I sometimes make serious mistakes in wording in the course of producing this site. Here is one example. In this post about a female reader’s anti-feminist awakening, I spoke of Robinson Crusoe’s gratitude and humility. I said, “Crusoe fell to his knees and thanked God for his island.”

But this leaves the entirely wrong impression. It suggests that Crusoe was simply grateful that he was saved after his ship went down in a storm. That was not my point at all. Crusoe was obviously glad he was not killed, but more importantly he was grateful for being shipwrecked. On the second anniversary of the day he swam ashore, Crusoe writes in his journal:

The rainy season of the Autumnal Equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th. of Sept. in the same solemn Manner as before, being the Anniversay of my Landing on the Island, having now been there two Years, and no more Prospect of being deliver’d, than the first day I came there. I spent the whole Day in humble and thankful Acknowledgements of the many wonderful Mercies which my Solitary Condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I gave humble and hearty Thanks that God had been pleas’d to discover to me, even that it was possible I might be more happy in this Solitary Condition, than I should have been in a Liberty of Society, and in all the Pleasures of the World. That he could fully make up to me, the deficiencies of my Solitary State, and the want of Humane Society by his Presence, and the Communications of his Grace to my Soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his Providence here, and hope for his Eternal Presence hereafter.

It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this Life I now led was, with all its miserable Circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable Life I led all the past Part of my Days; and now I chang’d both my Sorrows and my Joys; my very Desires alter’d, my Affections changed their Gusts, and my Delights were perfectly new, from what they were at my first Coming, or indeed for the two Years past.

Before, as I walk’d about, either on my Hunting, or for viewing the Country; the Anguish of my Soul at my Condition, would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very Heart would die within me, to think of the Woods, the Mountains, the Deserts I was in; and how I was a Prisoner, lock’d up with the Eternal Bars and Bolts of the Ocean, in an uninhabited Wilderness, without Redemption: In the midst of the greatest Composures of my Mind, this would break out upon me like a Storm, and make me wring my Hands, and weep like a Child: Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my Work. and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the Ground for an Hour or two together; and this was still worse to me; for if I could burst out into Tears, or vent myself by Words, it would go off and the Grief having exhausted it self would abate.

But now I began to exercise myself with new Thoughts …

From this moment I began to conclude in my Mind, That it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken Solitary Condition, than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular State of the World; and with this Thought I was going to give Thanks to God for bringing me to this Place.

 [Robinson Crusoe, Norton, pp. 82-83]

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