ­great Disturbances, and e­ very one s­hall judge for me, w ­ hether they might not have been deluded in the like Circumstances as well as I. 19. Angel] The angel appears in Acts 12:7, when he f­ rees Peter from prison. Peter then goes to the ­house of Mary, the ­mother of John, knocks on the door, and tells ­t hose gathered of his escape. 20. Dev­il . . . ​odd] See “A Vision of the Angelick World,” note 17 in this volume. In his commen­ tary on this passage, Poole assumes it is the Devil. Defoe asks (6:2) how it could be pos­si­ble that the Devil could be a “Preacher of Righ­teousnes”? Joseph Glanvil, in his Saducismus Triumphatis: or, Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions, 2 parts (London, 1681), pt. 2:44–85, gives considerable space to the vari­ous interpretations of this prob­lem and has a fron­ tispiece depicting Saul, the spirit of Samuel and the Witch of Endor. Although Glanvil dis­ misses the notion that the appearance of Samuel to Saul was the work of a charlatan, he does not, in the end, dismiss entirely the notion that the spirit was some form of dev­il. 21. in my Retirement] The reader is brought back into what might be considered the Crusoe narrative mode. 22. preposses’d] The OED has “1. a. Imbued or affected beforehand.” But Defoe places the emphasis on “possessed,” or as the OED defines that word: “2. a. Inhabited and controlled by a demon or spirit; lunatic, mad.” He uses “prepossess’d” in this sense in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 198. 23. Hypochondriack Delusion] In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, Defoe pre­sents a variety of stories involving genuine terror produced by the false appearance of ghosts, some of which are deliberately staged. The hypochondria, an area that was supposed to be located in the upper stomach and below the diaphragm, was considered to be the cause of vari­ous forms of insanity and melancholy. In ­women, the same disease was associated with the womb. See Lazarus Riverius, The Practice of Physick, trans. Nicholas Culpeper, Abdiah Cole, and William Rowland (London, 1655), 50.

272

Ser ious R eflections

The first Case was, when I crept into the dark Cave in the Valley, where the old  Goat24 lay just expiring, which, wherever it happen’d, is a true History, I assure you. When first I was stopp’d by the Noise of this poor d ­ ying Creature, you are to observe, that the Voice was not only like the Voice of a Man, but even articulate,25 only that I could not form any Words from it; and what did that amount to more or less than this, namely, that it spoke, but only it was in a Language that I did not understand. If it was pos­si­ble to describe the Surprise of my Spirits on that Occa­ sion, I would do it ­here; how all my Blood run, or rather stood still, chill’d in my Veins;26 how a cold Dew of Sweat sat on my Forehead; how my Joints, like Belshazzar’s Knees,27 shook one against another; and, how as I said, my Hair would have lifted off my Hat, if I had had one on my Head. But this is not all. A ­ fter the first Noise of the Creature which was a faint d ­ ying Kind of imperfect Bleating, not unusual, as I found afterward;, I say, a­ fter this, he fetch’d two or three deep Sighs as lively, and as like ­human, as it is pos­si­ble to imagine, as I have also said. ­These w ­ ere so many Confirmations of my Surprize, besides the Sight of his two glaring Eyes, and carried it up to the Extreme of Fright and Amazement; how I afterwards conquered this childish Beginning, and muster’d up Courage enough to go into the Place with a Firebrand for Light; and how I was presently satisfy’d with seeing the Creature whose Condition made all the l­ittle accidental Noises appear rational, I have already said. But I must acknowledge, that this real Surprize left some Relicks or Remains ­behind it, that did not wear quite off a ­great while, tho’ I struggl’d hard with them: The Vapours28 that ­were rais’d at first ­were never so laid, but that on ­every 24. Cave . . . ​Goat] This occurs on pages 148–151 of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition. 25. even articulate] Crusoe is clear on the point that he could not “form any Words” from the sounds coming from the goat. This is consistent with the OED’s first definition of this word: “Of sound: consisting of clearly distinguishable parts (usually words and syllables) capable of conveying meaning. Also (of the voice, a person, ­etc.): (capable of) producing meaningful or intelligible sounds.” The sounds from the goat seemed to be broken up as if they ­were words and seemed to be “capable of conveying meaning.” The clarification of this part of the incident puts it among a subset of themes in the first two volumes involving language, sound, meaning, and words. 26. chill’d in my Veins] This attempt on Defoe’s part to describe the feeling of terror along with such phrases as (4:25) “frighted out of their Wits” was almost formulaic in his writing. It forms part of a psy­chol­ogy of fear that links Defoe’s fiction with the Gothic novel at the end of the ­century. 27. Belshazzar’s Knees] When Belshazzar saw the writing made on the wall by a hand, “the joints of his loins ­were loosed, and his knees smote one against another” (Daniel 5:6). 28. Vapours] The OED has “3. pl. a. In older medical use: Exhalations supposed to be devel­ oped within the organs of the body (esp. the stomach) and to have an injurious effect upon the health.” And “b. A morbid condition supposed to be caused by the presence of such exhalations; depression of spirits, hypochondria, hysteria, or other ner­vous disorder. Now arch. (Common c1665–1750.).” In his discussion of diseases of the spleen, Riverius (350–352) speaks of evil vapors arising from the “Hipochondrion” that produces disturbing dreams. For Defoe’s use of this word elsewhere, almost always in a slightly mocking sense, see his

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

273

trifling Occasion they return’d; and I saw, nay, I felt Apparitions, as plainly and distinctly as ever I felt or saw any real Substance in my Life. The like was the Case with me before that, when I first found the Print of a Man’s Foot29 upon the Sand, by the Seaside on the North Part of the Island. And ­t hese, I say, having left my Fancy a ­little peevish and wayward, I had fre­ quently some Returns of ­these Vapours on differing Occasions, and sometimes even without Occasion; nothing but meer Hypochondriack Whimsies, fluttering of the Blood, and rising of Vapours, which nobody could give any Account of but myself. For Example: It was one Night,30 ­after my having seen some odd Appearances in the Air, of no ­great Significance, that coming home and being in Bed, but not asleep, I felt a Pain in one of my Feet; ­after which it came to a kind of Numb’dness in my Foot, which a ­little supriz’d me, and a­ fter that, a kind of Tingling in my Blood, as if it had been some Distemper ­running up my Leg. On a sudden I felt, as it w ­ ere something alive lye upon me, as if it had been a Dog lying upon my Bed, from my Knee downwards about half Way my Leg, and immediately afterwards I felt it heavier,31 and felt it as plainly roll itself upon me upwards upon my Thigh, for I lay on one Side; I say, as if it had been a Creature lying upon me with all his Weight, and turning his Body upon me. It was so lively and sensible to me, and I remember it so perfectly well, though it is now many Years ago, that my Blood chills and flutters about my Heart at the very writing it. I immediately flung my self out of my Bed, and flew to my Mus­ quet, which stood always ready at my Hand, and, naked as I was, laid about me upon the Bed in the dark, and ­every where ­else that I could think of where any Body might stand or lye, but could find nothing. Lord deliver me from an evil Spirit, said I! What can this be? And being tired with groping about, and having broke two or three of my Earthen Pots with making Blows ­here and ­t here to no Purpose, I went to light my Candle, for my Lamp which I us’d to burn in the Night, e­ ither had not been lighted, or was gone out. When I lighted a Candle, I could easily see ­t here was no living Creature in the Place with me, but the poor Parrot, who was wak’d and frighted, and cry’d out, Hold your Tongue, and, What’s the ­Matter with you? Which Words he learn’d of Po­liti­c al History of the Dev­il, 298; and Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 8 and 63. 29. Print of a Man’s Foot] See The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, Stoke Newington Edition, Bucknell, 127–131. 30. It was one Night] Unlike the two previous examples, the story that follows does not appear in The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures. 31. something alive . . . ​heavier] This is a near classic description of what was called a night­ mare. Its depiction in the painting of that name by Henry Fuseli has a heavy, demonic shape, an incubus, sitting on the body. Although the cause might be judged to be entirely physical, writers such as Robert Burton allowed that ­there was always a possibility that ­there was a genuine demon attacking the body. See Roy Porter, Mind-­Forg’d Manacles (London: Athlone, 1987), 58–68. For a patient suffering from dreams of this kind, see Patterns of Madness in the Eigh­teenth ­Century, ed. Allan Ingram (Liverpool: Liverpool Univer­ sity Press, 1998), 66.

274

Ser ious R eflections

me, from my frequent saying so to him, when he used to make his ordinary wild Noise and Screaming that I did not like. The more I was satisfy’d that ­there was nothing in the Room, at least to be seen, the more another Concern came upon me. Lord! says I aloud, this is the Devil. Hold your Tongue, says Poll. I was so mad at the Bird, tho’ the Creature knew nothing of the ­Matter, that if he had hung near me, I believe I should have killed him. I put my Clothes on, and sat me down, for I could not find in my Heart to go to Bed again; and as I sat down, I am terribly frighted, said I. What’s the ­Matter with you? says Poll. You Toad,32 said I, I’d knock your Brains out if you w ­ ere ­here. Hold your Tongue, says he again, and then fell to chattering, Robin Crusoe, and, Poor Robin Crusoe, as he us’d to do. Had I been in any Reach of a good Temper, it had been enough to have com­ posed me; but I was quite gone, I was fully possess’d with a Belief, that it was the Devil, and I pray’d most heartily to God, to be delivered from the Power of the evil Spirit. ­After some Time, I composed my self a ­little, and went to Bed again, and lying just in the Posture as I was in before, I felt a ­little of the Tingling in my Blood which I felt before, and I resolv’d to lye still, let it be what it would; it came up as high as my Knee, as before, but no higher; and now I began to see plainly that it was all a Distemper, that it was something Paralitick,33 and that affected the Nerves; but I had not e­ ither Experience of such a t­ hing, or Knowledge of Diseases, enough to be fully satisfy’d of the Nature of them, and ­whether any ­t hing natu­ral, any Numbedness or Dead Palsie34 affecting one Part of the Thigh, could feel as that did, till some Months ­after that, I felt something of the very same again at my first lying down in my Bed for three or four Nights together, which at first gave me a ­little Concern as a Distemper, but at last gave me such Satisfaction, that the first was nothing but the same t­ hing in a higher Degree; that the Plea­sure of knowing it was only a Disease, was far beyond the Concern at the Danger of it; Tho’ a dead Palsie to one in my Condition might reasonably have been one of the most fright­ ful ­Things in Nature; since having no body to help me, I must have inevitably 32. Toad] An insulting term derived from the notion of the toad as a loathsome creature. Its application to another animal, in this case the parrot, was not unusual. See OED and Defoe’s ­Family Instructor, 2:187, in which it is applied to a ­horse. In shouting at the parrot, Crusoe, his emotions completely out of control, treats the parrot as a ­human being or an evil spirit. It is reminiscent of Locke’s discussion of identity, in which he dismisses the notion that a par­ rot, however intelligent and articulate, could be considered a ­human being. See Locke, Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding, 446–448 (2:17.9–10). 33. Distemper . . . ​Paralitick] Distemper is prob­ably used ­here for an ordinary illness without reference to a disturbance of the “humours” that in early medicine was thought to be the cause of illness. What Crusoe describes has the appearance of a minor stroke. 34. Dead Palsie] In his chapter, “Of the Palsey, or Paralysis,” Riverius (18–23) distinguishes between attacks of vari­ous severity. A palsey that attacks a par­tic­u ­lar part of the body leav­ ing it immobile was called, appropriately, a “Par­tic­u­lar Palsey,” and this is similar to the defi­ nition provided for a “dead palsey” in the OED: “Palsy producing complete insensibility or immobility of the part affected.”

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

275

perish’d for meer Want of Food, not being able to go from Place to Place to fetch it. But to go back to the Case in Hand, and to the Apprehension I had been in; all the several Months that pass’d between the first of this and the last, I went about with a melancholy heavy Heart, fully satisfy’d that the Devil had been in my Room, and lay upon my Bed. Sometimes I would trye to argue my self a l­ittle out of it, asking my self, ­W hether it was reasonable to imagine the Devil had nothing ­else to do than to come thither, and only lye down upon me, and go away about his Business, and say not one Word to me? What End it could answer? and w ­ hether I thought the Devil was ­really busy’d about such Trifles?35 Or ­whether he had not Employment enough of a higher Nature, so that such a Th ­ ing as that could be worth his while? But still then I was answer’d with my own Thoughts, returning thus, What could it be? Or, if it was not a Devil, what was it? This I could not answer by any Means at all; and so I still sunk ­under the Belief, that it was the Devil, and nothing but the Devil. You may be sure, while I had this Fancy in my Head, I was of Course over-­run with the Vapours, and had all the Hypochondriack Fancies36 that ever any mel­ ancholy Head could entertain; and what with ruminating on the Print of a Foot upon the Sand, and the Weight of the Devil upon me in my Bed, I made no Diffi­ culty to conclude, that the Old Gentleman r­ eally visited the Place; and in a Word, it had been easy to have possess’d me, if I had continued so much longer, that it was an enchanted Island,37 that ­t here ­were a Million of evil Spirits in it, and that the Devil was Lord of the Manor. I scarce heard the least Noise, near or far off, but I started, and expected to see a Dev­il; ­every distant Bush upon a Hill, if I did not particularly remember it 35. Dev­i l . . . ​Trifles] Crusoe puts the notion that he is being haunted by the Devil to the test of asking what pos­si­ble purpose the Devil could have in tormenting a single person on an uninhabited island. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, Defoe often dismissed stories of this kind on the same basis. Why should the Devil spend his time on trivial m ­ atters when he had more impor­tant work to do? See, for example, his skepticism about reported activities of the Devil in Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 254–276. 36. Hypochondriack Fancies] Rivierius (21) includes in his discussion a palsey caused by melancholy, produced by “a Chollerick Humor.” Crusoe appears to feel that his depressed psychological state is caused by contemplating the pos­si­ble presence of the Devil on his island, but con­temporary medicine would not have separated the two. 37. enchanted Island] The Dryden-­Davenant version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest was called “The Enchanted Island,” sometimes as a subtitle, sometimes as its major title. Defoe seems to have had some knowledge of this work, and it may have been a general influence on the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe. The curtain for per­for­mances of the Dryden-­Davenant version had a sky in storm filled with strange spirits, dev­i ls, and dragons. See, for example, the illustration before the play, taken from Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare, in The California Editions of the Writings of John Dryden, ed. Maximillian Novak, George Guffey, et  al., 20 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954–2000), 10:8–9. For a reference to The Tempest in Defoe’s writings, see An Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 230.

276

Ser ious R eflections

before, was Man, and ­every Stump an Apparition; and I scarce went twenty Yards together by Night or by Day, without looking ­behind me. Sometimes indeed I took a l­ ittle Heart, and would say well, let it be the Dev­il if it ­will, God is Master of the Dev­il, and he can do me no Hurt, u ­ nless he is permit­ ted; he can be no where, but he that made him is t­here too; and as I said after­ wards, when I was frighted with the old Goat in a Cave, he is not fit to live all alone in such an Island for 20 Years that would be afraid to see the Devil. But all t­ hese ­Things lasted but a short while, and the Vapours that ­were raised at first, ­were not to be laid so easily; for, in a Word, it was not meer Imagination, but it was the Imagination ras’d up to Disease:38 Nor did it ever quite wear off till I got my Man Fryday with me, of whom I have said so much; and then having Com­pany to talk to, the Hypo39 wore off, and I did not see any more Dev­ils ­after that. Before I leave this Part, I cannot but give a Caution to all vapourish melan­ choly ­People, whose Imaginations run this Way; I mean, about seeing the Devil, Apparitions, and the like; namely, that they should never look ­behind them, and over their Shoulders as they go up Stairs, or look into the Corners and Holes of Rooms with a Candle in their Hands, or turn about to see who may be ­behind them in any Walks or dark Fields, Lanes, or the like; for let such know, they w ­ ill see the Devil ­whether he be ­there or no; nay, they ­w ill be so perswaded, that they do see him, that their very Imagination w ­ ill be a Devil to them where-­ever they go. But ­after all this is said, let nobody suggest, that ­because the brain-­sick Fancy, the vapourish Hypochondriack Imagination represents Spectres and Spirits to us, and makes Apparitions for us, that therefore t­ here are no such ­Things as Spirits both good and evil, any more than we should conceive that ­there is no Devil, ­because we do not see him. The Devil has Witnesses of his Being and Nature, just as God himself has of his; they are not indeed so vis­i­ble or so numerous, but we are all able to bring Evidence of the Existence of the Devil from our own Frailties,40 as we are to

38. meer Imagination . . . ​Disease] For a discussion of imagination and what we would call depression, see Porter, Mind-­Forg’d Manacles, 58–68. See also Thomas Tryon, A Treatise of Dreams and Visions ([London? 1695?]), 258–261. 39. Hypo] Hypochondria. A form of psychological depression that was a dominant form of ­mental illness in the age, afflicting James Thomson, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and ­others. Boswell even ran a journal called The Hypochondriack. Doctor Cheyne (1671–1743) dubbed it The En­glish Malady in his book (1733) by that title. See Porter, Mind-­Forg’d Manacles, 84–86. 40. Evidence . . . ​Dev­i l . . . ​Frailties] Defoe is prob­ably thinking of the original sin of Adam and Eve from the Fall. The Devil in the form of the Serpent tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and Adam joins her when she offers it to him. Genesis 3 does not identify the Serpent with the Devil or Satan, but it was traditional in Christian thought before John Milton gave it a classic form in his Paradise Lost. ­Human frailties are a constant reminder of that event.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

277

bring Evidence of the Existence of God41 from the Faculties of our Souls, and from the Contexture of our Bodies. As our Propensity to Evil42 rather than Good, is a Testimony of the original Depravity of ­human Nature; so the Harmony between the Inclination and the Occasion, is a Testimony which leaves the Presence of the evil Spirit with us out of question. Not that the Devil is always the Agent in our Temptations; for tho’ the Devil is a very diligent Fellow, and always appears ready to fall in with the Allurement, yet the Scripture clears him, and we must do so too, of being the main Tempter; ’tis our own corrupt debauch’d Inclination which is the first moving Agent; and ther­ fore the Scripture says, A Man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own Lusts, and enticed.43 The Devil who, as I said, is a very diligent Fellow44 in the infernal Work, and is always ready to forward the Mischief, is also a very cunning Fellow, and knows how most dextrously to suit alluring Objects to the allurable Dispositions;45 to procure ensnaring ­Things, and lay them in the Way of the Man whom he finds so easy to be ensnar’d, and he never fails to prompt all the Mis­ chief he can, full of Stratagem and Art to ensnare us by the Help of our corrupt Affections, and ­t hese are call’d Sathan’s Devices.46 But having charg’d Sathan home in that Part, I must do the Devil that Justice, as to own, that he is the most slander’d, most abus’d Creature alive; Thousands of Crimes we lay to his Charge that he is not guilty of; Thousands of our own Infir­ mities we load him with which he has no Hand in; and Thousands of our Sins, which, as bad as he is, he knows nothing of; calling him our Tempter, and pre­ tending we did so and so, as the Devil would have it, when on the contrary the Devil had no Share in it, and we w ­ ere only led away of our own Lusts, and enticed. 41. Evidence . . . ​Existence of God] In Genesis 1:27 God is said to have “created man in his own image.” Defoe takes this to mean both his body and his soul, though some Jewish com­ mentators thought that only the soul was meant, since Genesis 2:7 states that God created Adam from the lowly “dust of the ground.” However Poole in his commentary on Genesis 1:26 (Annotations, sig. B2) argues that while the resemblance to God “most eminently appears in Mans Soul,” it might also be found in “Mans Body, in the Majesty of Mans Coun­ tenance, and the height of his Stature.” 42. Propensity to Evil] See Genesis 8:21: “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” In his notes to the third dialogue of the first volume of the ­Family Instructor (1:65), Defoe comments on the folly that is natu­ral to ­children: “an allowed custom in ­doing evil, a natu­ral propensity we all have to evil, with this we are all born into the world.” 43. A Man . . . ​enticed] See James 1:14. The exact quotation is: “But e­ very man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” James absolves God of any role in humanity’s sins, and in his Conjugal Lewdness, 311, Defoe argues that the “mortified Mind” and a “Soul resolv’d” can resist enticement. 44. diligent Fellow] This bantering tone is similar to that in Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726). 45. allurable Dispositions] In this context this would seem to be an allusion to 2 Peter 2:18, in which Peter attacks backsliding sinners: “For when they speak ­great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness.” 46. Sathan’s Devices] See 2 Corinthians 2:11: “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.”

278

Ser ious R eflections

But now, having made this Digression in the Dev­il’s Defence, I return to the main Question, that of the Being of the Devil, and of evil Spirits; this, I believe, ­t here is no Room to doubt of; but this, as I have observ’d, is not the ­Thing; ­t hese are not the Spirits I am speaking of, but I s­ hall come directly to what I mean, and speak plain without any Possibility of being misunderstood. I make no Question, but that t­ here is not only a World of Spirits, but that t­ here is a certain Knowledge of it, tho’ to us impossible as to the Manner of it; ­t here is a certain Converse between the World of Spirits, and the Spirits in this World; that is to say, between Spirits uncased or unembody’d, and Souls of Men embody’d or cased up in Flesh and Blood, as we all are on this side Death. It is true, that we canot describe this Converse of Spirits, as to the Way of it, the Manner of the Communication, or how ­t hings are mutually convey’d from one to another. How Intelligences are given or receiv’d we know not; we know but l­ittle of their being convey’d this Way, from the Spirits unembody’d, to ours that are in Life; and of their being convey’d that Way, namely from us to them; of that we know nothing. The latter certainly is done without the Help of the Organ, the former is convey’d by the Understanding, and the retir’d Faculties of the Soul,47 of which we can give very ­little Account. For Spirits, without the help of Voice, converse.48

Let me, however, give, as Reasons for my Opinion, some Account of the Con­ sequences of this Converse of Spirits; I mean such as are quite remote from what we call Apparition49 or Appearance of Spirits; and I omit ­t hese, ­because I know they are objected much against, and they bear much Scandal from the frequent Impositions of our Fancies and Imaginations upon our Judgments and Under­ standings, as above. But the more par­tic­u ­lar Discoveries of this Converse of Spirits, and which to me are undeniable are such as follows; namely, Dreams, Impulses, Involuntary Sadness, &c.50 Voices, Hints, Noises, Apprehensions, Dreams are dangerous Th ­ ings to talk of; and we have such dreaming about them, that indeed the least Encouragement to lay any Weight upon ’em, is presently carry’d 47. retir’d Faculties . . . ​Soul] The OED gives the obsolete meaning of: “4. b. Inward, inner, recondite, hidden.” The communication between ­t hese spirits and ­human beings seems to occur on an almost unconscious level. 48. For Spirits . . . ​converse] Defoe used this quotation frequently in his writings as early as his The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley (see [Works], 1:117). In his Consolidator, 46, quoting ­t hese lines, he explained that ­humans can sometimes feel impulses from the “World of Spirits” that inform us “of some approaching Evil or Good, which it was not able to foresee.” 49. Converse of Spirits . . . ​Apparition] ­Here as in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, Defoe stresses vari­ous forms of communication with a spirit world rather than the appearance of apparitions. 50. Dreams . . . ​Sadness, ­etc.] This list is somewhat similar to that in John Aubrey’s Miscellanies.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

279

away by a sort of P ­ eople that dream waking; and that run into such wild Extreams about them, that indeed we ­ought to be very cautious what we say of them. It is certain, Dreams of old w ­ ere the Ways by which God himself was pleased to warn Men, as well what to do, as what not to do; what Ser­v ices to perform, what Evils to shun. Joseph, the Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was appear’d to in both ­t hese, Matt. ii 13: 19.51 He was directed of God, in a Dream; to go into, Egypt, and he was bid return out of Egypt in a Dream and in the same Chapter, the Wise-­ men of the East w ­ ere warn’d of God in a Dream,52 to depart into their own Coun­ try another Way, to avoid the Fury of Herod. Now as this, and innumerable Instances thro’ the ­whole Scripture, confirm, that God did once make use of this Manner to convey Knowledge and Instruction to Men, I wish I could have this Question well answer’d, (viz.) Why are we now to direct ­People to take no Notice of their Dreams? But farther, it appears that this was not only the Method God himself took by his immediate Power, but ’tis evident he made use of it by the Ministry of Spirits; the Scripture says in both the Cases of Joseph above-­nam’d, That the Angel of the Lord appear’d to Joseph in a Dream. Now e­ very unembody’d Spirit is an Angel53 of the Lord in some Sense, and, as Angels and Spirits may be the same t­ hing in re­spect of this Influence upon us in Dreams, so it is still; and when any Notice for Good, or Warning against Evil, is given us in a Dream, I think ’tis no Arrogance at all for us to say, the Angel of the Lord appear’d to us in a Dream; or to say, some good Spirit gave me Warning of this in a Dream; take this which Way you ­will. That I may support this with such undeniable Arguments, drawn from Exam­ ples of the Fact, as no Man w ­ ill, or reasonably can oppose, I first appeal to the Experience of observing P ­ eople; I mean such ­People as observe ­t hese t­ hings with­ out a superstitious Dependence upon the Signification of them, that look upon Dreams but with such a moderate Regard54 to them, as may direct to a right Use of them: The Question I would ask of such is, W ­ hether they have never found any 51. Matt. ii. 13. 19] Section 13 has “And when they w ­ ere departed behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his ­mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou ­t here ­until I bring thee word: for Herod ­w ill seek the young child to destroy him.” Section 19 has: “But when Herod was dead, behold and angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.” This time Joseph is told that Herod is dead and that they ­ought to return. 52. warn’d of God in a Dream] Matthew 2:12: “And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.” 53. e­ very unembody’d Spirit . . . ​Angel] Defoe sometimes treats spirits and angels as roughly equivalent, but for the most part, he follows the notion of a hierarchy of angels that goes back to the Old Testament with its seraphim and cherubim. The spirits that sometimes communi­ cate with h ­ uman beings appear to be of a lower order. The New Testament mentions “Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers.” See Colossians 1:16. 54. Dreams . . . ​moderate Regard] In addition to Thomas Hobbes’s argument that dreams ­were merely a form of “decaying sense” (See below note to “Vision of the Angelick World,” 17:24), writers such as Thomas Tryon, while acknowledging that messages might be con­ veyed by angels or spiritual forces and giving most space to such dreams, also argued that most dreams ­were simply caused by the nature of the body, eating too much or lying in the wrong position. See Tryon, A Treatise of Dreams and Visions (London, 1689), 17–35, 51–57.

280

Ser ious R eflections

remarkable Event of their Lives so evidently foretold them by a Dream, as that it must of Necessity be true, that some invisible Being foresaw the Event, and gave them Notice of it? And that had that Notice been listen’d to, and the natu­ral Pru­ dence used, which would have been used if it had been certainly discovered, that evil Event might have been prevented? I would ask o ­ thers, w ­ hether they have not, by Dreams, been so warn’d of Evil ­really approaching, as that taking the Hint, and making use of the Caution given in ­t hose Dreams the Evil has been avoided. If I may speak my own Experience, I must take leave to say, That I never had any capital Mischief befel me in my Life, but I have had Notice of it by a Dream;55 and if I had not been that thoughtless unbelieving Creature, which I now would caution other ­People against, I might have taken many a Warning, and avoided many of the Evils that I afterwards fell into, merely by a total obstinate Neglect of ­t hose Dreams. In like Manner, I have in some of the greatest Distresses of my Life, been encouraged to believe firmly and fully, that I should one Time or other be deliv­ ered; and I must acknowledge, that in my greatest and most hopeless Banishment, I had such frequent Dreams of my Deliverance, that I always entertained a firm and satisying Belief, that my last Days would be better than my first;56 all which has effectually come to pass. From which I cannot determine, as I know some do, that all Dreams are meer Dosings of a delirious Head,57 Delusions of a waking Devil, and Relicts of the Day’s Thoughts,58 and Perplexities, or Pleasures: Nor do I see any Period of Time fixed between the two opposite Circumstances; namely, when Dreams ­were to be esteemed the Voice of God, and when the Delusion of the Devil. I know some have strug­gled hard to fix that par­tic­u­lar Article, and to ­settle it as a ­Thing ­going hand in hand with the Jewish Institutions;59 as if the Oracle60 55. Notice . . . ​by a Dream] In the Strange Surprizing Adventures, Crusoe has a dream that appears to foresee Friday’s arrival on the island. 56. last Days . . . ​first] An echo of Job 42:12: “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.” Defoe quotes this passage a number of times, including the preface to Col­o­nel Jack where he associates it with the parable of the Prodigal Son. 57. Dosings . . . ​delerious Head] Stupefaction, bewilderment. ­Under the verb “doze,” the OED has the obsolete meaning of “To stupefy; to muddle; to make drowsy or dull; to bewil­ der, confuse, perplex.” Defoe is quoted twice, and one of the examples given is from The Strange Surprizing Adventures: “1719 DE FOE Crusoe. . . . ​The tobacco had . . . ​dozed my head. . . . ​The surgeon . . . ​gave him something to dose and put him to sleep.” The first exam­ ple has Crusoe mixing rum with tobacco to put himself to sleep when he has a fever. 58. Relicts of the Day’s Thoughts] Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, ed. A. R. Waller [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936], 3 [pt. 1, chap. 2]) defined dreams as “decaying sense,” the disor­ga­nized remnants of the day’s events. 59. Jewish Institutions] The High Priest was supposedly able to predict the ­f uture mainly by use of the urim and thummim which he wore in his breast plate. Saul frequently consulted the priests, who w ­ ere able to prophecy by reading this device. Dreams and other forms of prophecy are mentioned in 1 Samuel 28:6, when Saul fails to receive any information by t­ hese means. 60. Oracle] Josephus referred to the urim and thummim worn by the High Priest as the “oracle.” See Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 7 vols., ed. H. St. J. Thackeray and Ralph Marcus, Loeb Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 4:395 (3:164).

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

281

ceasing in the T ­ emple61 with the Consummation of the typical Law,62 all the Methods which Heaven was pleased to take in the former Times for revealing his ­Will to Men, ­were to cease also at the same Time, and the Gospel Revelation being fully and effectually supplied by the Mission of the Holy Spirit, Dreams and all the Uses and Significations of Dreams w ­ ere at an End, and the Esteem and Regard to the Warnings and Instructions of Dreams was to expire also. But the Scripture is Point-­blank against this, in the History of Fact relating to Ananias, and the Conversion of St. Paul;63 and in the Story of St. Peter and Cornelius the devout Centurion at Antioch; both of them eminent Instances of God’s giving Notice of his Plea­sure to Men, by the Interposition or Medium of a Dream. The first of ­t hese is in Acts ix. 10. ­There was a certain Disciple at Damascus named Ananias,64 To him said the Lord in a Vision, &c. the Words spoken in this Vision to Ananias, directing to go to seek out one Saul of Tarsus, go on thus v. 12. And hath seen in a Vision, a Man named Ananias coming in. The other Passage is of St. Peter and Cornelius65 the Centurion, Acts 10. v. 3. 10, 11. in the third Verse it is said, Cornelius Fasting and Praying, saw a Vision, which afterwards in the 22d Verse, is called an holy Angel warning him, in the 30th Verse it is said; a Man Stood before me in bright Cloathing; at the same Time, v. 10. it is said, St. Peter was Praying and fell into a Trance; this we all agree to be a Posses­ sion of Sleep or a deep Sleep; and in this Traunce ’tis said, he saw Heaven opened, that is to say, he dreamed that he saw Heaven opened; it could be nothing e­ lse; for no Interpreters w ­ ill offer to insist that Heaven was r­ eally opened; also the hearing a Voice v.13, 15. must be in a Dream; thus ’tis apparent the W ­ ill of God concerning 61. ceasing in the T ­ emple] Defoe seems to believe that prophecy connected with the T ­ emple, along with all pagan prophecy by oracles ceased with the coming of Christ. The issue is actu­ ally extremely complicated. Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, 2 vols. (London, 1738), 2: [no sig., u ­ nder “Oracle] states that “It was Eusebius who first endeavoured to persuade the Chris­ tians, that the coming of Jesus Christ had struck the oracles dumb.” But the Cyclopaedia article notes that ­t here ­were still oracles in 385 c.e. Eusebius may have been Defoe’s source. ­ ere not used in the New T ­ emple The Talmud appears to state that the urim and thummim w ­a fter the return from the exile, basing its arguments on Ezra 2:61–63 and Nehemiah 7:63–65. Josephus, on the other hand, suggests that it was used ­later in the New ­Temple but not ­a fter the High Priest John Hyrcanus around 104 b.c.e. Modern scholars seem to follow this notion. See Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 4:395, 7:379 (13:300); and Lisabeth Fried, “Did Second ­Temple High Priests Possess the Urim and Thummim,” Journal of Hebrew Scripture 7 (2007): 1–25 (article 3). 62. Consumation . . . ​t ypical Law] Defoe rehearses the notion that the replacement of the Old Law represented by the Old Testament, ended more or less with the death of Jesus in 33 c.e. and completely with the destruction of the Second T ­ emple in 70 c.e. In Christian theology, the New Law of the Christian New Testament, did not mean an end to methods of commu­ nication between God and humanity, but salvation was to be found through faith in Christ. The word “typical” is used h ­ ere in the sense of the events in the Old Testament representing “types” predictive of and fulfilled in events of the New Testament. 63. Conversion . . . ​Paul] See 2 Corinthians 12:1–21. 64. Ananias] The story of Ananias and his vision in which he is told to seek Saul (Acts 9:1–19) is similar in many ways to that of St. Peter and Cornelius, which follows. 65. St. Peter and Cornelius] In chapter 10 of Acts, both Cornelius, a centurion, and Peter have visions.

282

Ser ious R eflections

what we are to do or not to do, what is or is not to befal us, is and has been thus conveyed by Vision or Dream, since the Expiration of the Levitical Dispensation, and since the Mission of the Holy Ghost.66 When then did it cease? and if we do not know when it ceased, how then are we sure it is at all ceased, and what Authority have we now to reject all Dreams or Visions67 of the Night, as they are called, more than formerly? I ­w ill not say, but ­t here may be more nocturnal Delusions now in the World, than ­there ­were in ­those Times; and perhaps the Devil may have gain’d more upon Mankind in t­ hese Days, than he had then, though we are not let into t­ hose ­Things enough, to know w ­ hether it is so or not; nor do we know, that t­ here ­were not as many unsignifying Dreams in ­t hose Days as now, and perhaps as much to be said against depending upon them; though I think ­t here is not one Word in Scripture said, to take off the Regard Men might give to Dreams, or to lessen the Weight which they might lay on them. The only Text that I think looks like it, is the Flout Joseph’s Brethren68 put upon him, or threw out at him, when they ­were speaking of him with Contempt, Genesis xxxvii. 19. Behold this Dreamer cometh; and again, v. 20. Let us slay him and cast him into some Pit, and we s­ hall see what w ­ ill become of his DREAMS. This indeed looks a ­little like the pre­sent Language against Dreams; but even this, is sufficiently rebuked in the Consequences, for ­t hose Dreams of Joseph’s did come all to pass, and proving the superior Influence such ­Things have upon the Affairs of Men, in spight of all the Contempt they can cast upon them. The Maxim I have laid down to my self for my conduct in this Affair is in few Words, that we should not lay too g­ reat Stress upon Dreams,69 and yet not wholly neglect them. 66. Expiration . . . ​Holy Ghost] For Defoe’s discussion of dreams, see chapter 5, note 98 of ­ ecause it was in Leviticus that so many of this edition. Defoe uses “Levitical Dispensation,” b the laws of the Old Testament are laid down. Sometimes it is referred to as the “Mosaic” dis­ pensation, but both refer to the laws that ­were superseded by the coming of Christ. 67. Dreams or Visions] Both of t­ hese are coupled in Job 33:14–16 as ways of communication between God and man: “For god speaketh once, year twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed. Then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction.” 68. Flout Joseph’s Brethren] For flout, see OED: “1. A mocking speech or action; a piece of mockery, jeer, scoff.” It is not listed as obsolete, but its use as a noun in Defoe’s time was apparently more common than it is t­oday. The background to the jealousy of Joseph’s ­brothers are his having received a coat of many colors from his f­ather and his reporting to have dreamed two dreams the import of which was that members of his ­family, including his ­brothers would bow down to him. First he dreams that the sheaves in the field bow down to his sheaf and then he has a second dream suggesting his superiority to the rest of his f­ amily. ­A fter he has dreamed that “the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.” His ­father, Israel (Jacob), upbraids him, saying: “What is this dream that thou has dreamed? ­Shall I and thy ­mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?” See Genesis 37:3–10. 69. Stress upon Dreams] In his Treatise of Dreams and Visions, 6–7, Thomas Tryon notes the dismissal of the value of dreams as a m ­ atter of mere superstition. He begins his answer to such a position modestly enough by suggesting that dreams may indicate the health of the

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

283

I remember, I was once pre­sent, where a long Dispute was warmly carried on between two Persons of my Acquaintance upon this very Subject, the one a Lay­ man, the other a Clergyman,70 but both very pious and religious Persons: The first thought t­ here was no heed at all to be given to Dreams, that they could have no justifiable Original, that they w ­ ere Delusions and no more, that it was Atheisti­ cal to lay any Stress upon them, and that he could give such Objections against them, as that no Man of good Princi­ples could avoid being convinced by; that as to their being a Communication from the invisible to the vis­i­ble World, ’twas a Chimæra, and that he saw no Foundation for believing any Real­ity in such a ­Thing, ­unless I would set up for a Popish Limbus71 or Purgatory,72 which had no Foundation in the Scripture. 1. He said, If Dreams ­were from the Agency of any prescient Being, the Notices would be more direct, and the Discoveries clear; not by Allegories and emblematick Fancies, expressing Th ­ ings imperfect and dark:73 For to what body as well as the “secret bent of our minds” before trying to establish them as messages between the world of spirits and the ordinary world of ­human beings. 70. Layman . . . ​Clergyman] Although this may have been a genuine conversation between two ­people, Defoe seems to have staged a similar debate in Mist’s Weekly Journal for 6 Febru­ ary 1720 and 13 February 1720 (Lee, Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 2:193–199). The correspondent signing himself E. S. suggests that dreams are mainly from natu­ral distur­ bances of the body and that to cause them to put “ourselves upon]the Rack, and disquieting ourselves for nought” was against “the purest Doctrines of Chris­tian­ity.” The issue of the following week contained a reply from a T. E. presenting the opposing point of view, suggest­ ing that the belief in dreams as genuine messages from the spirit world is not foolish: “It is supported, as we have seen, by the Holy Scriptures,—by the strongest Testimony, and by daily Experience, and is fully agreeable to sound Reason; and we are not to be beaten out of it by anyone’s telling a Ridicu­lous Story of an old ­Woman’s Fancy, and then laughing at it; for ­t here is certainly a Medium, between believing every­t hing which Fancy suggests, and not believing any ­Thing, though Reason assures it.” 71. Popish Limbus] Limbo. The OED defines this as “1. a. A region supposed to exist on the border of Hell as the abode of the just who died before Christ’s coming, and of unbaptized infants.” It was divided into the limbus patrium and the limbus infantium, the first for t­ hose who lived before the coming of Christ, the second for infants who had not been baptized. The OED definition, placing it near hell, reflects a concept of punishment, but for some theo­ logians, it was merely a place for ­t hose who ­were to be denied the Beatific Vision. See The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.  L. Cross and E.  A. Livingstone, 3rd  ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 987. 72. Purgatory] The place of punishment and purification where the souls of ­t hose who have lived in a state of grace undergo punishment for such sins as need to be forgiven before being allowed into Heaven. The speaker correctly regards both the concept of limbo and purgatory as connected to the ideas of the Roman Catholic Church, but the concept of limbo was far less certain. Purgatory, especially, seems to allow for the possibility that the ghosts of the departed might visit the earth, a concept that Defoe denied in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions. For Defoe’s mockery of the concept of purgatory, see his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 65. See also The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1358–1359; and Walker, Decline of Hell, 59–61. 73. Allegories . . . ​imperfect and dark] In Mist’s Weekly Journal for 6 February 1720 (Lee, Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 2:193), Defoe had his correspondent, T. E., complain that “if they would have us understand their Hieroglyphicks and mystical Allusions, they should furnish us with a Key to them, by which we may never fail to interpret right;—or, in plain

284

Ser ious R eflections

Purpose should Spirits un-­embodied sport with Mankind, warning him of approaching Mischiefs by the most ridicu­lous Enigmas, Figures, &c. leaving the Wretch to guess what awaited him, though of the utmost Consequence, and to perish if he mistook the Meaning of it; and leaving him sometimes perfectly at a Loss, to know ­whether he was Right or Wrong, and without any Rule or Guide to Walk by in the most difficult Cases. 2. He objected, that with the Notice of Evil, suppose it to be rightly understood, ­there was not given a Power to avoid it; and therefore it could not be alledged, that the Notice was any way kind, and that it was not likely to proceed from a beneficent Spirit, but meerly Fortuitous and of no Significancy. 3. He objected, That if such Notices as ­those w ­ ere of such Weight, why ­were they not Constant: But that sometimes they ­were given, and sometimes omitted, though Cases ­were equally impor­tant; and that therefore they did not seem to proceed from any Agent, whose Actions ­were to be fairly accounted for. 4. He said, That oftentimes we had very distinct and formal Dreams, without any Signification74 at all, that we could neither know any Th ­ ing probable or any ­Thing rational of them; and that it would be profane to suggest that to come from Heaven, which was too apparently foolish and inconsistent. 5. As Men ­were not always thus warned, or supplied with Notices of Good or Evil, so all Men ­were not alike supplied with them; and what Reason could we give, why one Man or one W ­ oman should not have the same Hints as another. The Clergyman gave distinct Answers to all t­hese Objections, and to me, I confess, very satisfactory; w ­ hether they may be so to ­t hose that read them, is no Concern of mine, let e­ very one judge for himself. 1. He said, that as to the Signification of Dreams, and the Objections against them, b ­ ecause dark and doubtful, that they are express’d generally by Hiero­ glyphical Repre­sen­ta­t ions,75 Similies, Allusions, and figurative emblem­ Terms, so explain themselves, that the weakest Capacity may infallibly judge where to expect the foreboding Evil.” 74. Dreams, without any Signification] In Mist’s Weekly Journal for 16 January 1720 (Lee, Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 2:182–184), a correspondent signing herself “WHITE WITCH” poses a question about the meaning of dreams as warnings, giving examples of ­those that saved ­people and ­those that did not and asking ­whether “their Converse with Souls embodied by such means as is pretended, has ­really nothing at all in it, but is mere Deceptio Visus of the Mind,—­a Dream, a Delusion and no more.” 75. Hieroglyphical Repre­sen­ta­tions] Used h ­ ere in the sense given by the OED: “2. transf. and fig. having a hidden meaning; symbolical, emblematic.” Whereas T. E. (in “A Vision of the Angelick World,” note 73 in this edition) uses “Hierglyphics” in the sense of something that cannot be deciphered, the Clergyman considers such dreams as decipherable through “Interpretation.” Since hieroglyphics w ­ ere thought to embody visual picture along with ver­ bal meaning, Defoe sometimes argued that it was the ideal form of communication, closer to conveying full meaning than words. From that standpoint, dreams might appear to be equally meaningful. Although Athanasius Kircher thought he had found a way to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics during the seventeenth ­century, in fact they ­were not truly deci­ phered ­until the nineteenth ­century with the help of the Rosetta Stone discovered in 1799 and deciphered by Jean-­François Champollion from 1822–1824. Chinese characters ­were also

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

285

atick Ways of expressing ­Things was true, and that by this Means, for want of Interpretation, the Th ­ ing was not understood, and consequently the Evil not shun’d. This, he said, was the only Difficulty that remained to him in the Case, but that he could see nothing in it against the Signification of them, ­because thus it was before; for Dreams w ­ ere often allegorick and allusive,76 when they ­were evidently from God; and what the End and Design of Providence in that was, we could not pretend to enquire. 2. To the Second he said, we charged God foolishly, to say he had given the Notice of Evil without the Power to avoid it, which he denied; and affirmed, that if any one had not Power to avoid the Evil, it was no Notice to him, that it was want of giving due Heed to that Notice, not for want of the Notice being sufficient that, any Evil followed, and that Men first neglected them­ selves, and then charg’d the Judge of all the Earth with not ­doing right. 3. Likewise he said, the Complaint that ­these notices ­were not constant, was unjust, for he doubted not but they w ­ ere so, but our discerning was crazed and clouded by our Negligence in not taking due Notice of it, that we hoodwink’d our Understanding by pretending Dreams w ­ ere not to be regarded; and the Voice ­really spoke, but we refused to hear being negligent of our own Good. 4. In the same Sense he answered the Fourth, and said, it was a ­Mistake to say, that sometimes Dreams had no Import at all, he said it was only to be said, none that we could perceive the Reason of, which was owing to our Blindness and supine Negligence77 to be secure at one Time, and our Heads too much alarmed at another; so that the Spirit which we might be said to be conversing with in a Dream, was constantly and equally kind and careful, but our Powers, not always in the same State of Action, nor equally attentive to, or retentive of the Hints that w ­ ere given; or ­Things might be rendred more or less intelligible to us, as the Powers of our Soul w ­ ere more or less doz’d or somniated78 with the Oppression of Vapours from the Body, which occasions Sleep; for tho’ the Soul cannot be said to sleep79 itself, yet how far its Operations may be l­ imited, thought to be a form of hieroglyphic. For the background to this quest for a form of language thought to be more philosophical than the words formed by the alphabet, see David Porter, Ideographia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 15–108. 76. allegorick and allusive] This seems to echo Defoe’s description of the kind of fiction he was writing in Robinson Crusoe. See the preface to this edition and chapter 3, note 221. 77. Blindness and supine Negligence] Supine is used h ­ ere in the OED sense of: “2. fig. Morally or mentally inactive, inert, or indolent.” In Mist’s Weekly Journal for 6 February 1720 (Lee, Life and Recently Discovered Writings, 2:195–199), E. S., who takes the same position as the Clergyman h ­ ere, argued forcefully that “our Dreams proceed from a higher Cause than the Extravagancies of Fancy” and that they are usually decipherable. 78. somniated] Drowsy. The OED gives this passage as its source. 79. Soul . . . ​sleep] Defoe argues that the soul is always active but that the body’s sleep may limit its ability to perceive the meaning of dreams. But since the soul is a form of spirit, it is able to perceive what the bodily eye cannot. In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 181, Defoe wrote of the extent of such perception: “And from hence also it is evident that Dreams are sometimes to be call’d, and ­really are, Apparitions, as much as ­t hose other vis­i­ble Apparitions which are seen when we are (as we call it) broad awake; that Apparition is to the Eyes of the Soul, and as it is so, it may be seen as well sleeping as waking, for the

286

Ser ious R eflections

and the Understanding prescribed80 by the Sleepiness of the Body, says he, I ­will not undertake, let the Anatomist judge of it, who can account for the Contexture of the Parts, and for their Operations, which I cannot answer to. 5. As to the last Question, why ­People are not equally supplied with such Warnings, he said, this seem’d to be no Question at all in the Case; for Providence itself might have some Share in the Direction of it, and then that Providence might perhaps be l­ imited by some superiour Direction, the same that guides all the solemn Dispositions of Nature, and was a Wind blowing where it listeth:81 that as to the Converse of Spirits, tho’ he allowed the Th ­ ing itself, yet he did not tie it up to a stated Course of Conversing, that it should be the same always, and to all ­People, and on all Occasions; but that it seem’d to be spontaneous, and consequently Arbitrary, as if the Spirits unembodied had it left to them to converse as they thought fit, how, where, and with whom they would; that all he answered for in that Discourse was for the Th ­ ing itself, that such a ­Thing ­t here was, but why ­t here was so much of it, or why no more, was none of his Business, and he believed a Discovery was not yet made to Mankind of that Part. I thought it would be much to the Purpose to remark this Opinion of another Man, b ­ ecause it corresponded so exactly with my own, but I have not done with my Friend, for he led me into another Enquiry, which indeed I had not taken so much notice of before, and this was introduced by the following Question. You seem, says he, to be very inquisitive about Dreams, and to doubt, tho’ I think you have no Reason for it, of the Real­ity of the World of Spirits, which Dreams are such an Evidence of. Pray, says he, what think you of waking Dreams, Transes, Visions, Noises, Voices, Hints, Impulses, and all ­t hese waking Testimo­ nies of an invisible World, and of the Communication that ­there is between us and them, which are generally entertained with our Eyes open. This led me into many Reflections upon past ­Things, which I had been Witness to as well in myself as in other ­People, and particularly in my former Solitudes, when I had many Occasions to mark such Th ­ ings as t­hese; and I could not but Imagination sleeps not: the Soul ceases indeed to act organically, but it ceases not to act as a Soul, and in a spirituous Manner, and consequently can act upon spirituous Objects; and as well in Sleep as at any other time.” 80. prescribed] ­limited. The OED classifies this as rare and defines it as “2. trans. To limit, restrict, restrain, circumscribe; to confine within bounds.” One of the examples is from Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il in which he comments on the limitations place on ­human faculties. 81. Wind . . . ​listeth] Wishes or chooses. An allusion to John 3:8: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every­one that is born of the Spirit.” Poole, Annotations (2:sig. Aaaa2) notes that this is a difficult passage. He does not accept the notion put forward by some that it means that God is not in control of the wind, but he does allow that God’s control is “imperceptible” to ­human beings. In his Review for 11 January 1711 (7:499), Defoe takes Poole’s position main­ taining that the wind goes not freely but “where it is bidden.” In this view of earth from the moon, ordinary ­human perception is dismissed incapable of seeing real­ity as the wind is seen as “Troops of Armed Horse­men.”

