14 ROBINSON CRUSOE. cellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject: he asked me what reasons, more than a mere wander» ing inclination, I had for leaving my father’s house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desper- ate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enter- prise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; and these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labor and ‘sufferings of the me. chanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, an envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing, viz.: that this was the state of life which all other people envied ; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable con- sequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches, He bade me observe it, and I should always find, that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind ; but that the middle station had the fewest disas- ters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind ; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers, and uneasiness, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon them- selves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments ; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all de- sirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed