The Function of Death 75 



What then is the chief function of the death of the 

 individual as seen to occur in man? Is it not still for him 

 as it is for those simple existences in which only elementary 

 conduct prevails, a corrective process freely and lavishly 

 applied to eliminate defects and to develop more perfect 

 forms by survival and preference, and to provide con- 

 tinuously for adaptation to new conditions? 



Let us again refer to the previously studied heredity. 

 The life capacity of any individual creature is founded, as 

 we have seen in an inheritance of acquired habits and abili- 

 ties, and of structure to make these abilities effective. These 

 are of the past. The present individual is a link connecting 

 that past with a future, the life to come of his kind. The 

 individuals of the next generation will be the offspring of 

 some of these present. But which of these present are to be 

 so honored ? The answer to that question is nature's award 

 of consequences and compensations. Each of these creatures 

 of inherited capacity is under trial, in its one individual life, 

 with the obvious result of elimination of those least capable. 

 From infancy it progresses toward maturity, and all that 

 progress is a probation, testing its probable fitness to con- 

 tinue its race. The fitness under test is not only that of the 

 individual preserving himself, but of the family and nation 

 and race in part responsible for his preservation. It is not 

 fitness as an egotist imagines it ought to be ; it is the fitness 

 which actually does survive. Some survive, and these, 

 which thus prove capacity at least comparatively fit, with 

 other groups similarly tested and reduced, constitute the 

 groups that mature, and which in due course are permitted 

 to produce young having the qualities and tendencies of 



