Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.80

Text File | 1994-05-27 | 5.1 KB | 77 lines

.. < chapter lxxx 2  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
.. <p 347 >
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-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 vertebrae
the canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large
capacity.  Now, of course, this
.. <p 348 >
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.
.. <p 348 >