o not know
whether he is or he isn't. But I do say that, within the scope of his
vision, he is wholly convincing; that the men and women he sets into his
scene show ineluctably vivid and persuasive personality; that the
theories he brings forward to account for their acts are intelligible;
that the effects of those acts, upon actors and immediate spectators
alike, are such as might be reasonably expected to issue; that the final
impression is one of searching and indubitable veracity. One leaves
"Nostromo" with a memory as intense and lucid as that of a real
experience. The thing is not mere photography. It is interpretative
painting at its highest.

In all his stories you will find this same concern with the inextricable
movement of phenomena and noumena between event and event, this same
curiosity as to first causes and ultimate effects. Sometimes, as in "The
Point of Honor" and "The End of the Tether," he attempts to work out the
obscure genesis, in some chance emotion or experience, of an
extraordinary series of transactions. At other times, as in "Typhoon,"
"Youth," "Falk" and "The Shadow Line," his endeavour is to determine the
effect of some gigantic and fortuitous event upon the mind and soul of a
given man. At yet other times, as in "Almayer's Folly," "Lord Jim" and
"Under Western Eyes," it is his aim to show how cause and effect are
intricately commingled, so that it is difficult to separate motive from
consequence, and consequence from motive. But always it is the process
of mind rather than the actual act that interests him. Always he is
trying to penetrate the actor's mask and interpret the actor's frenzy.
It is this concern with the profounder aspects of human nature, this
bold grappling with the deeper and more recondite problems of his art,
that gives him consideration as a first-rate artist. He differs from
the common novelists of his time as a Beethoven differs from a
Mendelssohn. Some of them are quite his equals in technical skill, and a
few of them, notably Bennett and Wells, often show an actual
superiority, but when it comes to that graver business which underlies
all mere virtuosity, he is unmistakably the superior of the whole corps
of them.

This superiority is only the more vividly revealed by the shop-worn
shoddiness of most of his materials. He takes whatever is nearest to
hand, out of his own rich experience or out of the common store of
romance. He seems to disdain the petty advantages w