Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; THAT'S tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
Ahab is speaking of himself in the third person here, when he says that Ahab "never thinks" and "only feels."
Santiago, the old fisherman in Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea", constantly tells himself not to think, as he struggles to rein in the huge marlin. Like Ahab, he constantly thinks, even at times like a poet or a philosopher, and like Ahab he struggles to rein in his mind. Examples of what he tells himself while out alone on his boat:
"Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man."
"Don't think, old man. Sail on this course and take it when it comes."
"Do not think about sin."
"You think too much, old man."
"All I must do is keep the head clear."
And from the narrator:
"He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure."
"But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in and since there was nothing to read and he did not have a radio, he thought much and he kept on thinking about sin."
