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