THE GOSPEL OF WORK ACCORDING TO JOSEPH CONRAD

the "flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly," finds no better weapon than that of his own industry. At first, he works to sustain the sense of reality he associates with civilization. Work offers, he says, "the chance to find yourself. Your own reality? what it really means." Deeper in the heart of darkness, though, as dark and fearful truths begin to emerge, work offers instead a respite from too much reality. In the tasks of the moment, Marlow says, "The inner truth is hidden?luckily, luckily." Finally, when Marlow faces the critical temptation of "a dance and a howl" on shore, it is not "fine sentiments" by which he is restrained, but engineering and