Conrad Among the Psychologists

236 3. Conrad Among the Psychologists John E. Saveson. Joseph Conrad: The Making of a. Moralist. Amsterdam: Rodopi NV, 1972. In recent years, Norman Sherry has been locating new sources of Conrad's works through Nostromo and The Secret Agent and thereby enlarging our understanding of the novelist's artistic methods. Professor Saveson now finds other kinds of source and demonstrates how Conrad also used them in several works through The Secret Agent. Instead of approaching Conrad from such modern concepts as those of Freud or Jung, Saveson investigates Conrad's psychological assumptions in terms of other psychologists and thinkers contemporary with his own times. Saveson's book consists of three related sections which follow the progression of Conrad's assumptions in the order of publication of his works. The first section, "Changing Assumptions in Conrad's Early Fiction ," traces from the Malayan works through Heart of Darkness Conrad's basic concepts from Spencerian and Utilitarian bases to a qualification and expansion of these by Intuitionist and Pessimistic insights. Saveson assumes "psychological literacy" in Conrad and supports his supposition by means of Conrad's intimacy with H. G. Wells in the formative time of both writers' careers, a period which ended in 1907, the date of The Secret Agent. (Saveson incorrectly dates this novel 1904.) Saveson's hypothesis is that, since Wells' "basically Spencerian and Utilitarian beliefs were called into question, altered, and possibly strengthened as a result of Wells' attention to the German Pessimists," Conrad "evolved as a moralist according to a. similar pattern." Almayer's Folly reveals the fact that Conrad's earliest assumptions are not sentimental but "scientific" in that they are Spencerian; Spencer differentiates between the savage and the civilized in much the way Conrad does in his first novel. Sir James Brooke has been established as a source for Almayer's Folly and Lord Jim; Saveson's investigations, while not denigrating the presence of Brooke in the background of these novels, advance Spencer's claim as a major source and reveal these works in a new light. Also Alexander Bain, the eminent late-nineteenth century psychologist, was a spokesman for the Spencerian tradition , whose work Conrad could scarcely have failed to know. For Lord Jim, Conrad used both Brooke and post-Spencerian concepts such as those of W. E. H. Lecky, St. George Mivart, and Alfred Rüssel Wallace. In addition to Spencerian concepts, as noted in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Conrad found Eduard von Hartmann's philosophy of the Unconscious appropriate for his purposes. Furthermore , the Intuitionist hero of Lord Jim appears against the background of Kant, Bain, Brooke, T. H. Green, and Hartmann, by way of Schopenhauer. Lord Jim, then, as well as other works, possesses a more exact psychology, in contemporary terms, than has usually been attributed to it. Saveson's section on "Conrad as Psychologist" demonstrates how Conrad's earliest mature work is predominantly Utilitarian and 237 Spencerian. Marlow's psychological terms are essentially the same as those of James Sully, a chief spokesman for English Utilitarianism against German Pessimism represented by Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Lord Jim traces in great detail the genesis of an intuitional ethic in egoistic feelings. Psychological assumptions and their moral implications in The Nigger of the Narcissus are also strictly Utilitarian and correspond to assumptions in contemporary psychologists, including those of the widely translated French writer, Theodule Ribot. And Conrad, in delineating the main characters in The Secret Agent, adheres to the criminal psychology of Lombroso, whose theories were well known to Wells. Since turn-of-the-century criminal psychology is an extension of Darwinian and Spencerian principles, a special kind of continuity or relationship exists between this novel and Conrad's earliest fiction. Saveson also demonstrates how Conrad in Lord Jim appropriated certain aspects of Pessimistic psychology; he altered concepts from Spencerian sources by adding others from more metaphysical psychological systems. Brown is the major character who possesses characteristics from both sources. Both Brown and Kurtz illustrate Hartmann's principle that once the restraints of law are removed, the most highly civilized person becomes bestial. In his final section, "Conrad as Moralist," Saveson finds the morality of Lord Jim to be inconclusive. Marlow...