The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe | Page 4

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 completely happy; I say, after all this, any
one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I
gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so
predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty
one 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
sufficient for me, and for those I had to leave it to; and what I had was
visibly increasing; for, having no great family, I could not spend the
income of what I had unless I would set up for an expensive way of
living, such as a great family, servants, equipage, gaiety, and the like,
which were things I had no notion of, or inclination to; so that I had
nothing, indeed, to do but to sit still, and fully enjoy what I had got, and

see it increase daily upon my hands. Yet all these things had no effect
upon me, or at least not enough to resist the strong inclination I had to
go abroad again, which hung about me like a chronic distemper. In
particular, the desire of seeing my new plantation in the island, and the
colony I left there, ran in my head continually. I dreamed of it all night,
and my imagination ran upon it all day: it was uppermost in all my
thoughts, and my fancy worked so steadily and strongly upon it that I
talked of it in my sleep; in short, nothing could remove it out of my
mind: it even broke so violently into all my discourses that it made my
conversation tiresome, for I could talk of nothing else; all my discourse
ran into it, even to impertinence; and I saw it myself.
I have often heard persons of good judgment say that all the stir that
people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions is owing to the
strength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy in their
minds; that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, or a ghost
walking; that people's poring affectionately upon the past conversation
of their deceased friends so realises it to them that they are capable of
fancying, upon some extraordinary circumstances, that they see them,
talk to them, and are answered 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 anything in the stories they tell us of that kind more
than the product of vapours, sick minds, and wandering fancies: but
this I know, that my imagination worked up to such a height, and
brought me into such excess of vapours, or what else I may call it, that
I actually supposed myself often upon the spot, at my old castle, behind
the trees; saw my old Spaniard, Friday's father, and the reprobate
sailors I left upon the island; nay, I fancied I talked with them, and
looked at them steadily, 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 sleep, I had the villainy
of the three pirate sailors so lively related to me by the first Spaniard,
and Friday's father, that it was surprising: they told me how they

barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and that they set fire
to the provisions they had laid up, on purpose to distress and starve
them; things that I had never heard of, and that, indeed, were never all
of them true in fact: but it was so warm in my imagination, and so
realised to me, that, to the hour I saw them, I could not be persuaded
but that it was or would be true; also how I resented it, when the
Spaniard complained