Melville is a moral
philosopher, Conrad a speculative psychologist.
The essentially modern quality of Conrad lies in this transference
of wonder from nature to the behavior of man, the modern man for
whom lightning is only electricity and wind the relief of pressure
from hemisphere to hemisphere. Mystery lies in the personality
now, not in the blind forces that shape and are shaped by it. It
is the difference, in a sense, between Hawthorne, who saw the
world as shadow and illusion, symbolizing forces inimical to
humanity, and Hardy, who sees in external nature the grim
scientific fact of environment. It is a difference between eras
more marked in Conrad than in many of his contemporaries, because,
like Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe, he avoids the plain prose of
realism and sets his romantic heroes against the great powers of
nature--tempests, the earthquake, solitude, and grandeur. Thus
the contrast is marked by the very resemblance of romantic
setting. For Conrad's tempests blow only to beat upon the mind
whose behavior he is studying; his moral problems are raised only
that he may study their effect upon man.
If, then, we are to estimate Conrad's work, let us begin by
defining him in these terms.
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