 makes the front of a man - what, indeed, but
his eyes?
    Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are
so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one
picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale's eyes,
effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers
between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of
course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ
imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and
another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be profound
darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the
world from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the
whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct windows,
but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing
always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in
some subsequent scenes.
    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, anyone'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
