SELECTION: ORGANIC AND SOCIAL 221 



inherent bodily or mental quality of those selected. 

 Let us consider some illustrations of these. 



A German Professor, writing of the enormous 

 mortality of children in large towns, says that all 

 those young lives must pass out because there is 

 no place laid for them at Nature's great table : 

 " Natural selection, don't you know/ 5 But the 

 hideous mortality in question has almost nothing 

 to do with Nature's great table or with natural 

 selection. How can one tell ? The statistics show, 

 to some extent, what the children die of, and it is, 

 to a large extent, of their parents ! For some 

 large towns the deaths of infants have been care- 

 fully classified, not only as to the cause of death, 

 but in reference to what the parents do or do not 

 do ; the mortality is double in some classes what it 

 is in others ; and this seems certain, that in many 

 cases the selection is not related to the physique 

 of those eliminated. The selection depends, in 

 great part, on the parental standard of comfort and 

 standard of character. 



But, it may be said, if there is a differential death- 

 rate, a larger infant-mortality in the less thrifty 

 families, will that not work out right in the long 

 run, since their elimination implies a sifting out of 

 the hereditarily thriftless types ? The answer is 

 that, along with the greater mortality, there is 

 associated a greater fecundity, so that the sifting 

 is partially counteracted ; moreover, it is not to 

 be supposed that the less thrifty families with high 

 infant mortality are to be thought of as necessarily 

 undesirables ; much of the thriftlessness is as 

 artificial as much of the mortality is unnecessary. 



Take another instance, which may serve to bring 

 out the difference in method and results between 



