"
"Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,
are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act,
the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning
thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind
the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.
Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough.
He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength,
with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable
thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent,
or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever
a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations.
But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me?
Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable
than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest
and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow.
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