art. the diabolical disruption of order in robinson crusoe

8/11/2019 Art. the Diabolical Disruption of Order in Robinson Crusoe

1/9

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of English Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

'Why God no Kill the Devil?' The Diabolical Disruption of Order in Robinson Crusoe

Author(s): Nicholas HudsonSource: The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 39, No. 156 (Nov., 1988), pp. 494-501Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/516220Accessed: 05-08-2014 14:23 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.

For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 157.92.4.12 on Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:23:56 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ouphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/516220http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/516220http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ouphttp://www.jstor.org/


2/9

WHY GOD

NO KILL

THE

DEVIL?

THE DIABOLICAL DISRUPTION OF ORDER

IN ROBINSON CRUSOE

By

NICHOLAS HUDSON

ALTHOUGH

Crusoe

experiences

little

difficulty

in

persuading Friday

to

adopt

correct

notions on

most

points

of

Christian

doctrine,

he

finds his pupil strangely unreceptive to his scriptural account of the

devil.

If

God

much

strong,

much

might

as

Devil,

Friday

asks,

why

God no

kill

the

Devil,

so make no more do wicked?

(p. 218).1

Crusoe

can offer

no

answer to

this

problem

and

eventually

retires to

pray

for

inspiration,

leaving

Defoe s

commentators

with

their

own

problem

of

how to

interpret

his

confusion. Solutions to the

problem

have

varied,

but most have had

in

common the

assumption

that Robinson

Crusoe is

a

deeply

orthodox,

unambiguous,

even

allegorical

account

of

the

hero s

spiritual

journey

towards faith

and trust

in

God.

There must be

an appropriatelypious reason for Crusoe s hesitation.2

A broader

consideration of Defoe s

writings

suggests,

on

the

other

hand,

that he was

genuinely

baffled

by

the

kind

of

problems

raised

by

Friday.

As revealed

by

Defoe s

subsequent

discussions of the devil in

Serious

Reflections during

the

Life

and

Surprising

Adventures

of

Robinson Crusoe

(1719)

and,

most

notably,

The

Political

History

of

the

Devil

(1726),

the devil

presented perhaps

the

central

challenge

to

Defoe s

continuing

effort

to

justify

and honour the

Wisdom of

Providence

(p. 1). Throughout

his

writings

he

deliberates

on

the

heterodox possibility that God has given the devil an unjust range of

liberties or

that,

indeed,

the

devil

is

as

strong

as God. This

essay

will

examine

the

nature

and sources of these doubts.

1

All

references

in the text are

to

The

Life

and

Surprising

Adventures

of

Robinson

Crusoe,

ed.

J.

Donald

Crowley (London, 1972).

2

George

A.

Starr,

for

example,

has

interpreted

Crusoe s

difficulty

as

simply part

of

the

traditional

conception

of

the

fledgling

spiritual

guide

(Defoe

and

Spiritual

Autobiography

(Princeton, 1965), 90).

J.

Paul

Hunter

has

pointed

out

that,

according

to

17th-cent.

accounts

of

missionaries,

Indian converts

frequently questioned

the Christian

teachings

on

the

devil: Defoe

is

being historically

accurate

( Friday

as a

Convert: Defoe and

the

Accounts of Indian

Missionaries ,

RES NS 14

(1963),

243-8).

Most

recently, Timothy

C. Blackburn

interpreted

the

episode

as

a

dramatization

of

the failure

of

reason,

as

championed by contemporary

deists,

to

discover

the

mysteries

of

the

revelation

( Friday s

Religion:

Its

Nature and

Importance

in

Robinson

Crusoe ,

Eighteenth-Century

Studies,

18

(1985), 360-82).

Oxford University

Press 1988

ES New

Series,

Vol.

XXXIX,

No. 156

(1988)

This content downloaded from 157.92.4.12 on Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:23:56 UTC

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/9

WHY

GOD NO

KILL THE DEVIL?

In

The

History of

the

Devil

Defoe broaches

the

questions

which,

once

solved,

might

remove all doubts

concerning

the

devil s

role in

providence: Who is he? What is his original? Whence came he? And

what

is his

present

state

and condition? 3 These are

virtually

the same

issues which Crusoe

attempts

to

elucidate when

Friday

reveals

he has

no Notion of an evil

Spirit;

of

his

Original,

his

Being,

his

Nature,

and

above all of

his

Inclination to do Evil

(p.

217).

