Charting the course of evolutionism in Britain can be seen as an exercise in trying to understand the emergence of and response to what became known as “Darwinism.” Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term and tried to control how it was used – he was, of course, known as “Darwin’s bulldog” because of his aggressive support for the theory. But Darwinism certainly didn’t entail complete acceptance of the program outlined in the Origin of Species, because even Huxley would not have been a Darwinian on those terms (Fig. 26.1). To understand what was going on in the context of the time, we must be aware that the meaning of the term “Darwinism” has also changed over time. In the modern world it usually refers to the theory of evolution by natural selection. But in the late nineteenth century many evolutionists who did not believe that natural selection was the main mechanism of evolution called themselves “Darwinians.” The true value of the selection theory was recognized only in the twentieth century, so the contemporary reception of Darwin’s theory has to be understood in terms of a much broader debate over what evolutionism entailed.

To many ordinary people, Darwin simply became a symbol or figurehead for a generalized evolutionary philosophy, probably entailing notions of progress and the struggle for existence. In his later life, his face became familiar to all thanks to the publication of portraits and caricatures – often emphasizing certain apelike aspects of his features – published in popular magazines (Browne 2002). Even at this level there were ambiguities, though. Our vision of the initial debate over the Origin of Species has been shaped by the negative reaction of conservative religious thinkers and by Huxley’s strident anticlericalism, both fueling the claim that evolution and Christianity are incompatible. But because evolution was popularly supposed to entail progress, it was accepted by many liberal clergymen, whose views were thus not so far removed from those of the less aggressive secularists.