Robinson Crusoe in Outer Space: The Power of the Imagination

University of Houston • University of Houston-Clear Lake • ISSO Annual Report Y2004 • 31-40

Robinson Crusoe in Outer Space: The Power of the Imagination
Irving N. Rothman
Department of English

Abstract--The imagination is seeded with knowledge; the data knowledge provides us leads to understanding. In its beneficent state, the imagination helps build complex ideas from sensible impressions. On the other hand, when the imagination derives from an agitated or irrational state, it characterizes itself as madness. The third volume of the Robinson Crusoe trilogy is titled the Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720). Appended to it is the little known narrative of Robinson Crusoe's travels into outer space entitled A Vision of the Angelick World. Crusoe gains access to outer space not by virtue of fabricated wings and not by riding on the backs of eagles or by sailing in hot air balloons, nor is his visit to space consequent of a dream vision. He achieves space flight solely by the reach of his imagination. Crusoe says that "things"--a word exclusively restricted to sensible objects--become apparent to him in his imagination. His knowledge of the construct of the "Invisible World" leads him to see "the Ideas of Distant Things . . . in the Mind." The flexibility of the mind allows him to envision himself in outer space visiting the regions of heavenly bodies he has been discussing with a friend. Thus, Daniel Defoe has Robinson Crusoe explain his presence in space by the "Power of Imagination."

The nature of the imagination is a philosophical issue in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Locke tells us that imagination in its pristine state is the progression from sensible knowledge--i.e., understanding gained through our senses. David Hume, who doubtless derived ideas about the imagination from John Locke, sees the imagination as an associative faculty that depends upon the qualities of "resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect."¹ For Joseph Addison, ideas in Lockean epistemology are generated by the senses, but the secondary imagination allows transitions from sensible knowledge to ideas that constitute an agglomeration of sensibilities or the association of ideas.² Bishop George Berkeley in Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713) tells us that under the lens of a microscope a tulip³ is but a set of segmented images that comprise the plant one knows immediately but sees differently by eyesight. Berkeley explains that a cherry in its wholeness is a congeries of sensible impressions.⁴ The imagination allows one to proceed empirically from simple sensibilities to complex ideas, from immediate perception to spatiality by which one expands sensible objects into ideas. For example, no one has ever seen a centaur in real life. But the imagination allows one to connect the head and body of a man with the torso of a horse to produce an animal that combines the intelligence of man and the fecundity of the horse, encapsulating all knowledge into a single figure who becomes in mythos the tutor of the emperor Alexander.

However, the imagination could also signify a disturbance of the mind or delusions of the mind. The irrational has been equated with "excessive imagination or fancy."⁵ For John Locke, "Madness seems to be nothing but a disorder in the imagination, and not in the discursive faculty."⁶ Imagination can also prove to explain the distortion of religious zealots who practice the craft of black witchcraft and fraudulently attribute to the devil horrible acts and evil deeds which are, in fact, the self-indulgent acts of venal men exercising their free will. Daniel Defoe, in A Vision of the Angelick World, the concluding portion of the Serious Reflections During the Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720), condemns "the vapourish Hypochondriack Imagination [which] represents Spectres and Spirits to us, and makes Apparitions for us" (12). Dreams, according to Defoe, offer "the Reality of the World of Spirits" (24).

Discourse on the imagination conceptualizes dreams. For some, dreams introduce a delusional state whereby one provides acts of fantasy meant to delude or deceive man's sense of actuality. Fortune tellers can dupe listeners into believing dreams that prove to be no more than superstition or delusionary behavior. On the other hand, dreams based on data generated by the senses with their basis in reality can prove both informative and therapeutic. Those of faith may find stories of dream visions being illustrative, such as Joseph's dreams in Egypt predicting seven fruitful years and seven years of drought. Dreams that foretell events which ultimately come true are based on the dreamer's experiential knowledge; they predicate eventualities that are always feasible, though not always immediately predictable.

Robinson Crusoe, however, as narrated by Defoe, needs no dreams to enable flight into outer space; nor does he require supernatural forces, or inventive chariots to project him into space, modes of transport discussed in Marjorie Hope Nicolson's book-length study, Voyages to the Moon.⁷ He needs only the power of imagination. Supported by sensible knowledge derived from contemporary scientific empiricism, Defoe has Robinson Crusoe imagining himself in the worlds of outer space in the third book of the Robinson Crusoe trilogy.⁸ He finds himself in flight beyond Earth and in the "Wastes of infinite Space" in an imagined voyage distinctively different from his travels through the "Desarts of Karakathay, and the uininhabited Wastes of Tartary" (26), which he had experienced in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). He views "the heavenly Bodies, the Motion, the Distances, and the Bulk of the Planets, their Situation, and the Orbits they move in" (26). Defoe's knowledge of the science of space indicates his reading of available scientific sources, conceivably his use of the works of Sir Isaac Newton and other of his contemporaries.

