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And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
"裴廓德號"這位郁郁寡歡的船長,雖說可算是最不善于做出這種淺薄無聊的行動;雖說他一向嚴格要求別人的只是絕對的。毫不猶豫的服從;雖說他并不要求人家得把鞋子脫掉后才能跨上后甲板;雖說有時由于情況特殊(有關事項以后就要談到),他對他們說話時會語態失常(不管是出自謙虛還是帶有警告性質或者其它等等);然而,即使如此,亞哈船長可也決不是不遵守海上的種種至高形式和習慣的。
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.
也許還可以看到,他有時仿佛是以這種形式和習慣為掩護。來把自己偽裝起來;偶然利用這種形式和習慣,以達到其它一些比之形式和習慣所能合法效勞的更要隱蔽的目的。他腦子里還有相當程度的。未曾顯露的君主觀念;通過這些形式,那種君主觀念便體現為一種難以抗拒的獨裁。因為一個人隨他有多大的卓越的智力,那種智力總不能永遠對別人施行一種隨心所欲的霸權,而不需要借助某種形式上的策略和防備手段,盡管這種策略和防備手段本身多少總有點可鄙和卑劣。帝國的名正言順的皇子皇孫之所以能夠始終免掉人間的選舉手續,而且把這種風尚所能產生的最高的榮譽歸之于那些成名的人,就正是這個道理,雖然這些人之成名,與其說是因為他們具有確切無疑的超越于大眾的遲鈍水平的能力,倒不如說是因為他們是無能的神力所秘密創造出來的一小撮劣等貨。
