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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: blind and orderly and absorbed, impervious to sentiment, to logic,
to terror too perhaps.
That was the form of doubt he feared most. Impervious to fear!
Often while walking abroad, when he happened also to come out of
himself, he had such moments of dreadful and sane mistrust of
mankind. What if nothing could move them? Such moments come to
all men whose ambition aims at a direct grasp upon humanity - to
artists, politicians, thinkers, reformers, or saints. A despicable
emotional state this, against which solitude fortifies a superior
character; and with severe exultation the Professor thought of the
refuge of his room, with its padlocked cupboard, lost in a
The Secret Agent |
