Moby Dick – Knights and Squires

In a chapter called Knights and Squires, right after a chapter where Ishmael defended the dignity of whaling on the grounds that whale oil is used to anoint the kings of England, Melville has Ishmael praise democracy and equality. Ironic, no?

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman’s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war- horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!

I don’t think this is meant to be irony. Melville is not favoring democracy and equality on on our usual grounds that inequality is unfair or not nice or arrogant or leads to oppression or makes some people unhappy. He is not preaching the pink equality of the pink police state.

He is preaching the equality of courage. His equality is the equality of the 2nd Amendment, which gives to every American citizen the basic right of the aristocrat, the right to bear arms. His equality is the equality of the Round Table. It is the equality of heirs and coheirs to Christ, joint owners of Love and Light and all the universe. It is the equality of being endowed by God with inalienable rights. It is the equality of achievement.

Those who favor government stifling the entrepeneurs and shoving aside the churches and the charities and the other little platoons of society and everything else that can lead to distinctions and hierarchies and differences, might consider that they are attacking the true foundation of democracy and equality.

Mormons who complaint about the Proclamation on the Family–how can it say that husband and wife are equal partners but tell the husband to preside?!?!–might reflect on their own shriveled understanding of equality.