1870年，随着“达尔文主义”被广泛接受，出现了有着猿猴身体的查尔斯·达尔文的漫画[12]

“达尔文主义”这个词语在十九世纪晚期用来代表伊拉斯谟斯·达尔文的工作。1860年4月，当查尔斯·达尔文1859年的《物种起源》被托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎在Westminster Review中提到后，这个词语的意义才变成今天这样[13]。赫胥黎把这本书称为“a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism”（“自由的军械库中一把真正的惠特沃斯枪”），将科学自然主义提升至超过宗教信仰的高度, 并在赞扬达尔文思想有用之处的同时，表达了对达尔文渐进论专业角度的保留看法，还对能否证实自然选择可形成新物种表示怀疑。[14] 赫胥黎把达尔文的成就与尼古拉·哥白尼解释行星运动相提并论：

What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species should offer residual phænomena, here and there, not explicable by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of "The Origin of Species" an immense debt of gratitude...... And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of Von Baer's "Researches on Development," thirty years ago, any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated.[6]

同时代的另一个演化理论家是克鲁泡特金，在他的互助论：演化的一种因素（Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution（英语：Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution））一书里，他支持和赫胥黎主张相反的达尔文主义。他的理论以他所见人类与动物以合作为生存机制的普遍为中心。他以生物和社会性的论点来显出助长演化的主因是在自由联合的社会和团体里自由合作的个体。这是为了反驳演化的核心是激烈竞争的论点，竞争理论为当时流行的政治、经济和社会理论提供了合理性；而盛行的对于达尔文主义的诠释，例如克鲁泡特金视为对手的赫胥黎的诠释，克鲁泡特金的达尔文主义概念可以以以下的引言总结：

In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense– not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. — Peter Kropotkin， Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), Conclusion.