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

287

entertain a ­free Conversation with my Friend upon this Subject, as often as I had Opportunity, of which I must give some Account. I had one Day been conversing so long with him upon the common received Notions of the Planets being habitable,82 and of a Diversity of Worlds, that I think verily, I was for some Days like a Man transported into ­these Regions myself; w ­ hether my Imagination is more addicted to reallizing the Th ­ ings I talk of, as if they w ­ ere in View, I know not; or w ­ hether by the Power of the Converse of Spirits I speak of, I was at that Time enabled to entertain clearer Ideas of the Invis­ ible World, I ­really cannot tell; but I certainly made a Journey to all ­those sup­ posed habitable Bodies in my Imagination,83 and I know not but it may be very useful to tell you what I met with in my Way, and what the wiser I am for the Discovery; w ­ hether you ­w ill be the wiser for the Relation at second Hand, I can­ not answer for that. I could make a long Discourse h ­ ere of the Power of Imagination, and how bright the Ideas of Distant Th ­ ings may be found in the Mind, when the Soul is more than ordinarily agitated: It is certain the extraordinary Intelligence con­ veyed in this Manner is not always regular, sometimes it is exceeding confused, and the Brain being not able to digest it, turns round too fast; this tends to Lunacy and Distraction, and the Swiftness of the Motion t­ hese Ideas come in with, occa­ sions a Commotion in Nature, the understanding is mobb’d with them, disturb’d, runs from one ­Thing to another, and digests nothing; this is well expressed in our common Way of talking of a mad Man, namely, that his Head is turned.84 Indeed I can liken it to nothing so well as to the Wheels of a Wind-­mill, which if the Sails or Wings are set, and the Wind blow a Storm, run round so fast, that they w ­ ill set all on Fire,85 if a skilful Hand be not ready to direct and manage it. 82. Planets being habitable] The idea that t­ here might be other planets that ­were inhabited had once been regarded as a heresy, but by the end of the seventeenth ­century, it had been accepted as a distinct possibility. The notion was pop­u ­lar­ized by Bernard de Fontenelle. Thomas Burnet had come to the point of arguing that the earth was actually an insignificant part of the universe. See Bernard de Fontenelle, A Discovery of New Worlds, trans. Aphra Behn, in Works, by Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1992– 1996), 4:87–165; and Thomas Burnet, A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls, trans. “Mr. [John] Dennis” (London, 1723), 321; and Archaeologicae Philosophicae: or, The Ancient Doctrine Concerning the Originals of Th ­ ings, trans. Thomas Foxton (London, 1729), 29. 83. Journey . . . ​my Imagination] Defoe may possibly have known of the intellectual journey to the stars by Hai Ebn Yokdhan (Hayy ibn Yaqzan), the visionary island dweller created by Ibn al Tufayl. See The Improvement of ­Human Reason, Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, trans. Simon Ockley (London, 1708), esp. 130–132 (section 90). For a partial list of works comparing the experiences of Robinson Crusoe on his island with t­ hose of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, see “ ‘No Eye has seen, or Ear Heard’: Arabic Sources for Quaker Subjectivity in Unca Eliza Winkfield’s The Female American,” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 44 (2011): 261–283, esp. notes 7 and 47. ­ ental balance of; to impair 84. Head is turned] See OED: “45. To disturb or overthrow the m the power of judgement of; to make mad or crazy, distract, dement, infatuate. a. with the brain or head as obj.” 85. Wheels of a Wind-­mill . . . ​Fire] This would be caused by friction, presumably if the wheels ­were not sufficiently lubricated. Locke used the image of a lantern with a candle in it,

288

Ser ious R eflections

But not to enter upon this whymsical Description of Lunacy, which perhaps may be no Bodies Opinion but my own, I proceed thus. That when the Head is strong, and capable of the Impressions; when the Understanding is impowered to digest the infinite Variety of Ideas,86 which pre­sent to it from the extended Fancy; then, I say, the Soul of Man is capable to act strangely upon the Invisibles in Nature, and upon Futurity, Realizing e­ very Th ­ ing to itself in such a lively Man­ ner, that what it thus thinks of, it r­ eally sees, speaks to, hears, converses with, &c. as livelily, as if the Substance was ­really before his Face; and this is what I mean by ­t hose that dream waking, by Visions, Trances, or what you please to call them; for it is not necessary to this Part, that the Man should be asleep. I return to my Share of ­these ­Things. It was ­after my conversing with my learned Friend about the heavenly Bodies, the Motion, the Distances, and the Bulk of the Planets, their Situation, and the Orbits they move in, the Share of Light, Heat and Moisture, which they enjoy, their Re­spect to the Sun, their Influ­ ences upon us, and at last, the Possibility of their being habitable, with all the Arcana87 of the Skies; it was on this Occasion, I say, that my Imagination, always given to wander, took a Flight88 of its own; and as I have told you that I had an invincible Inclination to travel, so I think I travelled as sensibly, to my under­ standing, over all the Mazes and Wastes89 of infinite Space,90 in Quest of ­those presumably a magic lantern to illustrate succession of ideas. See Locke, Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding (2:14, 9). 86. infinite Variety of Ideas] ­There may be an echo of John Locke’s treatment of ideas in his Essay Concerning H ­ uman Understanding, but it would be difficult to narrow the influence ­here to any single reference. He discusses the succession of ideas in (2:14). 87. Arcana] Mysteries. Defoe uses this word twice before in this edition of Serious Reflections. See chapter 3, notes 64 and 191. 88. Imagination . . . ​Flight] In his Consolidator (1705), Defoe had already taken flight to the moon, not by imagination but by a kind of space ship. Nevertheless, his critics regarded it enough of a flight of imagination to question his sanity. See Joseph Brown, The Moon Calf (London, 1705). 89. Mazes and Wastes] Defoe liked to evoke such sublime images of the universe, ­whether in imagining it as h ­ ere in a semi-­scientific picture of the planets or in a more metaphysical sense as the unknown world where spirits may dwell. Defoe’s voyage to the Moon in the Consolidator was essentially po­liti­cal. But all are flights of the imagination and this passage shares a g­ reat deal with some of the imaginative spiritual flights that Defoe took at this time. In his Continuation of the Letters of a Turkish Spy, 111, using much the same language as Defoe uses h ­ ere, his Mahmut describes the state of ecstasy that he feels at the thought of returning to his native country. He describes this as a form of “Vision” or “dream waking,” as he experiences the feeling that his soul is bursting from his body: “the Soul would hasten the nearest way thro’ that Abyss to pass to the Regions of Light, of which she herself is native. The Phi­los­o­phers ­here entertain us with Scruples concerning the Soul’s passing the infinite inconceivable Space, we call Abyss, being the Gulph plac’d between Time and Eternity.” 90. infinite Space] In his Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls, trans. John Dennis (London, 1733), 318–329, Thomas Burnet allows himself a similar imaginative voyage through the universe. But in his The Sacred Theory of the Earth, 3rd ed. (London, 1697), 104, Burnet had a traveler from some planet in outer space visit the earth and view it as a “­little dirty Planet.” Defoe, who was familiar with Burnet’s work, may have been deliberately reversing Burnet’s method in arguing against the view that ­t here ­were beings on other planets.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

289

­ ings, as ever I did over the Desarts of Karakathay, and the uninhabited Wasts Th of Tartary,91 and perhaps may give as useful an Account of my Journey. When first my Fancy rais’d me up in the Confines of this vast Abyss, and hav­ ing now travelled thro’ the misty Regions of the Atmosphere92 could look down as I mounted, and see the World below me, ’tis scarce pos­si­ble to imagine how ­little, how mean, how despicable e­ very Th ­ ing look’d; let any Man but try this Experiment of himself, and he ­shall certainly find the same ­Thing; let him but fix his Thoughts so intensly upon what is, and must necessarily be seen in a Stage or two higher, than where we now live removed from the par­tic­u ­lar Converse with the World, as to realize to his Imagination what he can suppose to be t­here, he ­shall find all that is below him, as distant Objects always do, lessen in his Mind as they do in his Sight. Could a Man subsist without a supply of Food, and live but one Mile in per­ pendicular Height from the Surface, he would despise Life and the World93 at such a Rate, that he would hardly come down to have it be all his own; the Soul of Man is capable of being continually elevated above the very Thoughts of ­human ­Things, is capable of travelling up to the highest and most distant Regions of Light, but when it does, as it rises above the earthly Globe, so the Th ­ ings of this Globe sink to him. When I was at first lifted up in my imaginary Travels, this was the first ­Thing of Moment I remarked; namely, how ­little the World and ­every ­Thing about it seemed to me: I am not given to preach or drawing long Corollaries94 as the Learned call them, but I commend it to my Friends to observe, that could we always look upon the ­Things of Life with the same Eyes, as we ­shall do when we come to the Edge of Time,95 when one Eye can as it ­were look back on the World, and the other look forward into Eternity, we should save ourselves the Trou­ble of much Repentance, and should scorn to touch many of ­t hose Th ­ ings, in which now we fancy our chief Felicity is laid up; believe me we ­shall see more with half an Eye then, and judge better at first Glance, than we can now with all our pretended 91. Desarts of Karacathay . . . ​Tartary] Returning to his Crusoe mode, Defoe connects Cru­ soe’s voyages through China and Siberia in The Farther Adventures, to this imaginary voy­ age through space. In so ­doing, he is also hinting that Crusoe’s voyages ­were equally imaginative. 92. Regions of the Atmosphere] For Defoe’s concept of space, see Irving N. Rothman, “Rob­ inson Crusoe in Outer Space: The Power of the Imagination,” ISSO NASA  / UHCL  / UH (2004): 41–44. 93. despise . . . ​World] It was not only Thomas Burnet who allowed this kind of view from the standpoint of the universe but also some of t­hose who gave the Boyle Lectures. See, for example, John Clarke, An Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Moral Evil (London, 1721), 104. 94. long Corollaries] Digressions. The OED gives as an obsolete use of this word: “4. Some­ thing additional or beyond the ordinary mea­sure; a surplus; a supernumerary.” In fact, Defoe specialized in digressions, and a­ fter Swift’s criticism of digressions in his Tale of a Tub (1704), Defoe, somewhat uncomfortably, insisted he would continue his practice. 95. Edge of Time] In his imagination, Crusoe creates a way of seeing both past and ­f uture in one glance.

290

Ser ious R eflections

Wisdom and Penetration. In a Word, all the Passions and Affections suffer a gen­ eral Change upon such a View, and what we desire before, we contemn then with Abhorrence. Having begun to soar, the World was soon out of Sight, u ­ nless that as I r­ ose higher, and could look at her in a due Position as to the Sun, I could see her turned into a Moon,96 and shine by Reflection: Ay, shine on, said I, with thy borrowed Rays, for thou hast but very few of thy own. When my Fancy had mounted me thus beyond the Vestiges of the Earth, and leaving the Atmosphere ­behind me, I had set my firm Foot upon the Verge of Infi­ nite, when I drew no Breath, but subsisted upon pure Æther,97 it is not pos­si­ble to express fully the Vision of the Place; first you are to conceive of Sight as unconfin’d, and you see ­here at least the ­whole solar System at one View. Nor is your Sight bounded by the narrow Circumference of one Sun, and its Attendants of Planets, whose Orbits are appropriated to its proper System, but above and beyond, and on ­every Side you see innumerable Suns, and attending on them, Planets, Satellites, and inferior Lights proper to their respective Systems, and all t­hese moving in their subordinate Circumstances, without the least Confusion, with glorious Light and Splendor inconceivable. In this first Discovery ’tis most natu­ral to observe, how plainly it is to be seen, that the Reason of the Creation98 of such im­mense Bodies as the Sun, Stars, Planets, and Moons in the g­ reat Circle of the lower Heaven, is far from being to be found in the Study of Nature, on the Surface of our Earth: But he that w ­ ill see thorowly, why God has form’d the Heavens the Work of his Hands,99 and the Moon and the Stars which he has made, must soar up higher; and then as he w ­ ill see with other Eyes100 than did before, so he ­w ill see the God of Nature has form’d 96. turned into a Moon] See The Consolidator, xxxvii, note 31. In playing with this idea, Defoe was following a long line of writers of imaginary voyages to the moon, including Bishop Francis Godwin and Cyrano de Bergerac. 97. pure Æther] A supposed ele­ment filling all space beyond the sphere of the moon; a breathable fluid. In his Lexicon Technicum (London, 1704), sig. C3, John Harris confessed that “we scarce well understand” what was meant by the term. He preferred to believe in a void between the bodies of the universe and suspected “the Cartesian Doctrine of an absolute ­ ehind the concept. Plenum” to lie b 98. Reason of the Creation] Defoe adopts the Newtonian view of nature and the universe as the wonderful creation of a rational God. 99. Heavens . . . ​Hands] See Psalms 102:25: “Of old has thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.” In the same psalm (102:19) ­t here is the vision of God looking down upon his creation: “from heaven did the Lord behold the earth.” 100. see with other Eyes] Defoe used this theme in his Consolidator, in which the dwellers on the moon have special glasses which enable them to observe the ­human condition more clearly. And in a reprise of that e­ arlier work, he devoted three issues of the Review (11–16 January 1711 [7:501–7]) to a similar voyage. Although most of ­t hese issues are devoted to poli­ tics and the role of the Devil in inflaming nation against nation, he paused (7:506) to con­ sider the condition of humanity in relation to their ­f uture state: “This made me reflect with what dif­fer­ent Views men see the World at their ­going out of it, from what they have; most of the Time they are in it; and how strangely ­People Judge of ­Things by their Prejudices and Partiality, to what they ­w ill do when they step out of Time into Eternity.”

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

291

an infinite Variety which we know nothing of, and that all the Creatures are a Reason to one another for their Creation.101 I could not forget myself however, when I was got up thus high, I say, I could not but look back upon the State of Man in this Life, how confined from ­these Discoveries, how vilely employed in biting and devouring, envying, and malign­ ing one another, and all for the vilest Trifles that can be conceived. But I was above it all h ­ ere, and all ­t hose ­Things which appeared so afflicting before, gave me not the least Concern now; for the Soul being gone of this Errand, had quite dif­fer­ent Notices of the ­whole State of Life, and was neither influenced by Passions or Affections as it was before. ­Here I saw into many ­Things by the Help of a sedate Inquiry, that we can enter­ tain ­little or no Notion of in a State of common superficial Life, and I desire to leave a few Remarks of this imaginary Journey, as I did of my ordinary Travels. When I came, I say, to look into the solar System as I have hinted, I saw per­ fectly the Emptiness of our modern Notions, that the Planets w ­ ere habitable Worlds,102 and s­ hall give a brief Description of the Case, that o ­ thers may see it too, without the Necessity of taking so long a Journey. And first for the Word Habitable, I understand the meaning of it to be, that the Place it is spoken of, is qualify’d for the Subsistence and Existence of Man and Beast, and to preserve the vegetative and sensitive Life; and you may depend upon it, that none of the Planets except the Moon, are in this Sense habitable; and the Moon, a poor ­little watery damp Th ­ ing,103 not above as big as Yorkshire,104 nei­ ther worth being called a World, nor capable of rendring Life comfortable to Mankind, if indeed supportable; and if you w ­ ill believe one’s Mind capable of see­ ing at so g­ reat a Distance, I assure you I did not see Man, ­Woman or Child t­ here in all my Contemplative Voyage to it; my Meaning is, I did not see the least Rea­ 101. Reason . . . ​Creation] Something seems to have gone wrong with this sentence. He is arguing for an interrelation between all the creatures on the earth and that it amounts to a completely rational scheme. 102. Emptiness . . . ​Worlds] The notion of the existence of other planets with other beings would mean that the entire dispensation of ­t hose religions that took their origins from Juda­ ism would no longer be unique. The deists maintained that ­t here ­were prob­ably many worlds with their own religions and that God was merely concerned with his creation of them. Cru­ soe is always speaking of an environment for h ­ uman beings, not of some other form of life on other planets. 103. Moon . . . ​damp ­Thing] For seas on the moon, see Fontenelle, Discovery of New Worlds, 126–128. In a more scientific vein, John Harris quotes Newton to the effect that the moon was prob­ably “at its first Original, to have been a Fluid, like to our Sea,” but he notes that unlike the earth, it seemed to lack an atmosphere of clouds and storms. See Lexicon Technicum, sig. 5K1v. In his Astronomical Dialogues between a Gentleman and a Lady (London, 1719), 107– 108, Harris suggests that the moon might be inhabited, but not by anything with the same makeup as ­human beings. Although Harris admitted that his Astronomical Dialogues ­were modeled on the work of Fontenelle, he maintained that unlike Fontenelle, he presented the “Caelestial World just as it is,” without some of Fontenelle’s imaginative flights. 104. big as Yorkshire] In his Astronomical Dialogues between a Gentleman and a Lady, 107, John Harris estimated the dia­meter of the moon to be approximately 2,200 miles, though it is actually 2,160 miles. It is difficult to imagine Yorkshire being rolled into a ball and placed in the sky. Defoe is saying that the moon is not as large as it seems.

292

Ser ious R eflections

son to believe t­ here was or could be any t­ here. As to the rest of the Planets, I’ll take them in their Order. Saturn, (the remotest from the Sun, which is the Centre of the System,) is a vast extended Globe, of a Substance cold and moist,105 its greatest Degree of Light is never so much as our greatest Darkness may be said to be in clear Weather, and its cold unsufferable; and if it w ­ ere a Body composed of the same Ele­ments as our Earth, its Sea would be all Brass, and its Earth all Iron; that is to say, both would be continually frozen, as the North-­Pole in the Winter Solstice. What Man or Men, and of what Nature, could inhabit this frigid Planet, ­unless the Creator must be supposed to have created animal Creatures for the Climate, not the Climate for the Creatures. All the Notions of Saturns being a habitable World, are contrary to Nature, and incongruous with Sense; for Saturn is at so infinite a Distance from the Sun, that it has not above one ninetieth106 Part of the Light and Heat that we enjoy on our Earth; so that the Light t­ here, may be said to be much less than our Star-­light, and the cold ninety Times greater than the coldest Day in our Winter. Jupiter is in the same Predicament, his Constitution, however in its Degree much milder than Saturn, yet certainly is not qualify’d for h ­ uman Bodies to sub­ sist, having only one twenty-­seventh Part of the Light and Heat107 that we enjoy ­here, consequently its Light is at best as dim as our Twilight, and its Heat so l­ ittle in the Summer of its Situation, as to be as far from confortable, as it is in its Win­ ter Situation insupportable. Mars, If you w ­ ill believe our ancient Phi­los­o­phers, is a fiery Planet in the very Disposition of its Influence, as well as by the Course of its Motion; and yet even ­here, the Light is not above one Half, and its Heat108 one Third of ours. And on the other Hand, as Saturn is cold and moist, so this Planet is hot and dry, and would admit no Habitation of Man, through the manifest Intemperance of the Air, as well as want of Light to make it comfortable, and Moisture to make it fruit­ 105. Saturn . . . ​cold and moist] See Harris, Astronomical Dialogues, 131–135. Although Defoe dismisses the notion that Saturn might support life, Harris wrote of both Saturn and Jupiter that both planets prob­ably had “some kind of Inhabitants, who have Eyes to stand in need of Light as well as other Senses proper for their natures; for we never find Nature ­doing any ­t hing in vain, but ordering all t­ hings with the most consumate Wisdom” (129). 106. Saturn . . . ​one ninetieth] See Harris, Astronomical Dialogues, 132, for the comment, “And as to Light and Heat, ’tis probable that he hath not above a 90th part of what we enjoy by the Sun.” In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 25–26, Defoe made a mocking assessment of what beings on the vari­ous planets might be like. Thus he says of ­t hose on Saturn that “they are to live without Eyes, or be a Kind so illuminated from their own internal Heat and Light, that they can see sufficiently by their own Beams.” 107. Jupiter . . . ​Light and Heat] See Harris, Astronomical Dialogues, 127, where he supplies the figure of Jupiter having “a 27 Part” of the heat and light that the earth enjoys. In his mock survey of beings on other planets in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 26, he argued that beings on Jupiter “can live in Twilight, and by the Reflection of their own Moons, and subsist in continued Frost.” 108. Mars . . . ​Heat] See Harris, Astronomical Dialogues, 123, on Mars: “His Light and Heat is twice, and sometimes thrice, as weak as what we receive from the Sun.” In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, Defoe argued that Mars was so dry that a ­human being would turn to dust in such an atmosphere.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

293

ful; for by the Nature of the Planet, as well as by clear-­sighted Observation, ­t here is never any Rain, Vapour, Fog, or Dew in that Planet. Venus and Mercury 109 are in the extreme the other Way, and would destroy Nature by their Heat and dazling Light, as the other would by their Darkness and Cold, so that you may depend upon it, I could see very clearly, that all ­t hese Bod­ ies ­were neither inhabited or habitable; and the Earth only as we call it, being seated between t­ hese Intemperances appeared habitable, surrounded with an Atmosphere to defend it, from the Invasion of the inconsistent Æther,110 in which Perspiration111 could not be performed by the Lungs, and by which the needful Vapour it sends forth, is preserv’d from dissipating into the Waste and Abyss, and is condensed and timely returns in Showers of Rain to moisten, cool, and nourish the exhausted Earth. It is true the Way I went was no common Road, yet I found Abundance of Pas­ sengers ­going to and fro ­here, and particularly innumerable Armies of good and evil Spirits, who all seem’d busily employed, and continually upon the Wing, as if some Expresses112 pass’d between the Earth, which in this Part of my Travels I place below me; and some Country infinitely beyond all that I could reach the Sight of; for by the Way, though I take upon me in this sublime Journey to see a ­great deal of the invisible World, yet I was not arrived to a Length to see into any Part of the World of Light, beyond it all; that Vision is beyond all, and I pretend to say nothing of it ­here, except this only, that a clear View of this Part with Opticks unclouded is a ­great Step to prepare the Mind for a Look into the other. But to return to my Station in the highest created World, flatter not yourselves that ­t hose Regions are uninhabited, ­because the Planets appear to be so. No, no, I assure you this is that World of Spirits, or at least is a World of Spirits. ­Here I saw a clear Demonstration of Satan being the Prince of the Power of the Air;113 ’tis in this boundless Waste he is confined, w ­ hether it be his busie restless Inclination has posted him ­here, that he may affront God in his Government of the World, and do Injury to Mankind in meer Envy to his Happiness, as the fam’d Mr. Milton114 says it, or ­whether it is that by the eternal Decree of Providence he 109. Venus and Mercury] See Harris, Astronomical Dialogues, 112, 117–118, where although ­t here is an understanding of the tremendous heat, ­t here is still a discussion of some form of life being pos­si­ble. In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 26, Defoe argued that the heat of ­t hese planets would be so ­great that bodies would melt. 110. inconsistent Æther] Essentially bad air. In the note to 28:11, in speaking of ether as a breathable fluid, Defoe seemed to be using the idea favorably. Indeed one definition afforded by the OED (1b) is “The ele­ments breathed by the gods,” but ­here Defoe is using it in a nega­ tive sense for the ele­ments between the planets that might be good or bad. 111. Perspiration] Breathing. 112. Expresses] “Messenger sent to give an Account.” See Bailey’s Universal Etymological En­glish Dictionary. 113. Prince . . . ​Air] See Ephesians 2:2. Paul speaks of this “prince” as “the spirit that now worketh in the ­children of disobedience.” Defoe sees this as an allusion to Satan. 114. Mr. Milton] See Paradise Lost, book 4, in which Satan arrives at earth to corrupt mankind. Satan brings the “Hell within him” (l. 20) as he arrives at the earth, his passions, including “envy” (l. 115), boiling within him. Milton provides a rich picture of Eden and its ­human inhabitants,

294

Ser ious R eflections

is appointed to be Mans continual Disturber for divine Ends, to us unknown; this I had not wandred far enough to be informed of, ­t hose Secrets being lodged much higher, than Imagination itself ever travelled. But ­here, I say, I found Sathan keeping his Court, or Camp we may call it, which we please. The innumerable Legions that attended his immediate Ser­vice ­were such, that it is not at all to be wondred that he supplied e­ very A ­ ngle115 of this World, and had his Work ­going forward, not in ever Country only, but even in ­every individual Inhabitant of it, with all the Dexterity and Application imaginable. This Sight gave me a just Idea of the Devil as a Tempter, but r­ eally let me into a Secret, which I did not so well know before, or at least did not consider; namely, that the Devil is not capable of ­doing half the Mischief in the World that we lay to his Charge; that he works by Engines and Agents, Stratagems and Art is true, and a ­great deal is owing to his Vigilance and Application; for he is a very diligent Fel­ low in his Calling: But ’tis plain, his Power is not so ­great as we imagine, he can only prompt to the Crime,116 he cannot force us to commit it; so that if we sin ’tis all our own, the Devil is only to be charged with the Art of Insinuation; just as he began with Eve, he goes on with us; in short he reasons us out of our Resolutions to do well, and wheedles us to an Agreement to do ill; working us up to an Opin­ ion, that what Evil we are about to do is no Sin, or not so g­ reat a Sin as we feared, and so draws us by Art into the Crime we had resolved against; this indeed the Scripture intimates when it speaks of Satan’s Devices,117 the Subtilty of the wicked one,118 his lying in wait,119 &c. But to charge the Devil with forcing us to offend, is d ­ oing the Devil a g­ reat Deal of Wrong: Our d ­ oing Evil is from the native Pro­ pensity of our ­Wills: Humanum est peccare.120 I ­w ill not enter ­here into the Dis­ pute about an original Corruption in Nature, which I know many good Men and learned Men dispute, but that ­there is a secret Aptness to offend, and a secret Backwardness to what is Good, which if it is not born with us, we can give no Account how we came by, this I think ­every Man ­will grant; and that this is the Adam and Eve, and has Satan express his won­der, envy, and intent to destroy ­human happiness (ll. 358–392). In book 9:263–264, Milton writes of the happiness of Adam and Eve: “Conjugal Love, then which perhaps no bliss / Enjoy’d by us excites his envie more.” 115. ­Angle] Corner, used in the figurative sense of nook and cranny. U ­ nder “nook” the OED gives the obsolete meaning: “c. Any one of the corners or ends of the earth.” 116. only prompt to the Crime] This is the view offered in Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­ il. The power of the Devil is extremely l­ imited, and he is more often than not surprised by the sins of humanity. 117. Satan’s Devices] See 2 Corinthians 2:11: “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” 118. Subtilty . . . ​wicked one] A combination of Genesis 3:1, where the serpent is named as being “more subtil than any beast of the field,” and vari­ous places where Satan or the Devil is identified as the “wicked one.” See, for example, Matthew 13:19, 38. 119. lying in wait] A frequently used biblical phrase. See Proverbs 13:6; Lamentations 3:10; Luke 11:54. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 267, Defoe speaks of the Dev­il’s “Lurking, lying in Wait, ambuscade-­Tricks.” 120. Humanum est peccare] To be h ­ uman is to sin. Defoe played on this theme in a work using the title “Humanum est errare,” though using this in terms of po­liti­cal errors. See chapter 2, note 119 in this edition.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

295

Devil that tempts us, the Scripture plainly tells us, when it says, ­Every Man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own Lust and enticed.121 ­There is a secret Love of Folly and Vanity in the Mind, and Mankind are hurry’d down the Stream of their own Affections into Crime, ’tis agreeable to them to do this, and ’tis a Force upon Nature not to do it. Vice is down Hill, and when we do offend, ’Tis Nature all, we act as we intend. Vertue’s up Hill, and all against the Grain Resolv’d reluctant, and pursued with Pain.122

But to return to the Dev­il; his Power not extending to Creation, and being not able to force the World into an open Rebellion against Heaven, as doubtless he would do if he could, he is left to the Exercise of his Skill; and in a Word we may say of him, that he lives by his Wits;123 that is to say, maintains his Kingdom by Subtilty and most exquisite Cunning; and if my Vision of his Politicks124 is not a new Discovery, I am very much mistaken. His innumerable Legions as I hinted above, like Aid du Camps125 to a General, are continually employed to carry his ­Orders, and execute his Commissions in all Parts of the World, and in e­ very individual to oppose the Authority of God, and the Felicity of Man to the utmost of his Power. The first and greatest Part of his Government, is over ­those Savage Notions where he has obtained to set himself up as God, and to be worshipped instead of God; and I observed, that though having full Possession of t­hese P ­ eople, even by ­whole Nations at a Time, that is the easiest Part of his Government, yet he is far from neglecting his Interest ­there, but is exceeding vigilant to keep up his Authority among t­ hose ­People. This he does by sending Messengers into ­those Parts to answer the Pawawings126 or Conjurings, even of the most ignorant old Wizard, raising Storms and making Noises and Shreiks in the Air, Flashes of infernal Fire; and any ­Thing but to fright the ­People, that they may not forget him, and that they may have no other Gods but him.127 121. ­Every Man . . . ​enticed] See James 1:14. “But e­ very man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” Defoe repeats this from ­earlier in this text. See “A Vision of the Angel­ ick World,” note 43 in this edition. 122. Vice . . . ​Pain] The first couplet appeared at the end of the 1716 edition of The True-­Born En­glishman, 36. The second, which seems to go with the first, is undoubtedly also by Defoe but has not been traced. It is pos­si­ble that, just as Defoe added the first couplet in 1716, he de­cided to add on an additional couplet in this work. 123. lives by their Wits] This was a common En­glish phrase that Defoe used frequently in a variety of situations where ­mental agility was required. The OED 3c gives a usage by Ben Jonson in 1612. 124. Politicks] This is a foreshadowing of Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726). Defoe argues that the Devil exists but also contends that his power is ­limited. 125. Aid du Camps] The OED rec­ords the first use of aide-­de-­camp in 1690 as meaning a per­ son who hovers about a general or superior officer, ready to obey a command instantly. 126. Pawawings] See “A Vision of the Angelick World,” note 18 in this edition. 127. no other Gods but him] An echo of “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Exodus 20:3.

296

Ser ious R eflections

He has his peculiar Agents for this Work, which he makes Detachments of, as his Occasions, require, some to one Part of the World, some to another, as to the North Amer­i­ca, even as far as to the frozen Provinces of Groenland;128 to the North of Eu­rope, to the Laplan-­ders, Samoiedes, and Mongul-­Tartars, also to the Gog and Magog 129 of Asia, and to the Devil-­makers of China and Japan, again to the Southern Parts of Asia, to the Isles of the Indian and South Seas, and to the South Part of Amer­i­ca and Africa. Through all t­hese Parts he has an uncontroull’d Power, and is e­ ither wor­ shipped in Person, or by his Representatives, the Idols and Monsters which the poor ­People bow down to, and Satan has very ­little Trou­ble with them. He employs indeed some Millions of his Missionaries into t­hose Countries, who ­labour ad propagand. fid.130 and fail not to return and bring him an Account of their Success, and I doubt not but some of them w ­ ere at Hand in my Island, when the Savages appear’d t­here; for if the Devil had not been in them, they would hardly have come straggling over the Sea so far, to devour one another. In all t­ hese Countries the Brutality, the Cruelty and ravenous bloody Disposi­ tions of the P ­ eople, is to me a certain Testimony that the Devil has full Possession of them. But to return to my Observations in the exalted State of my Fancy, I must tell you, that though the Devil carried on his Schemes of Government, in t­hose blinded Parts of the World with ­great Ease, and all ­Things went to his Mind; I found he had more Difficulty in the northern Parts of the temperate Zone, I mean, our Climate and the rest of Christendom, and consequently he did not act h ­ ere by 128. Groenland] Greenland. 129. Gog and Magog] Bohun, Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (sig. Ee6) lists Magog as Persia or modern Iran. In biblical prophecy, it was this area and areas to the north (Gog and Magog) that ­were supposed to bring the destructive invaders to Israel. See Ezekiel 38 and 39. God ­w ill eventually overthrow them. In 39:11 ­t here is the prophecy: “And it ­shall come to pass in that day, that I w ­ ill give unto Gog a place of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea; and it s­ hall stop the noses of the passengers; and ­t here ­shall they bury Gog and all his multitude: and they s­ hall call it The Valley of Ha’mon-­gog.” In Ezekiel, Gog is seen as a prince leading the ­people of Magog, but they are sometimes treated as a single nation. ­Later biblical commentators associated them with the Mongol hordes who swept out of Siberia to conquer part of Eu­rope and the Near East. See Poole, Annotations, 2:sig. Aa 4. 130. ad propagand. fid.] More correctly and fully, de propaganda fide: propagating the faith. Pope Gregory XV established the Congregation de Propaganda Fide in 1622 at a time when the ­Counter Reformation appeared to be gaining strength. The purpose of this gathering of thirteen cardinals was the coordination of efforts to spread the Roman Catholic faith. See Paul Rycaut [A Continuation of] The Lives of the Popes, by Baptista Platina, 2nd ed. (London, 1688), pt. 2:270. This comparison of the Roman Catholic Church to the Dev­i l’s dominion is, of course, intentional satire, and he used the same phrase in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 8: “It ­w ill, I confess, come very much within the compass of this part of my discourse, to give an account, or at least make an essay ­towards it, of the share the Dev­il has had in the spread­ ing religion in the world, and especially of dividing and subdividing opinion is religion; perhaps, to eke it out and make it reach the farther; and also to shew how far he is or has made himself a missionary of the famous clan de propaganda fide; it is true, we find him heartily employ’d in almost ­every corner of the world ad progandum errorem: But they may require a history by it self.” Defoe also used the phrase in his Commentator of 17 June 1720.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

297

­ hole Squadrons and by Generals; but was obliged to carry on his Business w among us by par­tic­u ­lar Solicitations, to act by par­tic­u ­lar Agents upon par­tic­u ­lar Persons, attacking the personal Conduct of Men in a Manner peculiar to himself: But so far was this Difficulty from being any Advantage to the World, or Disad­ vantage to the Devil, that it only obliged him to make Use of the more Engines;131 and as he had no want of Numbers, I observed that his ­whole Clan seemed busy on this Side, the Number of which consists of innumerable Millions;132 so that in short, t­ here was not a Devil wanting, no, not to manage e­ very individual, Man, ­Woman, and Child in the World. How and in what Manner evil Angels attend us, what their Business, how far their Power extends, and how far it is restrained, and by who, ­were all made plain to me at one View in this State of Eclaricissiment 133 that I stood in now, and I ­will describe it if I can in a few Heads of Fact; you may enlarge upon them as Experi­ ence guides. And first, the Limitations of the Dev­il’s Power, are necessary to be understood, and how directed; for Example, you must know, that though the Numbers of ­t hese Evil Spirits, which are thus diligently employed in Mischief, are so infinitely g­ reat, yet the Numbers of good Angels or good Spirits, which are employed by a supe­ rior Authority, and from a Place infinitely distant and high above the Dev­ils bounds, is not only equal; I say, equal at least in Number, but infinitely superior in Power, and it is this Par­tic­u ­lar which makes it plain, that all the Devil does, or that his Agents can do, is by continual Subtilty, extreme Vigilance and Applica­ tion, u ­ nder infinite Checks, Rebukes, and Callings off by the attendant Spirits, who have Power to correct and restrain him upon all Occasions; just as a Man does a Dog134 or a Thief when he is discovered. On this Account, ’tis first plain, I say, that the Devil can do nothing by Force, he cannot kill, maim, hurt or destroy; if he could, Mankind would have but a very precarious State of Life in the World: Nay, the Devil cannot blast the Fruits of the Earth, cause Dearth, Droughts, Famine, or Scarcity, neither can he spread nox­ ious Fumes in the Air to infect the World; if any of t­ hose Th ­ ings w ­ ere in his Power, he would soon unpeople God’s Creation, and put his Maker to the Necessity of a new Fiat,135 or of having no more ­human Creatures to worship and honour him. 131. Engines] Applied figuratively to persons used as an “agent, instrument, tool.” See OED 10. 132. innumerable Millions] For an example of the vast number of spirits i­magined to be at the command of the Devil, see [“Anti-­Scott”], “Discourse of the Nature and Substance of Dev­i ls and Spirits,” in The Discovery of Witchcraft, 3rd ed. (London, 1665), 41. 133. Eclaricissiment] The OED provides the definition: “1. A clearing up or revelation of what is obscure or unknown; an explanation.” ­Here it is closer to an enlightenment, more prop­ erly, éclaircissement. Although the OED gives a quotation from 1673 (Dryden), it was not entirely anglicized ­until the ­middle of the ­century. This witty use of French and the entire tone of the discussion of the Devil is more typical of Defoe in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (see chapter 3, note 72 and “A Vision of the Angelick World,” note 137 in this edition) than anything that might be expected of Crusoe. 134. restrain . . . ​Dog] Saint Thomas was often depicted holding the Devil on a chain or leash. 135. new fiat] A new creation. Defoe is prob­ably echoing the vulgate version of Genesis 1:3: “let ­there be light,” or “fiat lux.” In his poem on the Trinity at the end of his New ­Family

298

Ser ious R eflections

You w ­ ill ask me, how I came to know all this? I say, ask me no Questions, ’til the Elevation of your Fancy carries you up to the outer Edge of the Atmosphere, as I tell you mine did: ­There you ­w ill see the Prince of the Air in his full State, managing his universal Empire with the most exquisite Art: But if ever you can come to a clear View of his Person, do but look narrowly, and you’ll see a ­great Clog136 at his Foot, in token of his ­limited Power, and though he is himself im­mense in Bulk, and moves like a Fiery Meteor in the Air, yet you always see a Hand with a Thunderbolt impending just over his Head; the Arm coming out of a fiery Cloud, which is a Token of the Sentence he is u ­ nder, that at the End of his appointed Time that Cloud ­shall break, and that Hand strike him with the Thun­ der represented, Down, Down for ever, into a Place prepared for him.137 But all this does not hinder him, who is prompted by infernal Rage against the Kingdom of God, and the Welfare of Man, from pushing Mankind as above, upon all the Methods of their own Ruin and Destruction, by alluring Baits, cunning Artifice, Night-­whispers, infusing wicked Desires, and fanning the Flames of Men’s Lusts, Pride, Avarice, Ambition, Revenge, and all the wicked Excursions of corrupt Nature. It would take up a long Tract by itself, to form a System of the Dev­il’s Politicks,138 and to lay down a Body of his Philosophy: I observ’d however, that some of his general Rules are such as t­ hese. 1. To infuse Notions of Liberty139 into the Minds of Men; that it is hard they should be born into the World with Inclinations, and then be forbidden to Instructor, 383, Defoe has “the G ­ reat Master-­Builder gave the Fiat” for the creation of the world: Whence had he the creating Hand to form ­Matter and Being of immaterial Nothing? Did he create merely by Deputation While the ­Great Master-­Builder gave the fiat? 219:34 Prince of the Air] The Devil. ......................................... Far above Nature’s Reach, above her Sight Hail Glorius High Eternal! Infinite! 136. Clog] A heavy object (usually wood) used to prevent movement or attempts at escape. See OED. 137. a Place prepared for him] Defoe does not describe the place prepared for the Devil. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 149, Defoe mocked the repre­sen­ta­tions of hell in pictorial art as absurd: “­These ­Things, however intended for Terror, are indeed so ridicu­lous, that the Dev­il himself, to be sure, mocks at them, and a Man of Sense can hardly refrain d ­ oing the like, only I avoid it, ­because I would not give offence to weaker Heads.” 138. Dev­i l’s Politicks] This clearly foreshadows Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il. 139. Notions of Liberty] In Defoe’s time, ­t here was a close connection between the concept of liberty and the philosophic concept of Libertinism, best expressed in ­England by the works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester but having an extensive background in French thought during the seventeenth ­century. The ideas put forward by Defoe in this section are a rough outline of Libertine beliefs. Rochester, whose poetry and ideas Defoe admired, served both as an advocate and a critic of Libertine attitudes. Defoe often expressed the view that self-­ restraint was true liberty, and frequently quoted his own poetic line that originally appeared in his A New Discovery of an Old Intreague: “Restraint from Ill is Freedom to the Wise.” He repeated it in his im­mensely popu­lar True-­Born En­glishman. See [Works], 1:21, 2:sig. B3. For

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

299

gratify them; that such and such Pleasures should be prepar’d in the Nature of Th ­ ings, made suitable and proper to the Senses and Faculties, which on the other Hand, are prepared in mere Constitution, and placed in his Soul, and that then he should be forbidden ­under the Penalty of a Curse to taste them; that to place an Appetite in the Man, and a strong power­f ul Gust to ­t hese Delights, and then declare them fatal to him, would be laying a Snare to Mankind in his very Constitution, and making his brightest Faculties be the Betrayers of his Soul to Misery, which would not consist with Justice, much less with the Goodness of a Creator. 2. To persuade from hence, that the Notions of f­ uture Punishments are Fables140 and Amusements, that it is not rational to think a just God would prepare infinite and eternal Punishments, for finite and trivial Offences; that God does not take Notice of the minute acts of Life, and lay e­ very Slip to our Charge, but that the merciful Dispositions of God, who so bountifully directs the w ­ hole World to be assistant to the Profit and Delight of Mankind, has certainly given him leave to enjoy it at fill,141 and take the Comfort of it without fear. 3. Of late indeed the Devil has learn’d, for Dev­ils may improve as well as Men in the Arts of ­doing ill. At last, I say, he has learned to infuse a wild Notion into the Heads of some P ­ eople, who are first fitted for it, by having reasoned themselves in Favour of their loose Desires up to a Pitch, that ­t here is no such ­Thing as a God142 or a f­ uture State at all. Now as at first the Devil was not Fool enough to attempt to put this Jest upon Man, his own Antiquity and Eternity being a Contradiction to it; so I found among my new Discoveries, that the Devil took this Abusurdity from Man him­ self, and that it went among Satan’s P ­ eople for a new Invention: I found also that ­t here was a black Party employ’d upon this new Subtilty, t­ hese ­were a Sort of Dev­ ils, for Satan never wants Instruments, who ­were call’d Insinuators, and who ­were formerly employed to prompt Men to Crimes by Dreams; and ­here I ­shall observe, that I learned a Way how to make any Man dream143 of what I please: For Example, a still useful introduction to Libertinism, see Antoine Adam, Les Libertines au XVIIe Siècle (Paris: Buchet/Chastel [1964]). 140. ­f uture Punishments are Fables] For this idea and its prevalence, see Walker, Decline of Hell, 59–61, 122–163. Such beliefs along with attacks upon or­ga­nized religion ­were often part of Libertine concepts. Defoe’s attitudes w ­ ere entirely contrary. As a young man, he put in his “Historical Collections” (item 15) a report from a man “risen from the dead.” Asked about the “other world,” he replied that “no man doth Believe how Exactly God Examineth, how strictly God Judgeth, how Severely God Punisheth.” 141. at fill] Fully, abundantly. The OED gives instances in which fill is used in the sense of full, as in “had one’s fill.” It gives (B1) “at (the) full” as a phrase having the same meaning as Defoe’s “at fill” h ­ ere. 142. no . . . ​God] It is difficult to find writers of this time promoting an agenda that might be described as atheistic. Although deists such as John Toland and Anthony Collins ­were active in attacking the reliability of the Bible, they believed that t­ here was a deity who had created the world in an orderly fashion. 143. any Man dream . . . ​please] Defoe reiterated this theory in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 152. He wrote that “if you whisper any t­hing close to the Ear of a Person in a deep

300

Ser ious R eflections

suppose one to be sound asleep, or as we say, in a deep Sleep, or dead asleep, let another lay his Mouth close to his Ear, and whisper any ­Thing to him so softly as not to awaken him, the sleeping Man s­ hall certainly dream of what was so whis­ pered to him. Let no Man despise this Hint, nothing is more sure, than that many of our Dreams are the Whispers of the Devil, who by his Insinua-­tors whispers into our Heads, what wicked Th ­ ings he wou’d have our Thoughts entertain and work upon; and take this with you as you go, t­ hose insinuating Dev­ils can do this as well when we are awake, as when we are asleep, and this w ­ ill bring me to what I call Impulses upon the Mind, which are certainly whispers in the Ear and no other, and come e­ither from good Angels attending us, or from the Dev­il’s Insinuators,144 which are always at hand, and may be judged of according as the Subject our Thoughts are prompted to work upon, are Good or Evil. From whence but from ­these Insinuators, come our causeless Passions, our involuntary Wickedness, sinning in Desire as effectually, as by ­actual committing the Crime we desire to commit? Whence comes Imagination145 to work upon wicked and vicious Objects, when the person is fast asleep, and when he had not been ­under the Preparation of wicked Discourse, or wicked Thoughts previous to ­those Imaginations? who forms Ideas in the Mind of Man? who pre­sents beautiful or terrible Figures to his Fancy, when his Eyes are clos’d with Sleep? who, but ­these insinuating Dev­ils, who invisibly approach the Man sleeping or waking, and whisper all manner of lewd abominable ­Things into his Mind. Mr. Milton,146 whose Imagination was carried up to a greater Height that I am now, went farther into the Abyss of Satan’s Empire a ­great Way, especially when he form’d Satan’s Palace of Pandemonium,147 I say, he was exactly of this Opinion, Sleep, so as to speak distinctly to the Person, and yet not awaken him, as has been frequently tried, the Person sleeping ­shall dream distinctily of what you say to him; nay, s­ hall dream the very Words you say.” As with this passage, Defoe’s inspiration was prob­ably Milton’s descrip­ tion of how Satan, in the form of a toad, whispered corrupting thoughts into the ear of Eve as she slept. ­ ngland Magazine 33 (1852): 144. Insinuators] Rev. Denis Kelly, “The Insinuator, ” Church of E 316–318: “Satan has no more power­f ul agents, no more willing instruments” (316). 145. Whence comes Imagination] Although most writers on dreams allowed for the possibil­ ity of communication through spirits or even direct communication from God, they also argued that dreams ­were often the product of natu­ral ­causes such as heavy meals. See, for example, Thomas Tryon [Philo Physiologus, pseudo.], A Treatise on Dreams and Visions ([London, 1689]), 48–50, 232–235. 146. Mr. Milton] In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726), 27–28, 55–57, Defoe treated Milton somewhat harshly, at least from the standpoint of his theology. While acknowledging Mil­ ton’s brilliance as a poet, Defoe accused him of Arianism. For Defoe’s opinion of Milton’s poetry, see the following note. 147. Pandemonium] At the end of the first book of Paradise Lost and the beginning of the second, Satan summons the representatives of his legions to “Pandemonium,” described as “the high Capitol / Of Satan and his Peers” (bk. 1, ll. 755–756), to debate their ­f uture. But it is the “spacious Hall” (bk. 1, ll. 762), a kind of parliament building where the ­great debate occurs, that is often associated with the notion of Pandemonium. In his Jure Divino (bk. 7, p. 14), Defoe had a footnote in which he wrote: “Milton’s Pandemonium, is allow’d to be the

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

301

when he represented the Devil tempting our M ­ other Eve, in the Shape of a Toad lying just at her Ear, when she lay fast asleep in her Bower, where he whisper’d to her Ear all the wicked ­Things which she entertained Notions of by Night, and which prompted her the next Day to break the g­ reat Command, which was the rule of her Life; and accordingly he brings in Eve telling Adam what an uneasy Night’s Rest she had, and relating her Dream148 to him. This Thought, however laid down in a kind of Jest, is very seriously intended, and would, if well digested, direct us very clearly in our Judgment of Dreams; viz. not to suggest them to be always ­Things of meer Chance; but that sometimes they are to be heeded as useful Warnings of Evil or Good by the Agency of good Spir­ its, as at other Times they are the artful Insinuations of the Devil to inject wicked Thoughts and abhorr’d abominable Ideas into the Mind; which we ­ought not only as much as pos­si­ble to guard against, but even to repent of, so far as the Mind may have entertained and acted upon149 them. From this general Vision of the Dev­il’s Management of his Affairs, which I must own I have had with my Eyes wide open, I find a ­great many useful Observa­ tions to be made; and first, it can be no longer strange, that while the Commerce of Evil Spirits is so ­free, and the intercourse between this World and that, is thus open, I say, it can be no longer strange, that t­ here are so many ­silent Ways of Spir­ its conversing, I mean Spirits of all Kinds. For as I have observed already, ­t here is a Residence of good Spirits, but they are placed infinitely higher out of the Reach, and out of the Sight of this lower Orbit of Satan’s Kingdom; as t­ hose pass and repass invisible, I confess, I have yet had no Ideas of them, but ­t hose which I have received from my first View of the infernal Region: If I should have any superior Elevations, and should be able to see the Œconomy of Heaven in his Disposition of ­Things on Earth, I ­shall be as careful to convey them to Posterity as they come in. However, the Transactions of good Spirits with Man are certainly the same; for as God has for a Protection and Safeguard to Mankind, ­limited the Devil from affrighting him, by vis­i­ble Appearances in his native and hellish Deformity,150 deepest laid Thought, most capacious and extensive that ever appear’d in print; and, I think, I cannot do too much honour to the Memory of so Masterly a Genius.” He then argued that his rendering of the Fall “forms to me the best Ideas of the ­matter of Original Crime, of any ­Thing put into Words in our Language.” 148. ­Mother Eve . . . ​Dream] See Paradise Lost, bk. 4, ll. 80–89; bk. 5, ll. 28–94. See also Defoe’s praise of this scene in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 152. 149. repent of . . . ​acted upon] This takes up the idea in Matthew 5:28, in which Jesus is pre­ sented as saying about the commandment against adultery: “But I say unto you, That whoso­ ever looketh on a ­woman to lust ­a fter her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Defoe extends guilt from thoughts to dreams. 150. vis­i­ble Appearances . . . ​Deformity] In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 22–24, Defoe argued that the Devil can take any shape he wishes or be invisible. But in speculating on his real appearance, in his System of Magick, 116, Defoe argued that it would “render him so frightful to his emissaries, and even his best friends and most useful ser­ vants . . . ​[that] would be terrified, and would run away from him instead of conversing with him; and the most accurate magician or southsayer in Arabia would, instead of ­going into

302

Ser ious R eflections

and the horrid Shape he would necessarily bear: So for Man’s Felicity, even the glorious Angels of Heaven are very seldom allowed, at least not lately, to appear in the glorious Forms they formerly took,151 or indeed in any Form, or with a Voice; the restraint of our Souls in the Case of Flesh and Blood we now wear not admit­ ting it, and not being able to familiarize ­those ­Things to us; Man being by no Means, in his encorporated State, qualified for an open and easy Conversation with unembodied Spirit. Moreover, this would be breaking into the Limits, which the Wisdom and Goodness of God has put to our pre­sent State, I mean as to Futurity, our Igno­ rance in which, is the greatest Felicity of h ­ uman Life; and without which neces­ sary Blindness Man could not support Life, for Nature is no way able to support a View into Futurity; I mean not into that Part of Futurity which concerns us in our State of Life in this World. I have often been myself among the Number of t­ hose Fools, that would be their own Fortune-­tellers; but when I look thus beyond the Atmosphere, and see a l­ ittle speculatively into Invisibles, I could easily perceive, that it is our Happiness that we are short-­sighted Creatures, and can see but a very ­little before us: For Example, w ­ ere we to have the Eyes of our Souls opened through the Eyes of our Bodies, we should see this very immediate Region of Air which we breath in, throng’d with Spirits, to us, blessed be God, now invisible, and which would other­wise be most frightful: We should see into the secret Transactions of ­those Messengers who are employ’d when the passing Soul takes its Leave of the Reluctant Body, and perhaps see Th ­ ings Nature would shrink back from with the utmost Terror and Amazement. In a Word, the Curtain of Providence for the Disposition of ­Things h ­ ere, and the Curtain of Judgment for the Determinaion of the State of Souls hereafter, would be alike drawn back, and what Heart could support ­here its ­f uture State in LIFE, much less that of its ­f uture State ­after LIFE even good or bad. It is then our Felicity,152 that the Converse of Spirits, and the Visions of Futu­ rity, are s­ ilent, emblematick, and done by Hints, Dreams, and Impulses, and not the deserts and wilderness to meet him, abhor the very place, and ­tremble at the thought of seeing him.” 151. Forms . . . ​formerly took] In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 19–22, Defoe instanced the vari­ous appearances of angels from the Old Testament, but insisted that they always appeared “in the Shape of Men.” 152. our Felicity] This notion that our inability to see beyond our ­limited abilities is part of ­human happiness is similar to that offered by many con­temporary writers exhorting their readers to remain content with the h ­ uman condition. It was given its best poetic expression by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man, in which h ­ uman beings are seen as a species “darkly wise, and rudely g­ reat.” The limitations placed on the senses of h ­ uman beings prevent them from ­dying from the smell of a ­rose in “aromatic pain” or from being deafened by the “­music of the spheres.” Similarly ­humans are blessed by “blindness to the ­f uture.” Although Pope completed his poem in 1734, fourteen years a­ fter Defoe’s Serious Reflections (1720), it more or less sums up con­temporary thinking on this subject. It was also an argument that had preoc­ cupied the Boyle Lecturers from 1696 to 1720 when Serious Reflections was published. See An Essay on Man, ed. Maynard Mack, Twickenham Edition, 11 vols. (London: Methuen, 1950– 1969), 3:40, ll. 200–203; 3:53, l. 4. For good statements of this philosophic position in a variety of con­temporary writers, see Robert Boyle, Disquisition about the Final ­Causes of Natu­ral

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

303

by clear Vision and open Discovery; they that desire a fuller and plainer Sight of ­t hese ­Things, ask they know not what; and it was a good Answer of a Gypsy, when the Lady of my Acquaintance, ask’d her, to tell her Fortune; Do not ask me, Lady, said the Gypsy, to tell you what you dare not hear. The W ­ oman was a ­little hon­ ester than her Profession intimated, and freely confess’d it was all a Cheat, and that they knew nothing of Fortunes, but had a Course or Round of doubtful Expressions, to amuse ignorant P ­ eople and get a ­little Money. Even the Dev­ils Oracles, for such no doubt they ­were at Delphos,153 and at other Places, though the Devil seemed at that Time to have some Liberties granted him, which it is evident have since been denied him, ­were allowed to be given only in doubtful Expressions, double Entendres, Ecchoes of Words, and such like: For Example, A Man ­going ot Sea and enquiring of the Oracle, thus; Have I just cause the Seas and Storms to Fear? Eccho. ___________________________Fear. Another. ­Shall we the Parthian Bowmen fight or Fly? Eccho. ___________________________Fly.

