Moby Dick

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small--at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side
by side and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two
objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in
order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to
bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary
consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes,
in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more
comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same
moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one
side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he
can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems
in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this
comparison.

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when