Read the following excerpt and answer the question that follows. Abridged from Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe My father, a wis
e and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. What does the historical context of the writing demonstrate or tell you? Even in that time, there was a lower, middle, and upper class of society. Unlike today, people in that time were all of the same class in society. There were no middle class citizens in that time; only very rich and very poor. Ideas of class separation did not become common until after that period in time.
