Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
Page 79
CHAPTER 79
The Prairie
To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head ofthis Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologisthas as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost ashopeful as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rockof Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulatedthe Dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his,Lavater not only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentivelystudies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwellsin detail upon the modifications of expression discernible therein.Nor have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hintstouching the phrenological characteristics of other beings than man.Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the applicationof 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 centraland most conspicuous of the features; and since it perhapsmost 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 tothe completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomicallyin keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose.Dash the nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what asorry remainder! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mightya magnitude, all his proportions are so stately, that the samedeficiency 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 headin your jollyboat, your noble conceptions of him are neverinsulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled.A pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon obtrudingeven when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne.
In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical viewto 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 withthe morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bullhas a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles,the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mysticalbrow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperorsto their decrees. It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand."But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the browis but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line.Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's riseso 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 dignityinherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it,in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powersmore 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 butthat 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 wayviewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile,you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depressionin the forehead's middle, which, in a man, is Lavater's mark of genius.
But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whaleever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great geniusis declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it.It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this remindsme 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 crocodileis tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at leastit is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion.If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lureback 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'shigh seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics.But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of everyman's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every otherhuman science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones,who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplestpeasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings,how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldeeof the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you.Read if it if you can.