DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION 41 



without a creator and through merely mechanical 

 causes. 



The third way in which the word Darwinism 

 is used, popularly, is to designate the application 

 to man of the Darwinian theory of selection. Man 

 is assumed to be the animal most highly bred in 

 the course of the struggle for existence, and nothing 

 else. 



Fourthly and lastly, the name Darwinism is 

 applied in a general way to the theory of evolution, 

 as I remarked before. This confusion of ideas 

 has done much harm in many ways. If, for instance, 

 a serious student, engaged in scientific research, 

 finds in his special department what he regards 

 as evidence of the development of species, he is 

 at once called a Darwinist, and as such is assailed 

 by another party. In the same way, on the other 

 hand, the advance of the theory of evolution as a 

 scientific hypothesis and theory is quite wrongly 

 appropriated as an outcome of Darwinism, as 

 Haeckel especially has done. This explains the 

 great applause which Darwinism has received in 

 the widest circles and down even to the lowest 

 classes. 1 



Let us now attempt to give a short criticism of 

 these various ideas of Darwinism. 



The theory of selection has recently been very 

 adversely criticised. Certain scientists refuse alto 

 gether to accept it, and some men of note have 



1 See also Modern Biology, p. 265 et seq. 



