As "Darwinism" became widely accepted in the 1870s,
amusing caricatures of him with an ape or monkey
body symbolised evolution.
Reaction to the publication
For more details on this topic, see Reaction to Darwin's theory.
The book aroused international interest, with less controversy than had greeted the popular Vestiges of Creation.
Though Darwin’s illness kept him away from the public debates, he eagerly scrutinised the scientific response, commenting on press cuttings, reviews, articles, satires and caricatures, and corresponded on
it with colleagues worldwide.
Darwin had only said "Light will be thrown on the origin of man", but the first review claimed it made a creed of the “men from monkeys” idea from Vestiges. Amongst early favourable responses, Huxley’s reviews swiped at Richard Owen, leader of the scientific establishment Huxley was trying to overthrow. When Owen's review appeared it joined those attacking the book.
The Church of England's response was mixed. Darwin’s old Cambridge tutors Sedgwick and Henslow dismissed the ideas, but liberal clergymen interpreted natural selection as an instrument of God's design, with the cleric Charles Kingsley seeing it as "just as noble a conception of Deity".
In 1860, the publication of Essays and Reviews by seven liberal Anglican theologians diverted clerical attention from Darwin, with its ideas including higher criticism attacked by church authorities as heresy.
In it, Baden Powell argued that miracles broke God’s laws, so belief in them was atheistic, and praised
“Mr Darwin’s masterly volume [supporting] the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature”.
Asa Gray discussed theleology with Darwin, who imported and distributed Gray’s pamphlet on theistic evolution, Natural Selection is not inconsistent with Natural Theology.