“Both the Code of Hammurabi and the American Declaration of Independence claim to outline universal and eternal principles of justice, but according to the Americans all people are equal, whereas according to the Babylonians people are decidedly unequal. The Americans would, of course, say that they are right, and that Hammurabi is wrong. Hammurabi, naturally, […]
“The First Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the foragers, was followed by the Second Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the farmers, and gives us an important perspective on the Third Wave Extinction, which industrial activity is causing today. Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. […]
“Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world. The sculptor from the Stadel Cave may sincerely have believed in the existence of the lion-man guardian spirit. Some sorcerers are charlatans, but most sincerely believe in the […]
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick seems to instill in prospective readers the same trepidation felt by the whalers who pursue its eponymous sea monster. During the two weeks I spent reading it, multiple people inquired as to why I would put myself through such an agonizing ordeal. Early on, I could provide no better answer than that […]
“Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,––though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,––in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these […]
“What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a […]
“There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” ––Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, pg. 310
“We know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though […]
“Not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous––why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be […]
“Let me make a breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I––being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude,––how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships’ standing orders, ‘Keep your weather eye […]