Such dark Replies, and other Words doubtful and enigmatic, ­were frequently given and taken for Answers, by which the deluded World ­were kept in doubt of that Futurity they hunted ­after: But Satan even then, was not permitted to speak plain,154 or Mankind to see what awaited him b ­ ehind the dark Veil of Futurity,155 nor was it proper on any Account whatsoever, that it should be other­wise. But before I come to this, let me put some Limits to the Elevations and Visions I have mentioned before; for as I am far from Enthusiastic in my Notions of ­Things (London, 1688), 155–214; William King, An Essay on the Origin of Evil, trans. Edmund Law (London, 1731), esp. 191–220 (King’s work appeared originally in 1702); Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (London, 1716), 112–129; and John Clarke, An Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil (London, 1720), 159–296. 153. Dev­i ls Oracles . . . ​Delphos] See Defoe’s Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 171, for commen­ tary on the Oracle of Delphi as inspired by the Devil. Defoe may have been reading Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle’s History of Oracles (1687; trans. 1688). See Aphra Behn, Works, 4:237–240, esp. 237–244. 154. Satan . . . ​speak plain] This passage might seem to leave the impression that Satan was capable of providing the oracle with a view of the ­f uture ­were he “permitted.” But this would appear to be a misinterpretation. Elsewhere Defoe denied the Devil this ability to see into the ­f uture. In his New F ­ amily Instructor, 269, he asserted firmly: “ ’tis plain, that the Devil knows nothing before-­hand. . . . ​God has with-­held from him the knowledge of Futurity, or taken it away from him if ever he had it; that the ­whole Glory of Scripture Prophecy might naturally and necessarily center in himself.” Similarly, in his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 96, he points out that at the time of the Flood, the Dev­i l’s be­hav­ior “proves his Ignorance of Futurity.” 155. ­behind . . . ​Veil of Futurity] The OED 3a provides a definition alluding to “The piece of precious cloth separating the sanctuary from the body of the ­Temple or the Tabernacle.” It suggests a place of sanctity and mystery where only the High Priest might enter. Used with prepositions such as “­behind” or “within,” it was intended to mean the hidden mysteries of a life ­a fter death, and in Hebrews 6:19–20, Jesus is seen as being the “forerunner” in entering “within the veil.”

304

Ser ious R eflections

­ ings, so I would not lead any one to fancy themselves farther enlightned than is Th meet, or to see Th ­ ings unseeable, as St. Paul heard ­Things unutterable.156 And therefore let me add ­here, that the highest Raptures, Trances and Elevations of the Soul, are bounded by the eternal Decree of Heaven and let Men pretend to what Visions they please, it is all Romance, all beyond what I have talked of above,157 is fabulous and absurd, and it w ­ ill for ever be true, as the Scripture says, not only, ­those Th ­ ings are hid from the Eye,158 but even from the Conception. Upon this Occasion I must own, I think ’tis Criminal to attempt to form Ideas ­either of Hell or of Heaven in the Mind, other than as the Scripture has described them, by the State rather than the Place; we are told in plain Words, it hath not entred into the Heart of Man to conceive,159 ­either of what is prepared for the f­ uture State of the Happy or Miserable; ’tis enough for us to entertain the general Notion, the Favour of God is Heaven, and the Loss of it the most dreadful of all Hell. A Heaven of Joy must in his Presence dwell; And in his Absence ­every Place is Hell.160

156. Paul . . . ​­Things unutterable] See 2 Corinthians 12:4: “How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” Defoe took up this ­matter of repre­sen­ta­tion his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 149–150, in connection with the renderings of “the several Pictures of Hell, represented by a ­great Mouth with horrible Teeth, gaping like a Cave on the Side of a Mountain.” He argued the absurdity of trying to represent something which was indescribable. Paul’s experience went beyond such repre­sen­ ta­tions, being beyond ordinary ­human capabilities as well as “unlawful” to examine. Yet, attempting to discuss what he maintained to be beyond description was one of Defoe’s major literary effects. See M. E. Novak, “The Unmentionable and the Ineffable in Defoe’s Fiction,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 15 (1982): 85–102. 157. Romance . . . ​above] For Defoe’s uses of this term, see preface, note 5, and chapter 3, notes 138 and 211 in this edition. 158. ­those . . . ​Eye] Perhaps an allusion to Job 28:20–21. Job asks, “Whence then cometh wis­ dom and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.” 159. it . . . ​conceive] 1 Corinthian 2:9: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the ­t hings which God hath prepared for them that love him.” 160. A Heaven . . . ​Hell] Defoe wrote two lines with much the same sentiment: Heaven in the Emanation of his Face, And want of Peace, makes Hell in ­every Place. He had expressed a similar concept in his Hymn to Peace, 10, in which he had urged: Debate no more the Place of Woe, ’Tis Myst’ry all, and best it should be so. (ll. 115–116) Defoe attacks hypocritical rulers and self-­serving church leaders: When Tyrants in thy Robes appear,. When Kings by Lust of Rule, and Power Misled, Pamper’d by Providence and over fed; Fall out for Power to Oppress, And then pretend tis’ all for PEACE; (ll. 204–208) ............................................. In Ecclesastick Quarrels ’tis the same, Where Hierarchy’s the ­t hing, and Peace the Name; (ll. 237–238)

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

305

My Meaning is this, all Visions, or propounded Visions161 ­either of Heaven or Hell, are meer Delusions of the Mind, and generally are Fictions of a waking bewildred Head; and you may see the Folly of then in the meannest of the Descrip­ tions, which generally end in shewing some glorious Place, fine Walks, noble illustrious Palaces, Gardens of Gold, and P ­ eople of shining Forms, and the like. Alas! t­ hese are all so short, that they are Unworthy the Thoughts of a Mind ele­ vated two Degrees above Darkness and Dirt: All ­t hese ­Things amount to no more than Mahomet’s Alchoran, and the glorious State of Th ­ ings represented by him to his Believers.162 In short, all this makes only a Heaven of Sense, but comes so infinitely short of what alone must or can be a Heaven to an exalted glorified Spirit, that I as much want Words to express how contemptible the best of ­t hese Descriptions are as to a true Description of Heaven, as I do to express a true Idea, or Description of Heaven myself. And how should this be done? We can Form no Idea of any ­Thing that we know not and have not seen, but in the Form of something that we have seen.163 How then can we form an Idea of God or Heaven, in any Form but of something which we have seen or known? By what Image in the Mind can we judge of Spir­ its? By what Idea conceive of eternal Glory? Let us cease to Imagin concerning it, ’tis impossible to attain, ’tis criminal to attempt it. Let me therefore hint h ­ ere, that supposing my self, as before, in the Orbit of the Sun, take it in its im­mense Distance as our Astronomers conceive of it, or on the Edge only of the Atmosphere with a clear View of the w ­ hole Solar System, the Region of Satan’s Empire all in View, and the World of Spirits laid open to me. Yet let me give you this for a Check to your Imagination, that even h ­ ere the Space between Finite and Infinite is as impenetrable as on Earth, and ­will for ever be so, till our Spirits being uncased s­ hall take their Flight to the Center of Glory, where ­every ­Thing ­shall be seen as it is; and therefore you must not be surprized, 161. propounded Visions] Defoe is prob­ably distinguishing between visions of private per­ sons and t­ hose put forward publicly in print or spread about orally. The OED provides the definition for the verb: 1a trans. “To put forward, set forth, propose, or offer for consider­ ation, discussion, ac­cep­tance, or adoption; to put forward as a question for solution.” 162. Alchoran . . . ​Believers] The most striking ­t hing about the Koran to outside observers in the West was the paradise with numerous houris or virgins offered to the believer. It became a standing joke in some Restoration comedies. See The Koran; Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed, trans. George Sale, 2 vols. (London: Scatcherd and Letterman, 1821), 2:399 (chap. 55). In presenting his highly moral Mahmut in Letters of a Turkish Spy (London, 1718), 110–113, Defoe had his Turkish Spy omit this from his vision of Paradise, and in some works, it was acknowledged that the highest joy of the afterlife in the Koran was the communion with God. See, for example, Adrian Reeland (Reland), Of the Mahometan Religion, in Four Treatises Concerning the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Mahometans (London, 1712), bk. 2, sec. 17:74–76. 163. Form . . . ​seen] This seems to echo the Lockean suggestion in the “Preface,” that “it is as reasonable to represent . . . ​a nything that ­really exists by that which exists not” (sig. A5:12– 15), but h ­ ere Crusoe uses the same notion of experience to suggest that the inability to have true ideas of a ­t hing so much beyond ­human apprehension as the glories of Heaven makes any attempt to represent it an act of folly.

306

Ser ious R eflections

if I am come down again from the Verge of the World of Spirits, the same short sighted Wretch, as to Futurity and ­Things belonging to Heaven and Hell as I went up; for Elevations of this Kind are meant only to give us a clearer View of what we are, not of what we ­shall be; and ’tis an Advantage worth Travelling for too. All this I thought necessary to prevent the whimsical Building of erroneous Struc­ tures on my Foundation, and fancying themselves carried farther than they are able to go. I come therefore back to talk of Th ­ ings familiar, and particularly to mention in the next Place, some of t­ hose other Ways by which we have Notice given of this Converse of Spirits which I have been speaking of; for the Whispers and Insinua­ tors I have mentioned, go sometimes farther than ordinary. One of ­t hose other Methods is, when by strong Impulses of the Mind, as we call them, we are directed to do, or not to do, this or that par­tic­u­lar ­Thing that we have before us to do, or, are ­under Consultation about. I am a Witness to many of ­t hese ­Things, as well in my own Life, as in my Observation of o ­ thers. I know a Man, who being at some Distance from London, not above six or seven Miles, a Friend that came to visit and dine with him urged him to go to London.164 What for, says his Friend, is t­ here any Business wants me? Nay, noth­ ing, says the other, but for your Com­pany; I do not know of any Th ­ ing wants you; and so gave over importuning him: But as his Friend had given it over, a strong Impulse of Mind seized him and follow’d him like a Voice with this, Go to Lon­ don, go to London. He put it by several Times, but it went on still, Go to London, go to London, and nothing eles could come upon his Thoughts but, Go to London. He came back to his Friend, Hark ye, says he, tell me sincerely, is all well at London? Am I wanted t­ here? Did you ask me to go to London with you on any par­tic­ u­lar Account. Not I, says his Friend, in the least; I saw all your F ­ amily, and all is very well t­here; nor did they say, they had any par­tic­u ­lar Occasion for you to return; I only ask it as I told you, for the Sake of your Com­pany: So he put off ­going again, but could have no Quiet, for it still followed him, and no doubt, a good Spirit communicated it, Go to London; and at length he resolved he would go, and did so; and when he came ­there he found a Letter and Messengers had been at his House, to seek him, and to tell him of a par­tic­u ­lar Business, which was first and last worth above a thousand Pounds to him, and which if he had not been found that very Night, would have been in Danger of being lost. I seriously advise all sober thinking Persons not to disregard ­t hose power­ful Impulses of the Mind, in Th ­ ings other­w ise indifferent or doubtful, but believe them to be Whispers from some kind Spirit, which sees something that we cannot see, and knows something that we cannot know. Besides, ­unless infinite Power should take off the Silence that is imposed upon the Inhabitants of the invisible World, and allow them to speak audibly, nothing can be a plainer Voice; they are Words spoken to the Mind, tho’ not to the Ear, 164. Go to London] Since the next anecdote is about an event in Defoe’s life, this one may have the same status, but we have no information about this incident.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

307

and they are a certain Intelligence of ­Things unseen, ­because they are given by Persons unseen, and the Event confirms it beyond all Dispute. I know a Man, who made it his Rule always to obey ­t hese ­silent Hints, and he has ofteu declared to me, that when he obeyed them he never miscarried, and if he neglected them, or went on contrary to them, he never succeeded; and gave me a par­tic­u­lar Case165 of his own, among a ­great many ­others, wherein he was thus directed. He had a par­tic­u­lar Case befallen him, wherein he was u ­ nder the Dis­ plea­sure of the Government, and was prosecuted for a Misdemeanor, and brought to a Tryal in the King’s-­Bench Court,166 where a Verdict was brought against him, and he was cast; and Times ­running very hard at that Time against the Party he was of, he was afraid to stand the ­Hazard of a Sentence and absconded, taking Care to make due Provision for his Bail, and to pay them what­ever they might suffer.167 In this Circumstance he was in ­great Distress, and no Way presented unto him but to fly out of the Kingdom, which being to leave his ­Family, ­Children and Employment, was very ­bitter to him, and he knew not what to do; all his Friends advising him not to put himself into the Hands of the Law, which tho’ the Offence was not Capital, yet in his Circumstances seemed to threaten his utter Ruin. In this Extremity he felt one Morning, (just as he had awaked, and the Thoughts of his Misfortune began to return upon him;) I say, he felt a strong Impulse darting into his Mind thus, Write a letter to them: It spoke so distinctly to him, and as it w ­ ere forcibly, that as he has often said since, he can scarce per­ suade himself not to believe but that he heard it; but he grants that he did not ­really hear it, too. However it repeated the Words daily and hourly to him, ’till at length walking about in his Chamber where he was hidden, very pensive and sad, it Jogg’d him again, and he answered aloud to it, as if it had been a Voice, Who s­ hall I write to? It returned immediately, Write to the Judge.168 This pursued him again for several Days, till at length he took his Pen, Ink and Paper, and sat down to write, but knew not one Word of what he should say, but Dabitur in hac hora, he wanted not Words:169 It was immediately impressed on his Mind, and the Words flowed upon 165. a par­tic­u ­lar Case] The events described are an approximate account of Defoe’s situation in late 1714 and early 1715, when he was in danger of imprisonment or worse for having insulted Arthur Annesley, Fifth Earl of Anglesey (1676–1737), at the time one of the regents governing the nation as George I was taking over as king. See Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 472; and Defoe, Letters, 447–448, 451. 166. King’s–­Bench Court] This court was presided over by Sir Thomas Parker. See the next note. 167. pay them . . . ​suffer] Bail had been posted for him and would have been forfeited had he indeed “absconded.” Defoe states that he put aside money to compensate ­t hose who put up the bail money. 168. Write to the Judge] The Judge was Lord Chief Justice Sir Thomas Parker (ca. 1666–1732), who was soon to become a favorite of George I and created First Earl of Macclesfield. See Defoe, Letters, ed. George Healey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), 51. 169. Dabitur in hac hora, he wanted not Words] The En­glish of the Latin is “it ­w ill be given in that hour.” The allusion is to Matthew 10:18–19. Jesus foresees that his disciples w ­ ill be brought before “governors and kings” for his sake, “But when they deliver you up take no

308

Ser ious R eflections

his Pen in a manner, that ever charm’d himself, and filled him with Expectations of Success. The Letter was so strenuous in Argument,170 so pathetick in its Eloquence, and so moving and perswasive, that as soon as the Judge read it, he sent him Word he should be easie, for he would Endeavour to make that M ­ atter light to him, and 171 in a Word never left, till he obtained to stop Prosecution, and restore him to his Liberty and to his ­Family. ­These Hints, I say, are of a Nature too significant to be neglected; whence they come is the next Enquiry. I answer, They are the Whispers of some subsisting Spirit communicated to the Soul, without the Help of the Organ, without the Assistance of a par­tic­u­lar Sound, and without any other Communication; but take it as you go, not without the merciful Disposition of that Power, that governs that World, as well as this that we are sensible of; How near t­ hose Spirits are to us, who thus foresee what concerns us, and how they convey t­hese Hints into our Minds as well waking as sleeping, or how they are directed, that I could not dis­ cover, nor can yet resolve, no not in the highest of my imaginary Elevation, any more than in what Manner they are L ­ imited and restrained. I have been asked by some, to whom I have talked freely of my frequent Appli­ cations to ­t hese ­Things, If I knew any Th ­ ing by ­t hose Observations, of the Manner of the Disposition of the ­human Soul ­after its Departure out of the Body?172 I mean as to its ­middle State, and ­whether, as some, it has a wandring Existence in the upper Part of the Waste or Abyss near to, but not in a pre­sent State of Felicity? ­W hether it is still confined within the Atmosphere of the Earth according to ­others, as in a Limbus, or Purgatory;173 or in the Circle of the Sun, as o ­ thers say? ­W hether I knew or perceived any Th ­ ing of our Saviour’s being ascended into the Body of the Sun174 only, and not into the highest Heaven receiving his redeemed thought how or what ye ­shall speak: for it ­shall be given you in that same hour what ye ­shall speak.” The vulgate has “dabitur enim vobis in illa hora, quid loquamini.” 170. strenuous in Argument] The letter had to be impressive, since Defoe was not on good terms with Parker and had appeared before him in 1713, when Defoe was accused of publish­ ing three pamphlets in ­favor of the Jacobites. Parker had argued for prosecuting Defoe and rejected Defoe’s claim that the three pamphlets in question w ­ ere ironic. In a letter of 15 April  1713, Parker argued that “­these are not Subjects to be play’d with” and that Defoe should be punished. See Healey, ed., Letters, 410–411. 171. stop Prosecution] Defoe was not merely freed but was hired by the Whig government to undermine the Tory press. See Defoe, Letters, 451. 172. h ­ uman Soul . . . ​Body] Thomas Burnet had argued in De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium that the soul floated among the spirits in the atmosphere. See A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls, 120. 173. Limbus, or Purgatory] A place where, ­a fter death, souls might rid themselves of their sins and eventually attain Heaven. This continues to be a belief of the Roman Catholic Church that was dismissed by the Protestants at the Reformation. 174. Body of the Sun] In summarizing the beliefs of the vari­ous sects around at the time of Milton, David Masson listed the Soul-­Sleepers or Mortalists. Citing a pamphlet, first pub­ lished in 1643, Masson stated that they believed that Christ had ascended into the Sun. The reference is to Richard Overton’s Mans Mortalitie, sometimes ­later published as Man Wholly Mortal, a work that went into a number of editions during the seventeenth c­ entury. I am quoting from an edition of 1644, in which Overton argued: “Now seeing Heaven in Scripture

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

309

Souls to himself, and into an Incorporation with his Glory ­t here, till the Restitution of all ­Things?175 ­W hether I perceived any Th ­ ing of Satan being possessed of the reprobate Souls as they departed; and of his Substitutes as Executioners, being empowered and employed to torment them according to the received Notions of the wise Contemplators of such ­Things. I answered, as I do now, that not only nothing of all this appears, but on the contrary, such serious Contemplations as mine give a g­ reat and abundant Reason to be satisfied, that t­here is nothing in it all but meer Dream and enthusiastick Conjecture:176 I own that the Agents I mentioned, make use of all ­t hose ­Things to terrify and affright poor ignorant P ­ eople out of their Senses, and to drive them often into Desperation, and a­ fter to restore them by Cure that is worse than the Distemper, namely, by a Hardness and Coldness of Temper, rejecting entirely all the Notions of Eternity and Futurity, and so fitting them to go out of the World as they lived in it, (viz.) without troubling themselves with what is to come a­ fter it. But I return to the Article of Impulses of the Mind, for I lay greater Weight upon ­t hese than upon any of the other Discoveries of the Invisible World, ­because they have something in them relating to what we are about, something directing, something to guide us in avoiding the evils that attend us, and to accepting, or rather embracing Opportunities of d ­ oing ourselves good when they pre­sent, is frequently used, to expresse height or excellencie of degree or dignity of a t­ hing . . . ​a nd he ascended upward from the Earth into some part of the coelestialll bodies above. Act. 1.10. therefore, without doubt he must be in the most excellent, glorious, and heavenly part thereof, which is the SUN, the most excellent piece of the w ­ hole Creation, the epitome of Gods power, conveyour of life, growth, strength, and being to ­every Creature ­under Heaven, it may be with other ­t hings, but nothing without it, the brightnesse whereof we are not able to behold at the farthest distance, and according to the famous Copernichus and Tyche Braheus, it is highest in station to the ­whole Creation.” Thomas Burnet, who is critical of the astronomy of e­ arlier thinkers and believes the souls of the dead w ­ ill dwell aloft above the planets, comes very close to seeing Christ as a kind of sun: “But what­ever Schechinah is, or the glorious Body of Christ, it spreads its Rays, like a new Star, and its Light around it, and in its Neighbourhood all around it s­ hall dwell, as ­under a Throne of Glory.” Richard Burthogge also used the image of the sun in speaking of God’s relationship to the world. Such compari­ sons ­were not unusual in early Christian writers, but they almost always tended to be essen­ tially meta­phorical. See Overton, Man’s Mortalitie (Amsterdam [i.e., London], 1644), 27; Masson, The Life of John Milton, 7 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1896), 3:156–157; Burnet, A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls, 319; and Richard Burthogge, An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (London, 1694), 140–147. ­ ings] Acts 3:21. 175. Restitution of all Th ­ uman Under176. enthusiastick Conjecture] In the fourth edition of his Essay Concerning H standing, 2:428–441 (bk. 4, chap. 19), John Locke added a chapter titled “Of Enthusiasm,” urging his readers to distinguish between that which is discerned and understood by the reason and that which comes from some “inner light.” The prob­lem with such convictions is that they lead to the attempt to urge o ­ thers to one’s opinion. “For how almost can it be other­ wise, but that he should be ready to impose on another’s belief, who has already imposed on his own?” (2:430 [4, 19, 2]). Defoe (or his rather more enthusiastic persona, Crusoe) is careful to put some limits on his enthusiasm, but in the following paragraph he attempts to persuade his readers of the importance of paying attention to S., a belief that writers such as Jonathan Swift and William Congreve had subjected to scathing criticism. Defoe argues that he is tak­ ing a ­middle road and that ignoring “Impulses” can lead to a rejection of Christian beliefs entirely.

310

Ser ious R eflections

which many Times for want of the knowledge of our Way, we irrecoverably let slip. Voices, Apparitions, Noises, and all the other affrighting ­ Things, which unavoidably follow the Neighbourhood of Spirits in the Air we breath in, seem to have much less Signification, as to us, than ­t hese seasonable kind Whispers to our Souls, which it is plain, are directed for the Advantage of Life. It seems hard that Mankind should be so open to the secret Insinuators the whispering Dev­ils I have been speaking of, who are Night and Day, sleeping and waking, working upon his Senses by the Arts and Subtilties of Hell, to fill his Imagination with a thousand dev­ilish Contrivances to gratify his Vanity and Lust; and that our Thoughts should be always ready to receive the Impressions they make, pressed to follow the infernal Counsel, be awake to listen to all his Directions, but should be deaf to the Instructions of any kind Spirits that would influence us for our Advantage, and insensible of ­those Impressions which are made upon us for our immediate Good, by an Agent Good in itself, and acting from a Princi­ple what­ever it be, of Good to us. We have a foolish Saying, though taken from Something that is more signifi­ cant than we imagine when any Danger has suprised us. Well, my Mind misgave177 me, when I was ­going about it: Well, I knew some Mischief would come of it; did you so? And why then did you do it? Why did you go on? Why when your Mind misgave you, did you not obey the friendly Caution? Whence do you think your Mind received the speaking, tho’ s­ ilent Impression? Why did you not listen to it, as to a Voice? For such a one it was no doubt; and let all ­t hose unthinking ­People who go on in any Th ­ ing they are upon, contrary to t­hose secret s­ilent Impressions upon their Minds; I say, let them know and observe it, they w ­ ill very seldom fail of meeting some Mischief in the Way. They w ­ ill very seldom fail of miscarry­ing in the Way; I say very seldom, ­because I would not take upon me to prescribe Th ­ ings positively, which the Reader w ­ ill take me up short in, and say, how do I know it? But I ­w ill take the Liberty to say, I durst be positive in it, relat­ ing to my self, and I durst be positive from the Nature and Reason of the ­Thing. As to my own Experience, I wave saying much of it, but that in general I never slighted ­t hese Impulses, but to my ­great Misfortune; I never listen’d to and obey’d them, but to my ­great Advantage, but I choose to argue from the Reason of them, rather than from my own Experience. As they are evident Warnings of what is to come, and are testified daily and hourly by the Th ­ ings coming to pass afterwards, so they are undeniable Testimo­ nies, thay they proceed from some Being, intelligent of ­t hose ­Things that are at Hand, while they are yet to come. If then I am satisfied that it is a Notice given from a Something, be it what it w ­ ill, which is fully inform’d of what is attending me, tho’ conceal’d from me; why should I slight the Hint given me from any 177. misgave] Samuel Johnson defined this word as “to fill with doubt, deprive of confidence.” But the OED is prob­ably right in suggesting that it often involves a sense of “foreboding” and “apprehension.” This is certainly the way Defoe is using it, but he insists (57:31–32) that the feeling is a direct result of communication from the world of spirits.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

311

­ ing that knows, what I know not, and especially, for Example, for avoiding Th Evils to come. I know a Person, who had so strong an Impression upon her Mind, that the House she was in would be burnt that very Night, that she could not go to sleep, the Impulse she had upon her Mind press’d her not to go to Bed, which however she resisted and went to Bed, but was so terrified with the Thought, which as she call’d it, run in her Mind, that the House would be burnt, that she could not go to sleep. She had made so much Discovery of her Apprehensions in the ­Family, that they ­were all in a Fright, and applied themselves to search from the Top of the House to the Bottom, and to see e­ very Fire, and e­ very Candle safe out, so that as they all said, it was impossible any ­Thing could happen in the House, and they sent to the Neigh­ bours on both Sides to do the like. Thus far they did well, but had she obeyed the hint, which prest upon her strangely not to go to Bed, she had done much better, for the Fire was actually kindled at that very Time, tho’ not broken out. In about an Hour, ­after the ­whole ­Family was in Bed, the House just over the Way, directly opposite, was all in a Flame, and the Wind which was very high, blowing the Flame upon the House this Gentlewoman lived in, so fill’d it with Smoke and Fire in a few Moments, the Street being Narrow, that they had not Air to breath or Time to do any ­Thing, but jump out of their Beds and save their Lives; had she obey’d the Hint given, and not gone to Bed, she might have saved several ­Things of Value, which she lost; but as she neglected that, and would go to Bed, the Moments she had spar’d to her, ­were but just sufficient to get out of Bed, get some Cloaths on, and get down Stairs, for the House was on Fire in half Quarter of an Hour. It might be ask’d ­here, why could not the same kind Spirit have intimated by the same Whispers, where the Danger lay, and from what Quarter it was to be expected; in what Manner the Fire would attack them, and that it would come from the other Side of the Street, the Wind blowing it directly upon them? To this, I answer, that it is our Business the more vigilantly to observe and lis­ ten to the Hints which are given, seeing the Intimations are not so Par­tic­u ­lar as we might wish, without enquiring into the Reasons, why they are given no plainer. We have a g­ reat deal of Reason to believe the kind Spirit that gives t­ hese Intima­ tions and Whispers, thus to us, gives all the Light it is permitted to give, and whispers as much, ­either as it knows, or as it is allow’d to communicate; other­ wise, why does it give any Intimations at all? But on the other Hand, it may be alledg’d, that enough is intimated to suffice for our Safety, if we would obey the Intimation; and it would be a much more reasonable Question, to ask, why we slight and disobey the Impression that we acknowledge to have received, rather than why the Intimation was no plainer. A Person of my Acquaintance being to go to New-­England178 by Sea, two Ships presented, and the Masters earnestly solicited to take him as a Passenger; he asked 178. Acquaintance . . . ​New-­England] Defoe had vari­ous connections with New E ­ ngland including sending a ship engaged in trading to North Amer­i­ca starting with Boston. See

312

Ser ious R eflections

my Advice, professing, that as well the Ships, as the Captains, ­were perfectly indifferent to him, both the Men being equally agreeable to him, and the Vessels equally good. I had my Eye upon this Notion of Impulses, and prest him to observe strictly, if he had not some secret Motion of his Mind to one Ship rather than another, and he said he had not. ­After some Time he accidentally met one of the Captains, and falling into Terms with him, agreed for his Passage, and accordingly prepar’d to go on board; but from the very Time that he made the Agreement, nay, even while he was mak­ ing the Bargain, he had a strong Impression on his Mind, that he should not go in that Ship. It was some Days a­fter this, that he told me of t­hese Impressions, which increas’d on him e­ very Day; upon which I prest him earnestly not to go, but to take Passage with the other. ­After he had resolv’d upon this, he came to me, and told me, that he had with some Difficulty, and some Loss, put off the first Ship, but that now he had the same, or rather stronger Aversion to ­going in the second Ship, and had a strong Impression on his Mind, that if he went in the second Ship he should be drowned; I bid him consider it a ­little, and tell me if he had any farther Intimations of it; and he continued to tell me, that he had no Rest about his ­going in ­either of ­t hose Ships, and yet his Affairs lay so, that he was ­under a Necessity of ­going, and ­t here was no other Ship put up upon the Exchange179 for g­ oing. I press’d him, however, not to venture by any Means; I convinc’d him, that ­those Impulses of his Mind w ­ ere the Whispers of some kind Spirit, that saw ­Th ings farther than he could, and ­were certainly given him as Cautions to save him from some Mischief which he might not foresee; that it could be no evil Spirit, ­because keeping him back could be no Injury to him, of such a Nature as would gratify the Devil in any Part of his usual Desires; it must therefore be something for his Good, and he o ­ ught to be very cautious how he slighted the ­silent Admonition. In a Word, I prepossess’d him so much in aid of the secret Impulses of his own Mind, that he resolved not to go that Year, and he saw clearly afterwards, that the secret Intimation was from a good Hand, for both the Ships miscarried; the first being taken by the Turks,180 and the latter cast Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 48, 50; and Novak, Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 94. 179. the Exchange] In his work for the navy, Samuel Pepys frequently went to the Royal Exchange to hire ships. It is not entirely clear from his comments how this was done, but apparently t­ here was a listing of ships departing to vari­ous destinations and a way of contacting the captains of ­these ships. See Pepys, Diary, 3:47; 5:250, 252. See also chapter 1, note 22 in this edition. 180. taken by the Turks] By “Turks” Defoe means any one of the North African pirates who captured Eu­ro­pean ships and often sent the crews into slavery as indeed happens to Crusoe near the beginning of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures. They ­were often known by the all-­inclusive term as the “Barbary pirates.” They ­were a real menace for t­ hose sailing in the Mediterranean, but they sometimes sailed as far as the En­g lish Channel. In his History of the Principal Discoveries, 148, Defoe remarked, “Not a Sailor goes to Sea in a Merchant Ship, but he feels some secret Tremor, that it may one time or other be his lot to be taken by the Turks; it is impossible for a Seaman to sail by the Coast of Algier, or Tunis, without having a kind of horrour at the place, and a ­little panick feare upon his Spirits about it, that sometime

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

313

away and all the Men lost, the Ship foundring at Sea, as was suppos’d for she was never heard of. I could fill this Tract with Accounts of this Nature,181 but the Reason of the Case is stronger than the Example; for as it is an Intimation of something ­f uture, and that is to come to pass, it is certain, t­ here is a State in which what is F ­ uture and must come to pass is known, and why should we not believe the News, if it comes from the Place where the Certainty of it is known? Some give all this to a Prescience peculiar to the Soul it self, and of kin to that we call Second Sight;182 but I see no Ground for this, but mere Presumption. ­Others call it an Afflatus,183 which they think is a Distemper of the Brain.184

or other it may be his lot to be carry’d in ­t here and sold for a Slave.” He also noted (154) that all would be well if they lived by the “honest Fruits of their ­Labour. The prob­lem was that they “are Thieves, s and Murderers” and “­ought to be suppress’d.” He made much the same comment in his Atlas Maritimus, 266. See also G.  A. Starr, “Escape from Barbary: A Seventeenth-­Century Genre,” Huntington Library Quarterly 29 (1965): 35–52. 181. Accounts of this Nature] In The Strange Surprizing Adventures, 342, Crusoe acts on “strong Impulses” and avoids taking several ships from Lisbon to ­England. He notes that both of them “miscarry’d.” 182. Second Sight] Defoe wrote a series of pamphlets ­under the guise of a Highlander pos­ sessed of second sight, which the OED defines as “A supposed power by which occurrences in the ­f uture or ­t hings at a distance are perceived as though they ­were actually pre­sent.” Defoe clearly thought that it was mainly nonsense, as suggested by his writing his British Visions (Newcastle, 1710) using the name “Isaac Bickerstaff, Sen.” This was the pseudonym used by Swift in attacking the astrological writings of John Partridge and ­adopted by a variety of the wits of the time, including Richard Steele in writing his journal The Tatler. In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 205–206, he used it in a satiric mode, describing it as a pos­si­ble way of ascertaining who might function as a devil within society: “­Were I left with this excellent and useful Accomplishment, how pleasant would it be, and how it particularly would gratify my Spleen, and . . . ​Ill Nature.” He imagines himself at a public gathering being able to deter­ mine what persons dressed for a ball or masquerade might be a kind of devil. But Defoe found it a useful formula for predicting such happenings as the peace between Britain and France in 1712 and other events that a ­simple knowledge of current affairs would have made obvious. And he also seemed to enjoy writing in a visionary mode. In his Second-­Sighted Highlander (London, 1713), 5, he gave some sense of the visionary mode involved: “In my traversing the waste and barren Mounts of my Country, I see Mists crowning distant Moun­ tains, and marching to shock and engage each other, flaming Meteors dart this Way, rise, fall, shoot and flash; direct, oblique, prone, perpend, and pointing to each other: Moving Air describes in (to ­others invisible) small and exactly shap’d clouds, the very ­Faces, Shapes, names and Distinctions of such Persons, Nations, Towns, Cities and ­People of whom ­t hose Mists, Meteors, and other Clouds represent the Actions: Darkness it self forms the Posture of ­t hings by which We see, and e­ very Cloud is filled with Hieroglyphics for the Assistance of this uncouth Attainment called Second Sight.” 183. Afflatus] Inspiration or a divine imparting of knowledge. The Latin meaning has to do with a breathing into a person or object. In Swift’s satire on enthusiasm in his Tale of a Tub, the Aeolists are inspired by vari­ous forms of wind, none of which have anything truly divine about them. 184. Distemper of the Brain] See OED 4: “Deranged or disordered condition of the body or mind (formerly regarded as due to disordered state of the humours); ill health, illness, dis­ ease.” In his novel, Montrose, set in Scotland, Sir Walter Scott depicted t­hose supposedly having second sight as afflicted with the equivalent of this, including a condition similar to what we now think of as bi-­polar disorder.

314

Ser ious R eflections

­ thers call it a Sympathetick Power in the Soul,185 foreboding its own Disasters. O But all this is short of the Th ­ ing, for ­here is not a Foreboding only, which indeed is often felt, but is express’d another Way; but ­here is a direct Intelligence; a plain Intimation of the Evil, and warning to avoid it: This must be more than an Afflatus, more than a Sympathy; this must be from a certain Knowledge of a Th ­ ing that exists not, by a Something that does exist; and must be communicated by a Con­ verse of Spirits unembodied, with the Spirit embodied, for its Good; ­unless you ­will call it Divine Revelation, which I see no Ground for. All ­t hese Reasonings make it abundantly our Concern to regard ­t hese ­Things, as what we are greatly concern’d in; However that is not the chief Use I make of them h ­ ere, but (1.) they abundantly explain the Nature of the World of Spirits; and the Certainty of an Existence a­ fter Death; (2.) they confirm that the Disposition of Providence concerning Man, and the Event of ­Things, are not so much hidden from the Inhabitants of that World as they are from us; as also (3.) that Spirits unembodied see with a Sight differing from us, when we know nothing of it our selves. This offer’d many useful Reflections to my Mind, which, however, ’tis impos­ sible for me to communicate with the same Vivacity, or to express with the same Life, that the Impression they make on my own Thoughts came with. 1. The Knowledge of ­t here being a World of Spirits, may be many Ways useful to us, and especially that of their seeing into Futurity, so as to be able to commu­ nicate to us, by what Means soever they do it, what we ­shall, or ­shall not do, or what ­shall, or ­shall not befall us; to communicate Dangers before us, so as they may be avoided, and Mischiefs awaiting us, so as they may be prevented, and even Death it self, so as we may prepare for it; For we may certainly, if we would attend to ­t hese ­Things, encrease our Acquaintance with them, and that very much to our Advantage. I would be far from prompting the crazy Imaginations of Hypochondriac Distemper’d Heads, which run Men out to so many Extravagancies, and which in fixing their Thoughts upon the real World of Spirits, make this an imaginary World of Spirits to them; who think they are talk’d to from the invisible World, by the Howling of ­every Dog, or the Screeching of ­every Owl. I believe it was much of this vapourish dreaming Fancy, by which the Augurs of the Romans186 185. Sympathetic Power . . . ​Soul] See chapter 1, note 9 and chapter 5, note 83 in this edition. Ideas of sympathy, which became so popu­lar in the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century, ­were already gaining ground in Britain along with ideas of sensibility. In Spectator no. 302 (3:80), John Hughes wrote of a “Sympathy in Nature” by which “we feel our selves disposed to mourn when any of our fellow Creatures are afflicted.” 186. Augurs of the Romans] For a skeptical view of the Augurs and their functions, including the flights of birds, see Cicero, De Divinatione, trans. William Falconer, Loeb Library (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 431–467 (bk. 2:33–40). In his A System of Magick, 340, Defoe listed the Augurs among the vari­ous cheats practiced by the Devil, and noted, “when the augurs grew stale, when the cheats of the oracles ­were exposed, when the priests could no more predict by the entrails, he sets his wits to work to find other ways and means, for the carry­ing on his game.” See also chapter 5, notes 75 and 225 in this edition.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

315

determin’d Events from the Flying of Birds, and the Entrails of Beasts.187 It w ­ ill be hard for me to be prevail’d on to suppose, that even t­ hose intelligent Spirits which I speak of, who are able by such easy Ways, as the Impulses of our Minds, Dreams, and the like, to convey the Knowledge of ­Things to us, can be put to the Necessity, or find Reason to make Use of the Agency of Dogs and Birds, to convey their Notices by; this would be to suppose them to be much more confin’d in their Converse with us, than we evidently find they are; and on the other Hand would suppose the inanimate World to have more Knowledge of the invisible, than we have, whereas on the other Hand we know they have nothing at all to do with it. ­There is only this to be said for it, namely, that ­t hose inanimate Creatures188 do it involuntarily, and as it ­were, ­under the Power of Possession. I ­will not affirm, but that the invisible Inhabitants I have been speaking of, may have Power to act upon the brute Creatures, so as to employ them, or make use of their Agency in the Warnings and Notices which they give to us of Th ­ ings to come; but that the Brutes have other­w ise any farther Sight of Th ­ ings than we have, I can see nothing at all of that. It is true, Balaam’s Ass189 saw the Angel with the flaming Sword, standing in the Road, when the Prophet did not, but the Rea­ son is plainly express’d; the Angel was ­really ­t here, and actually presenting Terror to them with a flaming Sword in his Hand, only the Prophets Eyes ­were miracu­ lously witheld, that he could not see him. I ­shall unriddle this Mystery of the Agency of Beasts, and Birds, as far as Rea­ son dictates; and it seens to be Easy upon the Scheme of the Nearness of the Spir­ its I am speaking of to us, and their Concern to convey Intelligence to us; They may, I say, have Power to terrify the Brutes by horrible Apparitions to them, so as to force t­hose Howling and Screichings we have been told of, and to do this in such Places, and at such Times as ­shall suit with the Circumstances of the ­Family or Person concern’d, and so far their said extraordinary Howlings and Screich­ ings may be significant; but that the Brutes can ­either by Sense, or by extraordi­ ­ ings in Futurity relating to us, or to nary Sight190 have any Foreknowledge of Th 187. Entrails of Beasts] This form of divination was called haruspex. The ­w ill of the gods might be found in the entrails of animals offered for sacrifice. It was of Etruscan origins but had official sanction in ancient Rome. Haruspices w ­ ere especially favored by generals attempting to discover the possibilities of their success in war. 188. inanimate Creatures] Inanimate is used ­here in the sense of lacking a soul and not as dead or lifeless. From an etymological standpoint, it would seem to be a workable word, since anima means soul in Latin and the prefix “in” can often mean not or without as in “inconclusive.” On the other hand, the OED gives the verb “inanimate” as meaning “ani­ mate, infuse life into.” Bailey’s An Universal Etymological Dictionary, sig. Iii4, gives as its second definition “without Life or Soul.” Defoe’s usage allows for life but not for a soul. 189. Balaam’s Ass] See Numbers 22:21–38. In a larger context, the story is about the failure of Balak, king of Moab, to get Balaam to curse the ­children of Israel. In this par­tic­u ­lar incident, Balaam’s ass sees an angel armed with a sword and refuses to go forward even a­ fter Balaam beat him. The ass is given the power of speech and upbraids Balaam for his unkindness. ­A fter this, Balaam is able to see the angel. Eventually he tells Balak that the ­children of Israel are not to be cursed. 190. Brutes . . . ​extraordinary Sight] Charles Morton treats vision in his Compendium Physicae, 152–162, with attention to some of the experiments made by Robert Boyle and ­others

316

Ser ious R eflections

themselves; this has no Foundation in Reason or Philosophy any more than it has in Religion. ­Matter may act upon material Objects,191 and so the Understanding or Sense of a Brute may act upon vis­i­ble Objects, but ­Matter cannot act upon immaterial ­Things, and so the Eye of a Beast cannot see a Spirit, or the Mind of a Brute act upon Futurity, Eternity, and the sublime Th ­ ings of a State to come. What Use then the Spirits we speak of, inhabiting the invisible World, can make of the inanimate World to direct them, as Missionaries to us, I do not see, neither did I in all my Altitudes perceive they employ’d any such Agents. It is from the Misunderstanding of ­these ­Things that we place abundance of Incidents meerly fortuitous to the Dev­ils Account, which he knows nothing of; many a Storm blows that is none of his raising; many a Mid-­night Noise happens that is none of his making; if Satan or his Instruments had one Tenth Part of the Power, ­either of the Air, or in the Air, or over the Ele­ments, that we give them in our Imaginations, we should have our Houses burnt ­every Night, Hurricanes raised in the Air, Floods made in the Country, and in a Word, the World would not be habitable: But you remember I told you, as power­f ul as he is, he is chain’d, he has a g­ reat Clog at his Foot, and he can do nothing by Vio­lence, or without Permission. I might hint h ­ ere at abundance of idle ridicu­lous Dev­ils, that we are daily told of, that come and only make Game among us, put out our Candles, throw Chairs and Stools about the House, break Glasses, make a Smoak, a Stink of Brimstone,192 &c. whereas a­ fter all, the Devil has no more Sulphur about him than other Folks, and I can answer for it, that Satan is not disposed for Mirth; all the Frolicks and Gambols we ascribe to him, I dare say, are Anticks of our own Brain. I heard of a House in Essex, which they told me was haunted, and that e­ very Night the Devil with the nature of light. This included experiments with prisms and the nature of color. He has vision caused by rays proceeding from objects and impacting the eye. Defoe draws the conclusion that animals would be incapable of perceiving the forms of spirits. On m ­ atters of vision, Defoe would have been able to consult Harris’s Lexicon Technicum (1704), which he had used extensively for his Consolidator (1705). In his entry on vision (sig. 7Iv–7I3) Harris dismissed older theories of sight advanced by the Pythagoreans, Plato, and the Stoics involv­ ing an “emission theory” of vision by which the eye emitted rays directed ­toward and object. And in his entry on color, Harris ­adopted Newton’s experiments with prisms. 191. ­Matter . . . ​material Objects] This treatment of animals may have its roots in the philoso­ phy of René Descartes, who argued that animals ­were essentially mechanisms and that only ­human beings had souls and genuine ­mental powers. Defoe’s teacher at Newington Green, Charles Morton, was certainly influenced in a variety of ways by Descartes. In treating dif­ fer­ent spirits, from angelic to ­t hose of animals, he views the latter as “Volatized, and put in motion,” but only “Equivocally cal’d Spirits.” See Charles Morton, Compendium Physicae, ed. Samuel Eliot Morrison and Theodore Hornberger, Publications of the Colonial Society of Mas­sa­chu­setts, vol. 33 (Boston: Colonial Society, 1940), xxxvii–­x xxviii, 188–189. See also Charles Morton, An Essay ­towards the Probable Solution of this Question. When come the Stork and the Turtle, the Crane and the Swallow, when They Know and Observe the Appointed Time of Their Coming (London, 1703), 1–10. 192. Brimstone] See Defoe, Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 149, where Defoe mocks the notion that t­ here is any necessary connection between the Devil and brimstone.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

317

or a Spirit, call it which you ­w ill, came into such a Room, and made a most terri­ ble Knocking, as if it had a Hammer or a Mallet,193 and this for two or three Hours together: At length, upon looking about in an empty Closet in that Room, ­t here was found an old Mallet, and this was presently concluded to be the Mallet which the Devil made such a Noise with, so it was taken away: But the next Night they said, the Devil made such a Racket for want of the Mallet, that they w ­ ere much more disturb’d than before, so they w ­ ere obliged to leave the Mallet t­ here again, and ­every Night the Devil would come and knock in the Win­dow, for two or three Hours together with that Mallet, I have seen the Room, and the Mallet, in neither of which was any Th ­ ing extraordinary, but never heard the Noise, though I sat up to wait for it; nor ­after causing the Mallet to be taken away, was ­t here any Noise; be like the mannerly Spirit would not disturb us who w ­ ere Strangers. This pass’d for a most eminent Piece of Walking194 or Haunting, and all the Difficulty was to enquire, to what Purpose all this Disturbance was made, seeing ­t here was no End answered in it, and I always thought the Devil was too full of Business to spend his Time to no manner of Purpose. At last, all the Cheat was discovered, viz. that a Monkey kept in a House three or four Houses from it, had found the Way into that Room, and came ­every Night almost about Midnight, and diverted himself with the Frolick, and then went Home again. If t­ hese ­Things w ­ ere not frequently detected, it would be a g­ reat Scandal upon the Devil, that he had nothing to employ himself in, more significant, than Rap­ ping all Night with a Hammer to fright and disturb the Neighbours, making Noises, putting out Candles, and the like: When we come into the invisible State, of which we now know so ­little, we ­shall be easily convinced, that the Devil is other­w ise employ’d, and has Business of much more Importance upon his Hands. It would be very insignificant, to have us so frequently warned against Satans Devices, to have us be caution’d to be sober and vigilant, knowing that our Adver­ sary the Devil, goes about like a roaring Lion,195 seeking, &c. All t­hese ­Things import, that he is diligent in attacking us, watching all Advantages, hunting us down, circumventing, waiting, and constantly plying us with Snares that he may trapan196 and devour us: This admits not any of ­those ­simple, ludicrous, and senseless Digressions, which we set him to work upon in our Imaginations. Perhaps, it may be expected I should enter ­here upon the Subject of Appari­ tions, and discourse with equal Certainty of that yet undecided Question, con­ 193. Essex . . . ​Mallet] In his Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 215, Defoe referred to “Lady Hatt’s Dev­il in Essex” who used a mallet to make noise. In that work, Defoe does not provide a solu­ tion to the story of the “ghost” as he does ­here, but his treatment is equally satiric. 194. Walking] The OED 5, which quotes Defoe’s usage of this word among other writers, defines this as “The action (on the part of a ghost) of appearing.” 195. roaring Lion] An allusion to 1 Peter 5:8: “. . . ​your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” 196. trapan] “To catch in a trap; to entrap, ensnare, beguile.” The OED lists this as obsolete or archaic.

318

Ser ious R eflections

cerning the Real­ity of Apparitions,197 and ­whether departed Souls198 can revisit the Place of their former Existence, take up Shapes, Bodies, and vis­i­ble and appar­ ent Beings, assume Voices, and concern themselves with the Affairs of Life, of Families, Persons, and even of Estates, and the like, as many have affirmed they have been Witnesses to. I must be allowed to leave this where I find it; ­t here are some Difficulties which I am not yet got over in it, nor have I been elevated high enough to determine that Point, and ­shall not venture to decide it, without more certainty than I am yet arriv’d to. I would warn all P ­ eople not to suffer their Imagination, to form Shapes and Appearances where t­ here are none; and I may take upon me to say, that the Devil himself does not appear half so often, as some ­People think they see him; Fancy governs many P ­ eople, and a sick Brain forms strange ­Things to itself: But it does not follow from thence that nothing can appear, ­because nothing does at that Time. However, as my Design is to instruct, not amuse, so I say, I forbear to enter upn a Subject, which I must leave as doubtful as I find it, and consequently talk of to no Purpose. I have heard of a man that would allow the Real­ity of Apparitions, but would have it be nothing but the Dev­il,199 that the Souls of Men departed or good Spirits never appeared, it happen’d that to this very Man something appear’d, as he said, and insisted upon it to the last: He said he saw the Shape of an ancient Man pass by him in the Dusk of the Eve­ning, who holding up his Hand, as it ­were in a threatning Posture, said aloud, O wicked Creature, repent, repent. He was exceed­ ingly terrified, and consulted several P ­ eople about it, who all advised him seri­ ously to take the Advice; for his Life made it well known it seems, that he stood in need of it: But being seriously debating about it, one of his Friends asked what he thought of the Apparition, and ­whether it was any of the Dev­ils Business to bid him Repent; this puzzled his Thoughts, and in a Word, he grew a very sober Man: But ­after all, it was a real Man, and no Apparition that spoke to him, though his frighted Fancy made him affirm that he vanish’d out of his Sight, which he did not. And the Person who did it, being a Grave and pious Gentleman, met him by 197. Real­ity of Apparitions] This echoes the ­future title of Defoe’s An Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (1727). In his role as Crusoe the wanderer through the universe, Defoe does not attempt to have a good enough view of ­t hings to ­settle the question of ghosts as the spirits of the dead, but in his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 98–124, Defoe was adamant on the subject. What appear to be apparitions of the dead are likely to be good or bad spirits taking the form of the dead. As with the many foreshadowings of this work and The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il in Serious Reflections, ­t here is a suggestion that Defoe was already gathering materials in preparation for composing ­t hese volumes. 198. departed Souls] Defoe, like Thomas Burnet, argued that while apparitions may be spir­ its, the souls of dead do not meddle in the affairs of the living. See Burnet, Treatise concerning the State of Departed Souls, 124. 199. nothing but the Devil] In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 96, Defoe argued that if a spirit seemed to be acting for the good of the person seeing an apparition, it had to be a good spirit.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

319

mere Accident without any Design, and spoke as he did, from the Knowledge he had of his being indeed a most wretched wicked Fellow: By the Way, the Gentle­ man had the Opportunity to hear the Use that was made of it, and to hear himself mistaken for an Apparition of the Devil, but he was so prudent as not to discover it to the Man, lest the Reformation, which was the Consequence of the Fright, should wear off, when he should know, that t­ here was nothing in the Th ­ ing but what was common. If we would always make the like good Use of Satan’s real Appearances, I do not know but it would go a g­ reat Way to banish him from the vis­i­ble World; for I am well assur’d he would very seldom visit us, if he thought his Coming would do us any Good; at least he would never come, but when he was sent, he would never come willingly: For he is so absolutely at the Divine Disposal, that if Heaven Commands, he must go, though it ­were to do the good he abhors; not that I believe Heaven ever thinks fit to employ him in ­doing Good, if ever he is let loose, ’tis to act in Judgment as an Instrument of Vengeance, and some are of Opinion, he is often employed as a destroying Angel,200 tho’ I do not grant that; I can hardly think the Justice of God would gratify Satan’s Gust of ­doing Evil, so far as to suf­ fer him to be even so much as an Executioner: But that is by the Way. I have another Turn to give this Part of my Observations, which tho’ perhaps some may not think so much to the Purpose, as entring into a critical Enquiry ­after the Dev­ils par­tic­u ­lar Mission in ­t hese Cases: Yet I think other­wise. I have observ’d, that some desperate P ­ eople make a very ill use of the general Notion, that t­ here are no Apparitions, nor Spirits at all; and r­ eally the Use they make of it, is worse than the extreme of ­t hose, who, as I said, make Visions and Dev­ils of e­ very Th ­ ing they see or hear: For t­ hese Men persuade themselves t­ here are no Spirits at all,201 ­either in the vis­i­ble or invisible World, and carry­ing it on farther, they next annihilate the Dev­il,202 and believe nothing about him, ­either of one kind or another. This would not be of so much bad Consequence, if it was not always followed by a worse; namely, that when they have prevailed with themselves to believe ­t here is no Devil, the next ­Thing is, and they soon come to it, That t­ here is no God, 200. destroying Angel] In 1 Chronicles 21:12–16, God shows his anger at David for conduct­ ing a census of the ­people by sending “an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it.” God relents but not before David sees “the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched over Jerusalem.” This image of an angel with a sword hovering over a city was a common icon in seventeenth-­century tracts depicting the effects of a plague. In his Due Preparations for the Plague (London, 1722), Defoe had the m ­ other of the f­ amily used to illustrate the ways to deal with the plague on a practical and spiritual level employ this image to express her fear of the effect of the plague. 201. no Spirits at all] See Psalm 14:1, “The fool hath said in his heart, ­There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, ­there is none that doeth good.” Defoe views the disbelief in spirits as resulting inevitably in atheism. 202. annihilate the Devil] It may be said that for some con­temporary thinkers, the entire system of Hell, sin, and Heaven came to seem irrelevant. Jane Lead and the Philadelphians believed that Satan would eventually reform and be part of a universal salvation. See Walker, Decline of Hell, 194–230.

