ity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a
mark of generous temper in the mind.

These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full
stop; and I began by little and little to be off my design, and to
conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to attack the
savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they
first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent:
but that, if I were discovered and attacked by them, I knew my duty. On
the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the way not to
deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was
sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at that time, but
that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of them escaped to
tell their country-people what had happened, they would come over again
by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and I should only
bring upon myself a certain destruction, which, at present, I had no
manner of occasion for. Upon the whole, I concluded that I ought,
neither in principle nor in policy, one way or other, to concern myself
in this affair: that my business was, by all possible means to conceal
myself from them, and not to leave the least sign for them to guess by
that there were any living creatures upon the island--I mean of human
shape. Religion joined in with this prudential resolution; and I was
convinced now, many ways, that I was perfectly out of my duty when I was
laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures--I
mean innocent as to me. As to the crimes they were guilty of towards one
another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national, and I ought
to leave them to the justice of God, who is the Governor of nations, and
knows how, by national punishments, to make a just retribution for
national offences, and to bring public judgments upon those who offend in
a public manner, by such ways as best please Him. This appeared so clear
to me now, that nothing was a greater satisfaction to me than that I had
not been suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe
would have been no less a sin than that of wilful murder if I had
committed it; and I gave most humble thanks on my knees to God, that He
had thus delivered me from blood-guiltiness; beseeching Him to grant me
the protection of His providence, that I might not fall into the hands of
the barbarians,