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CHAPTER 46 . Surmises . Though , consumed with the hot fire of his purpose , Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick ; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion ; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways , altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage . Or at least if this were otherwise , there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him . It would be refining too much , perhaps , even considering his monomania , to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales , and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted . But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable , there were still additional considerations which , though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion , yet were by no means incapable of swaying him . To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools ; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon , men are most apt to get out of order . He knew , for example , that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck , yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership ; for to the purely spiritual , the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation . Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s , so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain ; still he knew that for all this the chief mate , in his soul , abhorred his captain’s quest , and could he , would joyfully disintegrate himself from it , or even frustrate it . It might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen . During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his captain’s leadership , unless some ordinary , prudential , circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him . Not only that , but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that , for the present , the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it ; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background ( for few men’s courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action ) ; that when they stood their long night watches , his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick . For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest ; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable — they live in the varying outer weather , and they inhale its fickleness — and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit , however promissory of life and passion in the end , it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash .
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