320

Ser ious R eflections

and so Atheism takes its rise in the same Sink,203 with a Carelesness about Futurity.204 I have no Mind to enter upon an Argument to prove the being of our Maker, and to illustrate his Power by Words, who has so many undeniable Testimonies in the Breasts of ever rational Being to prove his Existence: But I have a Mind to conclude this Work with a short History of some Atheists,205 which I met with many Years ago, and w ­ hether the Facts are testified or not, may be equally useful in the Application, if you do not think them a l­ ittle too Religious for you. Some Years ago, ­there was a young Gentleman, a Scholar at the University, eminent for Learning and Vertue, of prompt Parts, and g­ reat Proficiency, inso­ much that he was taken g­ reat Notice of by the Masters and Fellows, and e­ very one promised fair in their Thoughts for him, that he would be a g­ reat Man. It happened, ­whether from his earnest Desire of more Knowledge, or the Opinion of his own ­great Capacity, I know not which; that this Gentleman falling upon the Study of Divinity, grew so opinionative, so very positive and dogmatic in his Notions in religious Th ­ ings, that by Degrees it came to this Height, that his Tutor saw plainly, he had ­little more than Notions in all his religious Pretences to Knowledge, and concluded, he would e­ ither grow Enthusiastic or obstinately Profane and Atheistick. He had three Chums or Companions in his Studies, and they all fell into the same Error, as well by the Consequence of a ­great deal of Wit and ­little Grace, as by the Example and Leading of this other young Gentleman, who was indeed their Oracle, almost in e­ very ­Thing. As his Tutor who was a very good Man, fear’d for him, so it came to pass with him, and all the rest; for they ran up their superficial Notions in Divinity to such a Height, that instead of Reasoning themselves into good Princi­ples of Religion, 203. Sink] This is prob­ably used in the figurative sense suggested by the OED 2a: “A recepta­ cle or gathering-­place of vice, corruption, ­etc.” But it is not clear that the word used in this sense ever lost its primary meaning at the time—­OED 1a: “A pool or pit formed in the ground for the receipt of waste ­water, sewage, ­etc.; a cesspool; a receptacle for filth or ordure.” 204. Carelessness about Futurity] In his Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 233, Defoe was to describe a Deist who was “thoughtless of, that dull remote ­thing called Futurity.” 205. short History . . . ​Atheists] Defoe was surely using his powers of imagination in this story despite having a small basis in fact (see chapter 3, note 121 in this edition). He may have had the circle about John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester in mind, but Rochester told Gilbert Burnet that he had never “known an entire atheist,” even if Burnet thought that Rochester’s concept of God was simply that of some ­great power in the universe. The conversion of the atheists, however, has some resemblance to that of Rochester. See Some Passages of the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester (London, 1680), 22. The club also bears some relationship to the group of Libertines around Theophile de Viau, portrayed in an exaggerated fiction (Le Doctrine Curieuse des Beaux Esprit de ce Temps [1623]) by Pere François Garasse. As with Rochester, t­hese Libertines ­were not technically atheists. They tended to believe in Nature or a God who had ­little influence on the day-­to-­day lives of ­human beings. In this, they ­were not very dif­fer­ent from the deists of the eigh­teenth ­century. See Antoine Adam, ed., Les Libertins au XVIIe Siècle (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1964), 34–49; and Georges Minois, Histoire de l’Atheisme (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 187, 194.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

321

they ­really reason’d themselves out of all Religion whatsoever; ­running on to expunge e­ very right Idea from their Minds, pretending t­ hose ­Things ­really ­were not, of which they could not define both how and what they ­were; they proceeded to deny the Existence of their Maker, the Certainty of a f­ uture State, a Resurrec­ tion, a Judgment, a Heaven, or a Hell. They ­were not contented to satisfie themselves with ­these impious Founda­ tions, but they set up to dispute in private Socie­ties against all revealed Religion; thereby bringing on themselves the Curse denounced in Scripture against t­ hose, that do Evil and teach Men so to do;206 in a ­little Time they grew so publick, that more Com­pany came in, and which was worse, many joined with them in Princi­ ple, or as I should rather have said, in casting off all Princi­ples, and they began to be famous in the Place, though to the Offence of all good Men, and ­were call’d The Atheistical Club.207 They soon began to see sober, religious P ­ eople shun them, and in some Time, upon Information given, they w ­ ere obliged by Authority, to separate for Fear of Punishment, so that they could not hold their publick Disputations, as they began to do; yet they abated nothing of their wicked Custom; and this dreadful Crea­ ture, who set up at the Head of the rest, began to be so open in his Blasphemies, that he was at Length oblig’d to fly from the University. However, he went a g­ reat while before it came to that; and though he had been often admonished, yet instead of reclaiming,208 he grew the more impious, mak­ ing the most Sacred ­Things his Jest, and the Subject of his Ridicule: He gave out, That he could frame a new Gospel, and a much better System of Religion, than that which they call’d Christian; and that if he would trou­ble himself to go about it, he would not fail to draw in as g­ reat a Part of the World to run a­ fter him, as had 206. teach Men so to do] The passage reverses the advice of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus states, “Whosoever therefore s­ hall break one of t­ hese least commandments, and s­ hall teach men so, he ­shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” See Matthew 5:19. 207. The Atheistical Club] A real incident lies ­behind this depiction of a club of atheists. Defoe mentioned the story in a letter to Harley of 6 November 1705 giving an account of his travels. He wrote of the 24th of August 1705 (Healey, 111), “To Devizes again and from thence to Visit young Ducket Chosen for Caln . . . : of him the story how the Atheist Club at Oxford Us’d him, his Character.” In his note, Healey linked this to this passage in Serious Reflections and to the Review for 9 October 1705 (2:376). In that issue, Defoe was replying to Charles Leslie, the Jacobite author of The Rehearsal and mentioned a club of Jacobites at Oxford who ­were also known by the “Name of the Atheist Club.” Defoe then proceeded to write about how they threw an En­glish Gentleman out of the win­dow for refusing to utter one of their toasts “too horrid to Name.” It is difficult to tell from this account ­whether the toast had more to do with atheism or Jacobite princi­ples, but politics was certainly the context for the commentary in the Review. In addition to becoming a Member of Parliament for Calne, and a Commissioner of the Excise from 1722–32, Duckett (1684–1732), a loyal Whig, gained some renown as an author by criticizing Pope’s Iliad in pamphlets of 1715 and 1716 and being sub­ sequently included along with Defoe in the Dunciad. In 1729 he also joined with John Dennis in writing a clever parody of the Dunciad Variorum titled Pope Alexander’s Supremacy and Infallibility Examin’d. A somewhat dif­fer­ent version of this story about a club of atheists, set in Cambridge, appears in Defoe’s Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, 12. 208. reclaiming] Reforming. The OED 2e classifies this as obsolete: “To improve oneself mor­ ally or spiritually; to mend one’s ways, repent, reform.”

322

Ser ious R eflections

been ­after any other. I care not to repeat any of his blasphemous Words, it is not to be supposed t­here can be any blasphemous abominable Th ­ ing, that this Set of wicked wretched young Men did not run into, neither any Wickedness of that kind within their Reach, which they did not commit. It would be too long to enter into the par­tic­u­lar History of t­ hese Men, and how it pleased God to dispose of them; they might be in Number before they separated about twenty-­two in all, I ­shall tell you of some of them however, who did not run such Lengths as the rest: Th ­ ere was a young Man, who frequented their Society, though as he afterwards said, he was rather persuaded to be among them, than to be one of them; he had however too much yielded to their Delusions; and though they made him very much their Jest, ­because they found he still retained some ­little Sense of a God, and of a ­f uture State in his Mind, yet he had yielded dread­ fully to them, and began to do so more and more ­every Day. It happen’d one Day, this young Man was ­going to their hellish Society, and not minding the Weather, the Clouds gathered over his Head, and he was stopp’d by a sudden Shower of Rain in the Street: It rained so very hard, that it obliged him to stand up in the Gate-­way of an Inn for some Time; while he was standing ­here, a ­great Flash of Lightning more than ordinarily surpriz’d him; it seems the Fire coming so directly in his Face, that he felt the very Warmth of it, and was exceedingly startled; in the same Moment almost, as is natu­ral in the Case, fol­ lowed such a Clap of Thunder that perfectly astonished him. The Rain continu­ ing, kept him in the Gate-­way, as I said, for a good While, till he had Time for such Reflections, as ­t hese, Where am I ­going! What am I ­going about! Who is it has stopt me thus! Why are t­ hese Thunders, ­these Rains, and this Lightning thus Terrible? and whence are they! and with the rest came in this Thought, warm and swift as the Lightning, which had terrified him before, What if ­there should be a God! What ­will become of me then! Terrified with ­these ­Things, he starts out of the Gate-­way into the Street notwithstanding the Wet, and runs back through the Rain, saying to himself as he went, I ­will go among them no more! When he came Home to his Chambers, he fell into dreadful Agonies of Mind, and at length broke out thus: What have I been d ­ oing! have I been denying the Power that made me! Despising that God whose Fire flash’d just now in my Face! And which, had not that Mercy I have abused interposed, might have burnt me to Death! What kind of Creature am I! While he was thus giving vent to his Reflections, a near Relation of his, a pious good Man, who had often used to speak very plainly to him of the horrid Sin he was guilty of, happened to come to visit him. The young Man had thrown himself upon his Bed, and had with the deepest Sense of his Madness, and most serious Reproaches of himself for his horrid Life, had been expressing himself to his Friend, and he had been comforting him in the best Manner he could, when ­after a while he desir’d his Friend to retire, that he might be a ­little alone, and might give vent to his Thoughts with the more Free­ dom, and his Friend, taking a Book in his Hand, staid in the outer Room. In this Interval came another Scholar to the Door, who was one of the wicked Com­pany I mention’d just now: He came not to visit this first Gentleman, but to

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

323

call him to go with him to the usual Meeting of their dreadful Society. And knocking at his Chamber Door; this Gentleman, who was left in the Chamber, stept to the Door, and looking through a ­little Grate, not only knew the Person, but knew him to be one of the wicked Com­pany I have been speaking of: Now as he was very loath, his Friend should have such an Interruption to the good Dispo­ sition he was then in, so above all, he was loth he should be persuaded to go any more among that miserable Gang; wherefore he opened the Door a l­ittle Way, so as he was not very distinctly seen, and speaks aloud in the Person of his Friend thus: O Sir, Beseech them all to repent; for depend upon it, ­There is a God, tell them, I say so; and with that he shut the Door upon him violently, giving him no Time to reply, and g­ oing back into his Friends Room, took no Notice of any Body having been at the Door at all. The Person who knocked at the Door, you may suppose, was one of the Leaders of the Com­pany, a young Scholar of a good Parts and Sense, but debauch’d by that horrid Crew; and one that had made himself eminent, for his declar’d Opposition to all the common Notions of Religion; a complete Atheist and publickly so, with­ out God or the Desire of God in the World: However, (as he afterwards confessed) the Repulse he met with at the Door, and which he thought came from his Friend, gave him a strange Shock at first, and fill’d him with Horror: He went down the College-­Stairs in the greatest Confusion imaginable, and went musing along a good Way, not knowing where he was, or whither he went, and in that Embarrass­ ment of Thought went a ­whole Street out of the Way; the Words had made an unusual Impression upon his Mind, but he had his other Surprises too; for he Thought his Friend, for he believ’d firmly, that it was he that had spoken to him, had treated him very rudely. Sometimes he resented it, and reflected upon it as an Affront, and once or twice was upon the Point of ­going back again to him, to know the Reason of his using him so, and to demand Satisfaction: But still the Words, ­THERE IS A GOD, dwelt upon his Mind, and what if it should be so? says he, what then? Upon this Question to himself, the Answer immediately occurr’d to his Mind, What then! Why, then I am undone; for, have not I declar’d War against the very Notion, defy’d all the Pretenders to it, as mere Enthusiasts and Men of Whimsy? However, ­after ­these Thoughts his Mind cool’d a ­little again, and it offered to him, no doubt injected by an Evil Spirit, that he should not trou­ble himself with enquiring into it one Way or another, but be easy. This pacified him for a ­little While, and he shook off the Surprise he was in; the hardned Temper seem’d to return, and he kept on his Way t­owards the hellish Society, that he was ­going to before: But still the Words returned upon him, ­THERE IS A GOD, and began to bring some Terror with it upon his Mind; and the last Words of his Friend came into his Mind often tell them, I say so, this fill’d him with a Curiosity which he could not withstand, viz. of ­going back to his Friend, and enquiring of him, what Discoveries he had made of this Kind? how he came to have changed his Mind so suddenly? and especially, how he was arrived to a Certainty of the ­Thing?

324

Ser ious R eflections

I told you, that t­ here had been a g­ reat Shower of Rain, which had stopp’d the first young Gentleman in his Way out; it seems the Day was still showery and a ­little Rain happening to fall again, as this Gentleman went by a Bookseller’s Shop, he stops at the Door to stand up a ­little out of the wet. ­There happens to be sitting in the Shop reading a Book, a Gentleman of his Acquaintance, though far differing from him in his Princi­ples, being a very sober, studious, religious young Man, a Student in Divinity of the same College, who looking up called him in, and a­ fter a few common Salutes, he whispers in his Ear. Student.  I was looking in an old Book ­here just now, and began the following short Dialogue; and I found four Lines written on the Back of the Title Page, which put me in Mind of you. Atheist.  Me! why did they put you in Mind of me? Stud.  I’ll tell you presently, * come hither. *He retires into a back Room, and calls the other ­after him. Ath.  Well, now tell me. Stud. ­Because I think they are very fit for such an atheistical Wretch as you to read. Ath.  You are very Civil. Stud.  You know you deserve it. Ath.  Come, let me see them however. Stud.  Let me look in your Face all the While then. Ath.  No you shan’t. Stud.  Then you shan’t see them. Ath.  Well, let it alone then. Stud.  Come give me your Hand, you ­shall see them, if you ­w ill promise to read them over three Times. Ath. ­There’s my Hand, I’ll read them out to you. Stud. I’ll hold your Hand all the While, b ­ecause I’ll be sure of your Per­for­mance. Ath.  I’ll warrant you I’ll * read them. * He reads.

But if it should fall out, as who can tell? That t­ here MAYBE a God, a Heaven and * Hell: Had I not best consider well, for fear ’T shou’d be too late when my M ­ istakes appear.209 * He held him by the Hand till that Word, and then let it go: pressing ­gently one of his Fin­gers.210

209. But . . . ​appear] Defoe quoted this quatrain in a number of his writings. For some com­ mentary see this edition of Serious Reflections, chapter 3, note 123; and Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 19 and 360, the note to lines 19–22. 210. The last two lines of this quatrain are a repetition of that on page 536.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

325

Stud.  Well, what do you say to them? Ath.  I’ll tell you my Thoughts farther by and by, but first tell me what did you press my Hand for when you let it go. Stud.  Did you feel no Motion within you, when you read t­ hose Words, ­There may be a God. Ath.  What Motion? What do you talk of? Stud.  Come do not deny it, for I am a Witness against you. Ath.  Witness, for what? I have kill’d no Body, I have robb’d no Body; if you would turn Informer, I value not your Evidence. Stud.  No, no, I s­ hall not turn Informer of that Kind, but I am a Witness in your Maker’s Behalf. Ath.  What can you Witness? Stud.  I’ll tell you what I can Witness, I can testify, that your own Conscience is against you, in your impious denying the Existence of that God that gave you Life; you could not conceal it, I tell you I felt it. Ath.  How do you pretend to know, what my Conscience dictates to me, or what the Result of secret Reflections may be in the Mind? You may be mis­ taken, have a Care; you know you are not to bear false Witness. Stud.  It’s in vain to strug­gle with it, ’tis not to be conceal’d, you betray’d your­ self, I tell you. Ath.  How betray’d myself? you are might dark in your Expressions. Stud.  Did I not tell you, I would look in your Face all the While you read? Did I not see into the Distraction of your Soul? Did you not turn pale at the very Words, when your Tongue said, ­There may be a God? Was t­ here not a vis­i­ble Horror in your Countenance, when you read the Word HEAVEN? A Horror, which signified a Sense of your having no Share in it, or Hope about it? And did I not feel a Trembling in your very Joints, as I held you by the Hand, when you read the Word HELL? Ath.  And was that it you held me by the Hand for? Stud.  Indeed it was; I was persuaded I should find it; for I could never believe, but an Atheist had always a Hell within him, even while he brav’d it out against a Hell without him. Ath.  You speak enough to fright one; how can you say so positively a ­Thing, which you cannot be sure of? Stud.  Never add Sin to Sin,211 ’tis in vain to deny it. Ath. Well, well, its none of * your Business; who made you my F ­ather Confessor? * He is a l­ittle Angry. 211. Never add Sin to Sin] See Isaiah 30:1: “Woe to the rebellious ­children, said the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin.” Similarly Psalms 70:27 has “Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righ­teousness.” See also Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jeshua Son of Sirach, 5:4–5, in The Apocrypha, trans. Edgar Goodspeed (New York: Modern Library, 1959), 232.

326

Ser ious R eflections

Stud.  Nay do not be angry with your Friend, and though you are, do but take the Hint, and be as Angry as you ­w ill. Ath.  What Hint, what is it you aim at? your Hints are all so general, I can make nothing of them. Stud.  I aim at nothing but your eternal Felicity, I thought ­those Lines very apposite to your Case, and was wishing you had them, before I happen’d to see you; I thought, that such a Reflection in the Case of Atheism, so natu­ral, so plain, especially blessed from him, whose secret Voice can effectually reach the Mind, might be some Means to open your Eyes. Ath.  Open mine Eyes! to what? Stud. To something that I am persuaded you see already in Part, though I find you strug­gle hard against your own Convictions. Ath.  What is this something you speak of? Stud.  I mean in a few words, what the Lines you have read mean, viz. That perhaps ­there may be a God, a Heaven, and Hell. Ath.  I ­don’t know * but ­t here may. *He observes Tears stand in his Eyes. Stud.  Well, I see it begins to touch you, if you are uncertain, that is a Step to Conviction;212 and the rest of the Words you have read, are a most natu­ral Inference in your Case. —­—­You’d best consider well for Fear, ’T shou’d be too late when your M ­ istakes appear. Ath.  What would you have me confider? Stud.  I am not able to enter into that Part now; the first ­Things is to persuade you to look in; listen to the Voice of Conscience, I am satisfied you stand convicted at that Bar, you cannot plead Not guilty ­t here. Ath.  Convicted of what?

212. Step to Conviction] Conviction is being used in its theological meaning as in OED 8: “The fact or condition of being convicted or convinced of sin. ­under conviction(s): in the state of awakened consciousness of sin.” According to Bailey’s Dictionary, it is the first stage in repentance involving an apprehension of sin and one’s guilt. In his ­Family Instructor 2:120– 28, Defoe devoted considerable space to conviction as signs of God’s grace working in a per­ son on the way to a full conversion. His character, Sir Richard, suddenly becomes convinced of his lack of any real religious belief. Defoe may have agreed with Bailey’s definition placing “conviction” as the first stage in a conversion, yet ­t here has never been full agreement about the stages in a conversion. From the earliest periods of the Church ­t here have been attempts at classifying the stages leading to a full conversion to Chris­tian­ity, but no classification was accepted as an established system. In this case, the Atheist suddenly feels a sense of fear at the possibility of eternal damnation, despair, and then repentance. See, for example, Beverly Gaventa, “Conversion,” in The Anchor Bible, ed. David Freedman et al., 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1:1131–1133. See also Richard Baxter, A Call to the Converted (New York: American Tract Society, 1835), 158, where stress is placed on the “new and tender hearts” of the converted.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

327

Stud.  Of having acted contrary to the Light of Nature, of Reason, and indeed of common Sense; most impiously denied the God213 whose Air you breath in, whose Earth you tread on, whose Food you eat, whose Cloaths you w ­ ere, who is your Life, and ­w ill be your Judge. Ath.  I do not absolutely deny; I tell you, I d ­ on’t know, but ­there may be a God. Stud.  ­Don’t you know but ­there may! O SIR, I beseech you repent; for certainly ­THERE IS A GOD, depend upon it, I SAY SO. Ath.  You * Fright me. *He starts and looks surpriz’d. Stud.  Indeed I think it may well Fright you. Ath.  But you fright me upon a quite differing Account from what you imag­ ine; I am indeed very much surpris’d, and so would you too if you knew the Circumstance. Stud.  What Circumstance? Ath.  Pray did you hear ­those Words spoken any where to Day before you spoke them. Stud., not I. Ath.  Was you at Mr.—’s Chamber about half an Hour ago? Stud.  I have not been ­there this Month past, I have given over visiting him, and all such as he is, long ago. Ath.  Have you seen him to Day, or when did you last see him, did he speak ­t hose Words to you, or you to him. Stud.  I have not seen him, since I saw him with you about fourteen Days ago, when your Discourse (even both of you) was so Blasphemous and so Atheis­ tical, as made my very Heart ­tremble, and I resolv’d never to come into Com­pany with e­ ither of you again, and it was that very Discourse, that made me think of you when I found ­t hose Lines in this Book; I should think it an evident Discovery of God, and what I might hope should best forward your Conviction, if his Providence should have sent you to this Door at that Min­ ute, to receive the Hint on this Occasion. Ath. ­There is something more than common, in ­every ­Thing that has hap­ pened to me to Day! Stud.  If you would explain yourself a l­ittle, I might say more; but you know very well, I cannot make the least guess at what you mean. Ath.  Ask me no more Questions, ­there must be A * GOD or A DEVIL in Being. *He looks wildly and amaz’d. Stud.  Dear Friend, ­t here are both, depend upon it, but I beseech you compose your Mind, and do not receive the Conviction with Horror, but with Com­ fort and Hope. Ath.  One or other of them has been concern’d in what has happen’d to me to Day; it has been a strange Day with me.

213. denied the God] See Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il, 20, for a similar comment.

328

Ser ious R eflections

Stud.  If it relates only to ­t hese ­Things, perhaps it may be of Use to you to com­ municate the Particulars, at least it may give some vent to the Oppression of Thought, which you seem to be ­under, you cannot open your Mind to One, that has more earnest Desires to do you Good, tho’ perhaps not sufficiently furnish’d to advise you. Ath.  I must tell it or * Burst;

­ ere he gave him the w H ­ hole Story of his g­ oing to his Friend’s Chamber, in order to take him with him to the wicked Club they had kept, and how he had met him at the Door, and said the same Words to him, that the Student had repeated, and when he had done, says he to his Friend; and who now do you think must dictate the same Words to him, and afterwards to you, to say to me on the same Occasion. Stud.  Who do I think! Nay, who do you think? Ath.  Who! The Devil, if t­ here is a Devil. Stud.  Why, do you think the * Devil preaches Repentance! *He stands Stock-­still, and says not a Word, which the other perceiving, goes on.

Pray think seriously, for I see it does a l­ittle touch your Reason; is it likely the Devil should bid ­either of us, or both of us, intreat you to repent? Is it the Devil think you, that would pronounce the Certainty of the ­great Truth I speak of? Is it his Business to convince you that ­there is a God? Ath.  That’s very true. Stud.  One ­Thing however, I’ll say in Satan’s Behalf; and that is, that he never came up to your height of Sinning. The Devil has frequently set up himself, and persuaded poor deluded P ­ eople to worship him as a God; but to do him Justice, he never had the Impudence to deny the Being of a God; that’s a Sin purely ­Human, and even among Men very Modern too, the Invention of witty Men, as they call themselves; a Way they have lately found out to cher­ ish superlative Wickedness, and flatter themselves, that they s­ hall have no Audit of their Accompts in a F ­ uture State; of whom it may indeed be said in that Par­tic­u­lar, they have out-­sinn’d the Dev­il. Ath.  Indeed I think we have. Stud.  I with you would consider a ­little farther of it. Ath.  What can Men consider that have gone that Length? Stud.  Yes, yes, remember what St. Peter said to Simon the Sorcerer. Ath.  What was that? Stud. Read Acts. viii. 22. Repent therefore of this thy Wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine Heart may be forgiven thee. Ath.  No, No, the last of your Verses is against me ­t here most directly. Its all TOO LATE now my ­Mistakes appear. Stud.  No, no, Remember what you said, that it must be a God or a Dev­il. Ath.  What is that to the Purpose?

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

329

Stud.  Why you seem’d satisfied, that it could not be from the Devil. Ath.  But what the better am I for that, if the other is my ­Enemy? Stud.  Much the better if it was from God, if the Words you heard ­were from God, and that two unconcerted 214 Persons so eminently concurr’d in speak­ ing to you, you cannot believe God would bid you REPENT, if it was too late, or if he ­were your irreconcileable ­Enemy; on the contrary, if you believe it to be the Voice of his Providence, you ­ought to listen to and obey it. Ath. You have a strange Power of Persuasion, ­ t here’s no resisting your Argument. Stud.  It is not in me to persuade, but Heaven may make use of me to convince. Ath.  To convince is to persuade, I am convinc’d that I have been a dreadful Wretch. Stud.  I am persuaded you ­were convinc’d of that before. Ath.  I cannot deny but my Heart always struck me, a kind of chill Horror ran through my Veins, When I have utter’d the blasphemous Opinions that I have been drawn into, my very Blood stagnated at the Thought of it, and I look back on it with Astonishment. Stud.  I tell you, I felt a Tremor even in your Flesh, when you read the Words, a God, a Heaven, a Hell. Ath.  I confess to you my very Heart sunk within me at the Words who can tell; my Soul answer’d that I could tell myself, that it both is, and must be so. Stud.  Conscience is a faithful and never-­failing Evidence in his Maker’s Behalf. Ath.  It is a very terrible Evidence against me, and where ­w ill it End? Stud.  I hope it ­w ill End where it began, I mean in a heavenly Call to you to Repentance. Ath.  That is not always the Consequence of Conviction. Stud.  You must therefore distinguish again of what proceeds from Heaven, what from Hell, the Voice of God, and the Voice of the Dev­il; the first calls upon you to repent, the last prompts you to despair. Ath.  Despair seems to be the natu­ral Consequence of denying God; for it shuts out the Power that can alone restore the Mind. Stud.  The greater is that Love which refuses to be shut out, that sends such a heavenly Summons to you to repent, and in so eminent a Manner; it is not you having been an E ­ nemy, a Blasphemer, a Denyer of God; Peter denied Christ three Times,215 nay, the third Time he even abjur’d him, and yet mark the Words, The Lord look’d on him, and immediately he repented. 214. unconcerted] Unconnected, usually having to do with events rather than persons. But in The Weakest Go to the Wall (London, 1714), 31, Defoe described the Dissenters as “a g­ reat body of Men, but not a united Body, not a concerted cemented Body.” Similarly, in speaking of journalists in The Commentator of 22 February 1720, he described them as a “merry Gang of us, who set out together, without any Concert of Knowledge of one another.” 215. Peter . . . ​three Times] See Matthew 26:75: “And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.”

330

Ser ious R eflections

Ath.  My Case is worse than Peter’s. Stud.  And yet you see you are call’d on to repent. Ath.  I think you are call’d to make me repent, ­t here’s no answering you. Stud.  Amen; may I have the Blessing of being an Instrument to so good a Work, ­t here seems to be something extraordinary in it all. Ath.  It’s all a Surprise to me, how came I hither! Stud.  Nay, how came I hither! how came this Book ­here! who writ the Lines in the Frontispiece!216 how came I to read them! ’tis 0032all a Dream to me. Ath.  How came you to think of me upon the reading them! and how came I ­here just at the * Moment, and out of my Way too! *He lifts ups his Hands and cries out, ­There is a God, certainly ­there is, I am convinc’d of it, it must be so, Stud Nothing more certain; nor is ­t here any Doubt but all ­t hese ­Things are of him. Ath.  But ­t here are yet greater ­Things ­behind, I wish you would go with me to my Friend Mr.—­—’s Chamber, I am persuaded something yet more extra­ ordinary must have befallen him. Stud With all my Heart.† †  They both go to the first Gentleman’s Chamber, and found him at Home very much out of Order, but willing enough to discourse with them. Ath. Well, Friend of mine, I hope you are better dispos’d to your Friends than when I saw you last. Gent.  Truly when I saw you last, I was disposed of by the Devil, and so I doubt was you; I hope I s­ hall never come into that horrid Place again. Ath.  What horrid Place? Gent.  You know where I mean, I t­remble at the very Thoughts of the Place, and much more of the Com­pany; I with I could prevail upon you to come no more among them too: I assure you if I know myself, and if God would assist me to do it, I would much rather go to a Stake to be burnt. Stud.  I rejoice in such an Alteration, Sir, upon you, I hope our Friend ­here is of the same Mind, long may it continue in you both. Ath.  Well, pray tell us something of the Occasion of this happy Alteration; for it w ­ ill seem still more strange, how you came to be instrumental to my Change, if I know nothing of the Means that brought about you own. Gent.  Mine! I assure you, it was all from Heaven: Not the Light that shone about St. Paul,217 was more immediately from Heaven than the Stroke that touch’d my Soul; it is true, I had no Voice without, but a Voice has spoken (I hope) effectually to my Understanding, I had Voice enough to tell me, how I was in the Hands of that Power, that Majesty, that GOD, whom I had wick­ edly, and with a Hardness not to be expressed, disown’d and deny’d.

216. Frontispiece] The work to which Crusoe is referring has not been identified. 217. Light . . . ​St. Paul] See Acts 9:3. This occurs at Paul’s (then Saul) moment of conversion.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

331

Stud.  Pray Sir, if you care to have it known, give us some Account of the Par­ ticulars of this wonderful ­Thing. Gent.  Sir, I ­shall do it * freely, I think I ­ought not to conceal it. *­Here he gives an Account of the Surprise he was in by the Lightning, how he was stopt in his Way to his wicked Com­pany, and went back to his Chamber. Ath.  Well, now I ­w ill no more won­der at the Salutation you gave me, when I came to call you, but thank you for it. Gent.  What Salutation? Ath.  Why, when I was at your Chamber about two Hours ago. Gent.  You at my Chamber! Ath.  Nay, you need not conceal it, for I have told our Friend ­here all the Story. Gent.  I know nothing of what you talk of, much less what you mean. Ath.  Nay, what need you go about to conceal it? I tell you I do not take it ill, I hope I may have Reason to be thankful for what you said to me, and look upon it as spoken from Heaven; for I assure you, it has been an Introduction to that Light in my Thoughts, which I hope ­shall never be extinguish’d. Gent.  Dear Friend, as I believe you are serious, so I hope you believe I am so; I profess I know nothing of all you talk about. Ath.  Why, was I not at your Door this After­noon, a ­little ­a fter the ­great Shower of Rain? Gent. Not that I know of. Ath.  Why, did not I knock at your Chamber Door, and you come to the Door yourself and speak to me? Gent.  Not to Day, I am very sure of it. Ath.  Am I awake! are you Mr.—am I sure we are all alive, and know what we are saying, and to who? Gent.  I beseech you unriddle yourself, for I am surprised. Ath.  Why, about three a Clock this After­noon, I came to this Chamber-­Door; I knock’d; you came and open’d the Door; I began to speak, you interrupted me, and—­—

­ ere he repeats the Passage at large, and his own Thoughts, and Resentment as H before. Gent.  Depend upon it, ’twas some Voice from Heaven, it was nothing of mine; I have not been at the Door since two of the Clock, when I came first in, but have been on the Bed or in my Study ever since, wholly taken up with my own Thoughts, and very much indispos’d.

The young Man turns Pale, and falls into a Swound.218 ­There was a g­ reat deal more belonging to this Story, but ’tis too long for the pre­sent Purpose, I have related this Part on several Accounts, and it hits the Pur­ pose I am upon many Ways. 218. Swound] Variant spelling for swoon or faint. The OED lists this as now archaic or dialect.

332

Ser ious R eflections

1. ­Here is a vis­i­ble Evidence of God, and of his Being and Nature fix’d so in the Mind, that not the most hardn’d Atheist can deny it, Nature recoils at ­every Endeavour to suppress it, and the very Pulsation of his Blood ­shall discover and acknowledge it. 2. Yet even in this, we see how the Power of Imagination may be work’d up, by the secret Agency of an unknown Hand, how many Th ­ ings concurr’d to make this Man believe he had seen an Apparition, and heard a Voice, and yet t­ here was nothing in it but the Voice of a Man unseen and mistaken; the young Man was so surprised at his Friends declaring that he knew nothing of his coming t­ here, that he concluded it had been all a Vision or Apparition that opened the Door, and that it was a Voice that had spoken to him, of what Kind he knew not; and the Reflection upon this surprised him so much as threw him into a Swound, and yet ­here was neither Vision or Voice, but that of an ordinary Person, and one who meant well, and said well. It is not to be doubted, but that many an Apparition related with a g­ reat deal of Certainty in the World, and of which good Ends have follow’d has been no more than such a serious ­Mistake as this. But before I leave it, let me observe, that this should not at all hinder us from making a very good Use of such Th ­ ings; for many a Voice may be directed from Heaven, that is not immediately spoken from thence; as when the C ­ hildren cried Hosannah219 to our Saviour, they fulfilled the Scripture, which said out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings thou hast ordain’d Praise; so doubtless he that made all ­Things and created all ­Things; may appoint Instruction to be given by fortuitous Accidents, and may direct concurring Circumstances to touch and affect the Mind as much, and as effectually, as if they had been immediate and miraculous. Thus was the two Persons happening to say the same Words to the Atheist, the strange reading of t­ hose Lines, when the Person came into the Bookseller’s Shop, the incident of his ­running into the Shop for Shelter, and many the like ­Things of the same Nature, and order’d in the same Mannner as the Cock crowing when Peter denied Christ,220 which though wonderfully concurrent with what his blessed Master had foretold, yet was no extraordinary Th ­ ing in a Cock, who natu­ rally crows, at such a Time of the Morning.

219. Hosannah] See Matthew 21:15–16. “And when the chief priests and scribes saw the won­ derful t­ hings that he did, and the c­ hildren crying in the t­emple, and saying, Ho-­san-na to the son of David; they w ­ ere sore displeased. and said unto him, Hearest thou what t­ hese say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and suckling thou hast perfected praise?” Jesus is alluding to Psalm 8:2: “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength b ­ ecause of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the ­enemy and the avenger.” In his interpretation of this psalm, Poole, Annotations (1:sig. Rrrr2) prefers a meta­phorical interpretation of “babes and sucklings” as representing the young and weak who may suddenly gain strength to oppose the enemies of God. 220. Cock . . . ​Christ] See the prediction, Matthew 26:34, and its fulfillment, Matthew 26:74–75.

A V ISION OF THE A NGELICK WOR LD

333

In a Word, all ­t hese ­Things serve to convince us of a ­great Super-­intendency of Divine Providence in the minutest Affairs of this World, of a manifest Existence of the invisible World, of the Real­ity of Spirits, and of the Intelligence between us and them. I hope I have said nothing of it to mis-­guide any Body, or to assist them to delude themselves, having spoken of it with the utmost Seriousness in my Design, and with a sincere Desire for a general Good.

FINIS

Notifications of Books Printed and Sold

BOOKS Printed for and Sold by William Taylor, at the Sign of the Ship and Black-­Swan in Pater-­noster-­Row. PHillips’s new World or universal En­glish Dictionary, the 7th Edit. Improv’d with above twenty thousand Words. 2. The History of the Revolutions of Rome, by the Abbot Vertot, in 2 Vols. 8vo. 3. —­—. His History of the Revolution in Sweden 8vo. 4. The History of’ Charles the 12th, late King of Sweden, the 2d Edit. with a Continuation to his Death, 8vo. 5. The History of the Turks, in 4 Vols, 8vo. 6. The Turkish Spy, Vol. 9th, 12mo. 7. Memoirs of a Cavalier, written threescore Years ago, by an Englifh Gcntle­ man, who served first in the Army of Gustavus Adolphus, the glorious King of Sweden, till his Death: And ­after that in the Royal Army of King Charles the First, from the Beginning to the Conclusion of the Rebellion. 8. C. Grammont’s Memoires of the En­glish Court, during the Reigns of King Charles the 2d and King James the 2d; the 2d Edit. To which is added a compleat Key. 9. The Life and strange surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mari­ner; who lived twenty-­eight Years all alone in an uninhabited Island, on the Coast of Amer­i­ca, &c. in 2 Vols 8vo. 10. The Farrier’s New Guide: Containing 1. The Anatomy of a Horse, being an Exact and Compendious Description of all his Parts, with their Actions and Uses, illustrated with Figures curiously engraven on Copper-­Plates. a. An Account of all the Diseases incident to Horses, with their Signs, C ­ auses, and Methods of Cure:   Wherein many Defects in the Farrier’s Practice are now carefully sup­ plied, their Errors expos’d and amended, and the Art greatly improved and 335

336

N o t i f i c at i o n s o f B o o k s P r i n t e d a n d S o l d

advanced according to the lateft Discoveries: The Whole interspersed with many curious and Observations, concerning Feeding and Exercise, &c. By ­Will. Gibson. 11. The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia; A Romance. Done from the Greek of Heliodorus, in 2 Vols, 12mo. 12. The Whole Art of Surveying and Mea­sur­ing of Land. By John Love, Philomath. the 4th Edition. 13. Trigonometry improved, and Projection of the Sphere made easy, teaching the Projection of the Sphere, Orthographick and Stereographick; as also Trigonometry plain and ­spherical, with plain and intelligible Reasons for vari­ous and moft useful Methods, both in Projection and Calculation; with the Application of the Whole to Astronomy, Dialling and Geography. By Henry Wilson. 14. The London Accomptant. By same Author. 15. Mr. Hawkesbee’s Phisico Mechanical Experiments on Variety of Subjects. 16. Dr. Desaguliers Translation of Mr. Marriot’s Hydrostaticks. 17. —­— ­His Translation of Dr. Gravesande’s Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Phylosohy. 18. Mr. Raphson’s Translation of Sir Isaac Newton’s Algebraic Lectures. 19. The Religious Phi­los­o­pher, by Dr. Niewentyt. 3 Vols. 20. The Use of the Globes. 21. Astronomical Lectures read in the publick Schools in Cambridge. By Mr Whiston. 22. —­—­His Lectures to explain Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. 23. —­—­His Ele­ments of Euclid. 25. —­—­His Solar System, a large Sheet.* 2 6. Mr. Cunn’s Treatise of Vulgar and Decimal Fractions. 27. A Set of Scriptural Maps, fitted to be bound with the Folio Bible. 28. A large Atlas of twenty-­two Sheets, and eleven Sheets Maps, &c. Price bound 2 l.

Bibliographic Descriptions

Title page [double rule frame, 8.0  cm × 15.5  cm within 8.9  cm × 16.3  cm] Serious Reflections | DURING THE | LIFE | And Surprising | ADVENTURES | OF | Rob­ inson Crusoe: | WITH HIS | VISION | OF THE | Angelick WORLD. | [rule 7.7 cm] Written by Himself. | [rule 7.6  cm] |[Printer’s device, a three–­ masted ship, 35 mm × 47 mm] | [rule 7.5 mm] LONDON: Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship | and Black–­Swan in Pater–­noster–­Row. 1720. [Harvard/Houghton, EC7.D3623R.1720] Collation 8° A8, B8–­I28(+), I38–­S8 (S7 wanting), A8, Bb8–­Ee8, Ff4; [1]–270; [1]–64, 63–84, [85, 86]. Illustrations: Frontispiece 179mm × 182, within platemark 181 mm × 184 mm Sign: $4; Ff2, $2 Contents: A2 ‘Robinson Crusoe’’S PREFACE.’ A7 v ‘THE Publisher’s Introduc­ tion.’ A8v ‘Advertisement.’ [1]: ‘Serious OBSERVATIONS.’ ‘Introduction.’ ‘Chap. I. Of SOLITUDE.’ 18: Chap. II. An Essay upon HONESTY.’ 30: Of Honesty in General.’ 38: Of the Tryal of Honesty.’ 57: ‘Of Honesty in Promises.’ 75: ‘Chap. III. OF THE Immorality of Conversation, AND The Vulgar Errors of Behaviour.’ 82: ‘Of unfitting our selves for Conversation.’ 86: ‘I. Of the Immorality of Conver­ sation in General.’ 92: ‘2. Of reforming the Errors of Conversation.’ 96: ‘3. Of Athiestical and Prophane Discourse.’ 105: ‘4. Of Lewd and Immodest Discourse,’ 111: Of Talking falsly.’ 119: Chap. IV. An Essay on the pre­sent State of Religion in the World,’ 167: ‘Of Differences in Religion.’ 180: ‘Of the wonderful Excellency of Negative Religion, and Negative Virtue.’ 187: ‘ETERNITY.’ 194: ‘FAITH:’ ‘Chap.V. Of listning to the Voice of Pro–­|vidence.’ 239: ‘Chap. VI. Of the Proportion between the Chri–­|stian and Pagan World.’ [1]: ‘A VISION OF THE .’ ­Running heads: A2v–­A7 (recto): ‘PREFACE.’; (verso): ‘Robinson Crusoe’s’; A8 (verso and recto): ‘The Publisher’s Introduction.’ Text: [2]–[243], [244], [245]–[270]; A Vision: [2]–[64], [63]–[84]. Typography: Page 11.8 cm × 19.5 cm; 8.2 cm × 14.8 cm, with catchword 15.2 cm. 37 lines [54, 38 lines]. Design letters: B1 ‘I’, 18 ‘W’, 30 ‘I’, 38 ‘N’, 57 ‘A’, 82 ‘B’, 86 ‘S’, 337

338

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

92 ‘B’, 96 ‘G’, 105 ‘T’, 111 ‘B’, 119 ‘I’, 167 ‘T’, 180 ‘N’; factotum initials, 24 mm × 24 mm, 75 ‘C’; 204, 21 mm × 21 mm, ‘W’; 239, 26 mm × 26 mm, ‘I’; A1, 24 mm × 24 mm, ‘T’. Ornaments: Headpieces: A7 v, 25 mm × 76.0 mm, floral basket framed by floral sprays and ea­gles staring outward; B1, 33  mm × 84  mm, warrior’s busto in oval frame surrounded by flags, h ­uman figures, and bouquets in baskets; A1, 38  mm × 87  mm, bowl of flowers surrounded by hovering doves and framed within floral sprays; Tailpieces: A8v, 32 mm × 69 mm, warrior’s head crossed with trumpets and floral design; 17, 36 mm × 59 mm, face in the sun as a pendant sur­ rounded by sunflowers; 74, 23  mm × 32  mm, sunface within an oval frame in a pendant; 110, 29 mm × 40 mm, floral basket; 118, 45 mm × 62 mm, lion in a florid frame; 203, 49 mm × 56 mm, cupid’s face on a bowl filled with hearts, with doves perched on e­ ither side; 238, 45 mm × 52 mm, head on base within puti and floral array; 270, 59 mm × 75 mm, justice with scepter and scales framed in floral sprays; 84,30 mm × 43 mm, squirrel eating nut on a base, surrounded by floral sprays. Floral rules: A8v (1), B1 (1), 18 (Headpiece), 30 (1), 38 (1), 57 (1) 68 (1), 75 (Head­ piece), 82 (1), 92 (1), 96 (1), 105 (1), 111 (1), 119 (Headpiece), 167 (1), 180 (1), 194 (1), 204 (2), 239 (One–­rule headpiece). Catchword hyphenations: A2v Vo–­/Volumes, A3 With–­/Without, A3v arre–­/ arrested, A4v Manage–­/Management, 9 Repen–­/Repentance, 28 Hone–­/Honesty, 37 Princi–­/Principle, 55 pre–­/presuming, 68 I con–­/I confess, 100 some–­/something, 103 Mo–­/Motion, 126 aban–­/abandon’d, 143 Mon–­/Monsters, 152 Divi–­/Divinity, 184 Black–­Black–­swan, 217 Judg–­/Judgment, 224 extra–­/extraordinary, 231 invi–­/ invisible, 236 War–­/Warnings, 239 Know–­/Knowledge, 250 Alge–­/Algerines, 260 Chri–­/Christian, 268 Pro–­/Protection, [Angelick World]: 18 Expi–­/Expiration, 25 con–­/converses, 32 In–­/Inhabitant, 34 Govern–­/Government, 40 Mr. Mil–­/Mr. Milton, 45 a Hea–­/a Heaven, 46 er–­/erroneous, 50 ac–­/according, 51 ra–­/rather, 54 Whis–­/Whispers, 58 Fly–­/Flying, 59 Near–­/Nearness, 60 Coun–­/Country, 73 Ath. Con–­/Ath. Convicted, 74 I re–­/I resolv’d Catchword anomalies: 15 Men/Mens, 62 [omit]/a, 65 submit/submits, 96 est/ cest, 121 Old Gen^/Old Gent, 169 away/^way, 178 concilableness/concileableness, 215 fficult/ficult, 219 serv’d:/erv’d:, Angelick World: 6 chilld/chill’d, Note: Raised letters: the letter ‘b’ of ‘but’ as the first word on p. 25; the first let­ ter ‘a’ in ‘as’ on p. 244; in Angelick World, the ‘s’ in the catchword ‘cies’ on p. 14; the first letter ‘a’ in ‘any’ of Angelick World, p. 40. Paper: Provincial paper; Chain lines 2.8 cm–3.0 cm. Press figures: None. Cover: 12.0 cm × 20.0 cm Cover design: Calf, plain Spine: 3.0 cm × 19.3 cm Spine design: 3.0  cm × 19.3  cm; second panel titled ‘ROBINSON | CRUSOE’; third panel, ‘VOL. | III; bottom panel, ‘LOND. 1720’. Note: Physical dimensions confirmed by Elliot Paul Rothman, Boston, Mass.

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

339

Title–­page: [within a double rule frame, 8.0 cm × 15.5 cm within 8.9 cm × 16.3 cm] Serious Reflections | DURING THE | LIFE | And Surprising | ADVENTURES | OF | Robinson Crusoe: | WITH HIS | VISION | OF THE | Angelick WORLD. | [rule 7.7 cm] Written by Himself. | [rule 7.6 cm] | [Printer’s device, a three–­masted ship, 35 mm × 47 mm] | [rule 7.5 mm] LONDON: Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship | and Black–­Swan in Pater–­noster–­Row. 1720. [BPL Defoe 13.1720.3] Collation 8° A8, B8–­I8, K8–­S8 (S7 wanting), A8, Bb8–­Ee8, Ff4; [1]–270; [1]–64, 63–84. Illustrations: None Sign: $4; Ff2, $2 Contents: A2 ‘Robinson Crusoe’s PREFACE.’ A7 v ‘THE Publisher’s Introduc­ tion.’ A8v ‘Advertisement.’ [1]: ‘Serious OBSERVATIONS.’ ‘Introduction.’ ‘Chap. I. Of SOLITUDE.’ 18: Chap. II. An Essay upon HONESTY.’ 30: Of Hon­ esty in General.’ 38: Of the Tryal of Honesty.’ 57: ‘Of Honesty in Promises.’ 75: ‘Chap. III. OF THE Immorality of CONVERSATION, AND The Vulgar Errors of Behaviour.’ 82: ‘Of unfitting our selves for Conversation.’ 86: ‘I. Of the Immorality of Conversation in General.’ 92: ‘2. Of reforming the errors of Conversation.’ 96: ‘3. Of Athiestical and Prophane Discourse.’ 105: ‘4. Of Lewd and Immodest Discourse,’ 111: Of Talking falsly.’ 119: Chap. IV. An Essay on the pre­sent State of Religion in the World,’ 167: ‘Of Differences in Religion.’ 180: ‘Of the wonderful Excellency of Negative Religion, and Negative Virtue.’ 187: ‘ETERNITY.’ 194: ‘FAITH:’ ‘Chap.V. Of listning to the Voice of Providence.’ 239: ‘Chap. VI. Of the Proportion between the Christian and Pagan World.’ [1]: ‘A VISION OF THE Angelick World.’ Notes: Notation in front inside cover: ‘First Edition first issue with the first variant reading on p. 270.’ ­Running heads: A2v–­A7 (recto): ‘PREFACE.’; (verso): ‘Robinson Crusoe’s’; A8 (verso and recto): ‘The Publisher’s Introduction.’ Typography: Page 11.2 cm × 19.0 cm; 8.3 cm × 15.2 cm, with catchword 15.7 cm. 37 lines [54, 38 lines]. Design letters: B1 ‘I’, 18 ‘W’, 30 ‘I’, 38 ‘N’, 57 ‘A’, 82 ‘B’, 86 ‘S’, 92 ‘B’, 96 ‘G’, 105 ‘T’, 111 ‘B’, 119 ‘I’, 167 ‘T’, 180 ‘N’; factotum initials, 24 mm × 23 mm, 75 ‘C’; 204, 21 mm × 21 mm, ‘W’; 239, 25 mm × 25 mm, ‘I’; A1, 25 mm × 23 mm, ‘T’. Ornaments: Headpieces: A7 v, 25  mm × 77mm, floral basket framed by floral sprays and ea­gles staring outward; B1, 32  mm × 85  mm, warrior’s busto in oval frame surrounded by flags, h ­uman figures, and bouquets in baskets; A1, 38  mm × 87  mm, bowl of flowers surrounded by hovering doves and framed within floral sprays; Tailpieces: A8v, 32mm × 70 mm, warrior’s head crossed with trumpets and floral design; 17, 35 mm × 59 mm, face in the sun as a pendant sur­ rounded by sunflowers; 74, 24 mm × 32 mm, sunface within an oval frame in a pendant; 110, 39 mm × 40 mm, floral basket; 118, 51 mm × 64 mm, lion in a florid frame; 203,50 mm × 57 mm, cupid’s face on a bowl filled with hearts, with doves perched on e­ ither side; 238, 45 mm × 53 mm, head on base within puti and floral array; 270, 59 mm × 75 mm, justice with scepter and scales framed in floral sprays; 84,30 mm × 43 mm, squirrel eating nut on a base, surrounded by floral sprays.

340

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

Floral rules: A8v (1), B1 (1), 18 (2), 30 (1), 38 (1), 68 (1), 75 (2), 82 (1), 96 (1), 105 (1), 111 (1), 119 (2), 167 (1), 180 (1), 194 (1), 204 (2), 239 (1). Note: The double–­band is found in The ­Family Instructor (1718). Catchword hyphenations: A2v Vo–­/Volumes, A3 With–­/Without, A3v arre–­/ arrested, A4v Manage–­/Management, 9 Repen–­/Repentance, 8 Hone–­/Honesty, 37 Princi–­/Principle, 55 pre–­/presuming, 68 I con–­/I confess, 100 some–­/something, 103 Me–­/Motion, 126 aban–­/abandon’d, 143 Mon–­/Monsters, 152 Divi–­/Divinity, 184 Black–­/Black–­swan, 217 Judg–­/Judgment, 224 extra–­/extraordinary, 231 invi–­/ invisible, 236 War–­/Warnings, 239 Know–­/Knowledge, 250 Alge–­/Algerines, 260 Chri–­/Christian, 268 Pro–­/Protection, [Angelick World] 18 Expi–­/Expiration, 25 con–­ /converses, 32 In–­ /Inhabitant, 34 Govern–­ /Government, 40 Mr.  Mil–­/ Mr. Milton, 45 a Hea–­/a Heaven, 46 er–­/erroneous, 50 ac–­/according, 51 ra–­/rather, 54 Whis–­/Whispers, 58 Fly–­/Flying, 59 Near–­/Nearness, 60 Coun–­/Country, 73 Ath. Con–­/Ath. Convicted, 74 I re–­/I resolv’d Catchword anomalies: 15 Men/Mens, 62 [omit]/a, 65 submit/submits, 96 est/ cest, 103 Me–­/Motion, 121 Old Gen^/Old Gent, 169 away/way, 178 concilableness/ concileableness, 215 fficult/ficult, 219 serv’d:/erv’d:, 253 [omit]/is, 270 THE/THEY, [Angelick World]: 6 chilld/chill’d, Note: Raised letters: the letter ‘b’ of ‘but’ as the first word on p. 25; the first let­ ter ‘a’ in ‘as’ on p. 244; in Angelick World, the ‘s’ in the catchword ‘cies’ on p. 14; the first letter ‘a’ in ‘any’ of Angelick World, p. 40. Paper: Provincial paper; Chain lines 2.5 cm. Press figures: None. Cover: Calf, 11.7 cm × 19.25 cm Spine: 2.5  cm × 19.7  cm; modern, re–­tooled in calf; 6 panels without bands; gilded letter on recovered red label, ‘ROBINSON | CRUSOE’ which retains por­ tions of a frame comprised of a series of dashes. Note: BPL 13.1720.3 has no engravings and no advertisements, as does the Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania edition.

