In four characters, Conrad undermines all possibility of unambiguous moral action. The Professor, whose anarchism begins in existential emptiness and contains a violent totalitarian impulse, dramatizes the potential for death in the human will when its energies are directed toward power, toward political ends; the capacity for destruction, both private and public, of the Professor's devotion to the “idea” is grotesquely symbolized by the bomb he carries, his hand always on the detonator. The Assistant Commissioner has no “idea,” but his apparent efficiency is thoroughly undermined by the way Conrad exposes the ambiguity both of his motives and of the sources of the energy which enables him to succeed in his hunt for Verloc. Like Winnie, the Commissioner has chosen “respectability”—an inauthentic life. Winnie's own destruction begins in her feeling for Stevie and is hastened by Stevie's angry compassion, since even compassion is dangerous as a motive for action. This is a lesson Michaelis' youthful political experience has taught him, and his withdrawal presents the novel's final paradox: that in an anarchic world, self-preoccupied inertia may become the posture of a saint.