It has been my purpose in this study to try to demonstrate that Conrad's major creative phase rests on a continuous and consistent effort of thought. I began by arguing that Conrad conceived of his own art in terms of insight and vision rather than of laughter and tears; that he founded his values, both artistic and moral, on the hypothesis of a ‘spectacular’ universe; and that he steadily, even fiercely, resisted every attempt to reduce the significance of his work to its causal or biographical origins. It seemed, right, therefore, to approach the novels with the assumption that their author was in full possession of what he was trying to do and say. The Conrad that this assumption has enabled me to discover is a much more intellectually coherent figure than the one criticism has accustomed us to. From E. M. Forster's notorious verdict that ‘he is misty in the middle as well as at the edges’ to C. B. Cox's recent more qualified view that ‘there is no clear development of ideas throughout [his] work’, the mainstream of Conrad scholarship has stressed his power and profundity at the expense of his intelligibility and control.