protection by
natural accident and growth; and why should we profess to think beyond
it, for all the world as if we were the images of God! We are born under
a House of Lords, as birds under a house of leaves; we live under a
monarchy as niggers live under a tropic sun; it is not their fault if
they are slaves, and it is not ours if we are snobs. Thus, long
before Darwin struck his great blow at democracy, the essential of the
Darwinian argument had been already urged against the French Revolution.
Man, said Burke in effect, must adapt himself to everything, like an
animal; he must not try to alter everything, like an angel. The last
weak cry of the pious, pretty, half-artificial optimism and deism of the
eighteenth century came in the voice of Sterne, saying, "God tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb." And Burke, the iron evolutionist,
essentially answered, "No; God tempers the shorn lamb to the wind."
It is the lamb that has to adapt himself. That is, he either dies or
becomes a particular kind of lamb who likes standing in a draught.

The subconscious popular instinct against Darwinism was not a mere
offense at the grotesque notion of visiting one's grandfather in a cage
in the Regent's Park. Men go in for drink, practical jokes and
many other grotesque things; they do not much mind making beasts
of themselves, and would not much mind having beasts made of their
forefathers. The real instinct was much deeper and much more valuable.
It was this: that when once one begins to think of man as a shifting and
alterable thing, it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist
him into new shapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes. The popular
instinct sees in such developments the possibility of backs bowed and
hunch-backed for their burden, or limbs twisted for their task. It has
a very well-grounded guess that whatever is done swiftly and
systematically will mostly be done by a successful class and almost
solely in their interests. It has therefore a vision of inhuman hybrids
and half-human experiments much in the style of Mr. Wells's "Island of
Dr. Moreau." The rich man may come to breeding a tribe of dwarfs to be
his jockeys, and a tribe of giants to be his hall-porters. Grooms might
be born bow-legged and tailors born cross-legged; perfumers might have
long, large noses and a crouching attitude, like hounds of scent; and
professional wine-tasters might have the horrible expression of one
tasting wine stamped upon th