INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 187 
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6. The descent and ascent of Man—‘“‘a recognition of man’s solidar- 
ity with the rest of creation, of his affiliation 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 of Species has proved 
a veritable Magna 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. 
