Though Kipling and Wells both provide a set of laws for their animal societies, the laws are different in purpose and application. Kipling provides the jungle animals with an internal law, which is not imposed on them by an outside force. Kipling’s law is enforced through social pressure within the animal community, and regulates codes of behavior between the animals. Kipling’s law incorporates a sense of mutual cooperation. The law provides for ways of obtaining help and permission to hunt from other, but this is not the case in the law imposed by Dr. Moreau on the animal-men.

In The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells creates a set of laws that is imposed on the animals by Dr. Moreau. These rules regulate the animals’ behavior towards each other to a degree, but serve primarily to enforce Dr. Moreau’s authority and to hold them to behavior he considers proper. Punishment is physical, and administered primarily by Dr. Moreau and Montgomery. The animals watch the judgement of offenders and help to catch the perpetrators if they try to escape, but they don’t take an active part in the punishment or in deciding who should be punished. The animal-men have no control over the law’s creation, administration, or application.

Kipling’s law is a working, self-sustaining system that outsiders fail to understand. Interaction with humans causes a problem because they are outside of the jungle law. Interactions between the humans and the animals are settled through force rather than negotiation. Neither group is able to impose their own laws on the other. Wells handles the interaction between humans and animals differently. The human presence on Moreau’s island both disrupts the natural order and attempts to replace it. Dr. Moreau’s subjects are displaced from their natural environment and physically displaced from their animal forms, and given a set of rules to correspond with their new bodies, displacing their natural instincts. The human presence is a stabilizing force, in that it maintains the order it has created, but when the humans are removed from power, the animals return to their natural instincts. In a sense, order remains, but it is the natural order of instinct and it is not articulated or codified as it is in Kipling, and it is not the result of intelligent cooperative effort on the part of the animals.

Though Moreau’s law is not created or administered by the animal-men, the animal-men play a role in perpetuating it. The Speaker of the Law serves the same sort of function on Moreau’s island as Baloo does in The Jungle Book. As long as Moreau’s authority is intact, the animal-men work to support the system he has created. They educate each other of the law, inform on lawbreakers, and help Moreau apprehend guilty parties for punishment. Moreau and Montgomery alone could not hope to police the animal-men, so Moreau must indoctrinate them to participate in his system. Kipling’s animals enforce the law among themselves by treating those who do not follow it as outcasts, and they spread the knowledge of the law amongst themselves, but there is no manipulating force in play; they are able to sustain their system cooperatively. Moreau’s animal-men are not capable of such independence.

Kipling presents two distinct and functioning cultures in The Jungle Book, the culture of man and the culture of the animals. Both cultures are able to stand alone without aid from the others, but when the two meet, problems arise. The animals avoid the problem by avoiding man - The Law of the Jungle says that Man cannot be hunted, because to hunt Man brings retribution (Jungle Book p. 37). The men use force to keep the animals away. Moreau, on the other hand, must create a culture as he creates the animal-men, but the principle is in a way the same. The animal-men may not harm Moreau because to do so will bring retribution, and Moreau rules over them with pain and the threat of pain. Non-interaction is not an option, however. Moreau and the other humans separate themselves from the animals, but still interact with them regularly, using them in subservient positions but maintaining contact with them.

Moreau’s law also serves to venerate him and ascribe power to him, while the jungle law that Kipling presents does no such thing. The animals claim to consider man weak and defenseless, and the Law of the Jungle says nothing about honor or fear that should be held towards the humans (Jungle Book p. 37). Moreau’s animal-men are quite aware of his power and quick to profess it. They worship Moreau and do not believe Moreau could be weaker than they are until Prendick puts the thought in their heads.

Both Kipling and Wells incorporate intermediary figures. Mowgli is cast in a much more positive light than Montgomery. Mowgli begins with an empathy for the animals and then learns the ways of man. Montgomery begins with the ways of man and then begins to bond with the animal-men. For Mowgli the ability to move between the two worlds is an asset. Montgomery’s contact with the animals becomes his downfall. Mowgli is able to use his knowledge of jungle law to direct the animals into serving him at his man tasks. Montgomery’s contact with and understanding of the animal-men erodes his authority over them.

The wording of the law has some interesting implications. Following each command is the question, "Are we not men?" (Dr. Moreau p. 43) While this is most likely meant by Moreau as an affirmation, but it is easy for the reader to ask the question more skeptically, and the animal-men themselves do not seem to be particularly assured. This statement and the fear of punishment is all that Moreau gives the animal-men in the way of justification for the law, while Kipling states very clearly that the Law of the Jungle "never orders anything without a reason." Moreau’s imposed law is arbitrary, from the animals’ point of view, and once the authority figure is removed, there is no reason to follow the law anymore.

