232 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



It may be held that a habit in any species of dying a 

 natural death will produce a more efficient average 

 individual. And so it might be possible, given the 

 conditions, to think out the mechanism of the process. 

 Here also, of course, natural selection does not originate 

 the habit in question ; in this case dying. Death may 

 be, as Weismann seems to hint, in obscure physiological 

 correlation with the conditions of sexual reproduction. 

 It may be put down as a " chance/' i.e. until now an 

 unexplained, variation. 1 One race " happened" to begin 

 dying off, and profited thereby qua race. From it 

 sprang all the winning species, or else the same thing 

 "happened" over and over again. Death might also 

 be said to be involved in certain permutations and com- 

 binations of the germ plasm. That is the beauty of this 

 unknown and unknowable substance. Nobody can say 

 what it may not imply. If a rearranged protozoon 

 implies a Beethoven or a Shakespeare, if it gives him 

 his programme, " Be thou among the greatest of the 

 sons of men," molecular rearrangement in a germ cell 

 may well imply the simpler programme, " Thou shalt 

 surely die." And so, if he likes, Weismann may claim 

 this memorable " variation," natural death, as due to 

 the cause by which he seeks to explain the origin of all 

 variations. 



That, however, is not Weismann's line. Instead of 

 that he protests that, in calling natural selection the 

 cause of death, he does not mean to imply any competi- 

 tion between naturally mortal and potentially immortal 

 stocks. Then pray what right has he to talk of natural 

 selection? Let us go back to first principles. How 

 does Darwin's title-page define natural selection? As 



1 Use-inheritance will do nothing here. A habit of dying, after it 

 has been acquired, assuredly cannot be transmitted to offspring ! 



