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- and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be
recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey
in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that
leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How
many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and
sweetly perished there?
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
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.
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