"But the evidence isn't really what bothers most Americans about evolution. What bugs them is that evolution says something they just don't want to hear: namely, that we not only live in the natural world, but we are part of it. We emerged from it, or more accurately, we emerged with it. To them, that means we are just animals, our lives are an accident and our existence is without meaning, purpose or value. My concern for those who hold that view isn't just that they are wrong on science, wrong about the nature of the evidence, and mistaken on a fundamental point of biology. It's that they are missing something grand and beautiful and personally enriching."

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.