And

just

as

Friday

responds

to Crusoe s account of the

devil

with

embarrassing

ques-

tions,

Defoe admits

in

The

History

of

the Devil that the

Bible

has

left

sceptics wondering

why

God has not

killed or

at

least

kept

the devil

imprisoned:

I

know

it has been

questioned

by

some,

with

more

face than

fear,

how

it

consists

with a

complete victory

of

the

Devil,

which

they say

was at

first

obtained

by

the

heavenly

powers

over

Satan,

and his

apostate army

in

heaven,

that when he

was

cast out of

his

holy

place,

and

dashed into

a

place

of

punishment,

a condemned

hold,

or

place

of

confinement,

to be

reserved there

to the

judgment

of

the

great day:

I

say,

how

it consists with that

entire

victory,

to let

him

loose

again

and

give

him

liberty,

like

a

thief

that has

broken

prison

to

range

about God s

creation,

and there to

continue his

rebellion,

commit

new

ravages

and acts

of

hostility against

God,

make new

efforts at dethroning the almighty Creator; and in particularto fall upon the

weakness of his

creatures,

man?4

Defoe

promises

that he

will

give good

answer to these

questions .

In

fact,

he never mentions the

questions

again.

He does affirm

later that

the earth

is

the Lord s and the

kingdoms

thereof ,s

but he

makes little

effort to reconcile this

conventional tenet of

orthodoxy

with his

chronicle

of

all

the

times-ranging

from Noah s

flood to the

corrup-

tion of the

Popes-when

the devil was

truly

and

literally

the

universal

monarch, nay

the

god

of the

world .6

The

History of

the

Devil

covers

four millenniums of

struggle

between God and

Satan for

empire

over

mankind.

More often than

not,

Satan s

designs

have

succeeded,

forcing,

as it

were,

his maker in a new

kind

of

creation,

the

old one

proving

ineffectual .7 The verb to

force ,

which is

used more than

once

in

Defoe s account

of

the devil s

triumphs,

seems

remarkable,

for

it

elicits the heterodox

impression

that

God

has not

been in full

control of the devil s activities.

History

has

apparently

been

dominated

by

a Manichean

struggle

between

good

and

evil

in which

the

forces

of evil have

often been able to thwart the

designs

of

good.

3

Satan s

Devices;

or,

the Political

History of

the

Devil

(London,

1819;

repr.

Wakefield,

Yorks.,

1972),

I,

ii.

242.

4

Ibid. 39-40.

5

Ibid.

II,

viii.

341.

6

Ibid.

I,

ix. 144.

7

Ibid. x. 175.

495




4/9

Thus,

seven

years

after Robinson

Crusoe,

Defoe was still

allowing

sceptical

questions

about the devil

to

be

expressed

in his

writings,

but

was still unable to mount a convincing or entirely orthodox case to

answer those

questions.

A

major

instance of

the

troubles he

encoun-

ters

in The

History of

the

Devil

is his

treatment of the devil s activities

in

the New

World,

an issue of obvious relevance

to

Crusoe s

religious

instruction of

Friday.

Defoe entertained an unusual

theory

on the

barbarity

of

primitive

people

which

we

should

first

explain

before

showing

how

it

undermined

his efforts

to

justify

providence

in

both

The

History

of

the

Devil

and

Robinson Crusoe.

In The

History

of

the

Devil Defoe

argued

that Satan was

in

full

and

quiet possession of all the native peoples of America, such as Friday

and

his nation.8

There was

nothing

unusual about

this

opinion,

but

whereas Richard

Baxter and

other writers on the

devil had

suggested

that the

Indians

consciously practised

Satanism,9

Defoe

maintained

that the Indians

were not aware that their

society

harboured an

evil

being. According

to

Defoe,

the devil would not have achieved such

success

if

he were

readily

recognized

as the devil.

Thus,

primitive

people

all

practised

devil-worship-but

with the

full

conviction

that

they

were

worshipping

the

true God.

Defoe

was convinced

that

belief

in a benevolent Deity was so natural to men that it could never be

erased. The devil s

only

recourse

throughout history

had been to set

up wrong

notions of

worship,

and

bring [men]

to a false

worship

instead

of a

true,

supposing

the

object

worshipped

to

be

still

the

same .10

That the natives

were

worshipping

the devil could be

determined

by

their use of

bloody

sacrifices ,

a

practice

which fulfilled

the

devil s

objective

of

not

only

corrupting

men s

souls but also

destroying

their

bodies.

