英语听书《白鲸记》第699期

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As for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. 至于它的真正的头脑，你根本就一点也找不到什么迹象，一点也觉察不到。

The whale, like all things that are mighty², wears a false brow to the common world. 跟凡是伟大的一切东西一样，大鲸也是对人间戴起一副假面具的。

If you unload his skull³ of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of its rear end, which is the high end, 如果你拿掉了它脑壳里那些鲸油块，然后，打它后边（也就是它那隆起的地方）看一看它的后形，

you will be struck by its resemblance to the human skull, beheld⁴ in the same situation, and from the same point of view. 那么，它那跟你从同样角度、同样观点来看人类的后脑而结果却是完全相似的情况，一定会教你大吃一惊。

Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls⁵, and you would involuntarily confound it with them; 老实说，如果把这只倒置的脑壳（把它缩得跟人类的脑壳一般大小）放在装有许多人类脑壳的一只器皿里，你准会不自觉地把它跟人头混淆不清；

and remarking the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say—This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration⁶. 同时，看到它脑顶那地方的凹处后，你准会照骨相学的术语说——这家伙是毫无自尊心，毫无虔敬心的了。

And by those negations, considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious⁷ bulk and power, 而你把这些否定的断语，跟它那巨大的躯干和威力的肯定的事实一起考虑一下的话，你自己就会对那具有最高的威力的道理所在，

you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted⁸ potency⁹ is. 出乎意料地得出虽然不是最痛快的然而却是最正确的概念来。

But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain, 不过，如果你从原来的鲸脑的相当容积上，

you deem it incapable¹⁰ of being adequately charted, then I have another idea for you. 还认为不能对它获得适当的轮廓的话，那么，我给你另外出个主意。

If you attentively¹¹ regard almost any quadruped's spine¹², 如果你对差不多任何一种四足动物的背脊都留心地注意一下，

you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed¹³ skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. 那么，就它那脊骨跟一串结在项链里的许多缩小的脑壳，全都跟发育不全的正式的脑壳极相仿佛这一点说来，又要叫你大吃一惊了。

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