Quotation from: The Secret Agent

Written by: Joseph Conrad


They were his fellow-citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education,
Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could
understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind
and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the
instincts of a police officer. Both recognise the same conventions, and
have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of
their respective trades. They understand each other, which is
advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their
relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the
other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different ways,
but with a seriousness essentially the same. The mind of Chief Inspector
Heat was inaccessible to ideas of revolt. But his thieves were not
rebels. His bodily vigour, his cool inflexible manner, his courage and
his fairness, had secured for him much respect and some adulation in the
sphere of his early successes. He had felt himself revered and admired.
And Chief Inspector Heat, arrested within six paces of the anarchist nick-
named the Professor, gave a thought of regret to the world of
thieves--sane, without morbid ideals, working by routine, respectful of
constituted authorities, free from all taint of hate and despair.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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