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men abhor; and they believe they may challenge them to fhew the difference between that and robbing on the highway, or breaking open a house.

If they cannot fhew any difference in the crime, they will find it hard to fhew why there should be any difference in the punish

ment.

THE FARTHER

ADVENTURES

O F

ROBINSON CRUSOE,

&c. &c.

THAT homely proverb used on fo many occafions in England, viz. That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh, was never more verified than in the story of my LIFE. Any one would think, that after thirty-five years affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances, which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the fulness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man compleatly happy; I fay, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propenfity to rambling, which I gave an account of in my first fetting out into the world to have been fo predomi VOL. II.

B

nant

nate in my thoughts, fhould be worn out, the volatile part be fully evacuated, or at leaft condenfed, and I might at 61 years of age have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life and fortune any more.

Nay farther, the common motive of foreign adventures was taken away in me; for I had no fortune to make, I had nothing to seek: If I had gained ten thousand pounds, I had been no richer; for I had already fufficient for me, and for those I had to leave it to; and that I had was visibly increafing; for having no great family, I could not spend the income of what I had, unless I would fet up for an expenfive way of living, fuch as a great family, fervants, equipage, gaiety, and the like, which were things I had no notion of, or inclination to; fo that I had nothing indeed to do but to fit ftill, and fully enjoy what I had got, and fee it increase daily upon my hands.

Yet all these things had no effect upon me, or at leaft not enough to refift the ftrong inclination I had to go abroad again, which hung about me like a chronical distemper; particularly the defire of feeing my new plantation in the ifland, and the colony I left. there, run in my head continually. I dreamed of it all night, and my imagination run upon it all day; it was uppermoft in all my thoughts, and my fancy worked fo fteadily and strongly upon it, that I talked of it in my fleep; in fhort, nothing could remove it out of my mind; it even broke fo violently into all my discourses, that it made my conversation tirefome; for I could talk of nothing elfe, all my difcourfe run into it, even to impertinence, and I saw it myself,

I have often heard perfons of good judgment fay, that all the ftir people make in the world about ghofts and apparitions, is owing to the ftrength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy in their minds; that there is no fuch thing as a spirit appearing, or a ghoft walking, and the like; that people's poring affectionately upon the past converfation of their deceafed friends fo realifes it to them, that they are capable of fancying upon fome extraordinary circumftances that they fee them, talk to them, and are anfwered by them, when, in truth, there is nothing but shadow and vapour in the thing; and they really know nothing of the matter.

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after they are dead, or whether there is any thing in the ftories they tell us of that kind, more than the product of vapours, fick minds, and wandering fancies: But this I know, that my imagination worked up to fuch a height, and brought me into fuch excefs of vapours, or what else I may call it, that I actually fuppofed myself often-times upon the spot, at my old castle behind the trees, faw my old Spaniard, Friday's father, and the reprobate failors whom I left upon the island; nay, I fancied I talked with them, and looked at them fo fteadily, though I was broad awake, as at persons just before me; and this I did till I often frightened myself with the images my fancy represented to me: one time in my fleep I had the villainy of the three pirate failors fo lively related to me by the first Spaniard and Fryday's father, that it was surprizing; they told me how they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and that they

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