THE WHITE WHALE 345 
spouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the in- 
vestigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout 
alone. 
Still, we can hypothesise, even if we cannot prove and establish. 
My hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And 
beside other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by consider- 
ations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm 
Whale. I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it 
is an undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near 
shores ; all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and 
profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponder- 
ous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, Jupiter, Dante, and 
so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the 
act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on 
Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere 
long saw reflected there, a curious involved worming and undula- 
tion in the atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of 
my hair, while plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea 
in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this seems an addi- 
tional argument for the above supposition. 
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, 
to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, 
mild head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his in- 
communicable contemplations, and that vapour — as you will some- 
times see it — glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its 
seal upon his thoughts. For, d’ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear 
air ; they only irradiate vapour. And so, through -all the thick mist 
of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then 
shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank 
God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few 
along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and 
intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither 
believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with 
equal eye. 
