{"id":"01KFNR889E8M1VT96V3HGHB7BJ","cid":"bafkreifs2fjgr66kg3amcnjljcdi7kxqvzlyph77cwmaoib3zkl7ofukea","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":10692,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.446Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":10651,"text":"into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations.\r\nAnd, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour\r\nbetween a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan;\r\nyet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a\r\nship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying\r\nshape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could not\r\ncatch.\r\n\r\nBut it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded\r\nwhale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at\r\nall. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,\r\nthat his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though\r\nJeremy Bentham’s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of\r\none of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed\r\nutilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal\r\ncharacteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any\r\nleviathan’s articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the\r\nmere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully\r\ninvested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so\r\nroundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the\r\nhead, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is\r\nalso very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of which\r\nalmost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the\r\nthumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring,\r\nand little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy\r\ncovering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering. “However\r\nrecklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one\r\nday, “he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens.”\r\n\r\nFor all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs\r\nconclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world\r\nwhich must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the\r\nmark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very\r\nconsiderable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding\r\nout precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in\r\nwhich you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by\r\ngoing a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of\r\nbeing eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you\r\nhad best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this\r\nLeviathan.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84DSE118DF6SYKPTMFZT","peer_label":"55","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84DSE118DF6SYKPTMFZT","peer_label":"55","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":"01KFNR88F0X442BAK9YMZASXVY","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.792Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:18.927Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}