IV MODERN EVOLUTION 185 



There is the more need for laying stress on this 

 because recent discussions, revealing- divided opinions 

 among biologists as to the sufficiency of natural 

 selection as a cause of all modifications in the struc- 

 ture of living things, lead timid or half-informed 

 minds to hope that the doctrine of Evolution may 

 yet turn out not to be true. It is in such stratum 

 of intelligence that there lurks the feeling, whenever 

 some old inscription or monument verifying state- 

 ments in the Bible is discovered, that the infallibility 

 of that book has further proof. For example, until 

 1896, not a single confirmatory piece of evidence as 

 to the story of the Exodus was forthcoming from 

 Egypt itself. Even the inscription which has come 

 to light does not, in the judgment of such an expert 

 as Dr. Flinders Petrie, supply the exact confirmation 

 desired. But let that irrefragable witness appear, 

 and while the historian will welcome it as evidence 

 of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, thus 

 throwing light on the movements of races, and 

 adding to the historical value of the Pentateuch ; 

 the average orthodox believer will feel a vague sort 

 of satisfaction that the foundations of his belief 

 in the Trinity and the Incarnation are somehow 

 strengthened 



Herbert Spencer died in his eighty-third year, 

 on the 8th December 1903. In the following 

 May a number of eminent persons, including the 

 most distinguished men of science, asked permission 

 of the Dean of Westminster to place a memorial 

 tablet to Spencer in Westminster Abbey; but the 

 Very Reverend custodian of the building wherein 

 Darwin is buried refused the request on the ground 



