.. < 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
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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
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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.
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