Title–­page: [within a double rule frame, 8.0 cm × 15.5 cm within 8.9 cm × 16.3 cm] Serious Reflections | DURING THE | LIFE | And Surprising | ADVENTURES | OF | Robinson Crusoe: | WITH HIS | VISION | OF THE | Angelick WORLD. | [rule 7.7 cm] Written by Himself. | [rule 7.6 cm] | [Printer’s device, a three–­masted ship, 35 mm × 47 mm] | [rule 7.5 mm] LONDON: Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship | and Black–­Swan in Pater–­noster–­Row. 1720. [BPL Defoe 13.1720.3] Collation 8° A8, B8–­I28(+), I38–­S8 (S7 wanting), A8, Bb8–­Ee8, Ff4; [1]—270; [1]— 64, 63–84. Illustrations: None Sign: $4; Ff2, $2 Contents: A2 ‘Robinson Crusoe’s PREFACE.’ A7 v ‘THE Publisher’s Introduc­ tion.’ A8v ‘Advertisement.’ [1]: ‘Serious OBSERVATIONS.’ ‘Introduction.’ ‘Chap. I. Of SOLITUDE.’ 18: Chap. II. An Essay upon HONESTY.’ 30: Of Hon­

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

341

esty in General.’ 38: Of the Tryal of Honesty.’ 57: ‘Of Honesty in Promises.’ 75: ‘Chap. III. OF THE Immorality of CONVERSATION, AND The Vulgar Errors of Behaviour.’ 82: ‘Of unfitting our selves for Conversation.’ 86: ‘I. Of the Immorality of Conversation in General.’ 92: ‘2. Of reforming the errors of Conversation.’ 96: ‘3. Of Athiestical and Prophane Discourse.’ 105: ‘4. Of Lewd and Immodest Discourse,’ 111: Of Talking falsly.’ 119: Chap. IV. An Essay on the pre­sent State of Religion in the World,’ 167: ‘Of Differences in Religion.’ 180: ‘Of the wonderful Excellency of Negative Religion, and Negative Virtue.’ 187: ‘ETERNITY.’ 194: ‘FAITH:’ ‘Chap.V. Of listning to the Voice of Providence.’ 239: ‘Chap. VI. Of the Proportion between the Christian and Pagan World.’ [1]: ‘A VISION OF THE Angelick World.’ Notes: Notation in front inside cover: ‘First Edition first issue with the first variant reading on p. 270.’ ­Running heads: A2v–­A7 (recto): ‘PREFACE.’; (verso): ‘Robinson Crusoe’s’; A8 (verso and recto): ‘The Publisher’s Introduction.’ Typography: Page 11.2 cm × 19.0 cm; 8.3 cm × 15.2 cm, with catchword 15.7 cm. 37 lines [54, 38 lines]. Design letters: B1 ‘I’, 18 ‘W’, 30 ‘I’, 38 ‘N’, 57 ‘A’, 82 ‘B’, 86 ‘S’, 92 ‘B’, 96 ‘G’, 105 ‘T’, 111 ‘B’, 119 ‘I’, 167 ‘T’, 180 ‘N’; factotum initials, 24 mm × 23 mm, 75 ‘C’; 204, 21 mm × 21 mm, ‘W’; 239, 25 mm × 25 mm, ‘I’; A1, 25 mm × 23 mm, ‘T’. Ornaments: Headpieces: A7 v, 25  mm × 77mm, floral basket framed by floral sprays and ea­gles staring outward; B1, 32 mm × 85 mm, warrior’s busto in oval frame surrounded by flags, ­ human figures, and bouquets in baskets; A1, 38  mm × 87  mm, bowl of flowers surrounded by hovering doves and framed within floral sprays; Tailpieces: A8v, 32mm × 70 mm, warrior’s head crossed with trumpets and floral design; 17, 35 mm × 59 mm, face in the sun as a pendant sur­ rounded by sunflowers; 74, 24 mm × 32 mm, sunface within an oval frame in a pendant; 110, 39 mm × 40 mm, floral basket; 118, 51 mm × 64 mm, lion in a florid frame; 203, 50 mm × 57 mm, cupid’s face on a bowl filled with hearts, with doves perched on ­either side; 238, 45 mm × 53 mm, head on base within puti and floral array; 270, 59  mm × 75  mm, justice with scepter and scales framed in floral sprays; 84,30 mm × 43 mm, squirrel eating nut on a base, surrounded by floral sprays. Floral rules: A8v (1), B1 (1), 18 (2), 30 (1), 38 (1), 68 (1), 75 (2), 82 (1), 96 (1), 105 (1), 111 (1), 119 (2), 167 (1), 180 (1), 194 (1), 204 (2), 239 (1). Note: The double–­band is found in The ­Family Instructor (1718). Catchword hyphenations: A2v Vo–­/Volumes, A3 With–­/Without, A3v arre–­/ arrested, A4v Manage–­/Management, 9 Repen–­/Repentance, 8 Hone–­/Honesty, 37 Princi–­/Principle, 55 pre–­/presuming, 68 I con–­/I confess, 100 some–­/something, 103 Me–­/Motion, 126 aban–­/abandon’d, 143 Mon–­/Monsters, 152 Divi–­/Divinity, 184 Black–­/Black–­swan, 217 Judg–­/Judgment, 224 extra–­/extraordinary, 231 invi–­/ invisible, 236 War–­/Warnings, 239 Know–­/Knowledge, 250 Alge–­/Algerines, 260 Chri–­/Christian, 268 Pro–­/Protection, [Angelick World] 18 Expi–­/Expiration, 25 con–­ /converses, 32 In–­ /Inhabitant, 34 Govern–­ /Government, 40 Mr.  Mil–­/ Mr. Milton, 45 a Hea–­/a Heaven, 46 er–­/erroneous, 50 ac–­/according, 51 ra–­/rather,

342

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

54 Whis–­/Whispers, 58 Fly–­/Flying, 59 Near–­/Nearness, 60 Coun–­/Country, 73 Ath. Con–­/Ath. Convicted, 74 I re–­/I resolv’d Catchword anomalies: 15 Men/Mens, 62 [omit]/a, 65 submit/submits, 96 est/ cest, 103 Me–­/Motion, 121 Old Gen^/Old Gent, 169 away/way, 178 concilableness/ concileableness, 215 fficult/ficult, 219 serv’d:/erv’d:, 253 [omit]/is, 270 THE/THEY, [Angelick World]: 6 chilld/chill’d, Note: Raised letters: the letter ‘b’ of ‘but’ as the first word on p. 25; the first let­ ter ‘a’ in ‘as’ on p. 244; in Angelick World, the ‘s’ in the catchword ‘cies’ on p. 14; the first letter ‘a’ in ‘any’ of Angelick World, p. 40. Paper: Provincial paper; Chain lines 2.5 cm. Press figures: None. Cover: Calf, 11.7 cm × 19.25 cm Spine: 2.5  cm × 19.7  cm; modern, re–­tooled in calf; 6 panels without bands; gilded letter on recovered red label, ‘ROBINSON | CRUSOE’ which retains por­ tions of a frame comprised of a series of dashes. Note: BPL 13.1720.3 has no engravings and no advertisements, as does the Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania edition.

Title–­page: [within a double rule frame, 8.0 cm × 15.5 cm within 8.9 cm × 16.4 cm] Seri­ ous Reflections | DURING THE | LIFE | And Surprising | ADVENTURES | OF | Robinson Crusoe: | WITH HIS | VISION | OF THE | Angelick WORLD. | [rule 8.3 cm] Written by Himself. | [rule 8.2 cm] | [Printer’s device, a three–­masted ship, 40 mm × 47 mm] | [rule 7.6 mm] LONDON: Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship | and Black–­Swan in Pater–­noster–­Row. 1720. [Pennsylvania, Singer–­Mendenhall Collec­ tion, EC7.D3623.719 l. v.3 (PR3404.A1 1720 v. 3)] Collation 8° A8, [engr. illus.] B8–­I8, K8–­S8 (S7 wanting), A8, Bb–­Ee8, Ff8; [i–­x vi], [engr. illus.], [1]–270; [1]–64, 63–84, Advertisements, 2 pp. Illustrations: Engr. illus., gatefold, an illustrated history of Crusoe’s experiences on his island [Clark & Pine Sc. 1719], 179 mm × 294 mm; plate 187 mm × 302 mm. Sign: $4; Ff2, $2 Contents: A2 ‘Robinson Crusoe’s PREFACE.’ A7 v ‘THE Publisher’s Introduc­ tion.’ A8v ‘Advertisement.’ [1]: ‘Serious OBSERVATIONS.’ ‘Introduction.’ ‘Chap. I. Of SOLITUDE.’ 18: Chap. II. An Essay upon HONESTY.’ 30: Of Hon­ esty in General.’ 38: Of the Tryal of Honesty.’ 57: ‘Of Honesty in Promises.’ 75: ‘Chap. III. OF THE Immorality of CONVERSATION, AND The Vulgar Errors of Behaviour.’ 82: ‘Of unfitting our selves for Conversation.’ 86: ‘I. Of the Immorality of Conversation in General.’ 92: ‘2. Of reforming the errors of Conversation.’ 96: ‘3. Of Athiestical and Prophane Discourse.’ 105: ‘4. Of Lewd and Immodest Discourse,’ 111: Of Talking falsly.’ 119: Chap. IV. An Essay on the pre­sent State of Religion in the World,’ 167: ‘Of Differences in Religion.’ 180: ‘Of the wonderful Excellency of Negative Religion, and Negative Virtue.’ 187: ‘ETERNITY.’ 194: ‘FAITH:’ ‘Chap. V. Of listning to the Voice of Providence.’ 239: ‘Chap. VI. Of the Proportion between the Christian and Pagan World.’ [1]: ‘A VISION OF THE

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

343

Angelick World.’ Ff4–­Ff4v: ‘BOOKS lately Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship and Black–­Swan, in Pater–­noster–­Row.’ Notes: Notation in front inside cover: ‘First Edition first issue with the first variant reading on p. 270.’ ­Running heads: None Typography: Page 11.6 cm × 18.6 cm; 8.2 cm × 15.2 cm, with catchword 15.7 cm. 37 lines [54, 38 lines]. Design letters: B1 ‘I’, 18 ‘W’, 30 ‘I’, 38 ‘N’, 57 ‘A’, 82 ‘B’, 86 ‘S’, 92 ‘B’, 96 ‘G’, 105 ‘T’, 111 ‘B’, 119 ‘I’, 167 ‘T’, 180 ‘N’; factotum initials 75 ‘C’, 204 ‘W’, 239 ‘I’, A1 ‘T’. Ornaments: Headpieces: A7v, floral basket framed by floral sprays and ea­gles star­ ing outward, 25 mm × 77 mm; B1, warrior’s busto in oval frame surrounded by flags, ­human figures, and bouquets in baskets], 32 mm × 85 mm; A1, bowl of flowers sur­ rounded by hovering doves and framed within floral sprays, 38 mm × 87 mm. Tail­ pieces: A8v, warrior’s head crossed with trumpets and floral design, 32 mm × 70 mm; 17, face in the sun as a pendant surrounded by sunflowers, 35 mm × 59 mm; 74, sun­ face within an oval frame in a pendant, 24  mm × 32  mm; 110, floral basket, 39 mm × 40 mm, 118, lion in a florid frame, 51 mm × 64 mm; 203, cupid’s face on a bowl filled with hearts, with doves perched on ­either side, 50 mm × 57 mm; 238, head on base within puti and floral array, 45 mm × 53 mm; 270, justice with scepter and scales framed in floral sprays, 62 mm × 72 mm; 84, squirrel eating nut on a base, sur­ rounded by floral sprays, 30 mm × 43 mm. FF4, thee–­masted ship flying the British flag, 35 mm × 48 mm. Floral rules: A8v (1), B1 (1), 18 (2), 30 (1), 38 (1), 68 (1), 75 (2), 82 (1), 96 (1), 105 (1), 111 (1), 119 (2), 167 (1), 180 (1), 194 (1), 204 (2), 239 (1). Note: The double–­band is found in The ­Family Instructor (1718). Catchword hyphenations: A2v Vo–­/Volumes, A3 With–­/Without, A3v arre–­/ arrested, A4v Manage–­/Management, 9 Repen–­/Repentance, 8 Hone–­/Honesty, 37 Princi–­/Principle, 55 pre–­/presuming, 68 I con–­/I confess, 100 some–­/something, 103 Me–­/Motion, 126 aban–­/abandon’d, 143 Mon–­/Monsters, 152 Divi–­/Divinity, 184 Black–­/Black–­swan, 217 Judg–­/Judgment, 224 extra–­/extraordinary, 231 invi–­/ invisible, 236 War–­/Warnings, 239 Know–­/Knowledge, 250 Alge–­/Algerines, 260 Chri–­/Christian, 268 Pro–­/Protection, [Angelick World] 18 Expi–­/Expiration, 25 con–­ /converses, 32 In–­ /Inhabitant, 34 Govern–­ /Government, 40 Mr.  Mil–­/ Mr. Milton, 45 a Hea–­/a Heaven, 46 er–­/erroneous, 50 ac–­/according, 51 ra–­/rather, 54 Whis–­/Whispers, 58 Fly–­/Flying, 59 Near–­/Nearness, 60 Coun–­/Country, 73 Ath. Con–­/Ath. Convicted, 74 I re–­/I resolv’d Catchword anomalies: 15 Men/Mens, 62 [omit]/a, 65 submit/submits, 96 est/ cest, 103 Me–­/Motion, 121 Old Gen^/Old Gent, 169 away/way, 178 concilableness/ concileableness, 215 fficult/ficult, 219 serv’d:/erv’d:, 253 [omit]/is, 270 THE/THEY, [Angelick World]: 6 chilld/chill’d, Note: Raised letters: the letter ‘b’ of ‘but’ as the first word on p. 25; the first let­ ter ‘a’ in ‘as’ on p. 244; in Angelick World, the ‘s’ in the catchword ‘cies’ on p. 14; the first letter ‘a’ in ‘any’ of Angelick World, p. 40. Paper: Provinicial paper; Chain lines 2.5 cm.

344

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

Press figures: None. Cover: Replication of volume 1 in the Pennsylvania set. Spine: 2.3  cm × 19.1  cm; second panel titled ‘ROBINSON | CRUSOE’; third panel, ‘VOL. | III; bottom panel, ‘LOND. 1720’. See Moore #436; Hutchins, p. 128. [noted in Annenberg library, University of Pennsylvania.]

Other copies examined: Boston Public Library 27.19; Harvard HEW 2.3.8. University of Michigan PR3403.A1 1722 pt.3; examined with the assistance of Kate Hutchens, Special Collections librarian. Collation 8° A8, B8–­S8 (S7 wanting); I28 [single cancellans leaf]; A8, Bb8–­Ee8, Ff4; [1]–270; 115–116 (cancellans); [1]–64, 63–84, [85, 86]; cw I2r (115) ‘the’; cw can­ cellans I2r (115): ‘and’

Title Page: [with rubric lettering] REFLEXIONS | SERIEUSES | ET | IMPOR­ TANTES | DE | ROBINSON CRUSOE, | Faites pendant les Avantures | surprenantes de sa Vie. | AVEC | SA VISION | DU MONDE ANGELIQUE. | . Traduit de l’Anglois. | TOME TROISIEME. | Avec Figures. | [Device 36 mm × 45 mm, ‘UBER­ TAS EX FŒDERE ET PACE.’ With two puti holding fruited horns at fasces ped­ estal with double–­heart on top (B. Picart. del. 1918.)] | A AMSTERDAM, | Chez l’Honoré et Chatelain. | [rule 5.3 cm] | MDCCXXI. [Michigan PR 3403.F5 v.3]. Collation: f.p.,*12,**8 [** +1], A12 [A12 +  1]–­F12 [F4 + 1],G12–­I12, K12–­Q12 [Q11 + 1v]–­ T12, V12, X12–­Z12 [Z7 +  1]–­Aa12 [A8 + 1], Bb12 [Bb11 +  1], CC12–­DD4 Signature: $7 ­Running Heads *1v–­*7 v, **1v–­**6v, IV–­X XXIV ‘PREFACE’, *3–­*9, III–­XVII ‘DU TRADUCTEUR.’, *10v–­**6, xxi–­xxiii ‘de robinson crusoe.’; *8v, ­table de chapitres.’1–­466 v. ‘Reflexions de’, r. 3–­29: Robinson Crusoe. Ch. I.’, 30–­129: ‘Robinson Crusoe. Ch. ii.’, 131–­207: ‘Robinson Crusoe. Ch. iii., 209–­343: ‘Rob­ inson Crusoe. Ch. iv.’, 344–­411: ‘Robinson Crusoe. Ch. V.’; 412–­467: ‘Robinson Crusoe. Ch. vi.’; v. 470–­632 ‘vision’, r. 471–­631 ‘du Monde Angelique.’ Contents: [III] ‘PRÉFACE| du | TRADUCTEUR.’; XIX ‘PREFACE | de | ROB­ INSON CRUSOE.’, [*12] ­ TABLE | DES} CHAPITRES.’ 1 ‘REFLEXIONS | SERIEUSES | ET IMPORTANTES | DE | ROBINSON CRUSOE.’ | ‘INTRODUC­ TION.’, 2 ‘CHAPITRE I. | De la Solitude | ‘Elle est incapable de rendre l’homme heu—­| reux, & sort mal assortie aux devoirs | d’un Chrétien.’, 30 ‘CHAPITRE SEC­ OND.| Essai sur la Caractere d’un Honnete—­| Homme. Comment ce terme est entendu | communément en ‘l’opposant a celui de | Malhonnete–­Homme.’, 131 ‘CHAPITRE III.’ | Des vices. qui regnent dans le Commerce | civil, & des Irregularitez ordinairies | de la conduite des Hommes.’, 209 ‘CHAPITRE IV. | Essai sur l’Etat présent de la Religion | dans le monde.’, 344 ‘CHAPITRE V. | De la necessité d’écouter la Voix de la | Providence.’, 412 ‘CHAPITRE VI. | De la proportion qu’il

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

345

y a entre le Monde | Chrétien, & le Monde Payen.’, 469 ‘VISION | DU MONDE | ANGELIQUE.’ Typography: 6.6  cm x. 12.0  cm; with catchwords 6.3  cm × 12.4  cm, lines per page: 29; p. 48, 28 lines. Ornaments: *1 Headpiece 20 mm × 65 mm [typographic segments]; design cap­ ital ‘V’ 22mm × 22 mm, XVIII tailpiece 20 mm × 14 mm [doorpiecel]; XIX Head­ piece 18 mm × 65 mm [typographic segments], design initial ‘s’ 19 mm × 19 mm, XXXIV tailpiece 26  mm × 27  mm [flower bowl], [1] headpiece 21  mm × 61  mm [mirrored floral design with a fruit basket in the ­ middle],, 208 tailpiece 30  mm × 38  mm [floral], 343 tailpiece 30  mm × 47  mm [shelf], 411 tailpiece 26 mm × 37 mm [typographic segment]. Catchword hyphenations: IV l/ex–­/l’excellence, IX for–­/fortes, XI jus–­/ustecce, XIII rai–­/raison, XV cer–­/certaines, XVIII PRE–­/PREFACE., XXII sati–­/satirique, XXI au–­/auroient, XXIV TA–­/TABLE, *12 RE–­/REFLEXIONS, [1] CHA–­/ CHAPITRE, 5 em–./emporte, 11 mou–­/mouvemens, 12 tua–­/tuation, 17 per–­/per­ petuel, 20 reti–­/retirée, 29 CHA–­/CHAPITRE, 33 sa–­/satis, 34 bel–­/belle, 37 quoi–­/ quoique, 44 Hon–­/Honnnêteté, 49 in–­/interêt, 62 vou–­/voulois, 70 cepen–­/cepen­ dant, 71  héri–­ /héritage, 72 seule–­ /seulement, 74 sem–­ /semblable, 76 d’en–­/d’entendre, 79 géné–­/général, 83 lors–­/lorsque, 85 Qu’est–­/Qu’est–­ce, 89 hom–­/homme, 106 gieuse–­/gieusement, 109 che–­/chement, 112 hom–­/homme, 113 Quoi–­/Quoique, 119 dé–­/dépens, 121 diffe–­/differens, 122 obli–­/obligations, 126 Com–­/Combien, 127 Quoi–­/Quoique, 130 in–­/introduire, 136 con–­/contentement, 142 au–­/aucunes, 145 sui–­/suivre, 149 ré–./répandre, 153 cou–­/couragé, 154 dege–­/ degenerée, 161  géné–­/généralement, 166 Com–­/Comme, 183 volon–­/volonté, 189 Ce–­/Celui, 191 mina–­/minable, 194 pecta–­/pectable, 199 s’occu–­/s’occupe, 204 res­ sem–­/ressemblent, 208 CHA–­/CHAPITRE, 210 ima–­/imagination, 214 Com–­/ Combattre, 218 natu–­ /naturelles, 222  d’hom–­ /d’hommes, 224 le–­ /lequel, 225 pas–­/passions, 231 san–­/sanguinaire, 234 beau–­/beaucoup, 241 Di–­/Dviiniteé, 242 met–­ /mettre, 252 Sphe–­ /Sphere, 255 senti–­ /sentimens, 268 Prie–­ /Prieres, 271 Theo–­ /Theorie, 275 gene–­ /generale, 276 puis–­ /puissent, 283 ne–­ /nement, 284 d’ail–­/d’ailleurs, 289 able–­/ablement, 305 incon–­/inconvenient, 315 Veri–­/Veritez, 327 l’hom–­/l’homme, 329 ju–­/jugement, 338 Cet–­/Cette, 339 sub–­/substance, 340 ri–­/ribond, 343 CHA–­/CHAPITRE, 351 J’ap–­/J’appelle, 357 par–­/parfaitement, 360 Quoi–­/Quoique, 361 moin–­/moindre, 362 vo–­/volonté, 365 Re–­/Regles, 369 Faut–­/ Faut–il, 372 con–­ /confuses, 324 exé–­ /exécration, 378 Provi–­ /Providence, 385 diffe–­ /differentes, 390 pa–­ /parens, 393 ve–­ /venemens, 397 atten–­ /attention, 402 N’est–­/N’est–ce, 404 hom–­/homme, 411 CHA–­/CHAPITRE, Catchword anomalies: XI jus–­/ustesse, cepen–­/cependant [‘c’ above baseline], 241 Di–­/Dviiniteé, 419 ri–­/rique, 421 occu–­/occupent, 423 423 Espa–­/Espagnols, 427 accu–­/accusez, 431 légi–­/légitime, 445 pous–­/poussez, 447 re–­/retourna, 452 obli–­/obligez, 453 nel–­/nelles, 454 Pré–­Prédication, 455 ri–­/rituelles, 465 scru–­/ scrupule, 467 trou–­/trouvions, 468 VI–­/VISION, 473 mer–­/merce, 474 pen–­/pen­ dant,475 pro–­/produisit, 476 hu–­/humaine, 483 Quoi–­/Quoique, 484 croi–­/croire,

346

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

487 tuel–­/tuelle, 491 som–­/sommes, 494 l’ex–­/l’experience, 495 fica–­/ficatifs, 499 Ré–­/Réveur, 508 re–­/recherches, 514 Quoi–­/Quoiqu’il, 517 com–­/composent, 518 Quel–­/Quelque, 519 Mon–­/Mondes, 520 exa–­/examinant, 522 rap–­/rapport, 526 nom–­/nombre, 529 quoi–­/quoiqu’il, 533 extra–­/extraordinaires, 535 con–­/connoî­ tre, 539 vou–­/voudroit, invi–­/invisible, 551 trou–­/trouverons Plates: [Frontispiece] 130 mm × 81 mm on a plate140 mm × 88 mm, titled on the bottom plate mark ‘ROBINSON CRUSOE.’ [barefoot Crusoe dressed in animal skins at ocean­side with a turtle at his right foot, Crusoe in possession of an umbrella, a ­rifle, and a saw.]; map 305 mm × 173 mm on a plate 175 mm × 315 mm, heading: ‘MAPPE–­MONDE ou CARTE GENERALE DE LA TERRE, | Sur la quélle est trace le Voyage de | Robinson Crusoe.’ Paper: Chain lines, 2.7 cm; provincial Press Figures: None Cover: 10 cm × 16.7 cm, calfskin Cover Design: plain. Spine: 3.7 cm × 16.7 cm;6 panels each separated by a floral ridge; top panel, a capital ‘N.’ a flower; second panel, red leather and the letters ‘LA VIE DE | ROB. CRUSOE; third panel with letters in a triangular design ‘TOM | III.’; fourth, and fifth, and sixth panels configured with a floral design forming a diamond shape centered with a diamond–­shaped floral.

Title page: [with rubric lettering] DERDE DEEL | VAN | ROBINSON | CRUSOE, | Bestaande in | ERNSTIGE | AENMERKINGEN, | Over syn | LEVEN en WON­ DERBAERE | GEVALLEN. | Benevens syne Beschouwing der | ENGELE WAERELD. | Alles door hem felfsbeschreeven. | Uyt het Engels Vertaelt. | [orna­ ment 17.mm × 46 mm] | Tot AMSTERDAM. | [rule 6.5 cm] | By de Janssoons van Waesbergi. | M.D.C.C.XXII. [Michigan PR3403.D8 v.3] Collation: f.p.,*8 [*8 wanting],**4 [**4 wanting], A–­V8, X8–­Tt8, Vv4 [Vv4 want­ ing]; [i–xx], [1], 2–185, 86 [186], 187–331, 232 [332], 333, 434 [334], 335–414 [initial ‘4’ above baseline], 415–678. Signature: $5 ­Running heads: *8–­**2v, (recto) ‘AAN DEN LEZER’, (verso) ‘VOORREDEN’, **3v ‘Register der Hooftstukken.’, 2–528, (recto) ‘van Robinson Crusoe.’, (verso) ‘Ernstige Aanmerkikngen’; 529–678, (recto) ‘van Robinson Crusoe.’ (verso) ‘Gezigt van de Wereld der Engelen,’ Contents: *2 ‘VOORREDEN | AAN DEN | LEEZER.’, **3 ‘REGISTER | DER | HOOFTSTUKKEN’, [1] ‘ERNSTGE | AANMERKINGEN | VAN | ROBINSON CRUSOE | Over zyne wonderbaare | LEVENSGEVALLEN. | [rule 6  cm] | INLEIGING | VAN DEN | SCHRYVER.’, 2 passim, I–­XVIII hoofdstuk, 529 “GEZIGT | VAN DE | WERELD | DER |ENGELEN.’ Typography: 6.7 cm × 12.0 cm, w cw, 6.7 cm × 12.5 cm; 29 lines per pages; 371, 24 lines

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

347

Catchword hyphenations: [*2v] ge–­/gemeen, [*3v] schil–­/schillende, [*4v] der–­/ derling, *5  in–­/indien, [*5v] oor–­/oordeelt, [*7] be–­/beschamende, [**lv] Voor–­ IVoorsienigheit, [**2v] RE–­ /REGISTER, **3v ERNST–­ /ERNSTIGE, Al  I. HOOFD–­/I. HOOFDSTUK, 4 geer–­/geertens, 13 mees–­/meester, 14 zei/zelschap, 15 aan–­/aangedaan, 20 kon–­/konnen, 21 ge–­/gezelschap, 22 vul–­/vuldiger, 27 krui–­/kruiwaagen, 28 keer’/keerde, 31 vin–­/vinge, 37 bil–­/billykheit, 38 mil–­/mil­ dadigheit, 39 reg–­/regtigheit, 43 ge–­/gemeene, 46 Le–­/Levens, 47 ver–­/vermakelyk, 49 Hier–­/Hierom, 51 ie–­/iemand, 57 Ge–­/Gelyk, 64 lyk–­/lykheit, 68 ge–­/geval, 72 hel–­/helpen, 73 eer–­/eerlyk, 74 Ryk–­/Rykaards, 76 zelf–­/zelfde, 79 Va–­/Vader, 82 Schul–­/Schuldeischers, 83 on–­/ongelukken, 84 an–­landere, 88 zoda–­/zodanige, 95 Eer–­ /Eerstelyk, 99 dor–­ /dorven, 102 ker–­ /kerlyk, 104 be–­ /bedrog, 106 ge–­ / gehoord, 108 vol–­/volle, 113 on–­/onverdragelyk, 116 be–­/bedekken, 117 bemin–­/ beminnen, 118 be–­/bekooringen, 120 ge–­/gemeen, 131 In–­/indien, 133 on–­/onder, 134 nodi–­/nodige, 144 We–­/Weereld, 146 vol–­/volgen, 147 gedag–­/gedagten, 148 vaa–­/vaaren, 152 On–­/Onderrigt, 157 vaar–­/vaardig, 162 Nie–­/Niemendal, 165 kwaa–­/kwaade, 168 schan–­/schandelyk, 170 ver–­/verdedigen, 171 kely–­/kelyke, 173 In–­/Indien, 175 zou–­ /zouden, 178 oor–­ /oorzaak, 179 bre–­ /breken, 181 ke–­ /kering, 184 XI. HOOFD–­/XI. HOOFDSTUK./ 185 wa–­/waren, 189 tuig–­/tuigbaar, 193 Men–­/ Menschen, 195 Chri–­/Christelyke, 198 ver–­/verradelyk, 199 ge–­/gelasterd, 200 zy–­/ zynen, 203 Dui–­/Duivel, 205 zon–­/zonde, 207 hun–­/hunne, 212 XIII. HOOFD–­/ XIII. HOOFDSTUK, 221 ge–­/gelooven, 224 hun–­/hunne, 227 fon–­/fondamenten, 233 der–­/derven, 234 erg–­/ergste, 235 oor–­/oorzaak, 244 lin–­/lingen, 245 ze–­/zeker­ lyk, 246  min–­/minnen, 253 Ma–­/Mahometaansch, 254 ge–­/genaamd, 257 pen–­/ penbaard, 269 de–­/dezelfde, 270 hun–­/hunne, 272 swer–­/swervende, 273 zo–­/ zodanig, 274 model–­/modellen, 276 goden–­/godendienst, 277 sent–­/sentlyk, 278 sche–­/sche^Catholyken, 281 let–­/lettenheit, 284 ver–­/vercieringen, 285 Va–­/Vad­ erlandt, 289 God–­/Goddelykheit, 291 aller–­/allerlendigsten, 292 ”aan/ “aangerand, 294 Gods–­/Godsdienst, 295 ver–­/verwyt, 296 den–­/denken, 304 ring./”ring, 307 meen–­/meenschap, 308 na–­/namentlyk, 309 ’t Gee–­/’t Geene, 310 wy–­/”wylen, 312 tree–­/treeden, 313 zet–­/zetten, 315 He–­/Hemelsche, 319 Gods–1 Godsdienstigheit, 320 wel–­/welken, 321 wree–­/wreede, 325 kan–­/kander, 327 mal–­/malkander, 328 rin–­/ringen, 329 vast–­/vaststellinge, 331 Go–­/Goden, 339 an–­/anders, 340 zul–­/zul­ len, 341 zie–­/zielen, 344 zie–­/ziele, 347 on–­/onrustige, 350 zeg–­/zeggen, 353 genaa–­/ genaadige, 354 by–­ /byzonder, 357 ge–­ /gezuivert, 358 Ge–­/Gelukkiger, 361 t’za–­/t’zamenhang, 366 ge–­/gestrekt, 368 Ver–­/Vernustige, 369 Ver–­/Verheve, 372 by–­/byna, 374 wel–­/welke, 385 boo–­/booden, 394 ge–­/gegeven, 395 zou–­/zoude, 397 na–­/nadert, 398 De–­/Dezelve, 399 waar–­/waardiger, 401  in–­/indirecte, 402 Ko–­/Koning, 405 ge–­/gevoeligheit, 406 on–­/onzen, 408 be–­/beslooten, 410 In–­/ Indien, 411 zaa–­ /zaaken, 413 voor–­ /voorledene, 418 be–­ /bedryven, 421 inne’/ inneren, 416 had–­/hadden, 429 spraa–­hyphen at baseline /spraaken, 430 haa–­/ haalen, 435 baa–­/baaren, 437 wor–­/worstelt, 438 be–­/begeven, 439 schyn–­/schyn­ sel, 441 de–­/dezelve, 445 di–­/direct, 447 dier–­/diergelyken, 453 Ro–­/Rovers, 455

348

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

gee–­/geene, 464 Chri–­/Christenen, 467 Lan–­/Landen, 469 Zee–­/Zee–­steeden, 470 ge–­/gevolglyk, 473 stree–­/streeken, 476 wan–­/wanneer, 477 Na–­/Natien, 478 goo–­/ gooden, 489 foe–­/foeyelyke, 493 kon–­/konnen, 495 om–­/omhelzen, 496 men–­/ menshelyke, 498 ver–­/vergelykt, 500 Moo–­/Moogelyk, 506 ’t gee–­/’t geene, 508 zit–­/zitten, 509 Op–­/0pregte, 511dani–­/danige, 512 op–­/oplettenheit, 515 dien–­/ dienstig, 519 meer–­/meerdert, 523 twiste–­/twistelyk, 524 ree–­/reedenen, 525 he–­/ heden, 517 vrug–­/vrugtigen, 531 tal–­/tallyk, 537 dik–­/dikwils, 540 schei–­/scheiden, 542 woor–­/woorden, 543 vaste–­/vastelyk, 546 doen–­/doender, 547 be–­lbequaam, 553 ver–­ /verkeerine, 555 waar’/waarschouwing, 557 tee–­ /t’eeniger, 559 Han–­/ Handelingen, 560 hou–­/houden, 562 ver–­/verwarde, 563 ra–­/raden, 566 noeg–­/ noegsaam, 569 keu–­/keurig, 571 me–­/mede, 574 vol–­/volgens, 577 om–­/omtrek, 581 Sa–­/Saturnus, 583 ry–­/ryzen, 584 zigt–­/zigtkunde, 586 dwin–­/dwingen, 594 bo–­/ boven, 604 Hei–­/Heidinne, 610 noe–­/noemen, 612 dry–­/dryvingen, 623 bed–­/ bedde, 629 Open–­/Openbarmge, 631 Nagt/Nagt–­uyl, 633 sch–­/schyningen, 634 zen–­/zenden, 635 ein–­/eindig, 636 om–­/omtrent, 637 Huy–­/Huysen, 639 over–­/ overgekomen, 641 ver–­/verzekeren, 642 on–­/onder, 645 dien–­/dienstige, 648 de–­/ delen, 650 Aan–­/Aangezigt, 651 zel–­/zelschap, 654 gie–­/gierigheyd, 676 ver–­/ver­ vulden, 677 dien–­/dienen. Catchword anomalies’. 97 is/te, 145 pralen,/en,, 278 sche–­/sche^Catholyken, 282 mer/”mer, 283gen^/gen, 317 fraai/fraay, 321 wree—[hypen at the baseline], 330 de/ hardnekkigheit, 304 ring./ ”ring, 427 len./len [‘1’ above baseline], 429 spraa— [hyphen on the baseline], 558 tyd/moesten, Plates: f.p. 125 mm × 75 mm, ‘GEZIGT DER ENGLEN WERELD.’; Pg. 1: topo­ graphical map, 149 mm × 226 mm, ‘HET EYLAND VAN ROBINSON CRUSOE.’; 28: 132 mm × 75 mm, ‘Een Arbyder loopt door diepe gedagten in een Vyver,’; 142: 132  mm × 75, ‘Een Engelsman beklaagt zich deerelyk van een Swartin geboren te zyn.’; 429: 132  mm × 74  mm, ‘Twee ter Doodverweezene werpen ’t Lot om vry te zyn.’; 598: 132  mm × 74  mm, ‘Een Kwaade Geest boezemt een Dame onder ’t droomen Ydelheyd in.; 624: 132 mm × 73 mm, ‘Een Dame ontwykt door een zoort van voorweeten het gevaar van’t Vuur.’; 648: 132 × 74 mm, ‘De Donder valt voor de voeten van een Godversaaker.’ Page: 9.5 cm × 15.4 cm Paper: wove laid Press figures: None Cover: 9.5 cm × 16.2 cm Design: Vellum Spine: 4.5 cm Spine Design: Plain, title at top in faded brown: LEVENS GEVALLEN | van | ROBINSON CRUSOE | III. Library Assistance, Dutch and German editions: Karla Vandersypen, Univer­ sity of Michigan Special Collections Librarian and Con­sul­tant

Bibliogr aphic Descr iptions

349

Title–­page: [in black and red] Ernstliche und wichtige | Besrachtungen | Des ROB­ INSON | CRUSOE, | Welche er bey den Crstaunungs—­| vollen Begebenheiten feines | Lebens gemacht hat. | Benebst feinem Beficht | Von | der Welt der Engel. | Aus dem En­glishchen Frantzofifchen | uberfest. | Bie auch mit curiosen Kupffern, nebst | einer accuraten Land–­Charte, worauf alle | des Autoris Reisen gezeichnet find, gezieret. [rule 0.00 cm] | AMSTERDAM, |1721. [UMich PR3403.G5 A13] Collation: 8o. 1–34, 35 [no pagination], 36–230 [proceed from ­here].+ Sign: $5 Typography: Page  10.4  cm × 16.7  cm; type: 8.2  cm × 13.9  cm, with catchwords 8.2 cm × 14.3 cm.; p. 132, 32 lines per page Paper: Provincial; chain lines 3.0 cm. Press figures: None Cover: 10.0 cm × 17.1 cm; vellum Spine: 4.5 cm × 17.0 cm; title panel, between rules, [rule 4.5 cm] | ENGLISSCHE | ROBINSON | [rule 4.5 cm] | I. II. TH. [rule 4.5 cm] Note: Library Assistance: Karla Vandersypen, University of Michigan Special Collections Librarian and Con­sul­tant

List of Editorial Emendations

Note copy–­text: Harvard/Houghton, EC7.D3623R.1720. Editor’s emended text on the left of the bracket corrects irregularities or incorrect text in the edition. Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventure of Robinson Crusoe

3:21 Life are] Lifeare 4:17 Story] Story 4:33 Note: ‘supprising’; orthography sustained, OED, 216. 6:2 over; all] over;all 6:7 Scorn] Scorn 7:1 THE] THE 7:14 intelligent] inte^ligent 7:15 Design] (hyphen wanting at line division) De^sign 8:4–5 un–­inhabited] nn–­inhabited 9:11 Ideas] Id:as 16:9 Confinement] Confinnement 11:28 he broke] be ~ 16:9 an into] andi nto 15:29 Hill] Hiil 17:8 Crocodile] Crocrodile 18:5 his Subsistance] hisSubsistance 21:10 cannot be an honest Man] ~ be^ honest Man 22:31 another, nor] another,nor 22:32 Landlord, or] Landlord,or 23:13 he that] he^hat 30:34 Cunning] Cunn^ing 35:7 your] you 35:38 his Property, to] his, Property ~ 36:31 besides this] besides, this 38:14–15 be employ’d in] be in employ’d in, 41:10 Design of this Head,] Design, of this Head 50:25 you] your

351

352

L i s t o f E d i t o r i a l E m e n dat i o n s

52:17–22 “Sir, I . . . ​w ithout Fail.”] (inverted quotation marks, left margin.) 52:33 to a Christian,] to as Christian, 69:5 in our] i^ our 73:24 1 greatest] ­great–­cest 77:19 xxxi v. xi] xxii. v. xx 79:18 peculiar] puculiar; Persons] Person 79:18 as are hardened] ~ arehardened 86:6 deceiv’d] deciev’d; note: 115:19, ‘deceiv’d’. [1st edn.] 115:36–37–116:1–7 (cancellans)] (cancellandum): [I2r] ­Others come nearer; assign Places to par­tic­u ­lar Accidents, as well as Persons, and tell on with [I2v] the most formal Incidents in the World, when t­ here has r­ eally never happened any such Th ­ ing, and that they know it to be so; t­ hese generally place the Incidents of the Story at a g­ reat Distance of Place, or of Time, to avoid being detected, but ’tis ordinary to find out the Guilt by some Circumstance or other in the Manner of the Relation. [Note: Original text may be found in the University of Michigan copy, PQ3403.A1 1722 pt. 3, where I2 (pp. 115–116) is an integral part of the signature, not a cancelled leaf; in an anomaly, the cancellans is nevertheless to be found in this edition, misplaced, between p. 270 and The Vision of the Angelick World. See the description in Hutchens, Chptr. 6, 122–23; Hutchens, 115:36 ‘nearer,’ with comma, not semi–­colon.] 86:22 telling] selling 89:Title World.] ~, 96:16 Customs] Customs (final ‘s’ raised above base line.) 105:8 Singapore] Sincapore 110:7–111:5 “When . . . ​invisible.”] (inverted quotation marks, left margin.) 115:7 Nor] Nor 115:15 only, but] ~ bnt 115:21 Hours]Honrs 115:31 But it] Bnt ~ 119:2 of what] ~ whar 119:25 Devotion and Joy of the ­People] Devotionand Joy ­People 125:29 persecuted them] persecuteth em 128:18 tho’] tho^; like minded:] ~minded|: 129:14 reconcil’d] reconcild 140:25 Wretch he] Wretch, that he 142:11 Pleads promises Pleads, promises 144:33 irresistible Desire,] ~ D^sire, 147:24 minister [miuister 150:29 him, as] him,as 150:34 is left] isle ft 153:13 commanded] (‘o’ elevated above the baseline) 168:37 it may be true] it may true, 171:3 3.] 3, 174:8 such as Laponia] such Laponia 176:20 James River] Janes ~ 179:17 take] Take 179:20 other, you] other, and you 180:29 Hands for the Amassing, or] Hands, for the Amassing 193:15 itself, and] (tight letter–­spacing) itself,and . . .)

L i s t o f E d i t o r i a l E m e n dat i o n s

353

A Vision of the Angelick World

196:7 which lead] which^ead 209:35 prescribed] perscribed 211:26 say, the Soul] ~ theSoul 210:38 Realizing] Reallizing 213:12 ’tis] tis 212:17 realize] reallize 213:25 form’d] formd 216:10 Injury] Jnjury 218:13 uncontroull’d] Original orthography; OED, U 10: (1655) vncontrolld, (1586, 1660) uncontrolled, (1718) uncontroll’d, (1742, 1755, 1777) uncontrouled. 218:20 for if] ~ it 219:1 Millions] M^illions 219:31 I say] dropped ‘I’ 221:17 Whispers] Wispers 225:15 contemptible] contemtible 227:37 pursued] persued 228:5 strenuous] strenous 228:24 of the ­human Soul] of^ ­human ~ 234:2 Hypochondriac] Hypcondriac (considered obsolete in the OED, H, 508). 234:4 Power to terrify] ~ to Terrify 243:8 Student.] ~, 243:11 Atheist.] ~, 234:27 Tears stand] ~ stands 253:25 crows] Crows

Selected Bibliography

Works Consulted by Authors Writing before 1731 ­ attle of the Authors Lately Fought in Covent Garden, A. London: J. Roberts, 1720. B Browne, Joseph. The Moon Calf (1705). Ed. Maximillian E. Novak, Augustan Reprint Soci­ ety No. 269. New York: AMS Press, 1996. Burnet, Gilbert. Some Passages of the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester. London: R. Chiswel, 1680. Burnet, Thomas. A Sacred Theory of the Earth. 3rd ed. [London, 1697]. —­—­—. A Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls. Trans. John Dennis. London: A. Bettesworth & C. Hitch, 1733. Burthogge, Richard. An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits. London: John Dun­ ton, 1694. Clarke, John. An Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of [Moral] Evil. 2 vols. London: James Knapton, 1720–1721. Cox, T. The Flying Post. 19 October 1719. Crisp, Samuel. Christ Exalted and Dr. Crisp Vindicated in Several Points Called Antinomian. London: Printed for the Author, 1698. Defoe, Daniel. An Appeal to Honour and Justice Though It Be of His Worst Enemies. Lon­ don: J. Baker, 1715. —­—­—. The Commentator. 1 January 1718–16 September 1720. —­—­—. Compleat En­glish Gentleman. Ed. Karl Bülbring. London: David Nutt, 1890. —­—­—. Conjugal Lewdness: Or, Matrimonial Whoredom. London: T. Warner, 1727. —­—­—. A Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy. London: W. Taylor, 1718. —­—­—. An Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions (1727). Ed. Kit Kincade. New York: AMS Press, 2007. —­—­—. An Essay upon Proj­ects (1697). Ed. Joan Kennedy, Michael Seidel, and Maximil­ lian E. Novak. New York: AMS Press, 1999. —­—­—. Jure Divino. London 1706. —­—­—. The Manufacturer. 30 October 1719–17 February 1720. —­—­—. Mere Nature Delineated: Or, A Body without a Soul. London: T. Warner, 1726. —­—­—. A New F ­ amily Instructor: In Familiar Discourses between a F ­ ather and His C ­ hildren, on the Most Essential Points of the Christian Religion. London: T. Warner, 1728.

355

356

Selected Bibliogr aph y

—­—­—. The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (1726). Ed. Irving  N. Rothman and R. Michael Bowerman. New York: AMS Press, 2003. —­—­—. Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720). In Romances and Narratives of Daniel Defoe. Ed. George A. Aitken, 14 vols. Lon­ don: J. M. Dent, 1805. —­—­—. Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, ed. G. A. Starr. In Novels, ed. P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008–2009. —­—­—. A System of Magick; Or, A History of the Black Art. Being an Historical Account of Mankind’s Most Early Dealing with the Dev­il. London: J. Roberts, 1727 [for 1726]. Gildon, Charles. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D. . . . . De F . . . ​of London, Hosier. London: J. Roberts, 1719. 2nd ed., 1720. Le Bossu, René. Treatise of the Epick Poem. Trans. W. J. London: Tho. Bennet, 1695. Le Clerc, Jean. Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne 15 (1721): 440–441. ­ uman Understanding (1690). Ed. Alexander Fraser, Locke, John. An Essay Concerning H 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1894; Reprint, Dover, 1959. —­—­—. Some Thoughts Concerning Education. In The Educational Writings of John Locke (1693), ed. James Axtell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. —­—­—. Two Treatises of Government (1690). Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1967. Mandev­i lle, Bernard. The Fable of the Bees (1704, 1714, 1723). Ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957. Milton, John. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Meritt Y. Hughes. New York: Macmil­ lan, 1985. Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Trans. Charles Cotton, 4th  ed., 3 vols. London: Daniel Brown, 1711. —­—­—. Essays. Trans. E. J. Trechmann, 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1947. —­—­—. Les Essais. Ed. Pierre Villey. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969. Overton, Richard. Man’s Mortalitie. Amsterdam [i.e., London], 1644. Pascal, Blaise. Pensées and the Provincial Letters. Trans. Thomas M’Crie and W. F. Trotter. New York: Random House [Modern Library], 1941. Pufendorf, Samuel. Of the Law of Nature and Nations. Trans. Basil Kennett. Oxford: A. & J. Churchill, 1703. —­—­—. The Whole Duty of Man. London: Charles Harper, 1698. Rogers, Woodes. A Cruising Voyage Round the World. London: A. Bell . . . ​Lintot, 1712, 1718. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711). Foreword by Douglas Den Uyl, 3 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001. Stillingfleet, Edward. Origines Sacrae. London, 1680. Tryon, Thomas [Philotheos Physiologus]. The Negroes Complaint of Their Hard Servitude and the Cruelties Practiced upon Them. London: Andrew Sowle, 1684. Tuffal, Abu Jafar Abu Bakr. The Improvement of ­Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai ebn Yokdan: Written in the Arabic above 500 Years Ago, by Abu Jaafer Ebn Tophail. Trans. Edfward Pocock and Simon Ockley. Dublin and London: Sam Fuller, 1731. Wettenhall, Bishop Edward. Enter into Thy Closet: or, A Method and Order for Private Devotion. 5th ed. London, 1684. Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester. Works. Ed. Harold Love. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Wither, George. Miscellaneous Works. 6 vols. New York: Franklin, 1967. Reprinted from the Publications of the Spenser Society, vols. 12–13, 16, 18, 22, 24.

Selected Bibliogr aph y

357

Works Consulted by Authors Writing ­after 1731 Avramescu, Cătălan. An Intellectual History of Cannibalism. Trans. Alistair Blyth. Prince­ ton: Prince­ton University Press, 2003. Ayer, A. J. “Can Th ­ ere Be a Private Language.” In Wittgenstein: The Philosophic Investigations, ed. George Pitcher, 257–266. London: Macmillan, 1968. Beesemyer, Irene. “Crusoe the Isolato: Daniel Defoe Wrestles with Solitude.” 1650–1850: Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 10 (2004): 79–102. Blewett, David. The Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 1719–1920. Jerrards Cross, Bucking­ hamshire: Colin Smythe, 1995. Cook, John. “Wittgenstein on Privacy.” In Wittgenstein: The Philosophic Investigations, ed. George Pitcher, 286–323. London: Macmillan, 1968. Dottin, Charles. Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticis’d; or, A New Edition of Charles Gildon’s Famous Pamphlet Now Published with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes, Together with an Essay on Gildon’s Life. London: J. M. Dent, 1923. Dudley, Edward, and Maximillian Novak. The Wild Man Within. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972. Furbank, P. N., and W. R. Owens. The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. —­—­—. Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998. Goldmann, Lucien. Le Dieu Caché. Paris: Gallimard, 1955. Greene, Jody. The Trou­ble with Owner­ship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Hunter, J. Paul. ­After Novels. New York: Norton, 1990. Hutchins, Henry. Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing 1719–1731. New York: Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 1925. Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the En­glish Poets, ed. John Middendorf. In Works, 23 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958–2018. Vols. 21–23. —­—­—. The Rambler, ed. W. J. Bate and A. B. Strauss. In Works, 23 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958–2018. Vols. 3–5. Kripke, Saul. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982. Lee, William, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings. 3 vols. London: J. C. Hotten, 1869. Moore, John Robert. A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe. 2nd ed. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1971. —­—­—. Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Nichols, John. Literary Anecdotes of the Eigh­teenth ­Century: Comprising Biographical Memoirs of William Bowyer, Printer, S.F.A. and Many of His Learned Friends; an Incidental View of the Pro­gress and Advancement of Lit­er­a­ture in This Kingdom during the Last ­Century; and Biographical Anecdotes of a Considerable Number of Eminent Writers and Ingenious Artists: with a Very Copious Index. 5 vols. London: Nichols, Son, and Bentley, 1812–1816. Novak, Maximillian. Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. —­—­—. Defoe and the Nature of Man. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963. —­—­—. “Defoe, the Occult and the Deistic Offensive during the Reign of George II.” In Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay, 93–108. Newark: Univer­ sity of Delaware Press, 1987.

358

Selected Bibliogr aph y

—­—­—. “Defoe’s Shortest Way with the Dissenters: Hoax, Parody, Paradox, Fiction, Irony, and Satire.” Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966): 402–417. —­—­—. “Defoe’s Theory of Fiction.” Studies in Philology 61 (1964): 650–668. —­—­—. “Humanum est errare.” Clark Library Newsletter, no. 4 (Spring 1983): 1–3. —­—­—. Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives: Finding “The ­Thing Itself.” Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2015. —­—­—. “The Unmentionable and the Ineffable in Defoe’s Fiction.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 15 (1982): 85–102. Patey, Douglas. Probability and Literary Form: Philosophic Theory and Literary Practice in the Augustan Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Paulson, Ronald. Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-­Century ­England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967. Pitcher, George, ed. Wittgenstein: The Philosophic Investigations. London: Macmillan, 1968. Rhees, Rush. “Can Th ­ ere Be a Private Language?” In Wittgenstein: The Philosophic Investigations, ed. George Pitcher, 257–266. London: Macmillan, 1968. Schonhorn, Manuel. Defoe’s Politics: Parliament, Power, Kingship, and Robinson Crusoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Seidel, Michael. Exile and the Narrative Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. Starr, G. A. Chris­tian­ity Not as Old as the Creation: The Last of Defoe’s Per­for­mances. Lon­ don: Pickering & Chatto, 2012. —­—­—. Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1955. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Vickers, Brian. “The Mackenzie-­Evelyn Debate.” In Arbeit Musse Meditation. Zu­rich: Ver­ lag der Fachvereine, 1985. Walzer, Michael. The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origin of Radical Politics. New York: Athenaeum, 1969. Warner, Michael. “The Mass Public and the Mass Subject.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, 380–383. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Wright, Thomas. The Life of Daniel Defoe. London: Cassell, 1894. Rev. ed., 1931. Zimmermann, Johnan Georg. Solitude; or, The Effects of Occasional Retirement on the Mind, the Heart, General Society, in Exile, in Old Age; and on the Bed of Death. 2 vols. London: H. Baldwin & Son, 1799.

