Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World(1720)

Daniel Defoe

Without inquiring, therefore, into the advantages of solitude, and how it is to be managed, I desire to tude real] is; for I must confess I have different notions agout it, far from those which are nerally understood in the world, and far from edge those notions upon those peo Is in the primitive times, and since that also, notes; who as ted themselves into deserts and unfrequented p aces, or confined themselves to 12113, monasteries, and the like, retired, as they call it, from the world. All which, I think, have noth ing of the thing I call solitude in them, nor do they answer any of the true ends of solitude, much less those ends which are retended to be sought after by those who have ked most of those retreats from the world.

As for confinement in an island, if the scene was placed there for this ve end, it were not at all amiss. I must acknowl there was confinement from the cuj oyments of the world, and restraint fiom human society. But all that was no solitude indeed no part of rt was so, except that which, as in my story, implied to the contemplation of sublime things, and t was but a very little, as my readers well know, compared to what a length of years my forced retreat lasted.