in THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE 99 



Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (published in 1863), 

 wherein the reader, turning up the article ' Deluge,' 

 is referred to ' Flood/ and thence to ' Noah ' ; archae- 

 ology produced the Chaldean original of the legend 

 whence the story of the flood is derived. With 

 candour as commendable as it is rare, the Reverend 

 Professor Driver, from whom quotation has been 

 made already, admits that ' read without prejudice 01 

 bias, the narrative of Genesis i. creates an impression 

 at variance with the facts revealed by science ' ; all 

 efforts at reconciliation being only ' different modes of 

 obliterating the characteristic features of Genesis, and 

 of reading into it a view which it does not express.' 

 While the ground in favour of the literal inter- 

 pretation of Genesis was being contested, an invading 

 force, that had been gathering strength with the 

 years, was advancing in the shape of the science of 

 Biology. The workers therein fall into two classes : 

 the one, represented by Linnaeus and his school, 

 applied themselves to the classifying and naming of 

 plants and animals ; the other, represented by Cuvier 

 and his school, examined into structure and function. 

 Anatomy made clear the machinery : physiology the 

 work which it did, and the conditions under which 

 the work was done. Then, through comparison 

 of corresponding organs and their functions in 

 various life-forms, came growing perception of their 

 unity. But only to a few came gleams of that unity 

 as proof of common descent of plant and animal, 

 for, save in scattered hints of inter-relation between 

 species, which occur from the time of Francis Bacon 

 onwards, the theory of their immutability was domi- 

 nant until nearly fifty years ago. 



