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 downward. 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