THE LATEST STAGE 245 



It will be seen that, on the principle of relativity, all 

 attempts to measure the velocity of anything rela- 

 tively to a stagnant aether are foredoomed to failure. 

 Compensating adjustments in the standards of time, 

 length and mass conspire together to defeat us. 



In fact, the attempt to investigate the aether itself 

 may have to be abandoned. It may be that in 

 inventing " a nominative case to the verb to undulate " 

 we have gone too far in imagining an all-pervading 

 stagnant medium with the mechanical or quasi- 

 mechanical properties suggested to our minds by the 

 too vivid words " universal aether." 



We can but feel that once more the self-sufficient 

 structure of nineteenth-century science has sustained 

 a rude shock. It may recover therefrom, and the 

 universal stagnant aether once more surround us. 

 Or that section may fall and have to be rebuilt on 

 newer lines, and the universal stagnant aether pass 

 into the great historical museum of intellectual 

 curiosities. It will be in good company, and may 

 wait in patience, with the firm hope of welcoming in 

 due course the conceptions which now may supplant 

 it, and may even cherish the possibility of a tri- 

 umphant reappearance on the acting stage of science. 



Simultaneously with the later work of Darwin 



(1865), a series of researches was being carried on in the 



Mendel and c l^ s ^ er f Briinn which, had they come 



the Laws of to his notice, might have modified the 



Inheritance. history of Darwin's hypothesis. Gregor 



Johann Mendel, a native of Austrian Silesia, an Augus- 



tinian monk, and eventually Abbot or Pralat of the 



Konigskloster, not satisfied that Darwin's view of 



