Scene III

Stubb and Flask on deck at night. The stars are each tiny cameras watching and watching. This is your silent meal, your silent bread, your silent foul, your silent wine. There is no more noise on the whole earth: you are deaf to everything. But what have your hands wrought in their firmest moments, and what has your spirit wrought in its darkest times? O what has spirit to do with all this blind mechanism, and how ought this material to be? There is nothing that ought to exist, nothing upon the face of the earth ought to exist. Here you have blind and dead matter hitting blind and dead matter: everything is deaf and blind and dead: there is no sound upon the face of the earth, there is nothing of which we can say, "This is amazing," or, "This is lovely," or, "This is beautiful." My roundness is your roundness; my sharp corners are your sharp corners. There is no such thing as belonging: nothing belongs to anyone. Nothing has the property of being owned and no one can be an owner. There are no more silver cords between objects and men that say, "This is mine," or, "That belongs to you." For everything is crude matter, and ownership is of the spirit.