Chapter 82.00: CHAPTER 80. The Nut.

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CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
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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 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 vertebræ to a strung necklace of
dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It
is a German conceit, that the vertebræ 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 vertebræ of which he was
inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, 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 vertebræ 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 vertebræ, 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.