184 
MOBY DICK; OR 
him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, liv- 
ing principle or soul in him ; and in sleep, being for the time dissoci- 
ated from the characterising mind, which at other times employed it 
for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the 
scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was 
no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued 
with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab’s case, yielding 
up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose ; that pur- 
pose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and 
devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own ; nay, 
could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was 
conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unhidden and unfeathered 
birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, 
when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was, for the time, but 
a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, 
to be sure, but without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in 
itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature 
in thee ; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus ; 
a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever ; that vulture the very creature 
he creates. 
CHAPTER XLIV 
THE AFFIDAVIT 
So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book ; and, indeed, 
as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particu- 
lars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier 
part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume ; the leading 
matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged 
upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away 
any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may 
induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of 
this affair. 
I care not to perform this part of my task methodically ; but shall be 
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items, 
