So let us dispose of the idea that evolution is a wonderful designer, or a wonderful conductor of species destinies, which we human beings ought to imitate. For human intelligence to imitate evolution as a designer, would be like a sophisticated modern bacterium trying to imitate the first replicator as a biochemist. As T. H. Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog,” put it:1 Let us understand, once and for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
