Invitation
For the last six hundred years， men have been going out in small
boats and large to hunt down and mm der wild whales and dolphins
for their meat， bone， oil， and baleen. Yet three thousand years ago，
in the ancient Mediterranean， the dolphin， a small whale， was the
doorway to profound religious mysteries and the honored guardian
of life in the sea. Gemistos Pletho， a fifteenth century Byzantine
philosopher， saw the dolphin swimming through the sea as the mind
of God in the waters. More recently， Melville reckoned that if God
returned to earth in our lifetime， it would be in the guise of the
whale.
The whale is a split in our consciousness: on the one hand viewed
as product， as resource， as an article， an object to be carved up to
satisfy the economi~ imperative; on the other， a view almost lost
now， as the great leviathan， the guardian of the sea s unutterable
mysteries. Ever since we discovered the awesome abilities of our
hands to fashion the world to our making， we have dishonored the
unknown， until instead of inspiring us， it merely seems an incon-
venience. Yet in that time when human beings lived a less exploitative
.life， the earth still held her secrets， and we revered those creatures
who could reveal them. Now we find ourselves at the threshold
of approaching the sea as we did the land : creating boundaries，
carving up territories， dividing--in the name of nations--the waters
that still flow in our veins and link each living thing to every other.
One of the points of this book is that in so doing we are furthering
the annihilation of our spirit.
We have， for too long now， accepted a view of non-human life
which denies other creatures feelings， imagination， consciousness，
and awareness. It seems that in our craze to justify our exploitation
of all non-human life forms， we have stripped from them any attri-
butes which could stay our hand. Try for a moment， if you can， to
imagine the imagination of a whale， or the awareness of a dolphin.
That we cannot make those leaps of vision is because we are bound
to a cultural view which denies their possibility.
Moreover， we are hound to a view that relegates feeling and
emotion to inferior functions， that searches in vain for pure objec-
tivity， and in so doing denies the humanity of the investigator and
the livingness of the creature under investigation.
We are bound to a vision that leads us further away from nature，
and further away fi om each other.
l his book is written by some people who wish to take a second
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