The Island of Dr. Moreau Man & the Natural World Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

They may once have been animals; but I never before saw an animal trying to think. (13.44)

But you have Prendick, and we don't mean a gorilla using sign language. People are animals too, and people think.

Quote #8

"[…] so long as your own pains drive you, so long as pain underlines your propositions about sin,—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels." (14.21)

Moreau believes pain links humans to the natural world and, in fact, will do so until pain is no longer affects how we act. Of course, there's a lot to be said for pain, such as the way it keeps us alive and whatnot.

Quote #9

A strange persuasion came upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and fate, in its simplest form. (16.89)

Wells was a scientist, so one might think he'd think of reason as something special and distinctly human. Nope. Reason joins instinct and fate as traits that are part of the natural order on Moreau's island.