that there were people here; and
that if so, I should certainly have them come again in greater numbers,
and devour me; that if it should happen so that they should not find me,
yet they would find my enclosure, destroy all my corn, carry away all
my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want.

Thus my fear banished all my religious hope; all that former confidence
in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of
his goodness, now vanished; as if he that had fed me by miracle
hitherto, could not preserve by his power the provision which he had
made for me by his goodness. I reproached myself with my uneasiness,
that I would not sow any more corn one year, than would just serve me
till the next season, as if no accident could intervene, to prevent my
enjoying the crop that was upon the ground. And this I thought so just a
reproof, that I resolved for the future to have two or three years corn
beforehand, so that, whatever might come, I might not perish for want
of bread.

How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man! And by what
secret differing springs are the affections hurried about, as differing
circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we
seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear;
nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me at
this time in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only
affliction was, that I seemed banished from human society, that I was
alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and
condemned to what I call a silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven
thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among
the rest of his creatures; that to have seen one of my own species,
would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the
greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of
salvation, could bestow; I say, that I should now tremble at the very
apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground, at
but the shadow, or silent appearance of a man's having set his foot on
the island.

Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many
curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my first
surprise: I considered that this was the station of life the infinitely
wise and good providence of God had determined for me; that as I could
not f