Moby Dick

Back Forward Menu

of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort
of life that lives in a dog or a horse.

Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though
some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are
of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of
the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for
example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to
the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any
generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita,
so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his
one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific