158 TILLERS OF THE GKOUND CHAP. 



said, " Gentlemen, this experiment has failed. We 

 must begin over again." 



Success came afterwards ; it must come with 

 such a man, but this same student says that he 

 never forgot the courage and the dignity of that 

 little speech. " We have failed ; we must begin 

 again." Is not man truly great when he can say 

 that, when he can .begin again begin the very day 

 of his failure ? 



Now in the short accounts of scientific work for 

 which alone we have room here, we can only speak 

 of the results, of the successes, but we must not on 

 that account think that there was no failure. Just 

 as we fail, fail constantly, so all the great men 

 have had times of failure. What makes them great 

 is that they have had the courage to begin again, 

 which we do not always have. The love of know- 

 ledge will carry man farther than almost any other 

 quality ; it carries him through failure to victory, 

 and the victory is often not for himself but for 

 those who live in the future. 



With this little story in our minds to help us 

 to understand what scientific work means in the 

 life of the man who does it, let us cross the Channel 

 and travel across the continent of Europe to 

 Austria, in order to learn something about the 

 experiments of the Abbot Mendel. 



Mendel was born in Silesia, and was the son of 



