i 80 Recent Advances in the Study of Heredity. 
I should first like to draw the reader’s attention to a remarkable 
instance of that close association which, as I have said, exists in 
the minds of some of those engaged in Mendelian enquiry between the 
Mendelian phenomena and their interpretation. I refer to the first 
sentence in the last paragraph, which I have italicised. Mr. Lock 
thinks that because I declared myself (for I was the anonymous 
reviewer) to be not yet satisfied with the explanation, therefore 
I cast doubt on the facts to be explained. I do not doubt the facts 
for a moment. Nor did I say I did. 
And secondly I did not demand that the observer should be 
sceptical after the event, but that he should approach the phenomena 
with an active scepticism of every theory advanced to explain them. 
I undertook the experiment which I have dealt with in this Lecture 
in a sceptical spirit and, I am much less (if at all) sceptical of the 
Mendelian interpretation now that I know the result of it. “ What 
other object (than that of testing the interpretation) can have been 
in the minds of all those who have laboriously continued Mendel’s 
inquiries ” I do not pretend to suggest. But it seems to me that to 
repeat a man’s experiments is not to test the interpretation put 
upon them, but merely to collect new instances of the phenomenon 
to be explained. To test the interpretation, the experiment must 
be repeated in such a way that one or other of two possible 
theories is forcibly put out of court by the result. 
