The Plan for a New Universe by G.K. Chesterton

There is one theory of the Origin of Species which I have never seen suggested. Probably this is because I have never read the numberless and voluminous works in which it has been suggested. For I have read much madder things, and nothing mad is likely to have been missed by the modern mind. But since it shocked the respectability of agnostics to suggest that all creatures had been made different by God, why did nobody suggest that they had been made different by Man? Why not trace the vast variety of animals as we can really trace the vast variety of dogs? The dog is already almost a world in himself, with all the appearance of distinct orders and types. A St. Bernard approaches the size and surpasses the legendary virtues of a lion; while there is a sort of Pekinese which a man might almost tread on as a somewhat unpleasing insect. Yet all this world of evolution has presumably had Man for its god. Suppose our sphere in space has itself been the Island of Dr. Moreau.

Suppose Man had some prehistoric civilization so colossal and complete that all beasts were beasts of burden, or all animals were domestic animals; that all rabbits were pet rabbits or all fleas performing fleas. Suppose the tame bird came first, and what we know as the wild bird afterwards. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of his early anti-domestic diatribes, compared a woman in the home to a parrot in the cage, saying that mere custom made us think the connexion natural. The answer, it has always seemed to me, is strangely obvious.