lped him in his investigations. Cuvier says of him that "he
was as faithful to his religious duties as he was in the pursuit of
his studies. The profoundest speculations with regard to weighty
matters of science had not kept him from the least important duty
which ecclesiastical regulations might require of him." There is,
perhaps, no life in all the history of science which shows so clearly
how absolutely untrue is the declaration so often made, that there is
essential opposition between the intellectual disposition of the
inquiring scientist and those other mental qualities which are
necessary to enable the Christian to bow humbly before the mysteries
of religion, acknowledge all that is beyond understanding in what has
been revealed, and observe faithfully all the duties that flow from
such belief.

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VIII.

ABBOT MENDEL: A NEW OUTLOOK IN HEREDITY.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one;
and that, while this planet has gone circling on according to the
fixed law of gravity from so simple a beginning, endless forms, most
beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved.--
Closing sentence of DARWIN'S _Origin of Species_.

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[Illustration: GREGOR MENDEL]

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VIII.

ABBOT MENDEL, [Footnote 14]: A NEW, OUTLOOK IN HEREDITY.

[Footnote 14: The portrait of Abbot Mendel which precedes this
sketch was kindly furnished by the Vicar of the Augustinian
Monastery of Bruenn. It represents him holding a fuchsia, his
favorite flower, and was taken in 1867, just as he was completing
the researches which were a generation later to make his name so
famous. The portrait has for this reason a very special interest as
a human document. We may add that the sketch of Abbot Mendel which
appears here was read by the Very Rev. Klemens Janetschek, the
Vicar of the Monastery, who suggested one slight change in it, so
that it may be said to have had the revision of one who knew him and
his environment very well.]

Scientific progress does not run in cycles of centuries, and as a rule
it bears no relationship to the conventional arrangement of years. As
has been well said--for science a new century begins every second.
There are interesting coincidences, however, of epoch-making
discoveries in science corresponding with the beginning of definite
eras in time that are at