Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe With His Vision of the Angelick World

SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

and after 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 observed to be the principal business of mankind?

Rob. Cm. Truly, madam, ‘tis very hard to answer such a question, the people being so differently employed, some one way, and some another; and particularly according to the several parts of the world through which our observations 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 all to me, because I am not a judge of the differing customs and manners of the people you speak of; but is there not one common end and design in the nature of men, which seems to run through all their actions, and to be formed 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 at first.

Old Gent. What question, sir?

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R.C. Why, 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 it.

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 little 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 eat and drink; but in the last part 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, and the like, devours his own species, nay, his own flesh and blood, as my Lord Rochester very well expresses it:

But judge yourself, I’ll bring it to the test, Which is the basest creature, man or beast? Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,

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SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

But savage man alone does man betray. Pressed by necessity, they kill for food,

Man undoes man, to do himself no good.

With teeth and claws, by Nature armed they hunt, Nature’s allowance to supply their want:

But man with smiles, embraces, friendship, praise, Inhumanly his fellow’s life betrays.

With voluntary pains works his distress, Not for necessity, but wantonness.

Old Gent. All this I believe is true; but this does not reach my question yet. There is certainly something among them which is esteemed as more particularly the end of life and of living than the rest; to which they apply in common as the main business, and which is always esteemed to be their wisdom to be employed in. Is there not something that is apparently the great business of living?

R.C. Why, really, madam, I think not. For example: great part of the world, and a greater part by far than we imagine, is resolved into the lowest degeneracy of human nature, I mean, the savage life; where the chief end of life seems to be merely to eat and drink, that is to say, to get their food, just as the brutal life is employed, 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 deserts of Arabia is not equal.

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Old Gent. I could mention many things, sir, in which they might differ, but that is not the present thing I inquire 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 named 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 religion 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 whether religion is not apparently the main business of the world, the principal apparent end of life, and the employment of mankind.

R.C. What 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, there 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,

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SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

acts of homage and adoration, and particularly that of praying to the Supreme Being which they acknowledge, is derived to mankind from the light of Nature with the notion or belief itself.

R.C. I suppose, madam, you mean by the question then, whether the notion or belief of a God in general, and the sense of worship in particular, 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 there you and I differ again a little; for by worship, I understand supplication.

R.C. Then you must take them both in together, for some part of the Indian savages only adore.

Old Gent. I confess there is much adoration, where there is little supplication.

R.C. You distinguish too nicely, madam.

Old Gent. No, no, I do not distinguish in what I call worship; I allege that all the adoration of those poor savages is

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mere supplication: you say they lift up their hands to their idols, for fear they should hurt them.

R.C. I do say so, and it is apparent.

Old Gent. Why, that is the same thing, 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 resolved into supplication.

R.C. I agree with you in that, if you mean the apparent end of worship.

Old Gent. Why, did not your man Friday and the savage woman you tell us of, talk of their old idol they called Benamuckee? 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 “O” 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 canst do all things: O give us what we want, for thou art bountiful: O spare us, for thou art merciful:” 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?

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Old Gent. O sir, I have many inferences to draw from it for my own observation; I do not set up to instruct you.

I thought this serious old lady would have entertained a farther discourse with me on so fruitful a subject, but she declined it, and left me to my own meditation, which, indeed, she had raised up to an unusual pitch; and the first thing that occurred to me, was to put me upon inquiring after that nice thing I ought to call religion in the world, seeing really I found reason to think that there 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 will appear that there is much more hypocrisy than sincerity — of which I may speak by itself.

In my first inquiries, I looked back upon my own travels, and it afforded me but a melancholy reflection, that in all the voyages and travels which I have employed 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 Brazils, where the Portuguese indeed profess the Roman Catholic principles, which, however, in distinction from paganism, I will call the Christian religion — I say, except the Brazils, 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 Larache, and the port of Sallee, by the Strait’s mouth, where I escaped from slavery, through the Atlantic Ocean, the coasts of Africa on one side, and of Caribbee, on the American shore, on the other side; from thence to Madagascar, Malabar,

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and the bay and city of Bengal, the coast of Sumatra, Malacca, Siam, Cambodia, Cochin China, the empire and coast of China, the deserts of Karakathie, the Mongol Tartars, the Siberian, the Samoiede barbarians, and till I came within four or five days of Archangel in the Black Russia.

It is, I say, a melancholy reflection to think how all these parts of the world, and with infinite numbers of millions of people, furnished with the powers of reason and gifts of Nature, and many ways, if not every way, as capable of the reception of sublime things as we are, are yet abandoned to the grossest ignorance and depravity; and that not in religion only, but even in all the desirable parts of human knowledge, and especially science and acquired knowledge.

What the Divine wisdom has determined concerning the souls of so many millions, it is hard to conclude, nor is it my present design to inquire; but this I may be allowed here, as a remark: if they are received to mercy in a future state, according to the opinion of some, as having not sinned against saving light, then their ignorance and pagan darkness is not a curse, but a felicity; and there are no unhappy people in the world, but those lost among Christians, for their sins against revealed 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 in a negative manner be true that the Christian religion is an efficient in the condemnation of sinners, and loses more than it saves, which is impious but to imagine. On the other

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hand, if all those nations are included under the sentence of eternal absence from God, which is hell in the abstract, then what becomes of all the sceptical doctrines 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 matters of religion; much less would I promote cavils at the foundations of religion, either as to its profession or practice, and therefore I only name things. I return to my inquiry after religion as we generally understand the word.

And in this I confine myself in my present inquiries 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 capacities of the people, as to all the unprovable parts of human knowledge.

The Moors of Barbary are Mahometans, and that of the most unpolished and degenerate 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 virtues 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 custom of the place, and it is to recommend a great man that he is rich, powerful in slaves, merciless in his government of them,

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and imperiously haughty in his whole household. Every man is a king within himself, and regards neither justice or mercy, humanity or civility, either to those above him or those below him, but just as his arbitrary passions guide him.

Religion here is confined to the biram and the ramadan, the feast and the fast, to the mosque and the bath; reading the Alcoran on one hand, and performing the 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 there is neither society, humanity, confidence in one another, or conversation with one another; but men live like the wild beasts, for every man here really would destroy and devour the other if he could.

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 digression to, viz., that it is to be said for the reputation of the Christian religion in general, and by which it is justly distinguished from all other religions, that wherever Christianity has been planted or professed nationally in the world, even where it has not had a saving influence, it has yet had a civilising influence. It has operated upon the manners, the morals, the politics, and even the tempers and dispositions of the people; it has reduced them to the practice of virtue, and to the true methods of living; has weaned them from the barbarous customs they had been used to, infusing a kind of humanity and softness of disposition into their very

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