102 HEREDITY 



are free to multiply, if their unfitness does not 

 interfere with their reproductive powers; and the 

 further question will then be raised as to how far 

 their unfitness, whether acquired or germinal, is 

 transmissible. 



But if the biometricians have conclusively proved 

 anything, it is that selection has not ceased among 

 civilised peoples. As Professor Pearson has said, 

 no one can look at a mortality-table and believe 

 that selection no longer occurs ; and as Reid says : 

 " If natural selection no longer eliminates the unfit 

 among civilised peoples, it is evident that most people 

 must die of old age, or else that the elimination 

 is not selective. But, as a fact, millions of people 

 perish, even in England, which is highly civilised, 

 before or during the child-bearing age, nearly all 

 of whom are eliminated because they are consti- 

 tutionally incapable of surviving under the ordinary 

 conditions of the environment in which they find 

 themselves." 



The vast majority of human deaths, especially 

 among civilised peoples, are due to disease ; and 

 disease is unquestionably selective. Thus, though 

 we may freely admit that the general tendency of 

 many charities, of many laws, and the work of the 

 medical profession is directed against the operation 

 of natural selection, yet this factor of evolution is 

 very far from having ceased, even amongst the most 

 civilised peoples. It cannot be argued that the 

 physical deterioration witnessed in our cities is the 

 result of the cessation of natural selection. 



On the other hand, we must not flatter ourselves 

 that no action on our part is required ; that the 