About the Editors

Maximillian E. Novak is Distinguished Research Professor of En­glish at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has published widely on seventeenth-­ and eighteenth-­century lit­er­a­ture, has edited a number of volumes in the “Cali­ fornia Dryden,” has written five books on Daniel Defoe, and is a general editor of the Stoke Newington Edition of the Writings of Daniel Defoe. Irving N. Rothman, who passed away in April 2019, was a professor of En­glish at the University of Houston, where he had taught since 1967. He was one of the general editors of the Stoke Newington Edition of the Writings of Daniel Defoe and edited or coedited three volumes, including The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il and two volumes of The ­Family Instructor. Manuel Schonhorn, who passed away in April 2021, was a professor of En­glish emeritus at Southern Illinois University. His books include Defoe’s General History of the Pirates and Defoe’s Politics: Parliament, Power, Kingship and “Robinson Crusoe.” He published articles on Defoe, Pope, Fielding, Sterne, Austen, Twain, and Hemingway, was the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the Clark Library–­UCLA Fellow, Huntington Library Fellow, and Newberry Library–­British Acad­emy Exchange Fellow, and was a member of the Columbia University Seminar in Eighteenth-­Century Eu­ro­pean Culture.

359

Index

Abimelech, 223n64 Abraham, 223, 268 Abstract . . . ​of the Inquisition in Portugal (Salgado), 155n130 Account of the Persecutions and Oppressions of the Protestants in France (Claude), 167n179 Acts: 1:25, 267n3; 2:17, 223n64; 2:39, 235n2; 3:21, 309n175; 8:22, 328; 9:1–9, 201n309; 9:1–19, 281n64; 9:3, 330; 10:9–20, 223n68; 12:7, 271n19; 12:15, 271; 13:22, 53n116; 22:6–11, 201n309; 24:10–26, 193n278; 26:19, 223n67 Acts and Monuments (Foxe), 182n234 Adam: appearance of God to, 268n5; created from dust, 277n41; creation of Eve as mate for, 26n58; disobedience of, 185n248, 195n286; and divine emanation, 213n20; dominion of, 207n4; and dream of Eve, 301; duties of, 195n286; eating from Tree of Knowledge, 117n206; and flaming sword, 196n293, 201n313; happiness of, 294n114; leaving Garden of Eden, 195n291, 196n293; Milton on, 195–196n291; nakedness of, 112n178, 113n184, 116n196; sin of, 56n130, 95n90, 112n177, 276n40; transgression of, 56 Adam, Antoine, 299n139, 320n205 Adamantine wall, 196 Addison, Joseph, 20n22, 20n23, 83n32, 84n33, 109n158, 210n14 Adolphus, Gustavus, 246n61 adoration in worship, 129–131 adultery, 23, 73, 97n100, 189n264, 301n149 Aeneas, 244n46 Aeneid (Virgil), 244n46 Aeolists, 313n183 Aesop’s fables, 114n187, 117n200, 122n231, 219n49 Aether, 290, 293

afflatus, 313, 314 Africa, xxix, xxxvii(n36); North Africa, 133n28, 242n39, 262n124; religious beliefs in, 136, 237, 238; voyage to, 32 afterlife, xxvii, 189n268; dreadful voyage to, 197n296; fear about, xxxiii; hermit remarks on, 20n23; in Koran, 305n162; and notion of wager, xxxiii, 102 ­After Novels (Hunter), 17n10 agitator, God’s presence in universe as, 227n79 Agricola, Julius, 250n75 Agrippa, 223n67 Aitken, George, 108n152, 111n171, 149n103 Alaric, 92n76 alarm, drumbeat as signal of, 79 Alberoni, Cardinal, 246n56, 256n98, 264n128 alcohol use, 28n65, 57–58, 97–98 Alcoran (Koran), 134, 305n162 Alexander III, Pope, 122n228 Alexander the ­Great, 247n63 Algiers, 238, 239, 242n39, 262n124 allegories, 283; Crusoe as figure in, xviii–­x ix, xxxvi(n15); dreams as, 285; and history, xvi, xx, xxv, 4, 8, 121 Allestree, Richard, 258n105 Amasa, 117n204 Amazon River, 239–240 Ambrose, Saint, 106n140 American Indians, xxix, xxxvii(n36); conversion to Chris­tian­ity, 261–262n119; Eu­ro­pean diseases affecting, 239n24; Spanish war against, 250n74, 261; witchcraft of, 270n18 Ames, William, 35n25, 35n26 Amiable Humorist, The (Tave), 84n33 amiable temperament, 84n33 Amos 15:13, 217n40

361

362 I n d e x Ananias, 193n278, 281 Anatomy of Exchange Alley (Defoe), xvi, 104n134 Anatomy of Melancholy, The (Burton), 125n1, 162n160 Anchor Bible, The (Gaventa), 326n212 Ancient Doctrine Concerning the Originals of Th ­ ings, The (Burnet), 287n82 angels, 223; with flaming sword, 201n313, 315; hierarchy of, 279n53; in Old Testament, 279n53, 302n151; and spirits, 213n22, 271, 279n53 anger, 78 Anglican Church, 25n47, 132n20, 182n233 Animals: and entrails of beasts, 225n75, 315; offered for sacrifice, 315n187; with power of speech, 315n189; soul and m ­ ental powers of, 316n191. See also specific types of animals Anne, Queen, xxvii, 169n184, 240n29, 241n31 Annesley, Arthur, 307n165 Annesley, Samuel, 35n25, 42n55, 81n26 Annotations on the Bible (Poole): on appari­ tion appearing as Samuel, 270n17; on “babes and sucklings,” 332n219; on David and Nabal, 54n124; on fin­ger of God, 208n6; on foolish talk of disciples, 269n9; on Genesis, 277n41; on God and wind, 286n81; on Gog and Magog, 296n129; on “holier than thou,” 165–166n173; on ­mother of Zebedee c­ hildren, 269n10; on nakedness of Adam and Eve, 112n178; on promise to nations, 235n2; on sun worship, 153n121; on Trinity, 206n3; on voice of God, 224n70 Anson, George, 8n29 Antiquity of China, The (Webb), 142n67 Anton Reiser (Moritz), 156n138, 157n138 Antony, Saint, 19n18, 20–21n26, 23n39, 28–29nn68–69 Apocrypha, 42n54, 198n301, 325n211 Apollo, 139, 149n101, 152n119 Apologeticus (Tertullian), 176n213 Apostles’ Creed, 257n101 apparitions, 332; and dreams, 285n79; Essay on the History and Real­ity of (see Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, An); feigned stories of c­ hildren on, 91n70; real­ity of, xxxii, 318; and spirits, 318nn197–199, 319 Appeal to Honour and Justice, An (Defoe), xxxiv, 7n26, 254n89, 258n107 appearance: facial (see facial appearance); false, and “hypocrite’s paint,” 117n202; importance in society, xxiii–­x xiv Aquinas, Thomas, 99n108, 100n112, 102n126 Arbuthnot, John, 222n58 Arcana, 90, 114, 288; use of term, 90n64, 114n191, 288n87

Arianism, xxiv, xxxi, 106, 106n140, 106n142, 106n143, 176n215, 300n146 Aristotle, xxi, 15n3, 19n20, 26n59, 102n124, 220n50 Arius, 106n142, 176n215 Armada of Spain, 5n16 Armenia, 236, 237, 238 Ascension Day cele­brations, 122n228 assurance: and “promissory text,” 36n32; and risk for atheists, 102; of salvation, 196n295 Assyria, 153 astrology, 211n17, 216n31, 217n37, 313n182 Astronomical Dialogues (Harris), 291–293nn103–109 astronomy, 139n53, 150n108, 151n110, 214n24, 309n174 As You Like It (Shakespeare), 109n158 Athanasian Creed, 132n20, 153n123 Athanasius, Saint of Alexandria, 21n26, 23n39, 28–29nn68–69, 106n140, 132n20 Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Brakke), 23n39, 29n69 atheism, xxxii–­x xxiii, 299n142, 320–332; and arguments for existence of God, xxiv–­x xv; and civil power, 107–108n148; compared to Libertinism, 320n205; and conversion to Chris­tian­ity, 326n212; and devil, xxxi, 327–329; and dialogue of divinity student and atheist, 324–331; and disbelief in spirits, 319n201; and fear of afterlife, xxxiii; and neglecting signs of God, xxviii; practical or virtual, 220; and “prophane” discourse, 98–110; and repentance, xxxiii, 328–330; and scale of relative value in religion, xxvi; and Socinianism, 108n149; speculative, 220n50 Atheistical Club, The, xxxiii, 321–323 Atkins, ­Will, 130nn13–14 Atkinson, C. T., 162n162, 163n163, 164n168 Atlas Maritimus & Commercialis: on Chinese naval strength, 145n81; on Chinese porcelain, 146n86; on crocodiles, 27n61; on distribu­ tion of religious beliefs, 240n26; on Java, 137n43; on Joshua, 244n48; on New Jersey, 240n29; on notion of racial purity, 75n210; on pirates, 313n180; on silver and “stones in the streets,” 164n167 Attitudes to Other Religions (Pailin), 148n98 Aubrey, John, 215n27, 222n59, 225n75, 278n50 audience of text, xxxiv–­x xxv, 4n5, 39n44 augurs, 225n75, 314n186 Augusta Triumphans (Defoe), 72n193, 161n159 Augustine, Saint, xxiv, 91n68, 92, 99n107, 106n140, 135n36, 181n230 Augustinian Order, 19n18 Augustus II, 162n162 Aurengzeb, 137n44

Index Aureng-­Zebe (Dryden), 137n44 Austen, Jane, 84n33 Austin, J. L., 69n185 Australia, xxvi Austria, 248n69 autobiographical comments of Defoe, xv, 124n241, 253n86; allegorical, xviii–­x ix, 4–5n12; in Appeal to Honour and Justice, xxxiv, 7n26, 254n89; on letter to judge, xxxii, 307n165, 307n167; in Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, xx, 7n25; in Serious Reflections, xxxiv; on silence with f­ amily, 18n17; on “slavery worse than Turkish,” 7n25; on travel to London, xxxi, 306n164; on “vio­lences and oppressions,” 7n24 auto de fe in Portugal, xxvi, 154n126 Avernus, 94n83 Avramescu, Cătălan, 128n9 Axtell, James, 73n203, 76n216 Aztecs, 138n52, 243n41 Babur, 137n44 Babylon, vision of whore of, 256n97 Babylonia, 153n121 Backscheider, Paula, 91n69, 312n178 Bailey, Nathaniel, 254n89, 293n112, 315n188, 326n212 Baines, Paul, 115n193 Bairam, 134n30 Baker, Henry, 18n17 Baker, John, 212n18 Balaam, 223, 315 Balak, king of Moab, 315n189 Bangorian Controversy, xxiv, xxvi, 35n25 bankruptcy: as “breaking,” 59n147; Compleat En­g lish Tradesman on, 46n84, 48n93, 53n117, 59n147; of Defoe, xxii, 53n117; Essay upon Proj­ects on, 46n84, 47n85, 60n150; Moll Flanders on, 48n91; repayment in, 61n153 baptism, 182, 283n71 Baptism in the Early Christian Church (Ferguson), 182n232 Barbados, 162 Barbary pirates, xxix, 246n57, 262nn123–124, 312–313n180 Barlow, David, 227–228n82, 228n83 Basic Writings (Aquinas), 99n108, 100n112, 102n126 Basore, John, 66n174 Bastian, Frank, 115n192 Bate, John, 250n74 Bathsheba, 53n118, 73 Battestin, Martin, 133n29 ­Battle of the Authors Lately Fought in Covent-­Garden, xvi Baxter, Richard, 93n81, 170n190, 185n248, 326n212

363 Baxter, Stephen, 170n189, 221n55 Beasts and Saints (Waddell), 27n61, 28n66, 29n68 Beaulieu, Luke de, 154nn128–129, 155n130 Beauline, L. A., 115n192 beaux (beau), fash­ion­able clothes of, 89–90n61 Beeckman, Daniel, 137n42 Beesemyer, Irene, 18n15, 24n45, 111n166 Behn, Aphra, 150n108, 287n82, 303n153 Belgrade, B ­ attle of, 245, 246n55 Belisarius, 244n45 Belshazzar, xxx, 211n17, 272 Belus, King of Tyre, 244n46 Benamuckee, xxv, 130 beneficence, 32, 34 benevolence, 32n8 Bentley, Richard, 214n25 Bergerac, Cyrano de, 290n96 Bering, Vitus, 241n33 Bering Strait, 241n33 Berkeley, George, xxi, 15n4, 17n10, 151n111, 261–262n119 Bible: as fiction, 105n138; in Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 32n7; miracles in, 28n67; New Testament of (see New Testament); as novel, 105; as Old Legend, 96n94; Old Testament of (see Old Testament). See also specific books of Bible bibliographic descriptions, 337–349 Bickerstaff, Isaac, 313n182 bill of exchange, protested, 48 Bill of Exclusion, 218 Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians in London (Highfill, Burnim, and Langhams, eds.), 120n217 Biology (Campbell), 163n164 bi-­polar disorder, 313n184 birds, patterns in flight of, 225n75, 314, 315 Black Britannia (Scobie), 75n212 Black Lists of Society for Reformation of Manners, 89n58, 96n92 Blackmore, Richard, 83n31 Blacks: as ­f ree in ­E ngland, 76n215; and “Maletta look’d Man,” xxiii, 74–76; and Negroes of Africa, 136; as servants in ­England, 76n213 Blackstone, William, 58n138, 59n144 black swans, 188 blasphemy, 104, 108n156 Blenheim, cele­brations for victory at, 168n183, 171n195 Blewett, David, 9n33 blind guides, 166 Blome, Richard, 63n163 Blount, Charles, 210n14 Blount, Edward, 183n238 blushing as sign of innocence, 113n179

364 I n d e x Blyth, Alistair, 128n9 Body without a Soul, A (Defoe), 85n38 Bohn, Henry, 39n46 Bohun, Edward, 133n28, 238, 244n48; Geo­ graph­i­cal Dictionary of (see Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary) Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 7n25 bombs, incendiary, in China, 144n79 Bond, Donald, 142n67 bonds, and honesty, 45, 46 bone lace, 146 Book of Common Prayer, The, 25n47, 106n143, 132n20, 175n208, 182n233 books as companions, 25n46 Borgmann, Karl, 248n68 Borneo (Beeckman), 137n42 Borosky, George, 203n320 Bosch, Hieronymus, 20n26 Boswell, James, 276n39 Boulton, James, 215n27, 217n38 Boulton, Richard, 111n170 Bourgignon, Antoinette, 157n138 Bowerman, R. Michael, 141n65 Boyle, Robert, 129n10, 228n83, 302–303n152, 315n190 Boyle Lectures, xxxi, 129n10, 214n25, 289n93, 302n152 Brakke, David, 23n39, 29n69 Brand, Adam, 149n102 Brandenburg, 162 Brathwaite, Richard, 63n162 Brazil, xxii, 32, 36, 131, 136, 240; Portugal in, 131, 136, 237, 245 bread: brown, 62; shew, 54 Bridgman, Orlando, 89n57 Briffault, Herma, 239n24 brimstone, 316n192 Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (Frere), 251n76 British Empire in Amer­i­ca, The (Oldmixon), 240n29 British Visions, The (Defoe), 211n18, 313n182 Brooks, Harold, 115n193 Brown, William Hill, 17n9 Browne, Joseph, 288n88 Browne, Thomas, xxxvii(n37), 115n193, 228n83, 228n84, 228n85 Browne, William, 65n171 ­Bubble Act (1720), 259n109 bubonic plague, 104n134 Buchan-­Brown, John, 215n27 Bucintoro, as old galley of Venice, 122n228 Bucintoro Departing from the Bacino di San Marco, The (Carvarijs), 122n228 Buddhism, 147n89 bud­get, use of term, 119n215 Buitelaar, Marjo, 134n30

Bülbring, Karl, 151n114 Bullinger, Heinrich, 182n234 Bunyan, John, xxv, xxvii, 121n224, 123–124nn239–240 Burgess, Anthony, 175n209, 196n295, 258n106 Burnet, Gilbert, 101n121, 132n21, 157n138, 320n205 Burnet, Thomas, xvii, xxxi, xxxvii(n45), 287n82, 288n90, 289n93, 308n172, 309n174, 318n198 Burnim, Kalman, 120n217 burning at stake, 182 Burns, Robert, xxviii Burthogge, Richard, 309n174 Burton, Robert, 125n1, 162n160, 273n31 Butler, Joseph, 32n8 Butler, Samuel, xix, 175–176nn209–210 Caesar, Julius, 250 Caleb Williams (Godwin), 51n103 Caledonia (Defoe), 150n106 California Edition of the Works of John Dryden, The, 17n9, 132n20, 275n37 Call to the Converted, A (Baxter), 326n212 Calvin, John, 92n75, 132n20, 182n234, 224n72, 226n78 Calvinism, 176n211, 177, 182 Campbell, John, 87n47 Campbell, Neil A., 163n164 Camus, Albert, 8n28 Canaanites, 244 Canada, 237, 241 cannibalism, xviii, 126–127nn5–7, 136; in Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 126n5, 136n40, 216n34; in necessity, xxii, 50; threat of death in, xxxiii Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia), 237n15 capitalism, 190n270 Captain Singleton (Defoe), xx Caractacus, 250n75 Ca­rib­bean Islands, 237 Ca­rib­bean Sea, 147 Carleton, George, 220n51 Carolina, 240, 241 Carswell, John, 259nn109–110 Cartagena, 237 Car­ter, Anne, 257n100 Cartesian Doctrine, 290n97 Carthage, 241n34, 244, 246n59, 263n125 Carvarijs, Luca, 122n228 Case Fairly Stated between the Turky Com­pany and the Italian Merchants, The (Moore), 44–45n75 Castiglione, xviii ­Castle of Indolence, The (Thomson), 227n79 casuistry, 103 Catherine, Saint, 107n147

Index Catholic Church, 132n20, 249; baptism in, 182n232; in Brazil, 131; on Chinese religious practices, 147n90; compared to dominion of devil, 296n130; consecrated wafer in, 158; and C ­ ounter Reformation, 296n130; Defoe criticism of, xxvi; differing beliefs in, 236–237; Easter cele­bration in, 181–182n231; in E ­ ngland, 182n233; in France, 167; and Inquisition, 154; on limbus and purgatory, 283n72, 308n173; miracles in, xxi, 28n67; ornate clerical vestments in, 182n234; in Poland, 159; and Protestant disputes, 248n68, 249n72; and Quietism, 25n49; silence and contemplation, 19n18; solitude of saints in, 15n2, 20–21n26 Catholic Encyclopedia, 15n2, 19n18, 19n19 Cavendish, Elizabeth (Second Duchess of Albermarle), 80n19 Cervantes, Miguel de, xviii, xix, 5, 5n16 Ceylon, 137, 259n111 Chadwick, William, 18n17 Chambers, Ephraim, 102n125, 281n61 Chambers, William, 149n102 Champollion, Jean-­François, 284n75 chance, and divine providence, xxviii Chance, James, 264n128 Chancery, 33 Chandler, Samuel, 154n129 Characteristicks (Shaftesbury), 113n184 Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley by Way of Elegy, The (Defoe), 42n55, 81n26, 188n258, 278n48 Characters (La Bruyère), 27n64 chariot of fire, 202n316 charity, 32n8, 34 Charity Schools, 32n8 Charles I, of G ­ reat Britain and Ireland, 7n22, 169n188, 175n209, 218, 255n91 Charles II, of G ­ reat Britain and Ireland, 89n58, 93n79, 110n166, 177n218, 218nn46–47, 255n94, 256n95 Charles II, of Spain, 154n126 Charles V, of Spain, 242 Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, 257n99 Charles XII, of Sweden, 160, 246nn60–61 Chavagnac, F., 145n81 Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe, A (Moore), 45n75 cherubims, 196n292, 279n53 Cheviot Hills (North­umberland), 26 Cheyne, Doctor, 276n39 ­children, 71–75; education as debt owed to, xxiii, 72–74; feigned stories of, 91; “fun” as word in language of, 119n212; and infants in limbus infantium, 283n71; natu­ral propen­ sity to evil, 277n42; obedience of, 142n67, 142n70, 293n113

365 Chile, 237 Chilon of Sparta, 12n10 Chimera, The (Defoe), xvi chimney-­corner romance and tales, 123 China, xx; and conversation of foreign characters, 87; Crusoe in, 289n91; G ­ reat Wall of, 144n78, 247n62; idols in, 147n89, 147n90, 149n102, 156n135; inventions in, 139n54, 144–145; l­egal system in, xxv; military in, 144–145, 247n62; naval strength of, 145; religion in, xxv, 137–147, 153n123, 156; trade with Britain, 146–147n88 China and Eu­rope (Reichwein), 146n88 China in the Sixteenth C ­ entury (Ricci), 153n123 Christian Hero (Steele), 83n30 Chris­tian­ity: ascetic discipline in, 29n69; Catholic beliefs in (see Catholic Church); as civilizing influence, xxv, 134; commu­ nion in, 21; conversion to (see conversion to Chris­tian­ity); differing beliefs in, 236–237, 248n68; ecumenical approach to, 153n124; of gentlemen, 82–83n30; immortal life in, xxix; number of followers of, 257–258; as “one fold,” 251, 252n81; original sin in, 38n42, 56n130, 66n175, 92n75, 95–96n90, 113n184, 114n189, 276n40; and pagan world, xxix, 235–264; Protestant beliefs in (see Protestantism); and religion around the world, 125–203; reward and punishment in, 107n147; in Roman Empire, 176n214; solitude in, 15n2, 17, 19n18, 25; Trinity in (see Trinity); vow of silence in, 20n21 1 Chronicles: 21:12–16, 319n200; 21:15, 201n313; 29:10, 107n144 2 Chronicles: 1:15, 164n167; 5:12–13, 171n196; 7:12, 169n186; 9:3–7, 163n165; 33:6, 270n15 Churchill, John, 170n189 Church of E ­ ngland, xxvi, 177, 182; and Dissenters, 35n25, 106n141, 107n148, 251n77; and enthusiasm in religion, 107n148, 175n209; and naturalization of foreign Protestants, 252n81; on Quakers, 107n148; and Socinianism, 106n141; vestments in, 182n234 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 162n160, 314n186 circulation of blood and money compared, 163 Circus Maximus, 135n38 cities of refuge, 231 City of God (Augustine), 92n77, 99n107, 135n36, 181n230 Clark, John, ii Clark, Katherine, 106n140, 107–108n148, 108n157 Clarke, John, 129n10, 289n93, 303n152 Clarke, Samuel, 91n69, 106n140, 303n152 Claude, Jean, 167n179, 168n182

366 I n d e x Claudius, 250n75 Claydon, Tony, 88n54, 89n58, 95n85, 98n103 Clayton, Thomas, 115n192 clothing: and coat of many colors, 282n68; decency of, 116; fashion in, 89–90n61; and nakedness, 113–114, 116; and ornate clerical vestments, 182n234 coat of many colors, 282n68 Coke, Edward, 58n138 Cole, Abdiah, 271n23 Cole, G. D. H., 26n55 Collier, Jeremy, 82–83n30 Collins, Anthony, xxiv, 99n111, 229n88, 299n142 Col­o­nel Jack (Defoe), xvi, xx; as history or parable, 118n211; on parable of prodigal son, 280n56; protagonist ­going abroad and becoming officer in, 52n109; on providence, 212n19; on “­r unning before the wind,” 56n132; on theft in necessity, 55n127; on “whoring and drunkenness,” 97n100; on word of honor of prisoners, 64n168 colonialism, xxix, 237, 239; Crusoe on benefits of, 259n113; death of native populations in, 239n24; of ­E ngland, 237, 238, 239, 240–241, 245; of France, 237, 239, 241n31, 245; of Spain, 75n210, 237, 239, 240, 242–244 color, nature of, 316n190 Colossians 1:16, 279n53 Commandments, 189n264; on adultery, 23n37, 189n264, 301n149; and fin­ger of God, 208n6; on honesty, 41; on honoring ­father and ­mother, 71n190; on killing, 189n264, 231n93; on stealing, 56; and three establishments or stages, 195n286 Commentaries on the Laws of E ­ ngland (Blackstone), 58n138 Commentator, The, xvi, xxix, xxxv(n9), xxxvi(n28), xxxvii(n36); on B ­ ubble Act, 259n10; on excursions, 188n260; on failure to enforce laws, 95n85; on French ­people, 166n176; on “hanged out of the way,” 65n171; on happiness, 80n16, 81n22; on journal­ ists as unconcerted, 329n214; on negative virtue, 183n236; on propagating the faith, 296n130; on punishment for crime, 216n32; on reform of stage, 83n30; on short-­sighted creatures, 216n33 Common Law, 33n12, 35n26 communion, 21 compass: and arch of the horizon, 228n85; invention of, 228n82 Compendium Physicae (Morton), 315–316n190, 316n191 Compleat En­glish Gentleman, The (Defoe), xxiii; on education, 72n193, 72n195; on “holier than thou,” 165n173; on murder of

Thynne, 203n320; on Rus­sia, 160n154; on sun, 151n114; as unfinished at death of Defoe, 72n193 Compleat En­glish Tradesman, The (Defoe), xxxiv; on bankruptcy, 46n84, 48n93, 53n117, 59n147; on conscience of tradesmen, 33n13; on “face,” 118n209; on Hercules, 219n49; on honesty, 55n125, 61n152; on new fash­ ions, 90n62; on plainness of expression, 39n43; on silver rule, 42n54 Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences (Poole & Turner), 232n96 Complete Poems (Rochester), 16n5 Complexion of Race (Wheeler), 75–76n212 conceit, 84–85 concurrences: and parallel dates, 218nn44–46; and voice of providence, 214–215, 216, 217 Conduct of Christians Made the Sport of Infidels, The (Defoe), 44n74 confession, 67n178, 194; honesty in, xxii, 38, 39, 40 Confession of Faith and Catechism Agreed by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, 181n229 Confessions (Rousseau), xxxvi(n27) Confucianism, xxv, 156n135 Confucius, 137n46, 138, 140n60, 142n68, 147n90, 156n135 Congregationalists, xxxvii(n41) Congreve, William, xxviii, 65n172, 71n192, 78n8, 105n138, 211n15, 211n18, 309n176 Conjugal Lewdness (Defoe), xxxiv; on abstinence, 115n193; on acts of mortification, 25n50; on customs as clogs upon nature, 114n188; on modesty, 112n177; on punish­ ment of inequities, 107n145; on reason, ­w ill, and emotions, 125n1; on role of God in sin of humanity, 277n43; on “sodomy of the tongue,” 110n165; on suitable society, 77n2; on “whoring and drunkenness,” 97n100 Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament, The (Prideaux), 149n103 Conquest of Amer­i­ca, The (Todorov), 239n24 conscience, 184; court of, 33, 35; and honesty, 33–34, 46; and religion, 35n26; storms in, 78 Conscience (Ames), 35n25, 35n26 Conscious Lovers, The (Steele), 109n159 Consolidator, The (Defoe), 95n89; on Bible as Old Legend, 96n94; on Chinese inven­ tions, 139n54, 144n76; on delusions, 80n18; on impulses from spirits, 278n48; parallel­ isms in, 157n140; on Peter the ­Great, 246n60; on predestination, 226n78; on vapours, 224n74; on vision, 316n190; on voyage to moon, 288n88, 288n89, 290n96, 290n100; on wild notions, 267n1

Index Constantine the G ­ reat, 176, 181n231 Constantinople, 44 Constantinus, Flavius Valerius Aurelius, 176n214 Constitution and Finance of En­glish, Scottish, and Irish Joint-­Stock Companies to 1720, The (Scott), 45n75 consubstantiation and transubstantiation., 161 contentment, 79–81 Contexts of Dryden’s Thought, The (Harth), 132n20 Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy, The (Defoe), xxiv, xxxi, xxxvii(n38); on differ­ ences in religion, 176n211; on existence of God, 100n116; on French p ­ eople, 166n176; on honesty, 44n74; on Inquisition, 154n128; Mahmut (Mahomet) in, 44n74, 148n96, 158n142, 176n211, 288n89, 305n162; moral and religious Turk in, 133n29; poem on Prometheus in, 100n116; on practical atheism, 220n50; on Quietism, 157n138; re­spect for Islam in, 69n182, 148n96 Continuation of the Lives of the Popes, The (Platina), 296n130 contracts: contingencies of promises in, xxiii; with devil, 91n71 conversation: atheistical and prophane discourse in, 98–110; fitness for, 84–87; of fools, xxiv, 85–87; idealization of, 77n1; immorality of, xxiv, 77–124; lewd and immodest discourse in, 110–116; reforming errors of, 94–98; and religion, 82–83; talking falsely in, 116–124 Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (Fontenelle), 150n108 conversion to Chris­tian­ity, xxix; of American Indians, 261–262n119; of atheist, 326n212; of Mahometans, xxix, 247, 248, 260; of Paul, 201n309, 201n312, 281, 330n217; of Rochester, 101–102; in Rus­sia, 256n96; of slaves, 162n161 Cooper, Anthony Ashley (Third Earl of Shaftesbury), xxii, xxiv, 17n9, 113n184, 218n46 copyholders, use of term, 34n20 copyright, attitude of Defoe t­ oward, xxxv(n6) 1 Corinthians: 2:9, 304n159; 2:14, 129n10; 10:12, 49n97 2 Corinthians: 2:11, 277n46, 294n117; 12:1–21, 281n63; 12:2, 201n312; 12:4, 304n156; 12:7–10, 29n70, 29n73 Cornelius, and Saint Peter, 281 Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (Earle), 262n124 Cortés, Hernán, 138n52, 241n34, 242n35, 242n38, 243n40

367 Cotgrave, Randle, 268n8 Cotton, Charles, 16n6 Council of Chalcedon, 90n66 Council of Constantinople, 106n140 Council of Nicea, 181n231 counterfeit money, 61 ­Counter Reformation, 296n130 courage, 186, 196n294; and honesty, 40–41 courtesans, 156 Court of the Gentiles, The (Gale), 93n78, 149n105, 244n47 courts: of Chancery, 33; of conscience, 33, 35; Papal Court at Rome, 155n132 Cowley, Abraham, 187n258 Cox, T., xvi, xix, xxxv, 5n17; abridgment of Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, xxxv, 9n33, 12n8; on Defoe as “prostituted pen,” 9n33; suggested death of, 12nn9–10; threatening revelations, 7n27 Craigie, William, 74n207 Cranmer, Thomas, 182n233 creation: of Adam from dust, 277n41; reason of, 290, 291 credit, financial: and honesty, xxii, xxxvi(n28), 60–61; promise of payment in, 60–61 Creech, Thomas, 100, 100–101nn118–119 crime, 70, 230; in extreme necessity, xxii–­x xiii; and facial appearance, xxiv; and power of devil, 294 Critical Essays of the Seventeenth ­Century (Spingarn), 116n197 crocodiles, saints crossing river with, 27 Cross, F. L., 283n71 crucifixion of Jesus Christ, 105, 106n141, 269n9 Cruel Persecutions of the Protestants in the Kingdom of France (Claude), 168n182 cruelty: in Inquisition, 154; in parent punishment of ­children, 142n70; of Romans t­ oward prisoners, 134n34; of Spanish in Mexico, 242–244 “Cruisado,” xxix Crusoe, Robinson: as allegorical figure, xviii–­x ix, xxxvi(n15); as author, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xxxviii(n4), 3–9; and autobio­ graphical comments, 124n241; captivity at Salé (Sallee), 7n25, 31n1, 131n19, 246n57, 262n123; on Chinese civilization, xxv; on Chinese lacquer work, 146n88; on Chinese porcelain, 146n86; on colonialism, 259n113; and divine providence, xxviii; dreams of, 280n55; at edge of time, 289n95; footprint in sand experience, xxx, xxxiii, 6, 273, 275; in France, 166nn175–176; goat encounter, xxx, 6, 272, 276; as haunted by devil, 274n35; imaginative travels of, 289n91; in India,

368 I n d e x Crusoe, Robinson (continued) 259n111; leg pain and numbness experience, xxx, 273, 274, 275; listening to impulses, xxxii, 313n181; map of island, ii; marriage of ­father to black “Cook-­Maid,” xxiii, 74–76; as narrator, 125n3; and Old Gentlewoman, xxv, xxix; and parrot, xxx, 273–274; possessing obscure form of real­ity, xix; preface to Serious Ref lections, 3–9; primitive standard of living on island, 31n2; Quixotic nature of, xxv; relation to Defoe, xvii, xviii; on religion around the world, xxv–­xxvi, 125–203; on responsibility of God for fulfillment of messianic promises, 235n4; in Rus­sia, 147n91, 247n65, 289n91; Serious Reflections of, xxxiv; on shipwreck, 209n11; in Siberia, 44n70, 289n91; solitude experiences, xx, xxi; sound mind and memory of, 4; in Spain, 166n175; tolerance for religious differences, xxix; as visionary, xxx–­x xxi; and Xury, 36; years on island, 7n22 “Crusoe the Isolato” (Beesemyer), 18n15, 24n45, 111n166 Cry of the Oppressed (Pitt), 47n86 Culpeper, Nicholas, 271n23 cunning be­hav­ior, 43 Cushman, Herbert, 100n117 Cyclopaedia (Chambers), 102n125, 281n61 Cyprian, Saint (Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus), 246, 263 Cyprus, 260 Cyril of Alexandria, Saint, 90n66 Dabydeen, David, 76n213 Damasus, Pope, 106n143 Dampier, William, 137n42 dancing masters, 74 dancing of French ­people, 166 Daniel, 211n17; 3:1, 153n121; 3:1–28, 152n120; 3:1–30, 176n212; 4:32, 29n72; 7:13–14, 264n130 Daniel Defoe (Backscheider), 91n69, 312n178 Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings (Lee), 47n87 Daniel Defoe: The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence (Clark), 106n140, 108n157 Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions (Novak), 4n10, 7n25, 44n71, 48n92, 133n27, 175n207, 253n86, 307n165, 312n178 Darius, 211n17 Darius III (Darius Codomannus), 247n63 Davenant, William, 17n9 David, 53, 54, 73, 117n204, 252; and Saul, 53n116, 54n120, 171n193 Davis, Herbert, 65n172 Deacon, Thomas, 106n142

deafness, 87n48 Dearing, Vinton, 132n20 death: accidental, 231, 232; constant aware­ ness of, 189n268; conversion to Chris­tian­ ity near time of, 101–102; by executions, 198n303; fear of, 196; and fear of afterlife, xxxiii; gulf of, 185n248; by misadventure, 231; and negative virtue of ­dying man, 183n236, 202–203; at sea, rescue from, xxiv; solitude in, 26n57; threat of, from cannibals, xxxiii debt: bankruptcy in (see bankruptcy); and honesty, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 42, 46–52, 57, 60; owed to ­children for education, xxiii, 72–74; repayment of, xxiii, 48, 57, 61 deception, mask indicating, 65n172, 78n8, 184 Decline of Hell, The (Walker), 105n136, 267n2, 283n72, 299n140 Defoe, Daniel: on “allegorick history,” xvi, xx, xxv; “as they call it” phrase used by, 34; autobiographical comments of (see autobiographical comments of Defoe); defending fiction, 8n28; digressions of, 289n94; in duel, 109n159; on existence of God, xxiv–­x xv; on honesty, xxi–­x xiv, 31–76; on immorality of conversation, xxiv, 77–124; imprisonment of, 4n10, 7n24; library sale cata­log, 137n45; on listening to voice of providence, xxviii, 205–233; on necessity, xxii–­x xiii, xxxvi–­x xxvii(n32); personas assumed by, 7n27; poetry of, xxvii, 150–152, 187, 187–188n258, 190–202; punishment for libel, 4n10, 108n155; relationship with publishers, xvi; on religion around the world, xxv–­x xvii, 125–203; on romance, 5n15, 118n211, 121–122n227, 304n157; rumor of death, 253n86; on satire, xix–xx, xxxvi(n20); silence of, 18–19n17; on solitude, xx–­x xi, 15–30; writings of (see specific titles) “Defoe, the Occult and the Deist Offensive during the Reign of George I” (Novak), 35n25, 90n67, 106n140 Defoe and Casuistry (Starr), 103n128 Defoe and the Nature of Man (Novak), xxxvi–­x xxvii(nn32–33), 37n36, 49n98, 126n5, 136n40, 186n252 Defoe’s Early Life (Bastian), 115n192 “Defoe’s Theory of Fiction” (Novak), 118n211, 120n218 deism, xxiv, xxv, 108; and carelessness about futurity, 320n204; of Collins, 99n111, 229n88, 299n142; on concept of God, 105n135; on existence and location of hell, 267n2; on life on other planets, 291n102; and natu­ral laws, 207n5; obsession of Defoe on replying to, 107n148; Prideaux on, 149n103; on

Index reliability of Bible, 299n142; of Toland, 91n69, 99n111, 105n135, 229n88, 299n142 Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment (Lemay ed.), 35n25, 90n67, 106n140 “Deist. A Satyr on the Parsons” (Sackville), 105n139 deities, ancient, 92 Dell, Floyd, 125n1 delusions, 280; and fancies, 224n73; of grandeur, 80n19; and happiness, 80n16; “hypochondriack,” xxx, 271; nocturnal, 282; Tale of a Tub on, 80n18 Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, A (Clarke), 303n152 Denham, John, 255n91 Denmark, 237 Dennis, John, 287n82, 288n90, 321n207 depression, 276n38, 276n39 Descartes, René, xxi, 15n4, 17n10, 316n191 Desert F ­ athers, The (Waddell), 20n21, 20n24 design, use of term, 3n1 destiny, 209–210 Deuteronomy: 4:19, 153n122; 4:27, 140n61; 9:10, 208n6; 19:5, 231n94, 231n95; 19:7, 231n95; 24:14–22, 34n19 Devastation of the Indies, The (Las Casas), 239n24, 242n36, 243n40, 261n118 devil, xxxi, 275–278, 294–301, 303, 316–319; and apparition appearing as Samuel, 270, 271; in art, 141n65; and atheism, xxxi, 327–329; and augurs, 314n186; and brimstone, 316n192; on chain or leash, 297n134; devices of, 294; and “Dev­i l’s Office plunder,” 231; as ­enemy of mankind, 249–250; evidence of, 276–277; and evil, xxx, xxxi, 48, 52n113, 91n72, 93n81; existence of, xxx, xxxii, 99, 276–277; and God explained to Friday, 96n95, 99n108, 103n128, 173n202; haunting by, 274n35, 316–318; and honesty, 52; indefatigable application of, 8n29; inflam­ ing conflicts between nations, 290n100; knowledge of f­ uture, 303n154; as lion, 317n195; lurking in wait, 294n119; making contract with, 91n71; number of spirits in command of, 297n132; oracles of, 303; and pandemonium, 300; Po­liti­cal History of (see The Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il); power of, xxxi, xxxii, 178n221, 287, 294n116, 295n124, 296; pride of, 117n206; as prince of power of the air, 293; as serpent in Garden of Eden, 276n40; and solitude, 19; System of Magick on, 99n109, 301–302n150; and “tares sowed among the wheat,” 177, 177–178n219; as tempter, 294; tolerance of God for, 96n95; volunteers in ser­vice of, 93; white and black types, 122n230; on wick­ edness of mankind, 48n89, 91n72, 93n81

369 Dewing, H. B., 244n48 Diary (Pepys), 312n179 Diaz de Castillo, Bernal, 242n38, 243n42 dice cast on drumhead, 221–222 Dictionary of American En­glish, A (Craigie & Hulbert), 74n207 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, A (Smith), 225n75 Dictionary of the Proverbs in En­glish in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, A (Tilley): on “blot in the escutcheon,” 42nn58; on “content is happiness,” 79n14; on health and physicians, 39n46; on honesty, 43n60, 43n63; on horns of ox, 63n160; on malice, 67n180; on “many a one signs that is full sorry,” 79n11; on “medicine for a mad dog,” 254n89; on neighbour’s loaf, 49n94; on sin of ­father for benefit of ­children, 75n211; on solitude, 18n16, 24n43; on “storms in conscience,” 78n7; on “to err is ­human,” 54n119; on virtue, 66n174; on “white devil,” 122n230 Dido, Queen, 244 Digby, Kenelm, 17n9, 227n82 Diogenes, 24nn44–45, 67n181 Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, The (Diaz del Castillo), 242n38, 243n42 Discovery of New Worlds, A (Fontenelle), 287n82, 291n103 disobedience of Adam and Eve, 185n248, 195n286 Disquisition about the Final C ­ auses of Natu­ral ­Things (Boyle), 302–303n152 Dissenters, xxiv, xxvi–­xxvii, 177; and Church of ­England as “one fold,” 251n77; Defoe as, 25n47, 107–108n148; Hooper as founder of, 182n234; importance of conscience to, 35n25; in Ireland, 175n209; lifting of penalties against, 7n22; and Salter’s Hall Controversy, 90n65, 90n67, 106n141, 133n27, 174n204, 174–175n207; and Socinianism, 106n141; Swift on, 224n72; and Teckley, 248n69; and “third man,” 174–175n207; as unconcerted, 329n214 distemper, 274, 313, 314 divine emanation, 213 Documentary History of Primitivism, A (Whitney), 128n9 Dods, Marcus, 92n77 Donne, John, 132n21, 200n308 Don Quixote (Cervantes), xviii, xix, 5 d’Orleans, Louise Marie, 154n126 Double Dealer (Congreve), 65n172, 78n8 Doxology of Prayers, 107 dragonnades, 167nn178–179 Drake, Francis, 185n248 Dr. Burnet’s Travels (Burnet), 157n138

370 I n d e x dreams, 216, 278–288; and apparitions, 285n79; communication with God in, xxx, 223, 282n67, 300n145; communication with spirits in, xxx, 233n98, 278, 279n54, 283n70, 286, 300n145; as decaying sense, 280n58; natu­ral c­ auses of, 300n145; as nightmare, 273n31; and visions of night, 282; warnings in, 223, 233n98, 279–280, 284n74; whisper­ ing to person affecting, 299–300 drums: as alarm signal, 79; and dice cast on drumhead, 221–222 Drusilla, 193n278 Dryden, John, 17n9, 89n59, 94n83, 107n147, 132nn20–21, 137n44, 153n123, 253n87 Duckett, George, 321n207 Dudley, Edward, 128n9 Duel in Early Modern ­England, The (Peltonen), 109n159 duels: in defense of honor, 109nn158–159; of Defoe, 109n159; of Hamilton and Mohun, 85n41, 109n159 Dumont, Jean, 155n131, 156n134 D’Urfey, Thomas, 98n105 Dutch colonies, 237, 238, 239 duty of ­doing good, 33n9 Dyet of Poland, The (Defoe), 81n23 Earle, Peter, 262n124 earth: as loadstone, 227n82, 228n83; view of universe and, xxxi, xxxvii(n45), 287n82 Easter cele­bration, 181, 181–182n231 East Indies, 87 Ecclesiastes: 1:2, 86n42; 1:7, 186n249; 2, 87n46; 3:26, 45n78; 7:1, 65n170; 9:11, 57n137 Ecclesiastical History (Eusebius), 135n36 Ecclesiasticus, 325n211 Echard, Laurence, 135n36, 155n132, 158n141 eclipse: calculating time of, 214n24; of sun, 151n110 economics, xv–­x vi; ­bubble in, 259nn109–110; and divine administration of world, 229n89; and financial honesty, xxxvi(n28), 46–52, 60–62, 68–70; and financial speculation and collapse, 259nn109–110; and slave trade, 262n124; statistical analy­sis in, 257–258n102 Edict of Fontainbleau, 164n170, 167n178, 167n179 Edict of Nantes, 164n170, 167n178, 167n179, 168n182, 249n72 Edict of Potsdam, 164n170 Edit of Milan, 176n214 education: of “black Maletta look’d Man,” xxiii, 74–76; in Charity Schools, 32n8; as debt owed to ­children, xxiii, 72–74; and equality, xxxvii(n36); Locke on, 73n203, 76n216, 113n181

Educational Writings (Locke), 73n203, 76n216, 113n181 Edwards, John, 107n147, 108n149, 108n157 Egypt, 9n34, 197n300, 217, 279n51 Ehrenpreis, Irvin, 186n250 Eid-­Ul-­Azha, 134n30 Eid-­U l-­Fitr, feast of, 134n30 Eigh­teenth ­Century Confronts the Gods, The (Manual), 93n78 ejectments, 51 elections, drunkenness at time of, 98n104 Elegy on the Author of the True-­Born-­ Englishman, An (Defoe), 102n122, 104n129 Elijah, 7n23, 197n297, 197n300, 202n316; mantle of, 202nn318–319 Elisha, and mantle of Elijah, 202nn318–319 Elizabeth, Queen, 169, 182n234 Ellis, Frank, 40n47, 58n143, 81n23 Elysian Fields, 193n279 emanation, divine, 213 embarrassment, use of term, 27n63 Embassy from the East-­India Com­pany of the United Provinces to the G ­ rand Tartar Cham Emperour of China, An (Nieuhof), 139n56 embezzlement, 49n95 emblematic history, 5n15 emblems: popularity of, 5n15; use of term, 6n19 Emergence of Probability, The (Hacking), 222n58 Emlyn, Thomas, 90n65, 91n69, 106n141 Emmaus (Emaus), 269n9 enchanted island, 275 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 33n12, 33n15 Endor, witch of, 270n16, 271n20 ­England: Civil War in, 179n226; colonies of, 237, 238, 239, 240–241, 245; France at war with, 88n51, 168; Huguenot refugees in, 167n180; paganism in, 251; religious beliefs in, xxvi–­x xvii, 7n22, 177–182, 182n233, 252n81, 253n87; Roman invasion of, 250–251; ­union with Scotland, 177n218 ­England in the 1690s (Rose), 170n190 En­glish Dictionary, An (Bailey), 254n89 En­glish Gentleman (Brathwaite), 63n162 En­glish Lit­e r­a­ture in the Age of Disguise (Novak), 184n240 En­glish Malady, The (Cheyne), 276n39 En­glish Order of the Garter, 172n200 En­glish Ship “Royal Sovereign” (van de Velde), 145n82 Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil, An (Clarke), 129n10, 289n93, 303n152 Enter into Thy Closet (Wettenhall), xx, 17n12 enthusiasm and zeal in beliefs, 175, 177, 182, 249, 264, 309n176

Index entrails of beasts, 225n75, 315 Ephesians: 1:5, 194n281; 2:2, 293n113; 2:8, 252n80; 4:2, 84n35; 4:25, 123n235; 4:26, 78n6; 4:31–32, 67n180; 5:16, 217n40; 5:22, 71n181 Epicureans, 80n14, 99n107, 101n118 Epicurus, 80n14, 100, 162n160, 220n50 Episcopalianism, 177, 182n234, 249 equality, xxxvii(n36), 190 equator, magnetic shift at, 228n86 Equiano, Olaudah, 75n212 equity: and honesty, 42, 47, 50; and punishment of inequities, 107n145 Erasmus, 87n46 “Escape from Barbary” (Starr), 313n180 Essay Concerning H ­ uman Understanding, An (Locke), xxi; on enthusiasm of convictions, 309n176; on existence of God, 104n132; on freedom and imprisonment, 18n15; on happiness and plea­sure, 16n6; on ­humans as “short-­sighted creatures,” 216n33; on identity, 274n32; lantern image in, 288n85; moving hand as example in, 22n35; on perception of spirits, 268n8; on second ­causes, 23n40; on sense of time, 191n273 Essay on Man, An (Pope), 302n152 “Essay on Reason, An” (Mackenzie), 111n167 Essay on the History and Real­ity of Apparitions, An (Defoe), xvii, xxx, xxxii; on angels in Old Testament, 302n151; on apparition appearing as Samuel, 270n17; on Arcana, 90n64; on Atheistical Club, 321n207; on be­hav­ior against slander, 186n251; on communication with spirits, 233n98, 278n49; on concurrence of c­ auses, 31n3; on deism, 320n204; on dreams, 233n98, 285n79; on feigned stores of c­ hildren, 91n70; on flaming swords, 201n313; on ghosts of departed, 283n72; on guilt and fear, 81n23; on happiness, 79n14, 80n16; on Hind as highway robber, 230n90; on “hypochondriack delusions,” 271n23; on inscrutable role of devil, 90n63; on insig­ nificance of planets, 151n114; on Judgment Day as g­ reat audit, 258n105; on life on other planets, 292–293nn106–109; on lying, 109n158; on Quietism, 157n138; on reactions to super­natural encounters, 270n14; on religion in Mexico, 243n42; on Saint Peter in Rome, 155n132; on spirits and apparitions, 318n197, 318n199; The Tempest reference in, 275n37; on unembod­ ied spirits, 213n22; on vapours, 273n28; on vis­i­ble appearance of devil, 301n150; on work of providence, 211n16 Essay on the Origin of Evil, An (King), 303n152

371 Essays (Montaigne): on books as compan­ ions, 25n46; on imperfection of resolutions, 21n27; on liars, 118n208; on moral judgments, 16n6; on passions, 17n11; on “retire within yourself,” 17n13, 25n48, 27n62; on skepticism about ­human wisdom, 127n8; on solitude, 15n1, 16n8, 17n11, 17n13, 18n14, 18n16, 24n42, 24n45; on soul, 23n38 Essay ­towards the Probable Solution of this Question, An (Morton), 316n191 Essay upon Proj­ects, An (Defoe), xxiv, xxv, xxxvii(n39); on bankruptcy, 46n84, 60n150; economic analy­sis based on statistics in, 257–258n102; on En­glish language, 38n40; on exchanges in London, 20n22; on frame-­work knitting, 146n84; on sun, 150n109; on swearing, 88n49, 88–89n55, 115n194; on treatment of debtors, 47n87; on warfare, 145n80, 170n190 Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits, An (Burthogge), 309n174 “Eternity” (Defoe), xxvii–­x xviii, 190–193 ethical be­hav­ior, xxii Eugene, Prince, 245, 245–246n55 euhemerism, 92n78, 121n226 Eu­rope in the Seventeenth ­Century (Ogg), 164n170, 248n69 Eusebius, 135n36, 281n61 Eve: created as mate for Adam, 26n58; disobedience of, 185n248, 195n286; dream of, 301; eating from Tree of Knowledge, 117n206; and flaming sword, 196n293, 201n313; happiness of, 294n114; leaving Garden of Eden, 195n291, 196n293; Milton on, 195–196n291; nakedness of, 112n178, 113n184, 116n196; and serpent, 117n206; sin of, 56n130, 112n177, 276n40 Evelyn, John, xxi, 18n15, 24n45, 111n166 everlasting, as h ­ uman concept compared to timelessness of God, 191n275 evidence, and skeptical approach of atheists, xxxii–­x xxiii evil: and devil, xxx, xxxi, 48, 52n113, 91n72, 93n81; good coming from, 50; natu­r al propensity to, 277n42; of swearing, 88n49; tolerance of God for, 96n95 evil time, 217n40 Exchange of London, 20n22, 20n23, 312n179 Exclusion Crisis, 218n46 excursion, use of term, 150n106, 188n260 exemplars, use of term, 95n87 exhalations and vapours, 224n74, 272n28 Exodus, 217; 4:8, 224n70; 9:18, 197n300; 9:23, 197n300; 14:21, 197n298; 14:26–31, 170n191; 15:1–19, 170n191; 20:3, 295n127; 20:12, 71n190; 20:16, 41n52; 21:13, 231n93, 231n94; 31:18, 208n6; 32:24–30, 200n306

