254 ROBINSON CRUSOE.

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 | had to go abroad
again, which hung about me like a chronical 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 people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions
is owing to the strength of imagination, and the powerful oper-
ation of fancy in their minds ; that there is no such thing as a
spirit appearing, or a ghost walking ; that people’s poring affec-
tionately upon the past conversation of their deceased friends,
so realizes 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 vapor in the thing, and they really know nothing
of the matter.

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are
auy 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 va-
pors, 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 vapors, or what else [ 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 fright-
ened myself with the images my fancy represented to me. One
time, in my sleep, I had the villany 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 at-
tempted to murder all the Spaniards, and that they sat 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,