250 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



but that, from the first and until now, natural selec- 

 tion has favoured sex, and has made it the pre- 

 dominant reproductive method. This seems to be 

 perfectly fair, if Weismann is willing to postulate 

 the true condition of natural selection, viz. competi- 

 tion ; in this case, competition between sexual and 

 non-sexual forms. But I am afraid that may not be 

 so. In view of Weismann' s attitude towards the 

 question of the origin of (natural) death, 1 one must 

 concur in Romanes' criticism, that " ultra Darwinians 

 use the term ' natural selection ' with extreme laxity." 

 The condemnation might be even more severely 

 expressed. 



As to the origin of death, I must confess to find- 

 ing 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, in- 

 dependently 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 



1 See the paragraphs which follow. Of course, if there is a correlation 

 of sex and death, the new question is really the same under a different 



