{"id":"01KFNR871QM39RQKNZCFSTCRGJ","cid":"bafkreicivir2rcxnydyjemqbzean25dsl4iknuxa6xhlvmdzbqlqqpzsbu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":4928,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.923Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":4862,"text":"The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do\r\ncommercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the\r\nmissionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive\r\nmissionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land,\r\nJapan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom\r\nthe credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.\r\n\r\nBut if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no\r\næsthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to\r\nshiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet\r\nevery time.\r\n\r\nThe whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you\r\nwill say.\r\n\r\n_The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?_ Who\r\nwrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who\r\ncomposed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a\r\nprince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down\r\nthe words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And\r\nwho pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!\r\n\r\nTrue enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no\r\ngood blood in their veins.\r\n\r\n_No good blood in their veins?_ They have something better than royal\r\nblood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;\r\nafterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of\r\nNantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and\r\nharpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the\r\nbarbed iron from one side of the world to the other.\r\n\r\nGood again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not\r\nrespectable.\r\n\r\n_Whaling not respectable?_ Whaling is imperial! By old English\r\nstatutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.” *\r\n\r\nOh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any\r\ngrand imposing way.\r\n\r\n_The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?_ In one of the\r\nmighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world’s\r\ncapital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian\r\ncoast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*\r\n\r\n*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.\r\n\r\nGrant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real\r\ndignity in whaling.\r\n\r\n_No dignity in whaling?_ The dignity of our calling the very heavens\r\nattest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your\r\nhat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I\r\nknow a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty\r\nwhales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of\r\nantiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.\r\n\r\nAnd, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet\r\nundiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute\r\nin that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably\r\nambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a\r\nman might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death,\r\nmy executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in\r\nmy desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory\r\nto whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84E5QTCH1DXXJAMQAJ8E","peer_label":"24","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84E5QTCH1DXXJAMQAJ8E","peer_label":"24","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR871B6Y3MWSK7KMEGC9NN","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.652Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:18.917Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}