{"id":"01KJNXJQWJ8SAD88F0P6X5MVH4","cid":"bafkreih3y435tb6x6yfur4slmqnnda4linacojginbewe4t4alzw6fvc4i","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":307078,"char_start":299519,"chunk_index":42,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1890,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"‘what’s the matter now, old fellow?’ ‘Look ye here,’ says he; ‘let’s\r\nargue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’\r\nsays I—‘right _here_ it was.’ ‘Very good,’ says he—‘he used his ivory\r\nleg, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise\r\nStubb, what have you to complain of? Didn’t he kick with right good\r\nwill? it wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you\r\nwere kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It’s\r\nan honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England\r\nthe greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and\r\nmade garter-knights of; but, be _your_ boast, Stubb, that ye were\r\nkicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; _be_\r\nkicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back;\r\nfor you can’t help yourself, wise Stubb. Don’t you see that pyramid?’\r\nWith that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to\r\nswim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my\r\nhammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask?”\r\n\r\n“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.’”\r\n\r\n“May be; may be. But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask. D’ye see Ahab\r\nstanding there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing\r\nyou can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him,\r\nwhatever he says. Halloa! What’s that he shouts? Hark!”\r\n\r\n“Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!\r\n\r\n“If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!\r\n\r\n“What do you think of that now, Flask? ain’t there a small drop of\r\nsomething queer about that, eh? A white whale—did ye mark that, man?\r\nLook ye—there’s something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask.\r\nAhab has that that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 32. Cetology.\r\n\r\nAlready we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost\r\nin its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere\r\nthe Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of\r\nthe leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter\r\nalmost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the\r\nmore special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which\r\nare to follow.\r\n\r\nIt is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,\r\nthat I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The\r\nclassification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here\r\nessayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.\r\n\r\n“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled\r\nCetology,” says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.\r\n\r\n“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry\r\nas to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families.\r\n* * * Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal”\r\n(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.\r\n\r\n“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.”\r\n“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field\r\nstrewn with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to\r\ntorture us naturalists.”\r\n\r\nThus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,\r\nthose lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real\r\nknowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in\r\nsome small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are\r\nthe men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at\r\nlarge or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:—The Authors\r\nof the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner;\r\nRay; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;\r\nMarten; Lacépède; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick\r\nCuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne;\r\nthe Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to\r\nwhat ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above\r\ncited extracts will show.\r\n\r\nOf the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen\r\never saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional\r\nharpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate\r\nsubject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing\r\nauthority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great\r\nsperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy\r\nmentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper\r\nupon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of\r\nthe whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the\r\nprofound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the\r\nthen fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to\r\nthis present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats\r\nand whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference\r\nto nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past\r\ndays, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was\r\nto them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a\r\nnew proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,—the\r\nGreenland whale is deposed,—the great sperm whale now reigneth!\r\n\r\nThere are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the\r\nliving sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest\r\ndegree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale’s and Bennett’s;\r\nboth in their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both\r\nexact and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to\r\nbe found in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes,\r\nit is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific\r\ndescription. As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic,\r\nlives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted\r\nwhales, his is an unwritten life.\r\n\r\nNow the various species of whales need some sort of popular\r\ncomprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the\r\npresent, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent\r\nlaborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I\r\nhereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete;\r\nbecause any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very\r\nreason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical\r\ndescription of the various species, or—in this place at least—to much\r\nof any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of\r\na systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not the builder.\r\n\r\nBut it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the\r\nPost-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea\r\nafter them; to have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations,\r\nribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I\r\nthat I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful\r\ntauntings in Job might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a\r\ncovenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have swam\r\nthrough libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with\r\nwhales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. There\r\nare some preliminaries to settle.\r\n\r\nFirst: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology\r\nis in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it\r\nstill remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.666Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.666Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}