Sex as an Adaptation 451 
on the organism. The bad effects of close interbreeding that 
seem sometimes to follow is explicable on this view. This, 
it seems to me, is the most plausible solution of the question 
that has been advanced; but, even if this should prove to be 
the correct view, we need not assume that the process has 
been acquired on account of this advantage, for there is 
nothing to show that it has been acquired in this way. 
