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Notes on Life and Letters-Part25_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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itself! For one can't conceive a vocal Eternity. An enormous

silence, in which there was nothing to connect one with the



Universe but the incessant wheeling about of the sun and other

celestial bodies, the alternation of light and shadow, eternally



chasing each other over the sky. The time of the earth, though

most carefully recorded by the half-hourly bells, did not count in



reality.

It was a special life, and the men were a very special kind of men.



By this I don't mean to say they were more complex than the

generality of mankind. Neither were they very much simpler. I



have already admitted that man is a marvellous creature, and no

doubt those particular men were marvellous enough in their way.



But in their collectivecapacity they can be best defined as men

who lived under the command to do well, or perish utterly. I have



written of them with all the truth that was in me, and with an the

impartiality of which I was capable. Let me not be misunderstood



in this statement. Affection can be very exacting, and can easily

miss fairness on the critical side. I have looked upon them with a



jealous eye, expecting perhaps even more than it was strictly fair

to expect. And no wonder--since I had elected to be one of them



very deliberately, very completely, without any looking back or

looking elsewhere. The circumstances were such as to give me the



feeling of complete identification, a very vivid comprehension that

if I wasn't one of them I was nothing at all. But what was most



difficult to detect was the nature of the deep impulses which these

men obeyed. What spirit was it that inspired the unfailing



manifestations of their simple fidelity? No outward cohesive force

of compulsion or discipline was holding them together or had ever



shaped their unexpressed standards. It was very mysterious. At

last I came to the conclusion that it must be something in the



nature of the life itself; the sea-life chosen blindly, embraced

for the most part accidentally by those men who appeared but a



loose agglomeration of individuals toiling for their living away

from the eyes of mankind. Who can tell how a tradition comes into



the world? We are children of the earth. It may be that the

noblest tradition is but the offspring of material conditions, of



the hard necessities besetting men's precarious lives. But once it

has been born it becomes a spirit. Nothing can extinguish its



force then. Clouds of greedyselfishness, the subtle dialectics of

revolt or fear, may obscure it for a time, but in very truth it



remains an immortal ruler invested with the power of honour and

shame.



II.

The mysteriously born tradition of sea-craft commands unity in a



body of workers engaged in an occupation in which men have to

depend upon each other. It raises them, so to speak, above the



frailties of their dead selves. I don't wish to be suspected of

lack of judgment and of blind enthusiasm. I don't claim special



morality or even special manliness for the men who in my time

really lived at sea, and at the present time live at any rate



mostly at sea. But in their qualities as well as in their defects,

in their weaknesses as well as in their "virtue," there was



indubitably something apart. They were never exactly of the earth

earthly. They couldn't be that. Chance or desire (mostly desire)



had set them apart, often in their very childhood; and what is to

be remarked is that from the very nature of things this early



appeal, this early desire, had to be of an imaginative kind. Thus

their simple minds had a sort of sweetness. They were in a way



preserved. I am not alluding here to the preserving qualities of

the salt in the sea. The salt of the sea is a very good thing in



its way; it preserves for instance one from catching a beastly cold

while one remains wet for weeks together in the "roaring forties."



But in sober unpoetical truth the sea-salt never gets much further

than the seaman's skin, which in certain latitudes it takes the






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