Summary
The principles of heredity established by Mendel are almost as important for biology as the atomic theory of Dalton is for chemistry. By means of these principles particular dissociations and recombinations of characters can be made with almost the same certainty as particular dissociations and recombinations of atoms can be made in chemical reactions. By means of these principles the hereditary constitution of organisms can be analyzed and the real resemblances and differences of various organisms determined. By means of these principles the once mysterious and apparently capricious phenomena of prepotency, atavism and reversion, find a satisfactory explanation.
Before the establishment of Mendel's principles, heredity was, as Balzac said, "a maze in which science loses itself." Much still remains to be discovered about inheritance, but the principles of Mendel have served as an Ariadne thread to guide science through this maze of apparent contradictions and exceptions in which it was formerly lost.
