194 
MOBY DICK; OR 
life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that tempo- 
rary interests and employments should intervene and hold them health- 
ily suspended for the final dash. 
Nor was Aliah unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emo- 
tion mankind disdain all base considerations ; but such times are evanes- 
cent. The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured 
man, thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale 
fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their 
savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, 
still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must 
also have food for their more common, daily appetites. For even the 
high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to 
traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, 
without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious 
perquisites by the way, Had they been strictly held to their one final 
and romantic object — that final and romantic object, too many would 
have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, 
of all hopes of cash — ay, cash. They may scorn cash now ; but let some 
months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this 
same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would 
soon cashier Ahab. 
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more re- 
lated to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and per- 
haps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of 
the Pe quod^s voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, 
he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usur- 
pation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if 
so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further obedi- 
ence to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From 
even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible con- 
sequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must 
of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection 
could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand, 
backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute at- 
mospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected to. 
For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be ver- 
bally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good de- 
