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.
"裴廓德号"这位郁郁寡欢的船长,虽说可算是最不善于做出这种浅薄无聊的行动;虽说他一向严格要求别人的只是绝对的。毫不犹豫的服从;虽说他并不要求人家得把鞋子脱掉后才能跨上后甲板;虽说有时由于情况特殊(有关事项以后就要谈到),他对他们说话时会语态失常(不管是出自谦虚还是带有警告性质或者其它等等);然而,即使如此,亚哈船长可也决不是不遵守海上的种种至高形式和习惯的。
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.
也许还可以看到,他有时仿佛是以这种形式和习惯为掩护。来把自己伪装起来;偶然利用这种形式和习惯,以达到其它一些比之形式和习惯所能合法效劳的更要隐蔽的目的。他脑子里还有相当程度的。未曾显露的君主观念;通过这些形式,那种君主观念便体现为一种难以抗拒的独裁。因为一个人随他有多大的卓越的智力,那种智力总不能永远对别人施行一种随心所欲的霸权,而不需要借助某种形式上的策略和防备手段,尽管这种策略和防备手段本身多少总有点可鄙和卑劣。帝国的名正言顺的皇子皇孙之所以能够始终免掉人间的选举手续,而且把这种风尚所能产生的最高的荣誉归之于那些成名的人,就正是这个道理,虽然这些人之成名,与其说是因为他们具有确切无疑的超越于大众的迟钝水平的能力,倒不如说是因为他们是无能的神力所秘密创造出来的一小撮劣等货。