The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad (best books to read for self improvement txt) đ
- Author: Joseph Conrad
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âHow does he look on it?â asked Comrade Ossipon listlessly.
âAngelic.â ââ ⊠I picked up a handful of his pages from the floor. The poverty of reasoning is astonishing. He has no logic. He canât think consecutively. But thatâs nothing. He has divided his biography into three parts, entitledâ ââFaith, Hope, Charity.â He is elaborating now the idea of a world planned out like an immense and nice hospital, with gardens and flowers, in which the strong are to devote themselves to the nursing of the weak.â
The Professor paused.
âConceive you this folly, Ossipon? The weak! The source of all evil on this earth!â he continued with his grim assurance. âI told him that I dreamt of a world like shambles, where the weak would be taken in hand for utter extermination.â
âDo you understand, Ossipon? The source of all evil! They are our sinister mastersâ âthe weak, the flabby, the silly, the cowardly, the faint of heart, and the slavish of mind. They have power. They are the multitude. Theirs is the kingdom of the earth. Exterminate, exterminate! That is the only way of progress. It is! Follow me, Ossipon. First the great multitude of the weak must go, then the only relatively strong. You see? First the blind, then the deaf and the dumb, then the halt and the lameâ âand so on. Every taint, every vice, every prejudice, every convention must meet its doom.â
âAnd what remains?â asked Ossipon in a stifled voice.
âI remainâ âif I am strong enough,â asserted the sallow little Professor, whose large ears, thin like membranes, and standing far out from the sides of his frail skull, took on suddenly a deep red tint.
âHavenât I suffered enough from this oppression of the weak?â he continued forcibly. Then tapping the breast-pocket of his jacket: âAnd yet I am the force,â he went on. âBut the time! The time! Give me time! Ah! that multitude, too stupid to feel either pity or fear. Sometimes I think they have everything on their side. Everythingâ âeven deathâ âmy own weapon.â
âCome and drink some beer with me at the Silenus,â said the robust Ossipon after an interval of silence pervaded by the rapid flap, flap of the slippers on the feet of the Perfect Anarchist. This last accepted. He was jovial that day in his own peculiar way. He slapped Ossiponâs shoulder.
âBeer! So be it! Let us drink and he merry, for we are strong, and tomorrow we die.â
He busied himself with putting on his boots, and talked meanwhile in his curt, resolute tones.
âWhatâs the matter with you, Ossipon? You look glum and seek even my company. I hear that you are seen constantly in places where men utter foolish things over glasses of liquor. Why? Have you abandoned your collection of women? They are the weak who feed the strongâ âeh?â
He stamped one foot, and picked up his other laced boot, heavy, thick-soled, unblacked, mended many times. He smiled to himself grimly.
âTell me, Ossipon, terrible man, has ever one of your victims killed herself for youâ âor are your triumphs so far incompleteâ âfor blood alone puts a seal on greatness? Blood. Death. Look at history.â
âYou be damned,â said Ossipon, without turning his head.
âWhy? Let that be the hope of the weak, whose theology has invented hell for the strong. Ossipon, my feeling for you is amicable contempt. You couldnât kill a fly.â
But rolling to the feast on the top of the omnibus the Professor lost his high spirits. The contemplation of the multitudes thronging the pavements extinguished his assurance under a load of doubt and uneasiness which he could only shake off after a period of seclusion in the room with the large cupboard closed by an enormous padlock.
âAnd so,â said over his shoulder Comrade Ossipon, who sat on the seat behind. âAnd so Michaelis dreams of a world like a beautiful and cheery hospital.â
âJust so. An immense charity for the healing of the weak,â assented the Professor sardonically.
âThatâs silly,â admitted Ossipon. âYou canât heal weakness. But after all Michaelis may not be so far wrong. In two hundred years doctors will rule the world. Science reigns already. It reigns in the shade maybeâ âbut it reigns. And all science must culminate at last in the science of healingâ ânot the weak, but the strong. Mankind wants to liveâ âto live.â
âMankind,â asserted the Professor with a self-confident glitter of his iron-rimmed spectacles, âdoes not know what it wants.â
âBut you do,â growled Ossipon. âJust now youâve been crying for timeâ âtime. Well. The doctors will serve you out your timeâ âif you are good. You profess yourself to be one of the strongâ âbecause you carry in your pocket enough stuff to send yourself and, say, twenty other people into eternity. But eternity is a damned hole. Itâs time that you need. Youâ âif you met a man who could give you for certain ten years of time, you would call him your master.â
âMy device is: No God! No Master,â said the Professor sententiously as he rose to get off the bus.
Ossipon followed. âWait till you are lying flat on your back at the end of your time,â he retorted, jumping off the footboard after the other. âYour scurvy, shabby, mangy little bit of time,â he continued across the street, and hopping on to the curbstone.
âOssipon, I think that you are a humbug,â the Professor said, opening masterfully the doors of the renowned Silenus. And when they had established themselves at a little table he developed further this
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