- end_line
- 10329
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.539Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10306
- text
- imagine, that there is any creature, fish, flesh, or fowl, so little in
love with life, as not to cherish hopes of a future state? Why does man
believe in it? One reason, reckoned cogent, is, that he desires it. Who
shall say, then, that the leviathan this day harpooned on the coast of
Japan, goes not straight to his ancestor, who rolled all Jonah, as a
sweet morsel, under his tongue?
Though herein, some sailors are slow believers, or at best hold
themselves in a state of philosophical suspense. Say they—“That
catastrophe took place in the Mediterranean; and the only whales
frequenting the Mediterranean, are of a sort having not a swallow large
enough to pass a man entire; for those Mediterranean whales feed upon
small things, as horses upon oats.” But hence, the sailors draw a rash
inference. Are not the Straits of Gibralter wide enough to admit a
sperm-whale, even though none have sailed through, since Nineveh and
the gourd in its suburbs dried up?
As for the possible hereafter of the whales; a creature eighty feet
long without stockings, and thirty feet round the waist before dinner,
is not inconsiderately to be consigned to annihilation.
- title
- Chunk 4