ABSTRACT
Mendel's and William Bateson's discovery was as fundamental as that of Copernicus, and of much greater practical importance. And yet Bateson was not of a retiring disposition. The early days of Mendelism were marked by extremely violent controversy on both sides— author can remember the time when Mendelism was considered grossly heretical at Oxford— a controversy in which Bateson played a notable part. And his public attacks on the Darwinian Theory were so phrased as inevitably to lead to the most heated argument, and even to the extraordinary misrepresentation that he disbelieved in evolution. For eight years Bateson attacked this theory with the utmost vigour; not because he considered it inherently improbable, but because he believed that it went beyond the evidence. Bateson scientific views inevitably led him to doubt the possibility of far-reaching improvements in human life by alteration of the environment.