Taking the view put forward in class that the animals in The Jungle Book can be likened to the peoples colonized by the British, Kipling presents a picture of natives whose culture functions appropriately without interference, but for whom the arrival of the British creates a problem. The animal society is not equipped to deal with humans. Their policy of avoiding humans seems to work well until the arrival of Sheer Kahn. The young wolves discover they can make an easy living by preying on the humans and their livestock, and the humans retaliate with traps and hunting. The arrangement is not beneficial for either side, and the intermediary figure of Mowgli is necessary to re-establish an order between the two.

Wells presents a similar view in some respects. Prendrick reflects that the animals were happy being their natural selves, when they didn’t know there was a state of being and existence different from the one they lived. Moreau’s interference attempted to raise them to a level they could not achieve, and allowed them to understand that their existence was not an ideal one. At the same time, the animals are able to remember the time when they were happy, and though Moreau tells them their current existence is an improvement, it is clearly through fear of him rather than the hope of an elevated existence that they repeat and keep the law.

If the same parallel is used here as in the Jungle Book, the view of native culture is not very different. Native people function adequately when they are unaware that there is a ‘better way,’ and are unable to achieve more than a parody of that better way when they are informed of its existence. However, Moreau’s attempt to exercise more direct control over the animal-men than the humans in The Jungle Book makes non-interaction a difficult goal to achieve. Kipling’s humans are content to ignore the animals so long as they aren’t harming humans, but Moreau must impose his control upon his animal-men regularly. Montgomery has to interact with the animal-man servants and the other animals even more frequently, and as an intermediary figure he is not presented in quite so heroic a light as Mowgli. His sympathy for the animal-men is viewed as a detriment rather than an asset. In the end, he is able to maintain a friendship with them only so long as he can provide for them something that they don’t have. He is not able to fit in with their natural order when they revert to their animal instincts, and they do not relate to him as a comrade.

Moreau’s meddling produces a very negative view of Empire, implying the process to be one that tries to make creatures something that they were never meant to be. Wells also presents much more clearly the risks of Imperialism. Kipling’s animals never pose any dramatic threat to the human population as a whole. The native society degenerates as the young wolves are lamed from traps, and left starving, and the humans are unquestionably superior. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, Moreau’s authority is the only thing preventing the animal-men from turning on the humans. British control in such a situation must be very tightly held, because a slip results in chaos and uprisings. The intermediary figure ‘goes native’ and the British presence is destroyed.

Moreau as an outsider in control is an important point, because it illustrates many of Kipling’s fears. Moreau pays no attention to the sort of animal he uses, he merely picks what he pleases. Carnivores and herbivores alike are brought to the island, and once he has worked on them, he turns them loose and expects them to get along and follow the rules. This is similar to Kipling’s disgust with British that don’t know Indian culture, illustrated in some of his short stories. To lump Hindus and Muslims together and tell them not to fight with each other is equally careless.

Moreau as lawmaker is also problematic from a character point of view. He is not a likely person to teach the principles of humanity to a new race. Moreau would be teaching his own set of morals to his new race of humans, if he succeeded in creating them. His principles caused him to be rejected from society in England, but he is now the god-figure for the humans he creates. The "white man’s burden" comes into question here. Is just any white man fit to indoctrinate and civilize the natives? Is a British man like Moreau still preferable to savageness? Likewise, is Montgomery an appropriate role model? Moreau also gives the animal-men no education in how to tell right from wrong, beyond the strict obedience to the law. Does teaching the rules without the moral justification for them truly constitute raising the consciousness of the natives?

Kipling avoids these questions by keeping the native authority in place, and, again, working with the native culture rather than overcoming it. The animals of the jungle already have moral judgement that stems from the law, which is founded in good reason. Mowgli works within the jungle law, but his authority is augmented by his command of fire. Still, when he resorts to this authority, he is recognized as different, and at first he is rejected. When he proves his superiority within the law and restores the lawful order to the jungle, putting the proper native authority back in place, he is accepted back among the wolves. Mowgli does not impose the white man’s law on the jungle creatures when he returns from the village, but he no longer joins in pack life either. He is set apart from the law, able to go outside it when necessary, but working within it when possible.

Kipling and Wells present similar ideas in different ways through their jungle laws, but the fundamental difference is in the source and justification of the law. The two address many of the same problems, but Kipling seems more geared to presenting the way things should be, while Wells shows the worst-case scenario. Kipling and Wells by no means agree on everything, but the similarities in their views are striking despite the difference in presentation.