Parts of the Vision of the Angelic World (1720) offer a satirical view of the Earth below, but the work is not an attack on the human spirit, such as we find in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), for man in the free perception of space has a vision which elevates him beyond base desire or pragmatic political partisanship. On the one hand, as he mounts in the "vast Abyss" of space, Robinson Crusoe, a traveler in space, looks down and sees the world below him. He surveys Earth and discovers "how little, how mean, how despicable every Thing look'd" (26). Space travel at best has an uplifting effect: "the Soul of Man is capable of being continually elevated above the very Thoughts of human Things, is capable of traveling up the highest and most distant Regions of Light, but when it does, as it rises above the earthly Globe, so the Things of this Globe sink to him" (27). This is the case of a "real story"--the understanding of the immensity and complexity of Creation--"conveyed by means of an imaginary story," as Jeffrey Hopes notes,⁹ confirming David Blewett's suggestion that Defoe has moved "away from a stress on authenticity towards a much greater emphasis on invention and imagination."¹⁰ No longer is one concerned with authenticating events of the narrative, for the issue has transferred to an understanding of the variety and variability of planets and other phenomena of outer space.

Maximillian E. Novak offers further insight into Defoe's attitude toward the relationship of scientific invention and imagination. He claims that Defoe "reverses the process of the voyage imaginaire; instead of sending his civilized man back to nature for reformation. . .Defoe creates an interaction between man and nature by which nature was to be made more productive and man more pure."¹¹ Novak refers here to Crusoe's industrialization on the island where he learns to bake his own bread by creating a crude oven under primitive conditions.¹² The mercantilistic philosophy may be applied to Crusoe in space. His flight among the planets in their pristine state allows him to separate man's earth-bound limitations and petty insufficiencies from his apperception of Creation and his new-found appreciation of the expansiveness of the cosmos. Man in space above human folly is capable of more expansive knowledge and keener intelligence than he has shown on Earth. His purpose becomes productive, not constrictive; his conduct, adventurous, not domestic; his philosophy, mercantilistic, not insular.

Because Robinson Crusoe makes the journey to outer space in his imagination, he is able to transcend a conversation with a friend on the nature of habitable bodies--planets and orbiting spheres of the "Invisible World" (24-25). In his flight into space, the power of the imagination affords him an understanding of his unique circumstances and enables him to encapsulate the realities and enigmas of the cosmos. Thus, Crusoe examines heavenly bodies. Investigation into Daniel Defoe's discussion of astronomy and science will discover the source of his knowledge of the bodies of outer space. The nature of complex ideas urges the discussion of scientific issues and their theological implications. Crusoe claims that no human on Earth can adequately study "such immense Bodies as the Sun, Stars, Planets, and Moons in the Great Circle of the lower Heaven,. . .." One "must soar up higher" to discover the "infinite Variety [of Creation] which we know nothing of" (28-29). Crusoe reports his observations and impressions of "Planets, Satellites, and inferior Lights" (28) that he views in the aether of outer space.¹³

Crusoe assumes that "none of the Planets except the Moon" is "habitable" (29). The Moon, he finds "not above as big as Yorkshire"; though it is habitable it cannot support life "comfortable to Mankind" (30). He claims that he found no life on the Moon when he visited it, not "Man, Woman or Child" (30).

Each of the planets is discussed in brief. Saturn is hostile to human life: "What Man or Men, and of what Nature, could inhabit this frigid Planet, unless the Creator must be supposed to have created animal Creatures for this Climate. . .. All the Notions of Saturn being a habitable World, are contrary to Nature, and incongruous with Sense" (30). Because of its distance from the Sun, Saturn "has not above one ninetieth Part of the Light and Heat that we enjoy on our Earth" (30). Jupiter with "only one twenty-seventh Part of the Light and heat that we enjoy here" is not any more habitable than Saturn. Mars is a hostile planet because it lacks "Rain, Vapour, Fog, or Dew" (31). Crusoe assumes that "Venus and Mercury. . .would destroy Nature by their heat and dazling [sic] Light" (31).

Defoe has Crusoe wish that he could view the atmosphere of space with "Optics unclouded" (32). Had he the capacity to view all the planets with the scientific knowledge needed to understand their composition and unimpaired by the effects of the atmosphere, he still could not achieve understanding of the "higher Light," which, in a literal sense would be the sun, and in a philosophical sense, "religious truth." Ambiguities and allegories both find treatment in Defoe's work. Not only is space uninhabitable by Man, but both his knowledge and understanding are limited even with improved optics. Full knowledge is, according to Defoe, the province of the Creator. It is beyond Man's perception or understanding.

Because it is not possible for humans to learn ultimate truth, they unfortunately relegate themselves to "the Converse of Spirits, and the Visions of Futurity" which may be found only "by Hints, Dreams, and Impulses, and not by Clear Vision and open Discovery" (43). Thus, humans are deceived by charlatans, persuaded by the Devil, and duped by wizards, gypsies, and black witchcraft.

