The Whale, Cont'd

I put down Moby Dick before Christmas--and I mean that literally: I had to put it down because the book was too heavy to carry around with me while I was traveling--but I've picked it back up again. This has been hard to do, since I put the book down at a point where Melville was describing the physiology of whales in pretty dense detail. This may sound boring, and at times it really is. There are moments, though, he comes up with things like this:

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.--Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it.

Melville was wrong about the ability of whales to see very well (they could probably benefit from bigger eyes) but they do have excellent hearing despite their small ears. Whale audiology aside, I enjoy the conclusion: most of us could stand to cultivate greater subtlety of mind. I'm not sure how to do that yet, but hopefully Melville will explain in the next couple hundred pages or so.