CHAP, xviu A " FAIR Y TALE OF SCIENCE " ? 231 



As to the origin of death, I must confess to finding 

 the theory most unsatisfactory. Of course we are 

 speaking of the origin of the habit of dying a natural 

 death. Death by accident, death as prey, death 

 (possibly ?) by disease, may all be assumed, independ- 

 ently of this new and advantageous habit of retiring 

 the seniors at a (roughly) fixed period. The new 

 habit is said by Romanes to be advantageous for this 

 reason, because, if multicellular (or, as , he says, if 

 sexual) organisms lived through ages, they would all 

 become broken down and decrepit as the result of 

 accident. For the life of me, I cannot see why this 

 should be true. If there was any emergency with 

 which unaided natural selection was able to deal, I 

 should have said it was this one imaginary danger. 

 Will the poor old things not be overtaken by their 

 enemies? Will they not starve from their prey 

 escaping them, or being taken from them by younger 

 competing creatures of their species who are not run 

 down by accident or infirmity ? Have we any reason 

 to believe that natural death death from old age has 

 ever been common in the animal world (in plants, 

 perhaps, yes) ; or have we any reason to regret its 

 absence ? But, if it plays a scanty part, how could it 

 secure the attention or obtain the approval of selecting 

 nature ? 



Next let us. ask, how we can conceive of the process 

 of selection being accomplished ? Race A is competing 

 against race B. The prize is fitness to survive; the 

 penalty, of course, is just death. But race A, being 

 clever enough to invent the habit of dying a natural 

 death, therefore survives, while race B, which refuses to 

 die unless by force, is therefore extinguished. 



This is not altogether such an Irish bull as it sounds. 



