Wednesday, February 20, 2008

From "The Whiteness of the Whale"

[no offense intended to any Vermonters]

"Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--why is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness--why will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright?... for what knows he, this New England colt, of the black bison of distant Oregon?

No: but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world." (164)

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