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