Control: it is what man has sought after since the creation of humanity. It is what early man certainly must have wished for when he arose from the primordial sea and beheld in overwhelming awe the starry night sky; it is what every modern religion, to a certain extent, bestows upon the faithful in relation to fate; it is what alchemists tirelessly hunted for in the bottom of flasks; and it is most certainly what supplies the intrinsic value of an exact genetic duplicate of a sheep. Control is what man seeks in order to control his surroundings, to feel secure in his meaning. The situation was no different in late-19th century, during which a young H.G. Wells was formulating his first conceptions of where the scientific world was headed, the accelerating achievements of which intrigued the young Darwinist. Envisioning the future of science, Wells became uneasy about the repercussions of a science that would not actually be created for almost a century thereafter: biomechanics.
In his 1896 novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells examines his image of the science and criticizes the ethical implications, the portrayal of God, and the isolation from society that would be necessary to develop such revolutionary, yet dangerous, scientific precedents.
It is widely accepted that the general population supports one side or the other of the perennially thorny evolution vs. creation debate. Thus, when one observes Moreau's defiance of either theory, performed in such a gruesome manner, it is easy to see how the question of his ethics arises. Primarily, his abbreviation of the evolutionary process to a beast mutating into human form, from millions of years to a few days, defiles the innate progression of the natural world. Similarly, though Moreau's process of human development more closely resembles creationism, he demeans the...