Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/97

 written in the Book of Evolution, he started to relate.

But I had heard this before, and asked him, therefore, to start where it ended. Not being able to read through the covers of what was to him a closed book, however, he referred me to the horticulturist, whom I found absorbed in the business of "fixing the type." But he had a little time to spare, seeing that I was an interested and earnest seeker of knowledge. And he revealed to me the wonders of Mendel's discovery, which was in itself truly wonderful. He demonstrated—the proof was irrefutable—how the dwarf pea, born of a tall ancestor, breeds true to dwarfness; and how the offspring of rusty wheat, by the aid of Mendelism, has been taught to resist disease. Now, this system, Mendelism, the horticulturist would apply to the breeding of men. "Better teaching and better sanitation," he said, "are but palliatives." Education is to man what a fertilizer is to the pea: the man might profit by it, but not his children. If the progress