372 I n d e x Ezekiel: 38, 296n129; 39, 296n129; 39:11, 296n129 Ezra 2:61–63, 281n61 fable, Serious Reflections as, 3, 4n7 Fable of the Bees, The (Mandev­i lle), 16n9, 17n9, 32n8, 113n180, 113n181, 114n185 Fables of Ǽsop Paraphras’d in Verse, The, 114n187 facial appearance: in absence of shame, 118n209; of “black Maletta look’d Man,” xxiii, 75, 76; importance in society, xxiv, 78; mask covering, 65n172, 78n8 ­factor, as agent abroad, honesty of, 48 Fairclough, H. Rushton, 94n83, 186n251, 244n46 “Faith” (Defoe), xxvii–­x xviii, 195–202 Faithful History of the Northern Affairs of Ireland, A (Ramsay), 249n70 Falconer, William, 314n186 Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, 36n28 false prophets in sheep’s clothing, 156n133 false witness, 41 ­family: c­ hildren in, 71–75; debt of education in, xxiii, 72–74; debt of induction in, 73–74; obligations in, 71–72; and relative honesty, 71–76; role of father/husband in, 71–73 ­Family Instructor, The (Defoe), xxv, xxxv; on anger, 78n6; on conviction of sin in signs of God, 326n212; on courage, 186n252, 196n294; on death of alienated son, 217n42; on eclipse of sun, 151n110; on education, 72n195; fiction in, 123–124n240; on gulf of death, 185n248; on irrational act of f­ amily member, 19n17; on natu­ral propensity to evil, 277n42; on negative religion, 183n237; on original sin, 95n90; on relative honesty, 71n188, 71n189; on scripture as key of instruction, 259n108; on servants in extended ­f amily, 71n188; on slavery, 162n161; toad as term applied to h ­ orse in, 274n32 fancies, 224; definition of, 224n73; “hypochondriack,” 275 farms: fee-­farm, 35; ­f ree farm, 34 Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, The (Defoe), ii, xv, xxxiv; on appearance of happiness, xxiv; on China, xxv, 137n46, 141nn64–65, 144n78, 145n80, 156n135, 247n62; on conditions of extreme necessity, xxii–­x xiii; “face” as term in, 118n209; on French p ­ eople, 166n176; on idol worship, xxv, xxix, 140n57, 252n79; on impenetrable languages, xix; on India travels, 259n111; on Jesuit missionaries, 156n135; and old age, 125n4; on provisions needed for travel, 247n65; as satire, xx, xxxvi(n20); savage

­ oman in, 130n13; on shipwrecked vessel, w 209n11; on Siberia travel, 44n70, 109n161, 131n18; summary of travels in, 131n19; on support for French Roman Catholic priest, 133n27; on travels from Africa to Rus­sia, 148n95 fashion: in clothing, 89–90n61; vice in, 96 Fasting and Feasting in Morocco (Buitelaar), 134n30 fate, 210; and predestination, 209n10 Faye, Charles de la, 168n181 fear: of atheist, xxxiii; of Belshazzar, xxx, 272; of death, 196; of disciples seeing Jesus walk on sea, 268n6, 269n13; as essential driving force, xxxiii; in footprint in sand experience, xxx, xxxiii, 6, 273, 275; in goat encounter, xxx, 6, 272, 276; in leg pain and numbness experience, xxx, 273, 274; religion based on, 130, 216; in super­natural encoun­ ters, 270n14 Fee-­Farm, 35 Felix, 193 Female American, The (Winkfield), 287n83 Fénelon, François de la Mothe, 25n49, 157n138 Ferguson, Everett, 182n232 fiction, 8n28, 118n211, 120n218, 121nn221–222; as allegorick, 121n221, 285n76; Bible as, 105n138; and chimney-­corner romance, 123n238; in ­Family Instructor, 123–124n240 Fictions of Modesty (Yeazell), 113n179 Fielding, Henry, xvii, xxviii, 5n15, 51n103, 84n33, 133n29, 215n30 Finch, Anne, 18n15 fin­ger of God, 208 fireworks, 144 first c­ auses, 99, 100, 102 First Council of Nicea, 106n140 first T ­ emple, destruction of, 165n173 Five Miscellaneous Essays (­Temple), 142n67 flaming swords, 201, 315; of angels, 201n313, 315; at Garden of Eden, 196n293, 201n313 Flanders, 158 Fleischbein, Johann Friedrich, 156–157n138 fluxing ­house, venereal disease treatment in, 111n170 folk tales, 123n239 folly and fools, 87 Fontainbleau, Edict of, 164n170, 167n178, 167n179 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, 150n108, 287n82, 291n103, 303n153 food: brown bread, 62; and cannibalism, 50; and meat offered to God, 73n200; as necessity, 49n98, 50, 54, 55; and provisions needed for travel, 247n65; shew bread, 54

Index fools: conversation of, xxiv, 85–87; and folly, 87; and knaves, 58, 85; and religious beliefs, 110; “Solomon’s Fools,” 12, 86, 215 footprint in sand experience, xxx, xxxiii, 6, 273, 275 Force, Pierre, 32n8 forgery, 123 Forsyth, James, 148n99 Foxe, John, 182n234 Foxton, John, 287n82 frame-­work knitting, 146 France: colonies of, 237, 239, 241n31, 245; and conversation of foreign characters, 87; dancing in, 166; dueling in, 109n159; ­England at war with, 88n51, 168; honesty and honor in, 64; Huguenots in, 164n170, 167–168, 249n72; Louis XIV of, 88n52, 164n170, 167n179, 170n190, 249n72, 257n100; religion in, 164n170, 167–168; travels of Crusoe in, 166nn175–176 Frederick I, 164n168 Frederick William I, 163n163, 164n168, 164n170 freebooters, 108 Freedman, David, 326n212 freedom of press, xxxv(n6) free-­holders, 34n18 ­f ree w ­ ill, 22n33 French, J. Milton, 255n92, 255n93, 255n94 Frere, Sheppard, 251n76 Freud, Sigmund, xxxii, 184n244 Friday, xviii, xx, xxx, 6; dream predicting arrival of, 280n55; as genuine person, xxxvi(n15); relationship of God and Devil explained to, 96n95, 99n108, 103n128, 173n202; and savage life, 128n9; worship of Benamuckee, xxv, 130 Fried, Lisabeth, 281n61 From Criminal to Courtier (Kunzle), 221n56 Fulda, Daniel, 127n6 Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions (Glanvil), 271n20 Furbank, F. N., xv Fuseli, Henry, 273n31 Galatians 4:4–5, 194n281 Gale, Theo­philus, 93n78, 149n105, 153n121, 244n47 Gallagher, Louis, 153n123 Gallantry a-­la-­Mode, 74n208 galleys as punishment, 168n182 Garasse, Pere François, 320n205 gardening, Chinese notion of, 142n67, 149n102 Garden of Eden: appearance of God in, 268n5; disobedience of Adam and Eve in, 185n248, 195n286; and flaming sword, 196n293, 201n313; gates of, 195–196n291;

373 happiness in, 294n114; nakedness of Adam and Eve in, 112n178, 113n184, 116n196; serpent in, 52n113, 117n206, 276n40; sin of Adam and Eve in, 112n177, 276n40; Tree of Knowledge in, 112n176, 117n206, 195n286 Gaugamela, ­battle of, 247n63 Gaventa, Beverly, 326n212 Gay, John, xxxv(n6) General History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, A (Defoe), 144n76, 237n16 General History of Trade, A (Defoe), 163n164 Genesis: 1:3, 297n135; 1:26, 277n41; 1:27, 277n41; 1:28–30, 207n4; 2, 26n58; 2:7, 277n41; 2:17, 112n176; 3:1, 294n118; 3:7, 112n175, 113n183, 276n40; 3:16, 71n181; 3:24, 196n292, 196n293, 201n313; 6–10, 242n37; 8:21, 277n42; 12:1, 223n60; 17:1, 223n60; 19:1–23, 223n60; 20:3, 223n64; 35:1, 223n60; 37:3–10, 282n68; 42:22, 36n27 gentile (genteel) manner, 89 Gentleman’s Calling, The (Allestree), 258n105 Gentleman’s Dictionary, The, 144n79 Gentleman’s Recreation, The (Blome), 63n163 gentlemen: concept of, 82–83n30; fash­ion­able clothes of, 89–90n61; honesty of, xxiii, 42, 63 Geo­graph­i­cal Dictionary (Bohun): on Amazon River, 239–240n26; on Bay of La’rache, 131n19; on Brazil, 240n28; on Flanders, 158n141; on Germany, 257n99; on G ­ reat Mogul (Indostan area), 259n112; on Hungary, 237n11; on Karacathay, 143n74; on Krim Tatars, 238n21; on Magog, 296n129; on Papal Court in Rome, 155n132; on Rhodes (Greek island), 260n117; on Siberia, 131n18, 237n18, 238n19; on Smyrna, 44n72; on South American rivers, 240n27; on Venice, 260nn115–116 Geography Anatomiz’d (Gordon), 144n76 George Berkeley (Wild), 262n119 George I, xxiv, xxvii, xxxii, 88nn50–52, 93n79, 93n80, 248n68, 264n128, 307n165, 307n168 George I, Elector and King (Hatton), 88n51, 264n128 George I and the G ­ reat Northern War (Chance), 264n128 “George Wither in Prison” (French), 255n92, 255n93, 255n94 Georgia, 236, 237, 238 Gerasimus, Saint, 28n66 Germany, xxvi, 177, 237, 257 ghosts: existence of, xxxii, 268n5; haunting by, 317n194; and Holy Ghost, 282; terror from, 271n23 gift of God, 252

374 I n d e x Gilbert, William, 227n82, 228n83, 228n84, 228n85 Gildon, Charles, xvi, xviii, xix; attributing Crusoe works to Defoe, 7n27; and Bunyan, 121n224; criticism of Defoe, 3n2, 3n3, 9n33, 32n7, 156n135; on Crusoe as character, 6n19; on The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures as fiction, 3n4; Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticiz’d, 137n46, 156n135; on romance writing, 4n5 Ginkel, Godard van, 170n189 Gladstone, W. E., 32n8 Glanvil, Joseph, 271n20 Glorious Revolution, 7n22, 110n166, 217n38, 218n46 Glover, T. R., 176n213 goat, d ­ ying, fear in encounter with, xxx, 6, 272, 276 God: arguments for existence of, xxiv–­x xv, 99n108, 100n112, 100n116, 101–103, 104n132, 214n25; in Arianism, 106n140, 106n142; and atheism (see atheism); and “awful” events, 224n70; Commandments of (see Commandments); creating man in own image, 277n41; in deism, 105n135; denial of, 99, 108n156; deprivation of, as punishment, 132n25; and devil explained to Friday, 96n95, 99n108, 103n128, 173n202; direct interventions in h ­ uman life, 23n40, 28n67; dreams in communication with, xxx, 223, 282n67, 300n145; evidence of, 277, 332; fin­ger of, 208; and first ­causes, 99, 100, 102; fulfillment of messianic promises, 235n4; gift of, 252; immutability of, 181n229, 228; and Louis XIV, 257n100; morality standard of, xxii; and notion of wager, xxxiii; parting River Jordan, 197n297; punishment of generation leaving Egypt, 9n34; in Quiet­ ism, xx, xxvi, 25n49, 156–157nn138–139; and religion around the world, 125–203; role in universe, xxxi, 214n25, 227n79, 290n98, 320n205; sacrifices to, 73n200; and second ­c auses, 23, 28n67, 54n121, 208n7; shew bread as offering to, 54n120; signs of, xxviii, xxxiii, 23n40, 208n8; and sin of humanity, 277n43; timeless realm of, 181n230, 191n275; tolerance of evil, 96n95; and voice of providence, xxviii, 205–233; and wind, 286n81 God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the Eu­ro­pean Imagination (Rawson), 127n6 gods: and ancient deities, 92; mockery of, 252 Godwin, Francis, 290n96 Godwin, William, 51n103 Gog, 296 golden rule, 42, 45n81, 46n82 Gómara, Francisco López de, 243n41, 243n42

good humor, 84; and amiable disposition, 84n33 Good Samaritan Laws, 35n26 Goodspeed, Edgar, 325n211 Gordon, Patrick, 144n76 Gospel-­Labourers, 261 Gosselink, Robert, 95n85 Goubert, Pierre, 257n100 grasshopper, Aesop’s fable of, 122n231 Graunt, John, 257n102 gravity, 228n83 ­Great Britain, 237, 240–241 ­Great Chain of Being, 228n87 ­Great Law of Subordination Consider’d, The (Defoe), 58n138, 97n100, 107–108n148 ­Great Mogul (Indostan area), 259n112 ­Great News from Count Teckely, 248n69 ­Great Northern War, 88n51, 256n98, 264n128 ­Great Promethean Artist, Poets say (Defoe), xxiv ­Great Wall of China, 144n78, 247n62 Greece: ancient, 121n226, 135, 139, 140; and Turks, 260n115, 260n117 Greek Orthodox Church, 159, 161, 181–182n231, 236, 237 Gregory the ­Great, Pope, 43n61 Gregory XV, Pope, 296n130 Grotius, Hugo, xxii, xxiii, 50n99, 97n96, 250n74, 259n113 Guffey, George, 275n37 Guiana, 239n25 Guilhamet, Leon, 39n44 guilt, xxiii, 22–23 Guinea, 32 gulf of death, 185n248 guns and gunpowder in China, 144–145 gust of inclinations, 97 Guthkelch, A. C., 80n18 Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe, 25n49, 157n138 Hacking, Ian, 222n58 Haddan, Arthur, 91n68 Hakluyt, Richard, 239n25 hallucinations, 224n73 Hamilton, James Douglas, 85n41, 109n159 hand: and left-­hand/right-­hand symbolism, 180, 187, 258n103; moving, as illustration of mind and w ­ ill, 22n35; uses of term, 185n245 Hand-­book of Proverbs, A (Bohn), 39n46 happiness, 78, 79–82, 193; of Adam and Eve, 294n114; of child, actions of ­father affecting, 75n211; and contentment, 79–81; and honesty, 37; nature of, 80n14; and peace, 81–82; and religion, xxiv, 82–83 Happy Man, The (Røstvig), 187n258 Harley, Robert, 7n25, 253n88, 321n207

Index Harlot’s Pro­gress, The (Hogarth), 76n213 Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Lit­er­a­ture and Antiquities, 217n37 Harris, John: Astronomical Dialogues, 291–293nn103–109; on Jupiter, 292n105, 292n107; Lexicon Technicum (see Lexicon Technicum); on Moon, 291nn103–104; on natu­ral phenomenon, 99–100n112; on Saturn, 292n105; on sun, 150n109; on vision, 316n190 Harth, Philip, 132n20 haruspex, 315n187 Hatney (American Indian chief), 261n118 Hatton, Ragnhild, 88n51, 264n128 haunting, by devil, 274n35, 316–318 Hazlitt, W. Carew, 65n171 Healey, George, 231n95, 307n168, 308n170, 321n207 heaven, 304–305; and chariot of fire, 202n316; existence and location of, 267n2; and insurance office image, xxviii, 200; Jesus on keys of kingdom of, 202n315; as reward, 107n147; third, 26, 201 Hebrews: 6:19–20, 303n155; 10:25, 25n47 Heidenreich, Helmut, 137n45 Helena, Saint, 27n61 Helenus, 27n61 hell, 132, 304–305; existence and location of, 267n2; fear of, xxxiii; gates of, 195–196n291; limbus on border of, 283n71; for punishment of sinners, 105n136; repre­sen­ta­tions in art, 298n137, 304n156 Henry, Matthew, 67n181 Henry VIII, 182n234 Hensley, Charles, 255n93 Herbermann, Charles, 15n2 Hercules, Aesop’s fable of, 219n49 heretics burned alive, 182n235, 182nn233–234 Hermit, The, 20n23 hermits: on afterlife, 20n23; Defoe on, 21n30; saints as, 15n2, 20–21n26, 27, 28n68; solitude of, xxi, 15n2, 20; vow of silence, 20n21 Herod, 223, 223n64, 279 Hessig, Walter, 148n99 Hicks, R. D., 12n10 hieroglyphics, 283n73, 284, 284–285n75 Highfill, Philip, Jr., 120n217 Highlander, second-­sight of, 211n18, 313n182 High Priest, 280–281nn59–61 Hilarion, Saint, 27, 28 Hilary, Saint, xxi Hind, James, 230n90 His Six Books of Epicurean Philosophy (Lucretius), 101n119 Historical Account of the B ­ itter Sufferings, and Melancholy Circumstances of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, An (Defoe), 249n71

375 Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies, An (Knox), 137n45 History and Remarkable Life of . . . ​Col. Jacque (Defoe), 5n15 History of All Religions in the World (Turner), 161n158 History of Ancient Philosophy (Windelband), 100n117 History of Arianism, The (Maimbourg), 176n215 History of Germany 1715–1815, A (Atkinson), 162n162, 163n163, 164n168 History of Oracles (Fontenelle), 303n153 History of Philosophy, The (Stanley), 80n14 History of Queen Anne, The (Trevelyan), 171n195 History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th & 17th Centuries, A (Wolf), 146n84 History of the Arians, The (Tillemont), 106n142 History of the Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients, The (Huet), 143n74 History of the Council of Trent (Sarpi), 154n127 History of the Inquisition, The, 154n127, 154n129 History of the Monks of Egypt (Rufinus of Aquileia), 20n21 History of the P ­ eoples of Siberia, A (Forsyth), 148n99 History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements, in the Several Arts and Sciences, The (Defoe): on Carthage, 244n45, 244n47; on civilization in Mexico, 241n34; on compass invention, 228n82; on crafts necessary for building ­Temple, 143n72; on Guiana, 239n25; on idol worship, 238n19; on Joshua the robber, 244n48; on piracy, 312–323n180; poem on Prometheus in, 100n116; on sympathetic influence, 228n83; on warfare, 145n80 History of the Wars (Procopius), 244n48 History of the Wars, of His Late Majesty Charles XII of Sweden, The (Defoe), xvi, 161n157 History of the World (Raleigh), 92n78, 121n226 History of Tom Jones (Fielding), 5n15 Hoadly, Benjamin, 133n29 Hobbes, Thomas, 50n101, 71n192, 279n54, 280n58 Hogarth, William, 76n213, 80n17, 98n104, 167n180 “holier than thou,” 165, 187 Holland: colonies of, 237, 238, 239; France at war with, 88n52; religious toleration in, 178n223; Socinians in, 106n141 Holocaust, 159n149 Holt, John, 76n215, 87n47 Holt decision, 76n215

376 I n d e x Holy Ghost, 282 Holy Inquisition, The (Beaulieu), 154nn128–129, 155n130 hom­i­cide by misadventure, 231n94 honesterly, Defoe use of word, 38 honesty, xxi–­x xiv, 31–76; and affliction, 52; Chancery Law of, 33; common law of, 33; and ­doing good, 33n9, 37; and false witness, 41; in finances, xxxvi(n28), 46–52, 60–62, 68–70; in general, 41–47; of gentlemen, xxiii, 42, 63; and h ­ uman infirmities, 53; and “lee shore of temptation,” 56; and mask indicating deception, 65n172, 184; as natu­ral or acquired virtue, xxii, 38; and necessity, 43, 48, 49–50, 53–58; and negative virtue, 184; in poverty, 43, 57–58; and practice of “allegorick history,” xxv, 4; in promises, xxiii, 63–70; relative, xxiii, 71–76; of rich man, 48–49; as tender plant, 43–44; “tryal” of, xxii–­x xiii, 48–62 honor (honour): and accusation of lying, 109n158; duels in defense of, 109nn158–159; of God, 109n159; and honesty, 42 Hooke, Robert, 150n109 Hooker, E. N., 17n9 Hooper, John, 182, 182n234, 182n235 Horace, 101n118, 186n251, 187n258 Hornberger, Theodore, 316n191 Horowski, Leonhard, 80n19 Hotham, John, 218 Howard, Richard, 239n24 Hoyle, John, 48n92 Hudibras (Butler), xix, 175–176nn209–210 Huet, Pierre-­Daniel, 143n74 Hughes, John, 314n185 Hughes, Lindsey, 160n156, 256n96 Huguenots in France, 164n170, 167–168, 249n72 Hulbert, James, 74n207 ­human nature: evil in, 277n42; sin and error in, 54, 294; sociability in, 15n3; sympathy and pity in, 16–17n9 humanum est errare (to err is ­human), 54, 294n120 ­ uman is to sin), humanum est peccare (to be h 294 Hume, David, 17n9, 17n10 Hungary, 237, 248n69 hunger, and necessity of food, 49n98, 50, 54, 55 Hunter, J. Paul, 17n10 hunting, 63–64, 67 hutch, use of term, 80n17 Hutchins, Henry, 5n17, 12n8 Hutchinson, Harold, 26n55 Hymn to Peace (Defoe), 79n13, 81n24, 304n160 Hymn to the Pillory (Defoe), 95n86

hypochondria, 271n23, 276n39, 314; and delusions, xxx, 271; and fancies, 275; and whimsies, xxx, 273 Hypochondriack, The, journal, 276n39 hy­poc­risy, xxvii, 66 Hyrcanus, John, 281n61 Iconologia (Ripa), 5n15 Ideographia (Porter), 285n75 idols, 128, 130, 139, 140, 149; in China, 147n89, 147n90, 149n102, 156n135; destruction of, xxv, xxix, 109n161, 252; mockery of, 252n82; in Siberia, 109n161, 147, 149n102, 256n96; in Tonquin, 156 Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe 1719–1920, The (Blewett), 9n33 imagination, 276, 300; and delusions, xxx; and false details, 118n208; and fancies, 224n73; space travel in, 287–290; as transforming power, xxxi; variety of ideas in, xxxi Immobile Empire (Peyrefitte), 144n78, 149n102 immorality: of conversation, xxiv, 77–124; failure to enforce laws against, 98n103 immutability of God, 181n229, 228 Impartial History of the Life and Actions of Peter Alexowitz, An (Defoe), 247n64 imprisonment: for blasphemy, 108n156; of debtors, 47, 49; of Defoe, 4n10, 7n24; and parole of prisoners of war, 64n165; in Roman Empire, cruelty t­ oward prisoners in, 134n34; and word of honor of prisoners, 64n165, 64n168 Improvement of H ­ uman Reason, Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, The (Tufayl), 287n83 Improvement of Imprisonment, An (Wither), 255n95 impulses: from devil, 300; listening to, xxxi–­x xxii, 306–314; from spirits, xxxii, 232–233n98, 278n48, 310n177; on travel to London, xxxi, 306; on writing letter to judge, xxxii, 307–308 Inca in Peru, 138n52 Incognita (Congreve), 105n138 India, 137, 148, 149n104, 252, 259n111 individualism, xxi Indonesia, 137n42 induction, debt of, 73–74 infidelity, radicated, 213 Ingram, Allan, 273n31 Innocent XI, Pope, 157n138 Inquisition, xxvi, 154–155, 156 inscrutables, 90 In Search of Zarathustra (Kriwaczek), 149n104

Index Intellectual History of Cannibalism, An (Avramescu), 128n9 Interregnum, 175n209 inventions: in China, 139n54, 144–145; in warfare, 145n80 Iraq War, 248n67 Ireland, 170, 175n209, 249 Isaiah, 34, 215–216n31; 2:2, 235n2, 236; 9:6, 82n28; 9:7, 264n130; 11:3, 258n106; 11:9, 235n3, 236n5; 30:1, 325n211; 32:6, 122n232; 32:7–8, 34n23; 32:8, 36n30; 32:17, 36n32; 34:11, 122n232; 37:19, 140n61; 47, 215n31; 65:5, 165n173 Islam, xxv, 69n182, 132n20, 134, 148n96, 176n211; Mahometan (Muhammad) as founder of, 260n114 (see also Mahometan, followers of); re­spect for, 69n182, 148n96; Sunni and Shiite, 176n211; and Teckley, 248n69 Islamic Festivals and Rituals (Shehab), 134n30 isolation, social, and solitude, xx–­xxi. See also solitude Israel: and anger of God, 165n173; c­ hildren of, 170, 195, 197n297, 217, 224n70, 315n189; dream of Joseph on return to, 223n64; and mercy of God, 165n173; and Philistines, 270n16; power of God of, 176n212; and promise of God, 244n49; prophecy on destructive invaders in, 296n129; Solomon dedication of T ­ emple in, 169n186; Syrian raids against, 168n181 Israelites, 243; arts skills of, 143, 144; on Banks of the Sea, 170; cruelties of, 244; disobeying Commandments, 195n286; dispersions of, 140n61, 143; refusal of Pha­raoh to ­f ree, 197n300; warned against sun worship, 153n122 Israel (Jacob), 200n307, 282n68 Issus, ­battle of, 247n63 Italy, 157, 237 Ivan V of Rus­sia, 246n60 Jacob, 200, 223, 282n68 Jacob, Giles: Merchant’s Companion, 48n92; New Law-­Dictionary (see New Law-­Dictionary) Jacobitism, 4n10, 7n25, 9n33, 253n86, 308n170, 321n207 Jamaica, 162 James 1:14, 277n43, 295n121 James I, 255n92 James II, xxvii, 7n22, 89n58, 170n189, 218, 253n87 Jansenists, 92n75 Japan, 140, 260 Jastrow, Morris, 153n121 Java, p ­ eople of, 137n43

377 Jephthah, 215n29 Jeremiah 2:26, 96n91 Jericho, destruction of, 243n44 Jerome, Saint, 28n66, 28n68 Jesuits, 139n53, 140n60, 147n90, 156nn135–136, 157n138 Jesus Christ, 8n31; accusing Jews of lying, 122n233; appearing to Apostles ­after death, 236n8; ascending into sun, 308–309n174; on blind guides, 166n177; as carpenter’s son, 9n32; on coming of messianic period, 173n203; crucifixion of, 105, 106n141, 269n9; death of, 281n62; divinity of, 90n65; dreams as warning about, 223n64; on evil servant parable, 187n253; on faith, 198n302, 198–200nn304–305; fear of disciples, 268n6, 269n13; followers as ­adopted sons, 194n281; on foolish talk of disciples, 269; foreseeing disciples brought before “governors and kings,” 307–308n169; on giving riches to poor, 194n282; as good shepherd, 251n77; on John the Baptist, 201n310; on keys of kingdom of heaven, 202n315; and King of Jews, 264n130; and kiss of Judas, 117; leading disciples through corn field, 54n123; and left-­hand/right-­hand symbolism, 180n228; miracles performed by, 216n31; number of followers of, 257–258; pride and ambition of disciples, 67n181; and Psalm 8:2, 332n219; on rash vows, 215n29; Sermon on the Mount, 23n36, 45n81, 321n206; Socinianism on, 106n141, 109n160; suffering for sins of humanity, 190n271; on trea­sury contributions of wealthy and poor, 94n84; walking on sea, 198n302, 268n6, 269n13 Jewish Antiquities (Josephus), 280n60, 281n61 Jews, 165n173; accused as ­children of the devil, 122n233; and crucifixion of Christ, 105; dispersion of, 143n72; execution of, xxvi, 154n126; on heaven, 201n312; in Inquisition, 154–155; and interpretation of Psalms, 207n3; Jesus as King of, 264n130; John the Baptist on, 19; Passover cele­bration of, 181n231; Paul on moral rectitude of, 187n255; in Poland, 159; Prideaux on, 149n103; wealth of, xxvi, 155 Joab, embrace of, 117 Job, Book of, 52n113; 1:7, 231n92; 1:8, 59n145; 1:9–11, 52n114; 1:21, 59n145; 12:4, 52n112; 13:23, 107n145; 16:9, 187n256; 22:5, 107n145; 24:14, 96n91; 28:20–21, 304n158; 30:1, 187n257; 31:11, 107n145; 33:14–16, 282n67; 42:12, 280n56 Joel (prophet), 223n64 John: 3:8, 286n81; 8:7, 70n187; 8:44, 122n233; 10:16, 251n77, 252n81; 16:13, 223n69

378 I n d e x John, Saint, vision of the whore of Babylon, 256n97 John Locke on Money (Kelly), 61n154, 62n156 Johnson, Samuel, xviii, xxxiv, xxxv(n13), 276n39, 310n177 John the Baptist, 19, 201n310 Jordan River, parting of, 197n297 Jordan-­Smith, Paul, 125n1 Joseph, 223, 282; coat of many colors, 282n68; dreams of, 279, 282n68 Joseph Andrews (Fielding), 51n103, 133n29 Joseph of Arimathea, 251n76 Josephus, 280n60, 281n61 Joshua, 244, 250n74; 1:1–11, 244n49; 6:21, 243n44; 7–14, 197n297; 10:40, 244n49 Josiah, 169 Journal of the Plague Year, A (Defoe), xvi, 104n134, 192n277, 215n29 Journey of the Embassy from their Majesties John and Peter Alexovitz, A (Brand), 149n102 Judaism, 291n102 Judas, 105n138, 117, 267 Judges 11:29–40, 215n29 Judgment Day, 187n254, 257–258, 264n129 Julian the Apostate, 215n29 Jupiter (god), 139, 219n49 Jupiter (planet), 292 Jure Divino (Defoe): on Adamantine Gate, 196n291; on Aztec religion, 243n41; on Cortés, 242n38; on decrees and fate, 210n12; on desire for absolute power, 178n221; on euhemerism, 93n78, 121n226; “exemplar” in, 95n87; on fear of death, 196n294; on government authority, 164–165n171; on idol worship, 130n12; on Milton, 300–301n147; on rape, 21n28; as satire, xxxvi(n20); on self-­ interest, 16n5; on self-­preservation, 50n101 justice, 33, 38, 42, 46 just subject, 4; connotations of, 4n11 Juvenilia (Wither), 255n95 Karacathay (Karakathay or Cathay), 143, 289 Kelly, Denis, 300n144 Kelly, Patrick, 61n154, 62n156 Kelsey, Francis, 97n96, 250n74 Kennedy, Joyce, 20n22, 47n87, 139n54 Keynes, Harris, 228n83 killing: commandment on, 189n264, 231n93; and hom­i­cide by misadventure, 231n94 Kincaide, Kit, 31n3, 79n14 King, J. E., 162n160 King, William, 303n152 1Kings 17:4-6, 23n7 2 Kings: 1:10, 197n300; 2:8, 197n297; 2:11, 202n316; 2:13, 202n318; 2:14–24, 202n319; 5:1–19, 168n181; 5:19, 168n181; 10:4–8,

163n165; 19:18, 140n61; 22:5, 169n187; 23, 169n187; 23:3, 169n187 Kircher, Athanasius, 284n75 knaves, 41n50, 58, 85 Knox, Robert, 137 Königsmarck, Count, 203n320 Koran, 134n30, 134n32, 305n162 Koran, The; Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed (Sale), 305n162 Kravitz, Leonard, 252n82 Krim Tartars, 238n21, 245 Kriwaczek, Paul, 149n104 Kroef, Justus van der, 250n74 Kunzle, David, 221n56 La Bruyère, Jean de, xx, 27n64 lacquer work of Chinese, 146–147 Lafayette, Madame de, xvii Lamentations 3:10, 294n119 Landen, b ­ attle at, 170n190 Lane-­Poole, Stanley, 262n124 Lang, Andrew, 111n166 Langhams, Edward, 120n217 language, xix; and hieroglyphics, 284–285n75; private, xxxvi(n17); reform of, xxiv; secret, xix; swearing in (see swearing); and “veneration for etymologies,” 38 Lapland, 237n17 La Rochefoucauld, François de, 16n5 Las Casas, Bartolomeo de, 239n24, 242n36, 243n40, 261n118 Last Judgment, 257n101, 264n129 ­Later C ­ areer of George Wither, The (Hensley), 255n93 Latham, Robert, 103n127 Latimer, Hugh, 182n233, 182n235 Latitudinarians, 132n20 Laun, Henri Van, 27n64 law: in China, xxv; in extreme necessity, xxii–­x xiii, 50n101; on financial debt, xxii, 46–47; and honesty, 46–47; natu­ral (see natu­ral law); rigorous enforcement as oppression, 33n11; on salvage at sea, 36n28; on vice, 94–95 Law, Edmund, 303n152 Law, John, xvi Lea, Phillip, 20n22 Lead, Jane, 319n202 Le Bossu, René, 3n2, 4n7, 8n29, 11n2, 12n6 Le Comte, Louis Daniel, 139n53, 142n70, 144n78, 147nn89–90, 247n62 Lee, William, xv, 47n87, 233n98, 283n70, 283n73, 284n74, 285n77 Lee, William of Culverton, 146n84 left-­hand/right-­hand symbolism, 180, 187, 258n103 Le Gobien, Charles, 147n90

Index leg pain and numbness experience, xxx, 273, 274, 275 Le G ­ rand, Antoine, 21n30 Lemay, J. A. Leo, 35n25, 90n67, 106n140 Leopold I, Emperor, 164n168 Leslie, Charles, 321n207 L’Estrange, Roger, 122n231 Letters (Defoe), 120n218, 253n88, 307n165, 307n168, 308n170, 308n171 Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (Marana), 143n72, 143n74 Letter to a Deist, A (Prideaux), 149n103 Letter to Mr. Bisset (Defoe), 184n240 Levant Com­pany, 44–45n75 Leviathan (Hobbes), 280n58 Leviticus: 20:6, 270n15; 24:5–7, 54n120; 27, 215n29 lewd and immodest discourse, 110–116 Lewis, Sinclair, xxviii Lexicon Technicum (Harris): on aether, 290n97; on circulation of blood, 163n164; on demonstration of proof, 102n124; on “Mechanicks” as mathematical science, 139n54; on moon, 291n103; on natu­ral phenomenon, 100n112; on sun, 150n109; on sympathetic influence, 228n83; on vision, 316n190 libel: Defoe punishment for, 4n10, 108n155; Steele suggested punishment for, 253n88 Libertinism, xxiv, xxxiii, 298–299nn139–140; compared to atheism, 320n205; on nudity, 116n197; of Rochester, 101n121, 110n164, 116n197, 298n139, 320n205; Vaughan poem on, 103n127 liberty, notions of, 298–299 Libraries of Daniel Defoe and Phillips Farewell, The (library sale cata­log), 137n45 Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton, The (Defoe), xvi Life and Recently Discovered Writings (Lee), 167n180, 233n9, 283n70, 283n73, 284n74, 285n77 Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, The (Defoe), xv, xvi, xvii, xxxiv; on American Indians, xxix; as autobiography and adventure novel, xx; on cannibals, 126n5, 136n40, 216n34; Captain’s ­Widow in, 32nn6–7; on captivity of Crusoe at Salé (Sallee), 7n25, 246n57, 262n123; on “concurrence of days,” 214–215n27; Cox abridgment of, xxxv, 9n33, 12n8; on dosings, 280n57; dream of angelic form with spear in, xxxiii; dream predicting arrival of Friday in, 280n55; on “events of t­ hings,” 216n34; as fiction, xix, xx, 3n4; on footprint in sand experience, 273n29; and Gildon, 121n224; on goat encounter, 272n24; on

379 honesty, 32n4, 32n6; hutch as dwelling in, 80n17; on isolation and solitude, xxi; on listening to impulses, xxxii, 313n181; ­mother in, 225n76; on piracy, 312n180; Portuguese Captain in, 36n34, 154n125; on relationship of God and Devil, 99n108, 103n128; as satire, xxxvi(n20); and savage life, 128n9; on saying prayers, 130n15; shipwreck in, 225n77; solitaire as term in, 20n24; on Spanish cruelty in Amer­i­ca, 242n36; travels of Crusoe in, 131n19, 148n95 Life of Antony, The (Athanasius of Alexandria), 21n26, 23n39, 28–29nn68–69 Life of Daniel Defoe, The (Wright), xxxvi(n15), 18–19n17 Life of Faith, The (Baxter), 185n248 Life of John Milton, The (Masson), 309n174 light, experiments on, 315–316n190 lightning: atheist fear of, xxxiii, 322, 331; shelter against, 89 Light Risen in Darkness, The (Bourgignon), 157n138 Limborch, Philipp van, 154n129 limbus, 283; and purgatory, 283n72, 308 lions: Christians thrown to, 176n213; roaring, devil as, 317n195; in stories of saints, 28n66 listening: to impulses, xxxi–­x xxii, 306–314; to voice of providence, xxviii, 205–233 Literary Anecdotes of the Eigh­teenth ­Century (Nichols), 9n33, 11n5 Lives (Plutarch), 135n36, 247n63 Lives of Eminent Phi­los­o­phers (Hicks), 12n10 Lives of the Chief Justices of E ­ ngland, The (Campbell), 87n47 Lives of the Popes, The (Platina), 106n143, 296n130 Livingstone, E. A., 283n71 loadstone, 227–229 Locke, John, xix, xxviii, xxxi, xxxii, 15n4; on education, 73n203, 76n216, 113n181; Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding (see An Essay Concerning ­Human Understanding); example of moving hand, 22n35; on existence of God, 104n132; on ­humans as “short-­sighted creatures,” 216n33; on identity, 274n32; on isolated self, 17n10; lantern image of, 287–288n85; Reasonableness of Chris­tian­ity, 107n147; on sense of time, 191n273; on shame and modesty, 113n181; on soul, 22n33; subjectivist view of the person, xxi; on vision, 151n111 Locke and the Compass of ­Human Understanding (Yolton), 22n33 London: Bedlam as m ­ ental hospital in, 80n15; honesty in, 44; impulse suggesting travel to, xxxi, 306; Royal Exchange in, 20n22, 20n23, 312n179; Saint Paul’s Cathedral in, 26

380 I n d e x Lord Chancellor of Britain, 269n12 Lord’s Prayer, The, 29n71, 107n144, 201n311 Lord Trea­surer of Britain, 269n11 Lorraine, Charles Henri de, Prince de Vaudemont, 220, 221n55 Lot, angels visiting, 223n60 Loughlin, James, 15n2, 19n18, 19n19 Louis XIV, 88n52, 164n170, 167n179, 170n190, 249n72, 257n100 Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (Goubert), 257n100 Louis XIV (Wolf), 168n182 Love, Harold, 37n37, 127n8 Love for Love (Congreve), xxviii, 71n192, 211n15 Lovejoy, Arthur, 128n9 Low Countries, 221n56 Lowther, Richard, 163n164 luck, and divine providence, xxviii, 230–232 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), 100–101nn118–119 Luke: 1:5–25, 223n62; 1:26–38, 223n63; 11:39, 156n133; 11:54, 294n119; 15:11–32, 58n139; 16:19–31, 268n4; 18, 194n282; 18:9–14, 52n111, 117n201; 18:10–14, 165n173; 18:11, 183n237; 18:11–13, 194n283; 18:13, 194n285; 18:18–30, 194n282; 22:52–23:23, 105n137; 24:13–31, 269n9; 24:17, 236 lust, 277, 295; and adultery, 23, 301n149 Lutherans, 161, 162, 165n173, 176n211, 177 lying, 116–124; accusation of, 109n158; and “allegorick history,” 121; essence of, 120; sin of, 116–117 Macartney, George, 144n78, 149n102 Maccabees, Book of, 198n301 Maccartney, George, 85n41 Mack, Maynard, 302n152 Mackenzie, George, xxi, 18n15, 24n45, 110, 110–111nn165–167, 112n174 MacNutt, Francis, 138n52 Magdeburg, sacking of, 249n72 Magnetical Advertisements (Barlow), 227n82 magnetism, 227–229 Magog, 296 Mahmut (Mahomet), as character in Continuation of the Letters of a Turkish Spy, 44n74, 148n96, 158n142, 176n211, 288n89, 305n162 Mahometan (Muhammad): as founder of Islam, 260n114; image as impostor, 260n114; Koran of, 305n162 Mahometan (Muhammad), followers of: in Barbary (North Africa), 133, 136, 246; conversion to Chris­tian­ity, xxix, 247, 248, 260; differing beliefs of, 176n211; in Eu­rope, 245; in India, 137n44, 148; in Indonesia

(E. Indians), 137; number of, 257; and practical atheism, 220n50; in Rus­sia, 238 Maimbourg, M., 176n215 Malebranche, Nicolas, 138n51 malice, 67 Mandarins, xxv, 137n46, 140, 141, 142, 143 Mandev­ille, Bernard, 16–17n9, 32n8, 109n159, 113n180, 113n181, 114n185 Manesseh, King, 270n15 Manley, Delarivier, 122n229 Mann, Charles, 239n24 manners, reformation of, 89n58, 93n82, 94–95n85, 108 Manoah, 223 Mansfield decision, 76n215 mantle of Elijah, 202nn318–319 Manuel, Frank, 93n78 Manufacturer, The (Defoe), xvi, 95n85, 239n25 Man Wholly Mortal (Overton), 308–309n174 Man without Passion (Le ­Grand), 21n30 Marana, Giovanni Paolo, 143n72 Marcus, Ralph, 280n60 Margoliouth, H. M., 21n28 Mark: 10:17–31, 194n282; 10:32–45, 67n181; 10:35–40, 269n10; 12: 41–44, 94n84; 13:13, 236; 13:32, 173n203 Markham, Clements, 138n52 Marlborough, Duke of, 245n53 marriage: to black “Cook-­Maid,” xxiii, 74–76; promise of, 64; and relative honesty, 71–76; subordination of wives to husbands in, 71n181 Marriage A-­la-­Mode (Dryden), 89n59 Mars (god), 139 Mars (planet), 292–293 Martinez, Juan, 239n25 Martyr, Peter, 138n52 Martz, Louis, 17n12 Marvell, Andrew, 21n28 Mary, Virgin, 223, 279 Mary I, Queen, 182n233 Mary II, Queen, xxiv; Black Lists ­under, 89n58; death of, 88, 170n189; and Defoe on parallel dates, 218nn46–47; failure to enforce laws against immorality ­under, 98n103; and reformation of manners, 89n58, 93n82, 94–95n85, 108n151; Sherlock taking oath to, 253n87 Mary­land, 240 masks for deception, 65n172, 78n8, 184 Massie, Robert, 160n155, 247n64, 264n128 Masson, David, 308–309n174 Mather, Cotton, 44n71 Matthew: 2:1–20, 223n64; 2:2, 264n130; 2:12, 279n52; 5:8, 23n41; 5:19, 321n206; 5:28,

Index 23n37, 301n149; 5:33–37, 215n29; 6:1, 189n263; 6:9–13, 201n311; 6:13, 29n71, 107n144; 7:12, 45n81; 7:15, 156n133; 8:13, 216n31; 10:18–19, 307n169; 10:29–30, 212n19; 11:12, 201n310; 12:3, 54n122; 12:3–4, 54n123; 13:19, 294n118; 13:24–30, 177n219; 13:38, 294n118; 13:55–56, 9n32; 13:57, 8n31; 14:22–32, 198n302; 14:25–26, 268n6; 14:26, 269n13; 15:28, 216n31; 16:18–19, 202n315; 17:20, 198n304; 19:21–30, 194n282; 20:20–23, 269n10; 21:9, 171n193; 21:15–16, 332n219; 22–28, 199n305; 23:16, 166n177; 24:14, 236; 24:36, 173n203; 24:51, 187n253; 26:34, 332n220; 26:74–75, 332n220; 26:75, 329n215; 27:3–5, 267n3; 27:19, 223n64; 28:20, 223n66 Matthews, William, 103n127 Maudslay, A. P., 242n38 Mauretania, 263n125 Maximes des Saints (Mothe-­Fénelon), 25n49 maxims of Confucius, 138, 140, 142n68 Mayow, John, 89n57 McKillop, Alan Dugald, 227n79 McLachlan, H. John, 106n141, 109n160 “Mechanicks,” 139, 142 Medes, 143, 211n17 Medina Sidonia, Duke de (Alonso Pérez De Guzmán), 5 meditation: in Quietism, xx, xxvi, 25n49; solitude for, xx, xxi, 17; Wetenhall on, 189n262 Meditations (Defoe), 231n95 Medland, Thomas, 9n33 meekness, 258 melancholy, 275 meletetics technique, 17n10 Memoirs and Observations (Le Comte), 139n53, 142n70, 144n78, 247n62 Memoirs of a Cavalier (Defoe), xvi; on Charles XII, 246n61; concurrence of events in, 215n27, 217n38, 218nn44–45; induction or initiation in, 73n201; protagonist ­going abroad and becoming officer in, 52n109; word of honor in, 64n168 Memoirs of an En­glish Officer (Carleton), 220n51 Menem (Menin), 221 Mentzer, Balthazar, 161n158 Merchant’s Companion, The (Jacob), 48n92 mercury, in venereal disease treatment, 111n170 Mercury (god), 139 Mercury (planet), 293 Mere Nature Delineated (Defoe), xix; on deafness, 87n48; on fools, 85n38, 86n43; on foreign characters, 86n45; on original sin, 113n184; on Peter the Wild Boy, 77n5, 113n184; on savage life, 128n9; on sympathy, 17n9 Merry Andrew, 120, 123n234; use of term, 120n217

381 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 100n114, 196n291 Mexico, 138, 237, 241n34, 242–245 Michael, Archangel, 196n292 Michelangelo, 258n103 Milan, Edict of, 176n214 military: in China, 144–145, 247n62; dice cast on drumhead determining punishment in, 221–222; in Low Countries, 221n56; ser­v ice in, 52, 73n201; in Sweden, 161n157, 246n61; Turkish, 260nn116–117 Miller, Frank, 100n114 Milton, John, xxxi, 81n26, 106n140; influence on Defoe, 150n107, 196n291, 300nn146–147; Paradise Lost (see Paradise Lost) Mind-­Forg’d Manacles (Porter), 273n31, 276n38, 276n39 Miner, Earl, 114n187, 219n49 Minois, Georges, 320n205 miracles, 28n67; of Catholic saints, xxi; of Elisha, 202n319; of Jesus, 216n31 Miscellanies (Aubrey), 215n27, 222n59, 225n75, 278n50 misery, xx Mississippi Com­pany, 166n176, 259nn109–110 Misson, François Maximillian, 156n134 Mist, Nathaniel, 4n10, 9n33, 253n86 Mist’s Weekly Journal, 167n180, 233n98, 283n70, 283n73, 284n74, 285n77 modesty, 112; and shame, 113n181; as virtue, 112n177, 113 Moguls, 137 Mohun, Charles, 85n41, 109n159 Moldavia, 237 Molinos, Miguel de, 25n49, 156–157n138 Moll Flanders (Defoe), xvi, xx; on bankruptcy, 48n91; foul language in, 98n106; gust of inclinations in, 97n98; “indefatigable application” in, 8n29; on pretend cheerful­ ness, 79n11; on “rage of the street,” 62n158; on reader interpretation of text, 39n44 monastic ­orders, silence in, 19n18, 20n21 money, 61–62; circulation of, compared to circulation of blood, 163; counterfeit, 61 Monk, George, First Duke of Albemarle, 255n94 Monk, Samuel, 118n211, 142n67 Montagu, Ralph, 80n19 Montaigne, Michel de, xx, xxi, xxxiv; on books as companions, 25n46; on canni­ bals, 127n7, 136n41; Essays (see Essays); on lying, 118n208, 119n214; on “retire within yourself,” 25n48, 27n62; on solitude, 15n1, 15n4, 16n8, 17n11, 17n13, 18n14, 18n16, 21n27, 24n42, 24n45, 30n74 Montal, Comte de (Charles de Montsaulnin), 221 Montezuma, 138

382 I n d e x Montrose (Scott), 313n184 Montsaulin, Charles de, Comte de Montal, 221 Moon: dia­meter of, 291n104; habitability of, 291; voyage to, 288n88, 288n89, 290n96, 290n100 Moon Calf, The (Browne), xxxvii(n44), 288n88 Moore, John Robert, xv, 44–45n75, 85n41 Moors of Barbary, 133, 246, 262n123 Moral Essay, Preferring Solitude to Publick Employment, A (Mackenzie), 18n15, 111n166 Moral Essays (Seneca), 66n174 Moral Gallantry, A Discourse (Mackenzie), 110n165, 111n167, 112n174 morality: honesty in, xxii; and immorality of conversation, xxiv, 77–124; in society, compared to in solitude, xxi; and virtue, 97; and wit, 83nn31–32 “Moral Paradox” (Mackenzie), 112n174 Moral Sentiments (Smith), 193n280 Morals of Confucius, 138n51, 138nn47–48, 140n60, 142n68 Morden, Robert, 20n22 More Reformation, A Satyr (Defoe), 40n47, 95n86, 108n151, 112n172 Moritz, Karl Philipp, 156n138 Morrison, Samuel Eliot, 316n191 Mortalists, 308n174 Morton, Charles, 102n122, 195n288, 315–316nn190–191 Moses, 197n300, 224n70, 243, 270n15 Most Compleat Compendium of Geography, A (Echard), 155n132, 158n141 Mottelay, P. Fleury, 227n82 Motteux, Peter, 5n14 Mr. Badman (Bunyan), xxvii Muhammad (Mahometan): followers of (see Mahometan, followers of); as founder of Islam, 260n114; Koran of, 305n162 mulatto, and “black Maletta look’d Man,” xxiii, 74–76 murder, 231, 232; in alcohol use, 57–58; commandment on, 189n264, 231n93; and hom­i­cide by misadventure, 231n94; in ­mental incapacity, 59n144 Muscovy, 159, 160, 236, 237, 238; Czar of, 246, 247, 262 ­music in church ser­v ices, 161n159 Myths and Legends of Babylonia and Syria (Spence), 153n121 Naaman, story of, 168n181 Nabal, 54, 73 nakedness, 113–114; of Adam and Eve, 112n178, 113n184, 116n196; and decency of clothes, 116 Namur, ­Battle of, 170nn189–190, 220n51

Nantes, Edict of, 164n170, 167n178, 167n179, 168n182, 249n72 Narva, B ­ attle of, 160, 246n60 natu­ral law, 97n96, 207n5; in conditions of necessity, xxii, xxiii, 49n98; duty of d ­ oing good in, 33n9; on just war, 250n74; scientific explanation of, 227n81 natu­ral religion, 207 nature: light of, 129; Newtonian view of, 290n98; scientific understanding of, 227n81; second c­ auses in, 23n40, 28n67, 208n7; signs of God in, xxviii, 23n40, 208n8, 214n25, 216n35; voice of, 214; worship of, 147n89, 148n99 Nazarenus (Toland), 105n138, 106n140 Nebuchadnezzar, 29, 152, 176n212 Nebuchadnezzar II, 153n121 necessity, xxii–­x xiii, xxxvi–­x xxvii(n32); and cannibalism, xxii, 50; and honesty, 43, 48, 49–50, 53–58; and moral judgment, 37n36; and self-­preservation, xxiii, 50n101, 54n121; and theft, xxii, 49, 55n127 Needham, Joseph, 139n53, 144n75 negative religion and negative virtue, 183–203 negative statements, difficulty in proof of, 102n125 Negroes, 136. See also Blacks Nehemiah 7:63–65, 281n61 Neo-­Platonists, 99n107 New Atalantis (Manley), 122n229 Newbold, Williams, 125n2 New Discovery of an Old Intreague, A (Defoe), 298n139 New E ­ ngland, 44, 240, 241, 311–312 New F ­ amily Instructor, A (Defoe), xvii; on Arianism, 106n140; on devil, 303n154; on education, 72n193; on fiat for creation of world, 297–298n135; on fiction, 118n211, 121n222; on romance, 38n40, 121–122n227; on Saint Peter in Rome, 155n132; on salvation, 190n270; on Trinity, 90n67, 297–298n135 New Jersey, East and West, 240 New Law-­Dictionary (Jacob): on blasphemy, 108n156; on bond, 45n79; on broken promise, 69n185; on chancery, 33n12; on contracts for sale of goods, 64n166; on copy-­holders, 34n20; on court of conscience, 33n14; on ejectments, 51n104; on fee-­farms, 35n24; on free-­holders, 34n18; on inden­ ture, 45n80; on insurance rules, 200n308; on promise of marriage, 64n167; on salvage of shipwreck, 36n28; on writ of rebellion, 34n16 New Testament, 105; on “be it unto thee,” 216n31; on fin­ger of God, 208n6; parables

Index of, xxv; on rash vows, 215n29; on salvation, 281n62; on spirits, 279n53 Newton, Isaac, 91n68, 105n136, 150n109, 214n25, 228n83, 291n103, 316n190 New Voyage Round the World, A (Dampier), 137n42 New Voyage Round the World, A (Defoe), xxvi; on savage life, 128n9; on “shoot the gulf,” 185n248; on sun worship, 152n117; “voiture” or carriage in, 202n317; on worship of heavens by natives, 149n103 New Voyage to Italy, A (Misson), 156n134 New Voyage to the Levant (Dumont), 155n131, 156n134 New York, 240, 241 Nicea, First Council of, 106n140 Nicholas, Saint, 160, 161 Nicholas, Thomas, 243n41 Nichols, John, 9n33, 11n5 Nicolson, Marjorie, 151n110 Nieuhof, Johann, 139n56 nightmares, 273n31 Nine Years’ War, 256n98 Noah, 142n67, 143n72, 242 Noon (Hogarth), 167n180 Norris, John, 264n128 North Africa, 133n28, 242n39, 262n124 North Amer­i­ca: Eu­ro­pean colonies in, 237, 239, 240–242; native Indians in (See American Indians) Northern Ireland, 249 Novak, Maximillian: The California Edition of the Works of John Dryden, 17n9, 132n20, 275n37; and The Consolidator, 139n54; Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions, 4n10, 7n25, 44n71, 48n92, 133n27, 175n207, 253n86, 307n165, 312n178; “Defoe, the Occult and the Deist Offensive during the Reign of George I,” 35n25, 90n67, 106n140; Defoe and the Nature of Man, xxxvi–­x xxvii(nn32–33), 37n36, 49n98, 126n5, 136n40, 186n252; “Defoe’s Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” xxxvi(n18); “Defoe’s Theory of Fiction,” 118n211, 120n218; “Der Fleischloser Freitag,” 127n6; En­glish Lit­er­a­ture in the Age of Disguise, 184n240; and Essay upon Proj­ects, xxxvii(n39), 20n22, 47n87; Gallantry a-­la-­Mode introduction, 74n208; “Humanum est errare,” 54n119; and The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures, 20n24; “The Unmentionable and the Ineffable in Defoe’s Fiction,” 304n156; Wild Man Within, 128n9 Nova Scotia, 237n15, 240, 241n31 novel, Bible viewed as, 105 Novels and Miscellaneous Works (Defoe), 104n129, 105n135, 151n110

