And even when recognized at last, their immense magnitude renders
it very hard really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth
can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life
that lives in a dog or a horse.
Indeed. in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures
of the deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore.
For though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures
of the land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad
general view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming
to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish
that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog?
The accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear
comparative analogy to him.
But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas
have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling;
though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita,
so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover
his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most
terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately
befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon
the waters; though but a moment's consideration will teach that,
however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much,
in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment;
yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult
and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate
he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these
very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness
of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.
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