A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning
this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content
with a hint. So long as a man's eyes are open in the light,
the act of seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then
help mechanically seeing whatever objects are before him.
Nevertheless, any one's experience will teach him, that though
he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance,
it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely,
to examine any two things--however large or however small--
at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie
side by side and touch each other. But if you now come
to separate these two objects, and surround each by a circle
of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them,
in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other
will be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness.
How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves,
must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive,
combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same moment
of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one
side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction?
If he can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man
were able simultaneously to go through the demonstrations
of two distinct problems in Euclid.
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