CHAPTER 79

  The Prairie

  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 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 jollyboat, 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 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

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, cars, 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 a 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 at 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 it if you can.