383 nudity, 113–114; of Adam and Eve, 112n178, 113n184, 116n196; and decency of clothes, 116 Numbers: 22:9–12, 223n64; 22:20, 223n64; 22:21–38, 315n189; 22:23, 201n313; 22:31, 201n313 Numidia, 263n125 Nussbaum, Frederick, 248n69 Nys, Ernest, 250n74 Nystad, Treaty of, 88n52, 264n128 Obdora, 237n18 obedience: of ­children, 142n67, 142n70, 293n113; and disobedience of Adam and Eve, 185n248, 195n286 obscene language, 112n172, 116n197 Ockley, Simon, 287n83 Of Royall Educacion (Defoe), 72n193 Of the Law of Nature and Nations (Pufen­ dorf), 36n28, 50n99, 55nn127–128 Of the Laws of Chance (Arbuthnot), 222n58 Of the Learning of the Chineses (Wotton), 137n46 Of the Mahometan Religion (Reeland), 305n162 Of the Nature of Th ­ ings (Lucretius), 101n119 “Of the Rustick and Hercules,” 219n49 Ogg, David, 164n170, 248n69 Ogilby, John, 114n187, 139n56, 140n57, 140n62, 143n71, 219n49 old age, 125–126 Old Bailey (Bayly), 108 Old Gentlewoman, xxv, xxix, 126–130 Oldham, John, 115nn192–193 Oldmixon, John, 240n29 Old Testament: angels and spirits in, 279n53, 302n151; Canaanites in, 244n47; on coming of Messiah, 264n130; on fin­ger of God, 208n6; on happiness, 187n258; on “have him in Derision,” 187n257; and “Levitical Dispensation,” 282n66; on “lying tongue,” 120n220; New Testament replacing Old Law of, 281n62; on rash vows, 215n29 Olearius, Adam, 237n18, 238n19 Olitzky, Kerry, 252n82 omens, xxviii, 225, 226, 314–315; and laws of probability, 222n59 O’Neil, John, 103n127 On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies (Gilbert), 227n82, 228n84, 228n85 On the Trinity (Augustine), 106n140 Oracle of Delphi, 303n153 oracles, prophecies of, 281n61 original sin, 38n42, 56n130, 66n175, 92n75, 95–96n90, 113n184, 114n189, 276n40 Orthodox Eastern Church, 159n152 Ottoman Empire, 44n70, 45n77, 248n69 Overton, Richard, 308–309n174

384 I n d e x Ovid, 100n114, 196n291 Owens, W. R., xv Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, The, 283n71, 283n72 Ozell, John, 5n14 Pachome, Saint, 27n61 paganism, 69, 131, 136, 138, 156; and Christian world, xxix, 235–264; destruction of idols in, xxv, xxix; and devil, xxxi; in ­England, 251; in India, 252; prophecies in, 281n61 Pailin, David, 148n98 palsy and paralysis, 274nn34 pandemonium, 300–301n147 Pantheon (Pomey), 100n113, 149n101; Tooke adaptation, 100n113, 149n101, 193n279 Papal Court at Rome, 155n132 parables, 121; on evil servant, 187n253; in New Testament, xxv; on prodigal son, 58nn139–140, 280n56; on Publican and Pharisee, 165n173, 184n242, 194nn282–283 Paradise Lost (Milton): on dream of Eve, 301n148; on happiness of Adam and Eve, 294n114; on Hell, 132n25, 195n291, 196n292, 293n114; inf luence on Defoe, 150n107, 196n291; on pandemonium, 300–301n147; on Satan, 52n113, 81n26, 117n206, 132n25, 276n40, 293–294n114; on serpent, 117n206, 276n40 parallelisms, 157n140, 218nn44–46 paralysis, 274nn33–34 Parker, Thomas, xxxii, 307n166, 307n168, 308n170 parrot, Crusoe dialogue with, xxx, 273–274 Parsons, Talcott, 190n270 Parthia, 143 Partridge, John, 313n182 Pascal, Blaise, xx, xxxiii, 102n123, 222n58 passions, 125; facial expression of, 78; rela­ tionship to reason and ­w ill, 125n2; and solitude, 17, 18n14, 19, 21n30, 22; as torrent, 125n1 Passions of the Mind in General, The (Wright), 125n2 Passover, 181n231 Patey, Douglas, xxviii, 208n7, 211n15 patience, xx, 254–255 Patterns of Madness in the Eigh­teenth ­Century (Ingram), 273n31 Paul, Saint, 26, 29, 129n10, 132n20, 178, 193, 304, 330; and Book of Common Prayer, 25n47; conversion experience, 201n309, 201n312, 281, 330n217; on “­doing evil that good may come,” 50n100; as hermit, 28n68; on obedience to heavenly vision, 223n67; on original sin, 56n130; on “putting away lying,” 123n235

peace: and contentment, 81; and happiness, 81–82; and understanding, 166 Peck, Harry, 217n37 peculiars, use of term, 77n4 Pegis, Anton, 99n108, 102n126 Pellew, Edward, Lord of Exmouth, 262n124 Peltonen, Markku, 109n159 Pennsylvania, 240 Pepys, Samuel, 103n127, 312n179 Perrin, Bernadotte, 247n63 persecution, xxvii, 167–168, 176–177, 181–182, 249; of Protestants, 159, 165–168, 249n72; in Roman Empire, 176n214, 181, 246n59; by “Tongue,” 252, 253, 256; and zeal in religion, 183, 249 Persia, 148, 176n211, 236; sun worship in, xxvi, 149, 153 Peru, 138, 237, 245 Peter, Saint, 155, 178, 202n315, 223, 271n19, 281, 329–330, 332 1 Peter: 3:8, 84n35; 3:15, 84n35; 4:5, 257n101; 5:8, 231n92, 317n195 2 Peter 2:18, 277n45 Peter the ­Great (Massie), 160n155, 247n64, 264n128 Peter the ­Great (Peter I), 88n52, 160n154, 246n55, 246nn60–61, 247n64, 256n96, 264n128 Peter the Wild Boy, 77n5, 113n184 Petty, William, 257n102 Peyrefitte, Alain, 144n78, 149n102 Pharisees, 54n123, 117, 156, 183; pride of, 117n201, 165n173, 183n237, 194; and Publican parable, 165n173, 184n242, 194nn282–283; as religious hypocrites, 166n177 Philadelphians, 319n202 Philippians: 2:3, 84n36; 4:7, 166n174 Philip II, 5n16 Philistines, 270n16 Philosophical Papers (Austin), 69n185 Phoenicians, 244 piety of Mary I, 88 Pilate, Pontius, 223 Pilgrim’s Pro­gress (Bunyan), xxv, 121, 123n240 pillory, 7n24, 108; Hymn to the Pillory (Defoe), 95n86; notices of crimes posted on, 120n219 Pine, John, ii piracy, 262n124, 312–313n180; of Barbary pirates, xxix, 246n57, 262nn123–124, 312–313n180 Pirate Coast, The (Zacks), 262n124 Pirate Wars, The (Earle), 262n124 Pitt, Moses, 47n86 pity as virtue, 16–17n9 Pix (Pyx), 158

Index plague, 104, 197n300; and flaming sword image, 201n313; prediction of, 211n18; and signs of God, 224n70 planets, 151–152, 287–293; Crusoe among, 265; habitability of, xxx, 150n108, 287–289, 291, 292–293; in solar system, xxxi, 291–293; travel to, 287–290 Plan of the En­glish Commerce, A (Defoe), 146n83, 240n29, 241n34 Platina, Baptista, 106n143, 296n130 Plato, 67n181, 80n14, 316n190 Plautinus, Aulus, 250n75 Playford, Henry, 98n105 Playford, John, 98n105 Pleasant Historie of the Conquest of the Weast India, The (Gómara), 243n41, 243n42 plough-­tail, 92 Plutarch, 135n36, 247n63 Poems and Letters (Margoliouth), 21n28 Poems on Affairs of State (Ellis), 40n47, 40n49, 58n143, 81n23, 160n154 poetry, xxvii, 150–152, 187, 187–188n258; blas­ phemous, 104; “Eternity,” xxvii–­x xviii, 190–193; “Faith,” xxvii–­x xviii, 195–202; of Oldham, 115nn192–193; of Rochester, xxvii, 190n272; of Suckling, 115n192, 115n193; of Wither, 255 Poetry of Meditation (Martz), 17n12 Poland, xxvi, 106n141, 158–159, 237 Po­liti­cal History of the Devil, The (Defoe), xvii, xxx, xxxi, xxxiv, xxxvii(n37); on Adam and Eve, 301n148; on Adamantine wall, 196n291; on Arianism, 106n140; on atheism, 220n50, 324n209; on Catholic Church, 296n130; on denial of God and Devil, 99n110, 327n213; on devil as e­ nemy of mankind, 249n73; on devil lurking in wait, 294n119; and “Dev­i l’s Politicks,” 298n138; on divine emanation, 213nn20–21; on dreams, 299–300n143; on evil forces, 52n113; on fear of devil, 216n32; on “for dame religion as for punk,” 176n210; on “full of emptiness,” 122n232; on ­f uture knowledge of devil, 303n154; on grotesque repre­sen­ta­tions of devil, 141n65; on haunt­ ing by devil, 274n35, 317n193; on heathen world, 132n20; on hell, 298n137, 304n156; on indefatigable application of devil, 8n29; on Jesuits in China, 156n135; on life on other plants, 150n108; on limitations of ­human faculties, 286n80; notion of making contract with devil in, 91n71; on Oracle of Delphi, 303n153; on power of devil, 294n116, 295n124; on prepossessed by spirits, 271n22; on purgatory, 283n72; on second-­sight, 313n182; on spirits taking form of the dead, 318n197; tone in, 277n44, 297n133; on

385 vapours, 273n28; on volunteers in ser­v ice of the devil, 93n81; on white and black dev­ils, 122n230; on wickedness of mankind, 48n89, 91n72; on witchcraft of American Indians, 270n18 Politics (Rackham), 15n3 Poltava, ­Battle of, 246n60, 246n61 Pomey, François Antoine, 100n113, 149n101 Pomfret, John, 18n15 Poole, Matthew, 168n181, 232n96, 271n20; Annotations of (see Annotations on the Bible) Poor Man’s Plea, The (Defoe), 89n58, 94n84, 95n88, 98n104, 135–136n39, 203n320 poor population, harvest shared with, 34n19 Pope, Alexander, xxxv(n6), 183n238, 302n152, 321n207 Pope, Walter, 127n6 porcelain, Chinese, 142n67, 146 Porter, David, 285n75 Porter, Roy, 273n31, 276n38, 276n39 Portugal, 154, 237, 239; auto de fe in, xxvi, 154n126; in Brazil, 131, 136, 237, 245; and conversation of foreign characters, 87; Inquisition in, xxvi, 154nn126–127 Portuguese Captain, xxii, 32n7, 35, 36–37, 154n125 Potsdam, Edict of, 164n170 poverty, 57–58; and harvest shared with poor, 34n19 powwow (paw waw), 270n18, 295n126 practical atheism, 220 Practice of Physick, The (Riverius), 271n23 Praise of Folly (Erasmus), 87n46 prayer: change through, 181n229; solitude for, xx, 20n26 predestination, 92n75, 181n229, 209n10, 226n78, 227nn80–81 Presbyterians, xxxvii(n41), 132n20, 177, 226n78, 249 Pre­sent State of the Parties, The (Defoe), 72n194, 175n209, 217n42 pride, 67; of Pharisee, 117n201, 165n173, 183n237, 194; of Satan, 117n206; and self-­conceit, 84–85; as sin, 43 Prideaux, Humphrey, 149n103, 260n114 Pride’s Purge, 255n93 Primitive Chris­tian­ity Revived (Whiston), 91n68 primitivism, 128n9 Princes de Cleves (Lafayette), xvii Principia (Newton), 214n25 Princi­ple Navigations, The (Hakluyt), 239n25 prism experiments, 316n190 prisoners. See imprisonment Prmitivism and the Idea of Pro­gress (Whitney), 128n9

386 I n d e x probability, 222nn58–59 Probability and Literary Form (Patey), 208n7, 211n15 Procopius, 244n48 Prodigal Son, parable of, 58nn139–140, 280n56 Prometheus, 100 promises: contingencies of, xxiii; honesty in, xxiii, 63–70; of marriage, 64; messianic, 235n2, 235n4; of payment, 60–61, 68–70; to p ­ eople of Israel, 244n49 propagating the faith (de propaganda fide), 296n130 property rights of shipowners, 36n28 prophecies, 223, 280n59, 281n61; in second-­ sight of Highlander, 211n18, 313n182 prophets, false, in sheep’s clothing, 156n133 Prospect of London, A (Lea and Morden), 20n22 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber), 190n270 Protestantism, xxi, xxvi, 135–136, 177, 178, 237, 248–249; and disputes with Catholic Church, 248n68, 249n72; in E ­ ngland, 252n81; in France, 164n170, 167–168; of gentlemen, 83n30; in Hungary, 248n69; Lord’s Prayer in, 107n144; miracles in, 28n67; on necessities of life, 26n54; in Poland, 159; on salvation, 132n20, 165n173; on soul ­a fter death, 308n173 Proverbs: 1:22, 215n28; 3:13, 188n258; 6:17, 120n220; 6:30, 49n96; 7:22, 86n44; 12:15, 86n44; 12:18, 252n83; 12:19, 120n220; 12:22, 120n220; 13:6, 294n119; 18:2, 86n44; 18:13, 12n7; 21:6, 120n220; 22:1, 65n170; 22:3, 210n13, 219n48; 22:27, 47n87; 24:16, 55n126, 56n134; 26:28, 120n220; 27:12, 210n13, 219n48; 27:22, 86n44 providence, 69; and concurrences, 214–215, 216, 217; as divine emanation, 213; listening to voice of, xxviii, 205–233; and luck, xxviii, 230–232; and signs of God, xxviii; “super-­intendency” of, xxxiii, 226, 333; weak reliance on, 219n49 Prus­sia, 159, 162n162, 163, 164n168 Prynne, William, 161n159 Psalms, 206–207n3; 7:11, 258n106; 8:2, 332n219; 8:3–4, 224n71; 14:1, 102n122, 319n201; 37, 188n258; 37:12, 187n256; 37:19, 217n40; 70:27, 325n211; 72:8, 235n3; 78:8, 9n34; 78:55, 243n43; 80:8, 243n43; 90:2, 191n275; 102:19, 290n99; 102:25, 290n99; 109:2, 120n220; 109:3, 253; 109:18, 253; 114, 197n299; 115:4, 140n61; 119:51, 187n257; 135:15, 140n61 Pseudodoxia Epidemica (Browne), 228n83 pseudonymous and anonymous publications, xviii

Publican and Pharisee, parable of, 165n173, 184n242, 194nn282–283 Publick Employment and an Active Life Preferred to Solitude (Evelyn), 18n15 “Publisher’s Introduction, The,” xviii, 11–12 Pufendorf, Samuel, xxii; on duty to do good, 33n9; on lawful and just war, 250n74; on law of nature, 136n40; Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 36n28, 50n99, 55nn127–128; on necessity, xxiii, 50n99, 55nn127–128 Punic Wars, 244n45 punishment: in China, 142, 143n71; in Chris­tian­ity, fear of, 107n147; for crime, fear of, 216n32; of Defoe for libel, 4n10, 108n155; deprivation of God as, 132n25; of generation leaving Egypt, 9n34; of Huguenots, 168n182; in military, dice cast on drumhead determining, 221–222; in pillory, 7n24, 95n86, 108, 120n219; in purgatory, 283n72; and sin, 105n136, 217, 217–218n42; in Socinianism, 107n147 Purchas, Samuel, 139n53 purgatory, 283; and limbus, 283n72, 308 Puritans, xix, 161n159 Pygmalion, 244n46 Pythagoreans, 316n190 Qua­dru­ple Alliance, 264n128 Quakers, 7n27, 107n148, 287n83 Quest for Security, The (Roberts), 163n163, 164n168, 248n68 Quietism, xx, xxvi, 25, 27n62, 80n14, 156, 156–157nn138–139 Quit-­Rent, 34, 35 Quixotism, 5, 5–6n18 race, xxxvii(n36). See also Blacks Rackham, H., 15n3, 162n160 Rake’s Pro­gress, The (Hogarth), 80n17 Raleigh, Walter, 92n78, 121n226, 239 Ramadan, 134 Rambler, The (Johnson), xviii, xxxv(n13) Ramillies, victory at, 168n183, 171n195, 217n38 Ramsay, John, 249n70 rape, 21n28 rapin (rapine), as plunder, pillage, robbery, 133, 135, 263 “Rash Vows” (Sanderson), 215n29 Rawson, Claude, 127n6 readers and audience of text, xxxiv–­x xxv, 4n5, 39n44 Read’s Weekly Journal, 253n86 reason, relationship to passions and ­w ill, 125n2 Reasonableness of Chris­tian­ity (Locke), 107n147 recoils of the mind, use of term, 79n9

Index Red Sea, parting of, 197n298 Reeland, Adrian, 305n162 Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (Wotton), 138n50 reformation of manners, 89n58, 93n82, 94–95n85, 108 Reformation of Manners (Defoe), 40n49, 58n143, 85n39, 89n58, 95n86 Rehearsal, The (Leslie), 321n207 Reichwein, Adolf, 146n88 relative honesty, xxiii, 71–76 Religio Laici (Dryden), 132n20, 153n123 Religio Medici (Browne), 115n193 religion, xxiv–­x xxiii; in China, xxv, 137–147, 153n123; Chris­tian­ity in (see Chris­tian­ity); and conscience, 35n26; and conversation, 82–83; “Eternity” and “Faith” poems on, xxvii–­x xviii; fear as basis of, 130; of gentle­ men, 82–83n30; God in (see God); and happiness, xxiv, 82–83; hy­poc­risy in, xxvii; natu­ral, 207; negative, and negative virtue, 183–203; as “politick cheat,” 103, 105n139; and proportion between Christian and pagan worlds, xxix, 235–264; revealed, 207; in Roman Empire, 92n77, 135, 139, 140, 141, 149, 156n135, 176n214; scale of relative value in, xxvi; solitude for prayer and meditation in, xx, xxi, 20n26; tolerance for differing beliefs of, xxvii, xxix, 178n223, 253n87; and voice of providence, xxviii, 205–233; as wager, xxxiii, 102; worldwide differences in, xxv–­x xvii, xxix, 125–203; zeal in, 175, 177, 182, 249, 264 Religion and the Decline of Magic (Thomas), 267n2 Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, The (Jastrow), 153n121 Religions of Mongolia, The (Hessig), 148n99 Religious Courtship (Defoe), 71n188, 188n261 repentance, xxxii, 57, 66, 194–195, 203; of atheist, xxxiii, 328–330 repression of disturbing thoughts, 79n12, 184n244 restitution, 57 Restoration: concealment and deception in, 78n8, 184n240; dancing masters in, 74n208; division between fools and knaves in, 58n141; gentleman concept in, 83n30; reforms in, xxiv; and Spectator journal, 77n1; wit in, 83n31 revealed religion, 207 Revelation: 7:1, 236n5; 17:4, 256n97; 21:1–27, 264n130 Review, The (Defoe), xxxvi(n32); on Atheisti­ cal Club, 321n207; on be­hav­ior against slander, 186n251; on capture of Hotham, 218n44; on cele­brations of victory over

387 French, 168–169n183, 171n195, 171n196; on Charles V, 242n39; on civilizing influence of Chris­tian­ity, 134n34; on concurrence of providence, 216n35; on concurring circum­ stances, 217n38; on Cortés, 242n35; on credit, 60n151; on debtors, 47n87; on denominative virtues, 42n56; on drunkenness, 98n104; on dueling, 109n159; on fear of death, 196n294; on Hercules fable, 219n49; on honesty, 48n88; Madman character in, 168–169n183, 171n195, 171n196; on modesty, 112n177; on moral and religious Turk, 133n29; on necessity, xxii, 37n36, 43n65; neighbour’s loaf image in, 49n94; on Oldham poetry, 115n192; on patience, 254n89; on Peter the ­Great, 246n60; on promise of marriage, 64n167; on prophecies from Highlander, 211n18; on salvation, 132n20; on Solomon’s Fools, 12n7, 86n44; on Suckling poetry, 115n192; on “surfeiting and nauseous,” 114n190; on Swedish military, 246n61; on Teckley, 248n69; on Trinity, 90n67; on voyage to moon, 290n100; on wind, 286n81 Reynolds, John, 232n96 Rhodes (Greek island), 260n117 Ricci, Matthew, 153n123 Rich, John, 120n217 Richard I, 36n28 Richardson, Samuel, xvii, 4n8 Ridley, Nicolas, 155n132, 182, 182n234, 182n235 right-­hand/left-­hand symbolism, 180, 187, 258n103 Rimmon (Syrian thunder god), 168n181 Ripa, Cesare, 5n15 Riverius, Lazarus, 271n23, 272n28, 274nn34 robbery, 230, 231 Roberts, Penfield, 163n163, 164n168, 248n68 Robertson, Ritchie, 157n138 Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing (Hutchins), 12n8 Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticiz’d (Gildon), 137n46, 156n135 “Robinson Crusoe in Outer Space” (Rothman), 289n92 Rochester, John Wilmot, xxi, xxiv, xxv, 127, 191n276; admiration of Defoe for, 104n130; concept of God, 320n205; conversion to Chris­tian­ity, 101–102; on cowards, 134n33; on fear and courage, 40n48; on fools, 58n141; on knaves, 37n37, 41n50, 58n141; “lewd song” incorrectly ascribed to, 103; as libertine, 101n121, 110n164, 116n197, 298n139, 320n205; on nudity, 116n197; Satyr against Reason and Mankind, xxi, 37n37, 40n48, 41n50, 127n8, 134n33; on self-­interest, 16n5, 37n37; “Upon Nothing” poem, xxvii, 82n29, 190n272

388 I n d e x Rochester-­S aville Letters, The (Wilson), 116n197 Rodes, David, 74n208 romance, 121n222; chimney-­corner, 123; Defoe on, 5n15, 118n211, 121–122n227, 304n157; Gildon on, 4n5; Richardson on, 4n8 Roman Empire, 121n226, 244n45; animal sacrifice in, 315n187; augurs in, 225n75, 314; cruelty t­ oward prisoners in, 134n34; decline of, 92n76; destruction of second ­Temple by, 143n72; in ­England, 250–251; Mauretania in, 263n125; observation of days in, 217; omens in, 225n75, 314–315; religion in, 92n77, 135, 139, 140, 141, 149, 156n135, 176n214 Roman History (Echard), 135n36 Romania, 237n11 “Roman Legend,” use of term, 122n227 Romans: 2:14-5, 132n20; 2:16, 187n255; 3:8–9, 50n100; 5:12, 56n130; 7:24, 67n178 Rome, Papal Court at, 155n132 Rooke, George, 145n82 Rose, Craig, 170n190 Rosetta Stone, 284n75 Røstvig, Maren-­Sofie, 187n258 Rothman, Irving, 20n24, 141n65, 289n92 Rothschild, Jon, 144n78, 149n102 Rousseau, George, 151n110 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, xxi, xxxvi(n27) Rowe, Nicholas, 275n37 Rowland, William, 271n23 Roxana (Defoe), xx, 93n79, 167n180 Royal Commentaries of the Yncas (Vega), 138n52 Royal Exchange of London, 20n22, 20n23, 312n179 Royal Sovereign (En­glish ship), 145 Rufinus of Aquileia, 20n21 Rus­sia: and conversation of foreign charac­ ters, 87; Crusoe in, 147n91, 247n65, 289n91; Peter the ­Great of, 88n52, 160n154, 246n55, 246nn60–61, 247n64, 256n96, 264n128; provisions needed for travel in, 247nn64–65; religion in, xxvi, 159–160, 238, 256n96; and Sweden, 88n51, 88n52, 246nn60–61, 264n128 Rus­sia in the Age of Peter the ­Great (Hughes), 160n156, 256n96 Rus­sian Orthodox Church, 159n152 Rycaut, Paul, 106n143, 296n130 Ryswick, Treaty of, 88n51, 88n52, 256n98 Sacheverell trial (1710), 4n10 Sackville, Charles, 105n139 Sacred Theory of the Earth, A (Burnet), xxxvii(n45), 288n90 sacrifice, animals offered for, 315n187

sadness, involuntary, xxx Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 249n72 Saint Paul’s Cathedral (London), 26 Saints: crossing river with crocodile, 27; as hermits, 15n2, 20–21n26, 27, 28n68; lions in stories of, 28n66. See also specific saints Saint’s Everlasting Rest, The (Baxter), 93n81 Sale, George, 305n162 Salé (Sallee), captivity of Crusoe at, 7n25, 31n1, 131n19, 246n57, 262n123 Salgado, James, 155n130 Salkeld, William, 76n215 Salter’s Hall dispute, xxiv, xxvi, 90n65, 90n67, 106n141, 133n27, 174n204, 174n207 salvage, laws of, 36n28 salvation, 132, 190n270, 281n62; assurance of, 196n295; universal, 267n2, 319n202 Samson, 223n61 Samuel, apparition of old man appearing as, 270, 271 Samuel, Geoffrey, 148n99 1 Samuel: 1:9–17, 73n200; 3:13, 73n200; 21:3–6, 54n120; 25:1–38, 54n124; 28:6, 280n59; 28:7–25, 270n16; 28:15, 270n17 2 Samuel: 11–12:24, 53n118; 11:2–4, 73n199; 11:15–17, 73n198; 20:1–10, 117n204 Sancho, Ignatius, 75n212 Sanderson, Robert, 215n29 Santa Marta, 237 Sarpi, Paolo, 154n127 Sartre, Jean-­Paul, 79n12, 184n244 Satan. See devil satire, xix–xx, 92; Defoe definition of, xxxvi(n20); Don Quixote as, 5n16; Po­liti­cal History of the Dev­il (Defoe) as, xxxi; of religion, 104 Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica (Horace), 186n251 Saturn, 292 Satyr against Reason and Mankind, A (Rochester), xxi, 37n37, 40n48, 41n50, 127n8, 134n33 Satyr against Wit (Blackmore), 83n31 Saul, 270n16, 271n20, 280n59, 281n64; and David, 53n116, 54n120, 171n193 savage life, 128 Saville, Henry, 116n197 Saxony, 165 Sayings of the ­Fathers, The, 20n21 scandal, 112n177, 188 Scandal Club, The, 112n177 Schonhorn, Manuel, 20n24 Science and Civilization in China (Needham), 139n53 Scobie, Edward, 75n212 Scotland, 177, 249; honesty in, 44, 45; u ­ nion with ­England, 177n218

Index Scott, Walter, 313n184 Scott, William, 45n75 scoundrel, use of term, 67n177 Scripture-­Doctrine of the Trinity, The (Clarke), 106n140 second c­ auses, 23, 28n67, 54n121, 208n7 Second Collection of the Writings of the True Born En­glishman (Defoe), 104n129 second sight, 211n18, 313 Second-­Sighted Highlander, The (Defoe), 211n18, 313n182 second T ­ emple, destruction of, 143n72 Second Volume of the Writings of the True-­Born En­glishman (Defoe), 42n55 Secord, Arthur, xxxvi(n32), 12n7 Seidel, Michael, 7n22, 20n22, 47n87, 139n54 Selden, Raman, 115n193 self, and imperfection of resolutions, 21n27 self-­conceit, 84–85 self-­defense: right of, 50n101; war as lawful and just in, 250n74 self-­interest, 32n8, 37n37 Self-­Interest before Adam Smith (Force), 32n8 self-­preservation, as necessity, xxiii, 50n101, 54n121 Seltzer, Alex, 80n19 Seneca, 66n174 seraphim, 279n53 Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe with his Vision of the Angelick World (Defoe), xvi, xviii–­xix; audience of, xxxiv–­xxxv, 4n5; autobiographical narratives in, xxxiv; bibliographic descriptions of, 337–349; Crusoe among the planets image in, 265; as fable, 3, 4n7; first edition of (1720), v, xv; on honesty, xxii, 31–76; on immoral­ ity of conversation, 77–124; on listening to voice of providence, xxviii, 205–233; as musing of Crusoe, xxxiv; on necessity, xxiii; preface by Crusoe, 3–9; publisher’s introduction, 11–12; on religion around the world, 125–203; Serious Observations as alternative title for, 13; on solitude, 15–30; title page of, v, xviii, xxxviii(nn1–5), 1, 337, 340, 342, 344, 346; on vice, xxiv; as “Written by Himself,” v, xviii, xxxviii(n4) Sermon on the Mount, 23n36, 45n81, 189m263, 321n206 Sermon Preach’d to the Protestants of Ireland Now in London, A (Ramsay), 249n70 Sermons on Several Occasions (Wesley), 65n171 serpent, 52n113, 117n206, 276n40, 294n118 servants: Blacks in E ­ ngland as, 76n213; evil, parable of, 187n253; in extended f­ amily, 71n188

389 Severus, Lucius Septimius, 246n59 sexual desires, 25n50, 97–98, 115n193; and adultery, 23, 301n149; and gust of inclina­ tions, 97n98; and lust, 23, 277, 295, 301n149 Shaftesbury, Third Earl of, (Anthony Ashley Cooper), xxii, xxiv, 17n9, 113n184, 218n46 Shakespeare, William, 78n7, 109n158, 125n2, 275n37 Shakespeare Head Edition of the Novels and Selected Writings of Daniel Defoe, The, 7n26, 64n163, 136n39 Shalmaneser V, 143n72 shame: absence of, 118n209; of Adam and Eve, 116n196; and modesty, 113n181 Sheba, Queen of, 163n165 Shehab, Rafi Ullah, 134n30 Shelton, Thomas, 5n14 Sherburn, George, 183n238 Sherlock, William, 253n87 shew bread, 54 Shiites, 176n211 Shimada, Takau, 137n46, 138n50 shipwrecked vessels, 36, 209, 225 Shortest Way with the Dissenters, The (Defoe), xxxvi(n18), 7n24, 39n44, 64n163, 136n39, 198n303 short-­sighted creatures, ­humans as, 216 Siam, 147 Siberia, xxv–­x xvi, xxix; barbarian tribe in, 131n18; conversion to Chris­t ian­ity in, 256n96; Crusoe in, 44n70, 289n91; idols in, 109n161, 147, 149n102, 238n19, 256n96; pagans in, 237; Peter the ­Great in, 246n60; Tartars in, 141n63 silence, xx, 19; vow of, 19–20, 23 silver rule, compared to golden rule, 42n54, 45n81, 46n82 ­simples, as plants, 43 sin, 57–58, 70; conviction of, in signs of God, 326n212; desire for, as sin, 23; of ­father for benefit of ­children, 75n211; of lying, 116–117; original, 38n42, 56n130, 66n175, 92n75, 95–96n90, 113n184, 114n189, 276n40; and power of devil, 294n116; pride as, 43; and punishment, 105n136, 217, 217–218n42, 283n72; repentance for, 57; role of God in, 277n43; “whoring and drunkenness” as, 97–98 Sincere Ideal, The (Guilhamet), 39n44 sincerity: and honesty, 40; of readers, appeal to, 39n44 Singapore, 147 Sirah 31:15, 42n54 Sir Christopher Wren (Hutchinson), 26n55 Sir George Mackenzie King’s Advocate of Rosehaugh (Lang), 111n166 slander, 41, 122, 186n251, 188

390 I n d e x Slaughter-­house, or a Brief Description of the Spanish Inquisition, The (Salgado), 155n130 slavery, 76, 162n161, 239, 262n124 sleep: deep, whispering to person in, 299–300; dreams in (see dreams); soul in, 285–286n79 Smith, Adam, 17n9, 193n280 Smith, D. Nichol, 80n18 Smith, William, 225n75 Smyrna, honesty in, 44 sociability: benefits of, compared to solitude, xx–­x xi; conversation in (see conversation); as ­human nature, 15n3; ideal type of, 77n1 social isolation and solitude, xx–­x xi. See also solitude society: common property in, xxii; honesty in, xxii; importance of outward appear­ ance in, xxiii–­x xiv; moral life in, xxi Society for Reformation of Manners, xxiv, 53n117, 88n55, 89n58, 95n85, 108n151; Black Lists of, 89n58 Socinian Creed, The (Edwards), 107n147, 108n149, 108n157 Socinianism, 106; and atheism, 108n149; found­ers of, 106n141; on nature of Jesus Christ, 106n141, 109n160; in Poland, 159; on rewards and punishments, 107n147; on Trinity, 108n157 Socinianism in Seventeenth-­Century ­England (McLachlan), 106n141, 109n160 Socinus, Faustus, 106n141 Socinus, Laelius, 106n141, 159 Socrates, 80n14, 83n32 solar system, 291; planets in, xxxi, 291–293; sun at center of, 152n119, 292 solitaire, first use of term, 20n24 Solitary Walker (Rousseau), xxi solitude, xx–­x xi, 15–30; in Chris­tian­ity, 15n2, 17, 19n18, 25; in death, 26n57; idealization of, xxxvi(n27); Mackenzie-­Evelyn debate on, 18n15, 24n45, 111n166; meditation in, xx, xxi, 17; and vow of silence, 19–20, 23 Solomon, 65, 163n166, 205, 252; birth of, 53n118, 73n199; dedication of ­Temple, 169; wisdom of, 163n165 Solomon’s Fools, 12, 86, 215 Solyman the Magnificent, 260n117 Some Passages in the Life and Death of the Right Honorable John, Earl of Rochester (Burnet), 101n121, 320n205 Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Locke), 73n203, 76n216 soul, 308–309; ­a fter death, 308, 309n174, 318n198; created in image of God, 277n41; and imaginative spiritual flights, 288n89; in

limbus, 308n173; retired faculties of, 278n47; and sleep, 285–286n79; and solitude, 22, 23; sympathetic power of, 314 Soul-­Sleepers, 308n174 South Amer­i­ca, 237, 239–240 South Sea ­Bubble, The (Cardwell), 259nn109–110 South Sea Com­pany, xvi, 95n85, 104n134, 259nn109–110 Sozini (Laelius Socinus), 106n141 space travel, 287–290 Spain: and American Indians, xxix, 250n74, 261; Armada of, 5n16; colonies of, 75n210, 237, 239, 240, 242–244; and conversation of foreign characters, 87; Crusoe in, 166n175; ­England at war with, 88n51; in Mexico, 138n52, 237, 242–245 Spanish Descent, The (Defoe), 81n23 Spectator, The, xviii, xxix; on China, 142n67; on dueling, 109n158; on invisible spirits, 210n14; on morality and wit, 83n32; on Royal Exchange, 20n22, 20n23; Steele essays in, 52n110, 77n1; on sympathy in nature, 314n185; tolerance and even temper of, 84n33 Speculum Speculativum (Wither), 256n95 Spence, Lewis, 153n121 Spingarn, Joel, 116n197 spirits, 268–271; as allusion, 268n8; and angels, 213n22, 271, 279n53; and appari­ tions, 318nn197–199, 319; and atheism in disbelief of, 319n201; in command of devil, number of, 297n132; connections to world of, 210–211n15; of dead, return of, xxxii, 268n5; divine intervention by, 210n14; dreams in communication with, xxx, 233n98, 278, 279n54, 283n70, 286, 300n145; embodied and unembodied, 213, 314; evil and good, xxx, xxxi, 271; existence of, xxxiii, 314, 319–320; forms of communi­ cation with, 278n49; in ­human shape, 268n5; impulses from, xxxii, 232–233n98, 278n48, 310n177; intimations and whispers from, 311, 312; in invisible spaces, 213n22; prepossessed by, 271; signs of presence, xxviii; taking form of dead, 318n197; vision in perception of, 268n8; voice of, 214 Spiritual Guide, The (Molinos), 157n138 Spiritual Refining (Burgess), 175n209, 196n295, 258n106 Stanley, Thomas, 80n14 Starr, G. A., 62n158, 98n106, 313n180 Starr, George, 103n128, 108n152 statistical analy­sis in economics, 257–258n102 Steele, Richard, xviii, xxxv(n11); on conver­ sation, 77n1; on dueling, 109n159; pseudonym used by, 313n182; on religion of gentlemen,

Index 82–83n30; sentimental view of ­human nature, 17n9; Spectator essays, 52n110, 77n1; tolerance and even temper of, 84n33; as Whig, 253n88 Steenkerk, b ­ attle at, 170n190 Stephen, Saint, 182n232 Stern, John, 203n320 Stillingfleet, Edward, 129n10 St. James Post, The, xv, xvi, 5n17 St. Lawrence River, 237 Stoics, 66n174, 80n14, 316n190 Stoke Newington Edition of the Writings of Daniel Defoe, 79–80n14 Storm, The: An Essay (Defoe), 90n63, 102n122, 104n129, 121n226, 123n237, 123n239 Storr, Anthony, 27n64 Story of the Barbary Corsairs, The (Lane-­Poole), 262n124 Stothard, Thomas, 9n33 Strafford, Earl of, 218 Strict Enquiry into the Circumstances of a Late Duel, A (Moore), 85n41 Sturmy, Daniel, 150n108 Suckling, John, 115n192, 115n193 suicide, 47n87 sun, 150–152; as center of solar system, 152n119, 292; Copernican theory of, 152n119; eclipse of, 151n110; Jesus ascending into, 308–309n174; light and heat from, 150n109; worship of, xxvi, 149, 152n117, 153 Sunnis, 176n211 super­natural encounters, xxxii; fear in, 270n14; signs of God in, xxviii Supplement to the Advice from the Scandal Club, A (Defoe), 115n192 supplication in worship, 129–131 Surgery, Skin and Syphilis: Daniel Turner’s London (Wilson), 111n170 Sutherland, James, 48n90 swans, black, 188 swearing: Defoe on, xxv, 88n49, 88–89n56, 115n194; evil of, 88n49; laws on, 88n56; and “sodomy of the tongue,” 110n165 Sweden, 160; Charles XII of, 160, 246nn60–61; and George I, 88n51, 264n128; military in, 161n157, 246n61; religion in, 237; and Rus­sia, 88n51, 88n52, 246nn60–61, 264n128 Swedenberg, H. T., 17n9, 132n20 Swift, Jonathan: on astrological writings of Partridge, 313n182; as con­temporary of Defoe, 38n40; on cosmetics concealing disease, 186n250; on criticism of digres­ sions, 289n94; on enthusiasm in religion, 175n209, 224n72, 309n176; “fun” as word used by, 119n212; Tale of a Tub (see Tale of a Tub) Sychaeus, 244n46

391 sympathy, 16–17n9, 314; early concepts of, 228n83; powder of, 17n9; power of, 16, 17n9, 314n185 Syria, 168n181 System of Magick, A (Defoe), xvii, xxx; on augurs, 314n186; on “chimney-­corner” tale, 123n238; on deism, 105n135; on denial of existence of God, 99n109, 102n122, 108n148; on familiar spirit, 270n15; on fancies, 224n73; on omens, 225n75; on vis­i­ble appearance of devil, 301–302n150; on witchcraft of American Indians, 270n18 Tale of a Tub (Swift): on Aeolists inspired by wind, 313n183; on clothing of fash­ion­able gentlemen, 90n61; on criticism of digres­ sions, 289n94; on delusions, 80n18; on enthusiasm in religion, 175n209, 224n72; on exhalations, 224n74; on predestination, 226n78 Talmud, 252n82, 281n61 Tartars, xxix, 131, 141, 147, 148, 238, 246n55 Tatler, The, 313n182 Tave, Stuart, 84n33 Taylor, Jeremy, xxxiv Taylor, William, xv, xvi, xxxviii(n5), 5–6n18, 5n17; books printed for and sold by, 335–336; and publisher’s introduction to Serious Reflections, 11n1, 11n4 Teckley (Teckeley), Count, 248n69 Te Deum, singing of, 171, 172, 173 Tempest, The, 17n9, 275n37 ­Temple, William, 137–138n46, 138n47, 142n67 temptation, 29, 56, 66, 277, 295; of David, 54n124; and devil as tempter, 294; “lee shore of,” 56 Ten Commandments, 189n264, 195n286, 208n6, 231n93. See also Commandments Tertullian, Quintus Septimus Florens, 176n213, 246n59 Test Act, xxvii Thackeray, H. St. J., 280n60 theft, 230, 231; commandment on, 56; in necessity, xxii, 49, 55n127 Theological Theory of a Plurality of Worlds, A (Sturmy), 150n108 third heaven, 26, 201 Thirty Nine Articles, 182n233 Thirty Years’ War, 177n216, 249n72 This Long Disease My Life (Nicholson & Rousseau), 151n110 Thököly, Imre (Count Teckley), 248n69 Thomas, Keith, 267n2 Thomas, Saint, 153n123, 297n134 Thomson, James, 227n79, 276n39 Thornhill, John, 26n55

392 I n d e x thummim, 280n59, 280n60, 281n61 Thynne, Thomas, 203n320 Tillemont, Louis Sébastian Le Nain de, 106n142 Tilley, Morris, 42nn57–58; Dictionary of the Proverbs (see Dictionary of the Proverbs in English in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, A [Tilley]) Tillotson, John, 88n54, 132n21, 220n50 time concept: and edge of time, 289; and eternity, xxviii; of Locke, 191n273; and timeless realm of God, 181n230 1 Timothy 3:16, 268n7 2 Timothy 2:24–25, 258n104 title pages: emblem of sailing ship on, xxxviii(n5), 1; of Serious Reflections, v, xviii, xxxviii(nn1–5), 1, 337, 340, 342, 344, 346; “A Vision of the Angelick World” advertised on, xvii; “Written by Himself” on, xvi, xvii, xviii Titus 3:2–3, 67n180 toad, use of term, 274n32 Tobit 4:15, 42n54 Todd, Janet, 287n82 Todorov, Tzvetan, 239n24 Toland, John: on Arianism, 106n140; as deist, 91n69, 99n111, 105n135, 229n88, 299n142; Nazarenus, 105n138, 106n140; on New Testament, 105n138 tolerance for religious differences, xxvii, xxix Tom Jones (Fielding), 215n30 Tonquin, 156 Tooke, Andrew, 100n113, 149n101, 193n279 Tories, 4n10, 7n25, 253n86, 253n88, 308n171 Tour thro’ the Whole Island of G ­ reat Britain, A (Defoe), 26n55 Tower of Babel, 111n167 Transilvania, 237 transubstantiation and consubstantiation, 161 travel: to Africa, 32; from Africa to Rus­sia, 148n95; “fugitive” as term describing, 121n225; listening to impulses concerning, xxxi, xxxii, 306; to planets, 287–290; and religion around the world, 131 Travels of Several Learned Missioners, The (Olearius), 145n81 treason, 87; t­ rials for, 87n47 Treatise Concerning the State of Departed Souls, A (Burnet), xxxvii(n45), 287n82, 288n90, 308n172, 309n174, 318n198 Treatise of the Pox, A (Boulton), 111n170 Treatise on Dreams and Visions, A (Tryon), 276n38, 279n54, 282–283n69, 300n145 Trechmann, E. J., 16n6 Tree of Knowledge, 112n176, 117n206, 195n286 Trevelyan, George, 171n195

Trinity, xxvi, 90–91nn65–69, 91, 174, 175n208, 206–207; in Arianism, 106n140, 106n142, 106n143; and Dissenters, xxiv, xxvi–­x xvii, 90n65, 90n67, 106n141, 133n27, 174–175n207, 174n204; and Saint Augustine, 92n75; and Salter’s Hall dispute, xxiv, xxvi, 90n65, 90n67, 106n141, 133n27, 174n204, 174n207; and Socinians, 108n157; tradi­ tional Christian view of, xxiv Triumph of Science and Reason, The (Nussbaum), 248n69 Triumphs of Gods Revenge (Reynolds), 232n96 True-­Born En­glishman, The (Defoe), 4n10; on alcoholic beverages, 28n65; on French ­people, 166n176; on Huguenot refugees, 167n180; on liberty, 298–299n139; on Muscovites, 160n154; on personal virtue, 63n162; as satire, 150n107; on vice and pain, 295n122 True Collection of the Writings of the True-­Born En­glishman, A (Defoe), 42n55 True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet, The (Prideaux), 260n114 trust and honesty, xxii Tryal and Condemnation of George Borosky . . . ​, Christopher Vratz, and Johne Sterne, The, 203n320 “tryal” of honesty, xxii–­x xiii, 48–62 Tryon, Thomas, 276n38, 279n54, 282–283n69, 300n145 Tufayl, Ibn al, 287n83 Tunis, 238, 239, 242n39 Tunisia, 133n28 Turkish Empire, 245, 245–246n55 Turks, 69; in Greece, 260n115, 260n117; honesty of, 44–45; military of, 260nn116–117; as moral and religious, 133n29; as pirates, 312–313n180 Turner, William, 232n96 Tusculan Disputations (Cicero), 162n160 Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare), 78n7 Two Treatises (Digby), 227n82 Tyrannick Love (Dryden), 107n147 unconscious mind, xxxii Unitarianism, 90n65, 106n141, 108n157 Universal En­glish Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, An, 100n112. See also Lexicon Technicum Universal Etymological En­glish Dictionary, An (Bailey), 293n112, 315n188 universe: earth in, xxxi, xxxvii(n45), 287n82; “mazes and wastes” of, 288n89; Newtonian view of, xxxi, 151n111, 214n25, 290n98; role of God in, xxxi, 214n25, 227n79, 290n98, 320n205; spiritual nature of, xxxi

Index “Unmentionable and the Ineffable in Defoe’s Fiction, The” (Novak), 304n156 “Upon Nothing” (Rochester), xxvii, 82n29, 190n272 Uriah, 73 urim, 280n59, 280n60, 281n61 Utrecht, Treaty of, 97n101, 241n31, 264n128 Vandals, 244n45 van de Velde, Willem (the younger), 145n82 vanity, 86 vapours, xxx, 80, 150n109, 224, 272–273, 276; definition of, 224n74, 272–273n28 Vattel, Emmerich de, xxiii Vaudemont, Prince (Charles Henri de Lorraine), 220, 221n55 Vaughan, John, 103n127, 104n130 Vega, Garcilasso de la, 138n52 veil of futurity, 303 venereal disease treatment in fluxing ­house, 111n170 Venice, 122, 260nn115–116 Venus (goddess), 139 Venus (planet), 293 Viau, Theophile de, 320n205 vice, 96, 97; laws against, 94–95; and negative virtue, 184; “whoring and drunkenness” as, 97–98 Vickers, Brian, 24n45, 111n166 Vienna, siege of, 248n69 Vietnam, 156n137 Vindication of the Lutheran Religion, A (Mentzer), 161n158 Virgil, 94n83, 186n251, 187n258, 244n46 ­Virginia, 240, 241 virtue: as denominating quality of humanity, 42n56; happiness in, 80n14, 81, 193; honesty as, xxii, xxiii, 42, 43; modesty as, 112n177, 113; and morality, 97; negative, and negative religion, 183–203; as own reward, 66, 107n147, 193; patience as, 254n89; sensibility as, 83n31 vision: con­temporary notions of, 151n111; emission theory of, 316n190; and ­humans as short-­sighted creatures, 216; ­limited abilities of, and happiness, 302n152; and nature of light, 315–316n190; and percep­ tion of spirits, 268n8 Vision of the Angelick World, A (Defoe), xxx–­x xxv, 26, 267–333 visions, 216, 223; and dreams, 282; and second-­sight, 211n18, 313n182 Vistlipustli, Aztec god of war, 243 Vitoria, Franciscus de, 250n74 voice of providence, listening to, xxviii, 205–233 Volga River, 238n22 vomit as medicine, 254n89 vows, rash, 215n29

393 Voyage Round the World (Anson & Walter), 8n29 Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors, The (Olearius), 237n18 Vratz, Christopher, 203n320 Waddell, Helen, 20n21, 20n24, 27n61, 28n66, 29n68 wafer in Catholic mass, 158 wager, religion as, xxxiii, 102 Walachia, 237 Walker, D. P., 105n136, 267n2, 283n72, 299n140 Waller, A. R., 280n58 Walter, Richard, 8n29 Ward, Adolphus, 88n54 warfare, 170nn189–190; arguments for, 263; inventions in, 145n80; as lawful and just, 250 Warner, Michael, xviii Warner, Thomas, 137n42 War of the Spanish Succession, 241n31, 245n53, 256n98 Watt, Ian, xxi Weakest Go to the Wall, The (Defoe), 329n214 Webb, John, 142n67 Weber, Max, 190n270 Webster, William, 176n215 Weekly Journal, 4n10 Wesley, John, 65n171 Westminster Conference (1662), 177n218 Westphalia, Treaty of, 162n162, 177 Wettenhall, Edward, xx, 17n12, 189n262 Wheeler, Roxann, 75–76n212 Whigs, 4n10; and Defoe as turncoat, 253n86; Defoe hired by, 308n171; Defoe suggesting punishment of, 253n88; Duckett as, 321n207; freedoms in constitution concept of, 164n171; Steele as, 253n88; Thynne as, 203n320 whimsies, “hypochondriack,” xxx, 273 Whiston, William, xxiv, 91n68, 91n69, 106n140, 151n110 Whitney, Lois, 128n9 Whole Duty of Man, The (Pufendorf), 33n9 Whole Works, The (Browne), 65n171 ­Widow, honesty of, xxii, 32, 35, 37 Wild, John, 262n119 Wilders, John, 175n210 Wild Man Within, The (Whitney), 128n9 ­will, relationship to reason and passions, 125n2 William III, xv, xxiv, 88n50, 88n52, 256n98; Black Lists u ­ nder, 89n58; and Defoe on parallel dates, 218nn46–47; failure to enforce laws against immorality ­u nder, 98n103; military victories of, 170nn189–190, 220n51; recoinage ­u nder, 61n154, 171n194; and reformation of manners, 89n58, 93n82, 94–95n85, 108n151; Sherlock taking oath to, 253n87

394 I n d e x William III (Baxter), 170n189, 170n190, 221n55 William III and the Godly Revolution (Claydon), 88n54, 89n58, 95n85, 98n103 Williams, Francis, 75n212 Wilson, Harold, 116n197 Wilson, Philip, 111n170 wind: God in control of, 286n81; Swift on Aeolists inspired by, 313n183 Windelband, Wilhelm, 100n117 Winkfield, Unca Eliza, 287n83 Winnicot, Donald, 27n64 wit: and living by ­mental agility, 295; and morality, 83nn31–32 Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy (D’Urfey), 98n105 witchcraft, 270n18 Wither, George, xxix, 253n86, 255, 255–256nn91–95 Wither’s Motto, 255–256n95 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xix Wolf, Abraham, 146n84 Wolf, John, 168n182 Wolsey, Robert, 116n197 worship: adoration and supplication in, 129–131; of idols, 130n12; of sun, xxvi, 149, 152n117, 153

Wotton, William, 137n46, 138n47, 138n50 Wren, Christopher, 26n55 Wright, Thomas, xxxvi(n15), 18–19n17, 125n2 writ of rebellion, 33–34 Xury, 7, 35, 36 Yaqzan, Hayy ibn, 287n83 Yeazell, Ruth, 113n179 Yokdhan, Hai Ebn, 287n83 Yolton, John, 22n33 Yorkshire, 44 Zacharias (Zachariah), 223 Zacks, Richard, 262n124 zeal in religion, 175, 177, 182, 249, 264 Zebedee ­children, 269 Zechariah, Book of, 52n113; 8:16, 123n235 Ziegler, Gaspar, 50n99 Zimmermann, Johann Georg von, xxxvi(n27) Zoroaster, 148n98, 149n103 Zoroastrianism, 148n98, 149n104 Zwingli, Huldrych, 182n234