Es wird gerne zugegeben, dass durch die Cultur die Entstehung neuer Varietäten begünstigt und durch die Hand des Menschen manche Abänderung erhalten wird, welche im freien Zustande unterliegen müsste, allein nichts berechtigt uns zu der Annahme, dass die Neigung zur Varietätenbildung so ausserordentlich gesteigert werde, dass die Arten bald alle Selbstständigkeit verlieren und ihre Nachkommen in einer endlosen Reihe höchst veränderlicher Formen auseinander gehen.
It will gladly be acknowledged that the origin of new varieties is favoured by cultivation and that by the human hand many a modification is sustained that would succumb in a free state, yet nothing entitles us to assume that the tendency to form varieties is so extraordinarily increased that the species lose all autonomy and their progeny diverge into an endless array of highly variable forms.
The manuscript has a deleted “d” before so außerordentlich, and a deleted “S” before endlosen.
sustained = erhalten Bateson has “acquired”, Sherwood “preserved”. The German verb erhalten is indeed ambivalent, it can mean both “to sustain” and “to obtain”. The context suggests the former reading, since Mendel implies a contrast with modifications that “succumb” in the wild.
succumb = unterliegen Bateson has “lost”, Sherwood “perished”. It is not clear from the formulation whether Mendel is talking in terms of natural selection here; he may as well have had in mind the “swamping effect” of naturally interbreeding poulations, or his own model according to which the number of hybrids “falls behind” the number of constant forms if left to self-fertilisation (see p. 17, s. 8). The use of the verb unterliegen suggests this, because it refers to processes that do not result in a complete erasure, but rather in a subjugation or weakening.
autonomy = Selbstständigkeit The emphasis here is not on the absolute stability of species, but on the regularity with which specific differences are passed on to future generations despite changing conditions; see p. 6, s. 1.
variable forms = veränderlicher Formen It is notable that Mendel here drops his distinction of “constant” and “hybrid forms” and chooses a more general term. He probably did not want to imply that all variability of heritable traits is due to segregation, which he used as a criterion for “hybrid forms”; see p. 15, s. 7.