.. < chapter lxxix 14  THE PRAIRE >


     To scan the lines of his face, or feel

the bumps on the head of this Leviathan; this is a thing which no

Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken.  Such an enterprise would


     seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the

Rock of Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the

Dome of the Pantheon.  Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only

treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of

horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the

modifications of expression discernible therein.  Nor have Gall and his

disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the phrenological

characteristics of other beings than man.  Therefore, though I am but ill

qualified for a pioneer, in the application of these two semi-sciences to the

whale, I will do my endeavor.  I try all things; I achieve what I can.

Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature.  He has

no proper nose.  And since the nose is the central and most conspicuous of the

features; and since it perhaps

.. <p 344 >

most modifies and finally controls their combined expression; hence it would

seem that its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely

affect the countenance of the whale.  For as in landscape gardening, a spire,

cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to

the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in keeping

without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose.  Dash the nose from

Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder!  Nevertheless, Leviathan

is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so stately, that the

same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no

blemish at all.  Nay, it is an added grandeur.  A nose to the whale would have


     been impertinent.  As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast

head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by

the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled.  A pestilent conceit, which

so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal

beadle on his throne.  In some particulars, perhaps, the most imposing

physiognomical view to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front

of his head.  This aspect is sublime.  In thought a fine human brow is like the

east when troubled with the morning.  in the repose of the pasture, the

curled brow of the bull has a touch of the grand in it.  Pushing heavy cannon

up mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic.  Human or animal, the

mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to

their decrees.  It signifies God: done this day by my hand.  But in most

creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of

alpine land lying along the snow line.  Few are the foreheads which like

Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes

themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all above them

in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending

there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer.

But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent

in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front

view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers

.. <p 345 >

more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature.  For you see

no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes,

ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad

firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom

of boats, and ships, and men.  Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow

diminish; though that way viewed, its grandeur does not domineer upon you

so.  In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic

depression in the forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of

genius.  But how?  Genius in the Sperm Whale?  Has the Sperm Whale ever

written a book, spoken a speech?  No, his great genius is declared in his

doing nothing particular to prove it.  It is moreover declared in his

pyramidical silence.  And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been

known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their

child-magian thoughts.  they deified the crocodile of the nile, because the

crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or as least it

is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion.  If hereafter any

highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the

merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now

egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's

high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.  Champollion deciphered the

wrinkled granite hieroglyphics.  But there is no Champollion to decipher the

Egypt of every man's and every being's face.  Physiognomy, like every other

human science, is but a passing fable.  If then, Sir William Jones, who

read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face, in its

profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read

the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow?  I but put that brow before you.

Read if it you can.

.. <p 346 >