CHAPTER XI 
CONCLUDING CHAPTER 
In the preceding chapters a considerable variety of 
topics has been dealt with, and in spite of the fact that 
all are more or less intimately connected with the 
study of organic evolution, the nearly historical order in 
which the subject-matter has been in great part pre- 
sented has inevitably rendered the treatment a little 
disjointed. 
The method we have so far adopted serves to illus- 
trate the state of transition in which our studies 
stand, and which it is our first object to assist in 
hastening to a close—the transition between the specu- 
lative philosophy of evolution and the exact science of 
genetics. 
Future treatises on genetics will make a fair beginning 
with the law of Mendel, and will then deal with the 
application of this law in detail ; and in this concluding 
chapter we may adopt the same method, and proceed 
to show how Mendel’s discovery affords the connecting- 
link between the various divergent branches which we 
have already sketched in outline. 
The central generalization, then, around which the 
subjects considered in the preceding pages are found 
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