Translating his theory of degeneration into a series of proposition on human affairs, [Ray] Lankester asks whether, for all its celebration of convenience and artificial tools, should modern civilization not fear that it too, like the parasite, may be in the process of decay, shedding its organic functions, and slowly drifting 'to the condition of intellectual Barnacles or Ascidians'?

[W]orkers no longer in need of protection, the defiant laborers were now, as the Regent of the York Special Commission set up to quell machine-breaking would write, 'ill-designing and wicked Men' who are not just engaged in the 'Destruction of the various Kinds of Machinery now most beneficially employed in the Manufactures of this Kingdom," but are in fact 'destructive of the good Order and Happiness of Society.'