Defoe did not

directly

refer to

cannibalism

among

the

natives,

but cannibalism served as his

metaphor

for the

devil s promotion of bloodshed throughout the world: mankind,

worse than

the

ravenous

brutes,

preys

on his own

kind,

and

devours

them

.

. .

by

all the

ways

of

fraud and allurement that hell can

invent. 11

The

implication

of Defoe s

argument

was

that the

devil

rather than

innate wickedness was the

major

instigator

of

bloodshed

among

primitive people

and indeed mankind

in

general.

This

thesis

may

help

to

explain why Friday

and

his nation seem to be neither noble

savages

8

See Satan s Devices, viii. 123.

9

See Richard

Baxter,

The

Saints

Everlasting

Rest,

9th

edn.

(London,

1662),

256.

Baxter,

one of

Defoe s

favourite

divines,

upheld

belief

in various

diabolical

phenomena

such

as

witch-

craft and

possession

in

The

Certainty of

a

World

of Spirits

(1691),

a work which

was later blamed

for

helping

to

legitimize

the

Salem

witch trials

of 1692.

10

History, I,

x. 174. See

also

I,

ii.

33.

l

Ibid.

II,

iv. 296.

496

HUDSON




5/9

WHY GOD NO KILL THE DEVIL?

nor

without

strong

traces

of mankind s

original

innocence and

good-

ness.

In

recent

years,

critics

have

generally agreed

that

Defoe

absolutely rejects the idea of the noble savage, and gives an essentially

Hobbesian or

Calvinist

account of man

in

his

natural

state;

in

the

words

of

J.

Paul

Hunter,

Defoe s

depiction

of

cannibalism

vividly

dramatizes

the

horrors of natural

depravity .12

While

this

interpret-

ation is consistent with

Crusoe s reaction

to

the cannibals

when he first

sees

them,

it does not

explain

why

he finds

little

evidence

of

depravity

when he

finally

meets a cannibal. In

fact,

just

the

opposite

is true.

Friday

is like a child

(p.

209)-grateful,

honest,

happy,

affectionate.

This

seeming paradox-that

an

otherwise innocent

and benevolent

people could be reduced to acts of cannibalism-is partly explained

when

Crusoe

questions

Friday

about his

religious

beliefs.

Friday

tells

Crusoe

of

his

god,

a benevolent

deity

named

Benamuckee

( much

good )

who

lives on

top

of

a mountain.

Crusoe

finally

tells

Friday

that Benamuckee is a

Cheat and

that

if

his

priests

talked to

anyone

on

top

of the

mountain,

it

must be with

an evil

Spirit (p.

217).

It is then

that he instructs

Friday

on

the

devil.

It

would

seem,

therefore,

that Benamuckee

demonstrates how

the devil

has

achieved

power

over

primitive

nations

by

setting

himself

up

as

God, taking advantageof mankind s naturaldesire to worship a deity.

Like

mankind before the

fall,

Friday

has no

understanding

of

evil;

he

worshipped

Benamuckee

with no

inkling

that this

might

be the

devil.

And

although

Friday s

people

are

guilty

of

cannibalism,

Crusoe

indicates

in

A

Vision

of

the

Angelic

World

(1720)

that

these abomin-

ations

had been incited

largely

by

the devil

rather than

by original

sin

or an

inherent

propensity

to

evil:

if

the Devil had not

been

in

them,

they

would

hardly

have

come

straggling

over

the Sea

so

far,

to

devour

one another. 13

By indicating that cannibalism-perhaps along with a great deal of

human evil-results

largely

from the

instigation

of

Satan rather than

12

J.

Paul

Hunter,

The

Reluctant

Pilgrim

(Baltimore,

1966),

130-1. See also

Blackburn,

pp.

364-5;

Virginia

Ogden

Birdsall,

Defoe s Perpetual

Seekers

(Lewisburg,

1985),

24-49.

13

A

Vision

of

the

Angelic

World,

appended

to

Serious

Reflections

during

the

Life

and

Surprising

Adventures

of

Robinson Crusoe

(London,

1720),

35. This

treatment of evil

among

primitive people

does

not

necessarily

contradict Defoe s

opinions

on

original

sin ,

which

in

fact

were not

perfectly

in

line with

the traditional

theology

of

Puritanism. In

The

Family

Instructor,

11th edn.

