Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically regarded,
if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems
a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature.
For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness.
Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is
but disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an one,
but with quite another; and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar,
it only results again from another phase of the Quaker,
modified by individual circumstances.
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman.
But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what are called
serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things
the veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been originally
educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism,
but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad,
lovely island creatures, round the Horn--all that had not moved this
native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle
of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack
of common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad.
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