CHAPTER 80
The Nut
If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist
his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square.
In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in
length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side
view of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But
in life—as we have elsewhere seen—this inclined plane is angularly filled
up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk
and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the
mass; while under the long floor of this crater—in another cavity seldom
exceeding ten inches in length and as many in depth reposes the mere
handful of this monster’s brain. The brain is at least twenty feet from his
apparent forehead in life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like
the innermost citadel within the amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like
a choice casket is it secreted in him, that I have known some whalemen who
peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any other brain than that
palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm
magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their
apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his general might
to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his intelligence.
It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the
creature’s living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain, you
can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that
are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.
If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of
its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its resemblance to
the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from the same point of
view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human
magnitude) among a plate of men’s skulls, and you would involuntarily
confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on one part of its
summit, in phrenological phrase you would say—This man had no self-
esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations, considered along with
the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power, you can best form to
yourself the truest, though not the most exhilarating conception of what the
most exalted potency is.
But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale’s proper brain, you
deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea for
you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped’s spine, you will be
struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed
skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a
German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But
the curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first
men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton
of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a
sort of basso-relieve, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the
phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not pushing their
investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe
that much of a man’s character will be found betokened in his backbone. I
would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist
of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in
the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.
Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial
cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that vertebra the
bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being eight in
height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. As it passes
through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers in size, but for a
considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course, this canal
is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance—the spinal cord—
as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain. And what is still
more, for many feet after emerging from the brain’s cavity, the spinal cord
remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. Under
all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey and map out the
whale’s spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the wonderful
comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than compensated by the
wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord.
But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I would
merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the Sperm
Whale’s hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the
larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould of
it. From its relative situation then, I should call this high hump the organ of
firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale. And that the great
monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to know.
