THE WHITE WHALE B2i 
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 con- 
volutions, 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 
(scale 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 quad- 
ruped’s spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae 
