320 MOBY DICK; OR 
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 nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared ki 
his pyramidical silence* And this reminds me that had the great 
Sperm Whale been known to the yoMng Orient World, he would have 
been deified by their childmagian thoughts. They deified the croc- 
odile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm 
Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be 
incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical 
nation shall lure back to their birthright, 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’s high seat, 
the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. 
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But 
there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s 
and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, 
is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty 
languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder 
and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read 
the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow 
before you. Bead if you can. 
CHAP TEE LXXIX 
THE NUT 
If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenolo- 
gist 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 
