JOHANN MENDEL 321 



that those of a more superficial nature could now regard the 

 whole world as a mechanism running according to known 

 laws which only needed to be further investigated in a few 

 details, and which now could be regarded as well-earned 

 property open to the exploitation of enlightened mankind. 

 But who, well acquainted with all known natural laws and yet 

 not quite petrified in mind, can even see a plant in Spring, 

 together with the coming and going of the flying insects 

 which it attracts, and not recognise all this and everything 

 that it suggests to our mind, as magical, and entirely unlike 

 the dreary mechanism which such people imagine ? To gain 

 further insight into life will certainly require great humility. 



In actual fact it was again, as in the case of the great men of 

 science of all kinds, a quiet devotion to nature, great patience, 

 and a complete absence of all desire for fame, which again 

 brought further progress after Darwin's time. The Augus- 

 tinian monk Johann (called Gregor) Mendel united in him- 

 self all these qualities; he set to work at the point at which 

 Darwin saw the greatest deficiency: 'the laws which govern 

 heredity are completely unknown.'^ Mendel opened the 

 way to a knowledge of these laws by studies in heredity 

 carried out on suitable living creatures, and himself attained 

 important results, which could even be expressed in figures, 

 and the prosecution of which still occupies a great many 

 scientists. 



We now know through Mendel, that the formation of 

 hybrids, which takes place to such an extent, particularly in 

 life when withdrawn from free nature, does not mean an 

 inseparable mixture, or an obliteration of the qualities of the 

 parents. Every living creature passes on unchanged to 

 its descendants all the characteristics that it has itself in- 

 herited, though not all of them to every one of its descend- 

 ants, since both parents are here concerned, although often 

 in an invisible manner. New kinds of living creatures, also 



^ Darwin, Origin of Species, London, 1859, p. 13. 

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