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.

In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a
touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the
elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as
that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperors to their decrees.
It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand." But in most creatures,
nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine
land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like
Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so 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 dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified,
that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the
dread powers more 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 but that 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 way
viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you
plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the
forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius.

But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written
a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his
doing noth