252 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



the winning species, or else the same thing " hap- 

 pened " 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 pro- 

 tozoon implies a Beethoven or a Shakespeare, if it 

 gives him his programme, " Be thou among the great- 

 est 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, Weis- 

 mann may claim this memorable " variation," natural 

 death, as due to the cause by which he seeks to ex- 

 plain 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 com- 

 petition between naturally mortal and potentially im- 

 mortal stocks. Then pray what right has he to talk 

 of natural selection ? Let us go back to first princi- 

 ples. How does Darwin's title-page define natural 

 selection ? As " the preservation of favoured races in 

 the struggle for life." If there is no struggle for life, 

 and no preservation of a favoured race, neither is 

 there any natural selection. Weismann's usage is 

 worse than "extreme laxity." It aims at finding 

 something cabalistic in natural selection, something 

 talismanic. He must be reminded that, according to 

 Comte, "nature" is the supreme example of an 

 empty abstraction by which " metaphysical " persons 

 think to explain phenomena, while giving no explana- 

 tion at all. Weismann is a " metaphysician " of that 

 type. He uses the phrase in lieu of an explanation, 



