“Professor, look at that sea! Who can say it isn’t actually alive! It expresses its anger and its tenderness! Yesterday it went to sleep as we did, and now like us it is awakening after a peaceful night...Watch it as it awakens under the caresses of the sun. It’s going to renew its diurnal existence. It’s fascinating to study its functions as an organism. It has a pulse, arteries, sudden movements, and I side with the learned Maury who discovered that it has a circulation as real as the circulation of blood in animals.”
Captain Nemo, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, translated by Miller and Walter, Naval Press Institute, 1993. |