(London,

1734),

Defoe described

original

sin

not

as

the

inherent

or

necessary

evil

attributed to

mankind

by

strict

Calvinism,

but

as

a natural

Propensity

in us

to do

Evil

(p. 21).He

generally

assumed

that this

propensity

could be

controlled

through

education and

discipline.

The mind

of a

child,

he

argued,

is

malleable

and

ready

to be

molded

into

any

Form

by

wicked

or virtuous

influences

(pp.

64-6).

Consistent

with

this

doctrine,

Crusoe s

education

of

Friday

is

remarkably

quick

and

easy, suggesting

that

Friday- a

child -is

capable

of

being

turned

towards evil or

goodness according

to the

predominant

influence at

any

time. For

a

contempor-

ary explanation

of how this

understanding

of

human nature differs from

the Calvinist

view,

see

497




6/9

original

sin,

Defoe

raises

a

number of

serious doubts

concerning

the

justice

of

providence.

First,

why

would

a

just

God abandon a

whole

nation to the wiles of an evil being whom they could not recognize and

therefore

could

not

avoid? Prominent

scholars

of

diabolical

phenomena,

such

as

Joseph

Glanvill,

acknowledged

the

seriousness

of

this

problem:

unless

all men had the

ability

to

distinguish

between

the

deceptions

of the devil and the

ways

of

God,

it

was

impossible

to

argue

that a

just

and

caring providence

ruled

over the

world.

As Glanvill

wrote

in

his textbook

on

witchcraft

and the

devil,

Sadducismus

Triumphatus

(1688-9),

..

if

there

be a

Providence

that

superviseth

us,

(as

nothing

is

more

certain)

doubtless

it

will

never

suffer

poor

helpless

Creatures to be

inevitably

deceived

by

the

craft

and

subtlety

of their

mischievous

Enemy,

to their

undoing;

but

will without

question

take such

care,

that

the works

wrought by

Divine Power

for the Confirmation

of

Divine

Truth,

shall have such

visible

Marks and

Signatures

... as

shall discover

whence

they

are,

and

sufficiently

distinguish

them

from all

Impostures

and

Delusions.14

In

order

to

prove

that

Friday s

people

should have

recognized

the

wickedness of their

customs,

Crusoe must

postulate

the existence of

visible

marks and

signatures

which

distinguish goodness

from

evil.

But even when Crusoe first

sights

the

natives,

he assumes that

they

had no

inkling

of the wickedness

of

cannibalism:

it is not

against

their

Consciences

reproving,

or

their

Light reproaching

them

(p. 171).

Long

before

his

religious

discussions with

Friday,

this

opinion

leads

to doubts

concerning

the

justice

of

God,

for

why

would the wise

Governor

of all

Things give up

any

of

his

Creatures,

to such

Inhumanity; nay,

to

something

so

much

below,

even

Brutality

it

self,

as

to

devour

its own kind?

(p. 197).

Crusoe s ruminations on

this

topic

are

at first

fruitless ,

but

having

observed

Friday s

evident

potential

for

goodness

and

piety,

he

eventually

decides

that the

natives

do

possess

a

natural

Light

to

distinguish

right

from

wrong. They,

not

God,

are

responsible

for

their

falling

into the

paths

of

evil:

... I sometimes

was

led

too far to invade the

Soveraignty

of

Providence,

as

it

were

to

arraign

the

Justice

of so

arbitrary

a

Disposition

of

Things,

that

should hide that

Light

from

some,

and reveal it to

others,

and

yet expect

a

like

Duty

from both: But

I

shut

it

up,

and check d

my Thoughts

with this

Conclusion .

. . as God was

necessarily,

and

by

the Nature of his

Being,

infinitely Holy

and

Just,

so it could not

be,

but that if these creatures were all

Richard Fiddes s admired textbook of

Christian

thought,

The

Body of

Divinity (Dublin,

1718),

i. 152-228.

14

Joseph

Glanvill,

Sadducismus

Triumphatus:

or.

Full and Plain Evidence

concerning

Witches and

Apparitions,

ed.

Henry

More

(London, 1688-9),

ii.

103.

498

HUDSON




7/9

WHY GOD NO

KILL THE DEVIL?

sentenc d to Absence from

himself,

it

was on account

of

sinning against

that

Light

which,

as

the

Scripture

says,

was

a

Law to

themselves,

and

by

such

Rules as their Consciences would acknowledge to be just, tho the Foun-

dation was not discover d to

us.

