Conrad’s Christians

Abstract

It will be recalled that the enormities of Conrad’s Muslims in his early works provide an exaggerated reflection of the faults of his Christians, particularly in the areas of exclusiveness, superstition and hypocrisy. As we have seen, Conrad hovered uneasily between belief and disbelief and attempted to fulfil himself spiritually in his literary career. To convey ‘things human’ in ‘a spirit of piety’ would clearly involve him with the whole human being, including what may be called man’s spiritual side; an intangible component from which, at least, the reaction to art is drawn (or so he suggests in ‘The Ascending Effort’). ‘A moralist,’ he writes to Galsworthy, ‘must present us with a gospel — he must give counsel, not to our reason or sentiment, but to our very soul.’¹