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Lord Jim has involved and implicated many readers in a psycho- moral drama which has no easy solution. To solve the complexity and obscurity of Lord Jim, many a critic has mainly focused on the protagonist, Jim’s paradoxical fate. In spite of his constructive and altruistic idealism, Jim, like Krutz of Heart of Darkness, not only shows the cowardice and fear but betrays the “fixed code of conduct” by jumping from the Patna. So he represents a main paradox of this novel, a discrepancy between his ideals and his performance. Another important paradox, implying a moral dilemma, is the paradox of “destructive element,” which Stein remarks when he diagnoses Jim’s case. In this paper I intend to examine this elusive paradox, “destructive element,” to reveal the moral obscurity or dilemma which many readers may find in this novel. Stein emphasizes that man’s purposeful act necessarily brings about the self-destructive result because the “objective meaning” has disappeared in this world. Therefore, man, especially a romantic figure like Jim, desperately needs his own ideal to avoid the complete self- destruction. In this context, Stein advises Jim “to follow the dream―useque ad finem (until the end)”, though the dream is the “destructive element” itself. I come to the conclusion that Conrad emphasizes by “destructive element” that in a universe devoid of objective meaning, any purposeful action requires some private illusion. This private illusion, as destructive it is, might be the only truth and “saving element” of human life.