“The writer’s method of attaining the essential was different from that of the thinker or the scientist. These, said Conrad, knew the world by systematic examination. To begin with the artist had only himself; he descended within himself and in the lonely regions to which he descended, he found “the terms of his appeal”. He appealed, said Conrad, “to that part of our being which is a gift, not an acquisition, to the capacity for delight and wonder… our sense of pity and pain, to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts… which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.”