Extensive study of Defoe's sources of information is warranted. Ilse Vickers in Defoe and the New Sciences is a start. Vickers notes the importance of Defoe's instructor at Newington Green, Charles Morton, whose lectures entitled Compendium Physicae (System of Physics, ca. 1700) taught science to students at Morton's Academy for more than forty years and served as a textbook for Harvard College: "Even a glance through the Compendium will show that Morton was abreast of much recent scientific research."¹⁴ Morton rejected astrological interpretations of planetary life. He chose to follow the teachings of Francis Bacon and modeled some of his chapters after Bacon's Parasceve, or Preparative towards a Natural and Experimental History, affixed to the Novum Organum (London, 1620).¹⁵

Vickers notes Defoe's familiarity with lunar travels in Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone: Or, a Discourse of a Voyage thither, by Domingo Gonsales (London, 1638).¹⁶ Experimental scientists of the Royal Academy were writing on the nature of space, orbital bodies, and theories of the atom and magnetism, which Defoe appropriated in Robinson Crusoe's imagineered flight into space. Vickers cites fifty-nine books in Defoe's library related to the new sciences that suggest the origins of empirical data and scientific impressions that found their way into A Vision of the Angelick World.¹⁷ Items are characterized under (1) chemistry, physics, and mathematics, (2) botany, gardening, and husbandry, (3) geography, topography, travelling, and exploring, (4) industry, crafts, trade, and commerce, (5) religion, and (6) sundries. Among works of interest are W. Molyneux's Sciothericum Telescopicum. . .of Adapting a Telescope to an Horizontal Dial (Dublin, 1686) and William Whiston's Praelectiones Astronomicae Cantabrigiae (Cambridge, 1707).

NOTE: Investigation into aerial voyages, the nature of the imagination, and the source of Defoe's scientific descriptions will require a return to the Hubbard Collection of Imaginary Voyages in the Special Collections Department of the University of Michigan libraries.

Endnotes
¹Wayne Waxman, Hume's Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994): 70.
²Roland Hall, "Some Uses of Imagination in the British Empiricists: A Preliminary Investigation of Locke, as Contrasted with Hume," The Locke Newsletter, No. 20 (1989), tells us that the term "association of ideas" originated with Locke (40). See Donald F. Bond. The Spectator. 5 vols. Cambridge: The Clarendon Press, 1965, the essays on "The Pleasures of the Imagination," Nos. 409, 411-421.
³George Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, in Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, ed. With an introd., David M. Armstrong (1713; N.Y.: Collier Books and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1965), part 3, p. 211.
⁴Three Dialogues, part 1, p. 148.
⁵R. S. Krishan, "'Imagination out upon the Wing': Lockean Epistemology and the Case of the Astronomer in Johnson's Rasselas." J. Evolutionary Psychology 11:3-4 (Aug. 1990): 332.
⁶From The Essay on Human Understanding, in Roland Hall, "Some Uses of Imagination in the British Empiricists: A Preliminary Investigation of Locke, as Contrasted with Hume," The Locke Newsletter, No. 20 (1989): 47. Hall also refers the reader to Bk. 2.11.13: madmen "do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning; but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths, and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles" (150). See The Works of John Locke. A New Edition, Corrected. 10 vols. London: Printed for Thomas Tegg, W. Sharpe and Son, G. Offor, G. and J. Robinson, J. Evans and Co.; Glasgow: R. Griffin and Co., and Dublin: J. Cumming, 1823; repr. Germany: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1963. 1:150-51.
⁷Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Voyages to the Moon (New York: Macmillan Company, 1948). Chptrs. 2-5. Further insights may be found in Paul Dottin, "Daniel Defoe et les Sciences Occultes," Revue Anglo-Amèricaine 1 (1923): 102-19; Ulrich Broich, "Robinsade und Science Fiction," Anglia 94 (1976): 140-62; and Michel Baridon, "Le Style de Defoe et l'épistémologie de la 'New Science,'" Tréma 9 (1984): 119-32. None of these works mentions Crusoe's imaginative flight into outer space.
⁸Daniel Defoe first wrote The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. That publication was so successful that he immediately followed it with a sequel entitled The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, also published in 1719. The success of these two volumes led to a third in 1720, more philosophical in nature, entitled the Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, with A Vision of the Angelick World appended to it.
⁹Jeffrey Hopes, "Real and Imaginary Stories: Robinson Crusoe and the Serious Reflections," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 8.3 (April 1996): 313-28.
¹⁰David Blewett, Defoe's Art of Fiction--Robinson Crusoe, Mol Flanders, Colonel Jack & Roxana (Toronto; Buffalo: U of Toronto P, 1979), 15-16, in Hopes, 327.
¹¹Maximillian E. Novak, Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe. University of California Publications, English Studies: 24. (Berkeley: University of California, 1962; reissued, N. Y.: Russell & Russell, 1976), 58.
¹²Novak, 57.
¹³A Vision of the Angelick World, 24-25.
¹⁴Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 39.
¹⁵Vickers, 41.
¹⁶Vickers, 71.
¹⁷Vickers, 177-81. Note Librorum ex Bibliothecis Philippi Farewell, D.D., et Danielis De Foe (London, 1731), republished as The Libraries of Daniel Defoe and Phillips Farewell, Olive Payne's Sales Catalogue (1731), ed. A. Heidenreich. Berlin: W. Hildebrand, 1970.

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