INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 193 



6. The descent and ascent of Man — " a recognition of man's solidar- 

 ity with the rest of creation, of his affihation to a Simian stock — that 

 man and anthropoid apes are collateral branches from a common Pri- 

 mate stock which remains hidden in obscurity." 



7. Liberation of intelligence. — "The Origin oj Species has proved 

 a veritable IVIagna Charta of intellectual liberties, for, as no other 

 single document before or since, it has released the thoughts of man 

 from the trammels of unreasoned conservatism and dogmatism." — 

 H. E. Crampton. 



8. Ideal of scientific mood and method. — ^As Professor T. H. Morgan 

 says, "It is the spirit of Darwinism, not its formulae, that we proclaim 

 as our best heritage." Darwin was the first great evolutionist to use 

 the inductive method, that of first securing an abundance of facts and 

 then formulating theories to explain the facts. 



The above-stated eight points give us an idea of the broader con- 

 cept of Darwinism. Today the term "Darwinism" has come to 

 acquire a much restricted and a technical meaning. To the modern 

 evolutionist Darwinism has come to be practically synonymous with 

 "natural selection," or at least with the general principle of "selec- 

 tion," some phases of which are termed "neo-Darwinism." Before 

 we can adequately enter upon a study of Darwin's most characteristic 

 causal theory of evolution — the natural-selection theory — it is almost 

 imperative for us to know something of the background out of which 

 this conception arose. Already we have presented in our survey of the 

 evidences of evolution an array of facts most of which were known to 

 Darwin and in accord with which he developed his causal theories. 

 But we cannot afford to overlook the now well-known fact that what 

 Darwinism chiefly aims to explain are the phenomena of adaptation 

 and the web of life. These phenomena are to be conceived of as the 

 background of Darwinism and will be dealt with as such in the next 

 chapters. 



