Not P but Moby-Dick (9)

[Mark Kohut]

I think Ian is on the right track...in fact I'll say, metaphorically, the
word conscience is halfway there...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conscience/

On Fri, Sep 8, 2023 at 9:51 AM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In the archaic sense, which I think applies here, "conscience" may mean
> simply "consciousness." Of course, Melville would push the meaning a bit to
> include those thoughts of good or ill behavior that replay themselves from
> memory into the present moments of his restless hours in the bunk where he
> would be sleeping if his memory didn't outplay his present surroundings for
> his attention.
>
> On Fri, Sep 8, 2023 at 5:22 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The following excerpt is from Chapter 29:
> >
> > Didn’t that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always
> > finds the old man’s hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the
> sheets
> > down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the
> pillow a
> > sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old
> > man! I guess he’s got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it’s a
> kind
> > of Tic-Dolly-row they say—worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don’t know
> > what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it.
> >
> > Does "conscience" here mean "guilty conscience", or is it something else?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
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>