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The logical structure of the Darwinian theory of the transformation of species through natural selection, as outlined at the end of 1859 in On the origin of species, is indissociable from its genesis, and successively and complementarily mobilizes the model of the selective activity of breeders and horticulturists (artificial selection) as well as the model, derived from Malthus, of the antagonism between demographic pressures and available resources. Using a didactic schema that has prevailed since the 1980s, in this article, Patrick Tort re-examines the foundations of the theory of descent with modification through natural selection, its departure from the providentialist natural theology, and its early deformation by the political and social philosophy of the liberal economic system, doubly embodied by Spencer (“social Darwinism”) and Galton (eugenics). It is this powerful annexation that offers a historical explanation for the concealment and distortion of the theses that Darwin would go on to defend eleven years later, in 1871, in The Descent of Man, on the evolution of human societies and civilization. These theses are diametrically opposed to the eliminationist dogma whose militant liberal fundamentalism, rigidly centering its interpretation around Origin of species, had long fettered the name of the naturalist.