(p. 210)

Significantly,

Crusoe

has at this

point adopted

a

position very

like that

of

contemporary

deists,

who were

arguing

convincingly

that

orthodox

writers must either

acknowledge

the

capacity

of

non-Christians

to

distinguish

between

good

and

evil or

else

give

up

belief

in

the

justice

of

God.15

Crusoe,

we

might

say,

is

caught

in a

trap

between

Manicheanism on one hand and deism

on the other. None

the

less,

the

above statement

represents

a

position

which Crusoe is able to

hold

only briefly before the culminating religious discussion with Friday.

This discussion throws the whole issue of

divine

justice

back into

question by

revealing

that

Friday

has been the victim of

diabolical

influences which he did not

suspect,

and does not

understand even

when

Crusoe

explains

them.

Timothy

C.

Blackburn

may

be

right

to

suggest

that

Friday s ignorance

on this and other

religious

questions

dramatizes Defoe s scorn

for

the

deists.16 It

should

be

kept

in

mind,

however,

that

this denial of mankind s natural

understanding

of evil

jeopardizes

Crusoe s

faith in a

just

providence.

As

Crusoe had

himself

admitted, such a providence would have given the natives the means,

either

naturally

or

through

revelation,

to

recognize

the wickedness of

Satan s directions.

Thus,

Friday s

question Why

God

no

kill

the Devil? is the climax

of

a

continuing struggle

with the

theological

issues raised

by

the

barbarity

of

the

natives,

a

struggle

which

would

continue

with

similar

irresolution and

contradiction

in

The

History

of

the Devil.

There

is,

moreover,

a

further

question

which

Defoe and

Crusoe

try

to answer.

What should

Christians

do

about cannibals? Could the

cannibals be

justly punished

or

persecuted

for sins

they

were deluded into commit-

ting

by

the devil?

This

problem

is raised

by history,

for

the New

World

savages

did

suffer enormous

cruelty

and

persecution

when

they

were

conquered

by

the

Spaniards.

This

persecution

would

suggest

either

that

providence

has

unjustly permitted helpless people

to

suffer

for

no

good

reason

or,

alternatively,

that God

sometimes

judges

the

world

according

to

a

standard

of

moral truth

incomprehensible

to

mortals.

In

Serious

Reflections

during

the

Life

and

Surprising

Adven-

tures

of

Robinson

Crusoe,

Crusoe

indicates

that

the

persecution

of

the

Indians was authorized

by

divine justice. The

Spaniards

were the

Instruments of divine

providence

to

destroy

those

Peoples,

who

15

See

e.g.

Charles

Blount,

The Oracles

of

Reason

(London,

1693),

196.

16

See

Blackburn,

pp.

369-74.

499




8/9

were

come

up (by

the Influence of the

Devil,

no

Doubt)

to such

a

dreadful

height,

in that abhorr d Custom of human

Sacrifices,

that the

innocent Blood cried for it .17 Given the devil s own taste for

bloodshed,

however,

it

does

not

seem reasonable

to

make

providence

the

destroyer

of

those

unwittingly

under

his influence. Later

in

Serious

Reflections,

Crusoe comes close to

contradicting

his

justifi-

cation

of

providence:

since

pagans

such

as the Indians had no

knowledge

that their actions were

wrong,

how

can

we,

upon any

Christian

Foundation,

punish

or

persecute

the

Man for

not

exercising

that which

God

had not

given

him? 18 In

The

History

of

the

Devil,

Defoe takes the

further

step

that

places

the

Spaniards

on

the

side

of

the devil rather than providence. The slaughtering of the natives, he

argues,

was

as

pleasing

to Satan as the

murderous rituals

of

the natives

themselves.

The

Spaniards

planted religion

in

those countries

in

a

glorious

and

triumphant

manner,

upon

the

destruction

of an

infinite

number

of

innocent

people,

whose blood has fattened

the soil for the

Catholic

faith,

and to Satan s full satisfaction .19

Defoe s

confusion

on this

problem

is

shared

by

Crusoe,

whose

final

years

on the island

seem

preoccupied

with

the

question

of what to do

about

the

cannibals.

When

Crusoe

first

witnesses the cannibalism of

the natives who come on shore, his anger fills him with murderous

designs.

These

designs

are

abandoned when

Crusoe concludes

that

cannibalism is not much worse

than

the atrocities

perpetrated by

Christian nations at war.

In

particular,

he remembers that

the

slaughter

of the Indians

by

the

Spaniards

was mere

Butchery,

a

bloody

and unnatural Piece of

Cruelty,

unjustifiable

either to God or

Man

(p. 172).

