BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1209 



Civilised society is blotched, and even too generally paled with 

 depressed vitality or "sub-health", whereas Wild Nature is for the 

 most part a world of exuberant vigour. There are, indeed, sluggish 

 and parasitic animals we might think of as depressed, but the rule 

 is a high standard of healthy activities throughout. Similarly, it is 

 only in Mankind and in creatures he shelters that we find senility — 

 deterioration that disintegrates the unity of the organism, the 

 nemesis of his over-coddling, over-cobbling, and physiological bad 

 debts. In Wild Nature there is never more than senescence. 

 There is ageing, indeed, but no senility; for the creature that 

 grows old is pushed off the stage by some competitive blow 

 or environmental gust, before any marked deterioration has 

 set in. No doubt from hour to hour we must "ripe and ripe", 

 but it should not be beyond man's power to evade "rotting and 

 rotting". 



Sadly prominent in civilised society is the pathology of sex; in 

 Wild Nature it is conspicuous by its rarity. There are some over- 

 sexed animals and ugly erotic orgasms, but they are exceptional, 

 and again are often known only in conditions of domestication. In 

 many cases, as among birds, there is singularly beautiful courtship, 

 and the conjugal relations are pleasant to contemplate. There are 

 many monogamous animals, and of these not a few throughout life. 

 But in civilised society the pathology of sex is obtrusive — ^witness 

 the long-continued disgrace of prostitution; the prevalence of 

 venereal diseases; the frequency of sensuality and degenerative 

 sex-habits; the common occurrence of nominal celibacy; the post- 

 ponement of marriage owing to lack of adequate housing, and other 

 difficulties; and in some countries, like ours, the large number of 

 unmarried women, a disproportion that always lowers the standard 

 of sex-selection on the woman's part. Why should there be so much 

 pathology of sex in civilised society? Part of the answer is no doubt, 

 as in the contrasts already noted, that man's whole known evolution 

 has been in process for a relatively short time, and his historic 

 civilisation forms and phases yet shorter, as compared with the 

 unthinkable millions of years during which disharmonies have been 

 sifted out from Wild Nature, while, above all, that latest civilisa- 

 tion-phase we call the Industrial Age has so far bought its progress 

 dear. Furthermore, as regards sex, it must be noted that civilised 

 man is not now seasonally punctuated, as most animals are, and that 

 animals are not in the same degree subject to the social conditions 

 and ethical limitations which lead in man to ignoble repressions and 

 perversions more readily than to ennobling control. But there is 

 another factor to be recognised that sex-selection (sifting for mates) 

 among animals has very frequently reference to vigour, agility, 

 artistic gifts, and the like — all spelling health. This has been true in 

 mankind also, as Darwin insisted; but one has only to look around 



