Calling him Ishmael.

While wading through Moby Dick for the past few weeks, I've often been struck by the transcendent turn Melville occasionally takes in the midst of detailed descriptions of cetacean anatomy. Here's one of my favorite passages:

How wonderful it is then—except after explanation—that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! . . .

. . . It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep they blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things!
. . . how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few as vast as the whale!