According

to

The

History

of

the

Devil,

this

brutality

had

greatly pleased

the

devil,

so

Crusoe

may

have

good

reason to

give

most humble Thanks

on

my

Knees to God for

saving

him

from

the

temptation to Blood-Guiltiness (p. 173). On the other hand, he later

decides

that

Providence

does wish

him

to attack the

natives when

they

come on to the island

with

white

prisoners.

He

now

apparently

feels

that the

time

has come

to be the destructive instrument of

providence,

a role he

initially

bestows

on the

Spanish

conquistadores

in

Serious

Reflections.

Significantly,

the

attack

on

the

savages

is

prompted by

a

sudden

impulse-mere

instinct rather

than

any

reasoned

speculations

on

the

will of

God.

Crusoe

increasingly

finds that his

attempts

to reason

through problems lead to doubt and indecision rather than action,

17

Serious

Reflections

during

the

Life

and

Surprising

Adventures

of

Robinson

Crusoe,

247-8.

Serious

Reflections

is in the same volume as

A

Vision

of

the

Angelic

Wborld,

ut the two works

are

separately

paginated.

18

Serious

Reflections,

256.

19

History,

I,

i. 14.

500

HUDSON




9/9

WHY GOD NO

KILL

THE DEVIL?

indecision

which

eventually

forces

him

to seek divine

inspiration

to

answer the

doubts raised

by Friday.

Similarly,

in

The

History

of

the

Devil Defoe periodically turns to the argument that the wisdom of

providence-the

wisdom which he

himself has elsewhere

attempted

to

delineate-is

beyond

the humble

capacities

of

human reason.

As he

comments

on how the first seeds

of evil

could have been

planted

in

the

angelic

nature

of

Lucifer,

I

acknowledge

I

do not

see

through

[this

difficulty];

neither do

I

think

that the

great

Milton,

after all

his fine

images

and

lofty

excursions

on

this

subject,

has left it one

jot

clearer

than

he found

it. 20

Defoe

frequently

criticizes

Milton,

his most

famous

predecessor

as the devil s

historian,

for

pretending

to

know

facts regarding Satan s nature and origin which the revelation left

concealed.

In view of

this

criticism,

it is

curious

how

closely

Defoe

echoes

Milton

in

the

preface

to

Robinson

Crusoe,

where

he

promises

to

justify

and honour the Wisdom of

Providence

(p.

1).

Whatever

objections

Defoe

later

expressed against

the

possibility

of

entirely

justifying

the

ways

of

God

to

man,

Crusoe

attempts

to answer

the

serious difficulties

raised

by,

in

particular,

his

observations on

the

wickedness

of the natives. His

resort

to

various irrational

alternatives

to a reasoned trust

in

God-sudden

impulses,

divine

inspiration-run

counter to the desire for certainty, the stolid empiricism, and the

hostility

to

superstition

which often

informs

Defoe s

theology

and is

the foundation

of

his

technique

as

a

realistic novelist.

What our consideration of

the devil

finally

reveals is

that

Robinson

Crusoe is not

a

confident

and

systematic

account

of

a

man s

journey

from error to

truth,

irreligion

to

piety, perplexity

to a firm

reliance on

the wisdom

of

providence.

Crusoe s hesitant

shifting

between

reason

and

impulse,

between

a

desire

to

reduce the

universe

to

some

logical

order and the

grudging acceptance

of a

universe

beyond

comprehen-

sion, reflects dilemmas that persist throughout Defoe s later writings

on

religion.

What

is

remarkable

is that

Defoe dramatizes his

per-

plexities

so

ingenuously,

and

allows

himself

to

journey

hopefully

down various

theological paths

without

knowing

whether his final

destination

will

be orthodox or

consistent

with

his

positions

elsewhere.

Historically,

Defoe s

discussions

of

the

devil

and

provi-

dence illustrate the

conflicts

and

perplexities

which

accumulated when

English

Protestants

began

to insist

on

a

theology

that

seemed

accept-

able

to reason

and common

sense,

a demand

inseparable

from

the rise

of empiricism and the increased liberty to question established

doctrines

which followed

the

political

events

of

1688

and

1714.

From

the

doubts

of

Crusoe,

we

might

say, grew

the

scepticism

of

Hume and

the need for new

ways

to

defend the wisdom of God.

20

Ibid.

v. 77.

501

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

art. the diabolical disruption of order in robinson crusoe

Documents