No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.

Conrad is stressing hunger as a primal force that strips away the social and moral “clothing” people rely on—fear, patience, disgust, superstition, and even professed principles. Under extreme deprivation, he suggests, the body’s need overrides cultivated restraint and inherited belief, revealing how contingent many ideals are on material security. The line fits Conrad’s broader preoccupation with testing civilization’s claims under pressure: when circumstances become brutal enough, lofty convictions can prove fragile, and behavior is driven less by creed than by necessity. The image of principles as “chaff in a breeze” underscores their lightness and disposability when set against physical survival.