have been investigated. I fail to discover any principle 
which will justify those who recognise accidental death 
as a phenomenon of nature—however limited in its 
action—in saying that they cannot possibly believe that 
it will be the case on a great scale. There is but one 
intelligent explanation. It is a desperate effort to retain 
unaltered a preconceived opinion in spite of the most 
damaging evidence to the contrary. 
Mr. Wallace further says :— 
“ Though the survival in individual cases may sometimes be due 
rather to accident than to any real superiority, yet we cannot doubt 
that in the long run those survive which are the best fitted by their 
perfect organism to escape the dangers which surround them.” 
“ The best organised, or the most healthy, or the most active, 
or the best protected, or the most intelligent, will inevitably, in 
the long run, gain an advantage over those which are inferior 
in these qualities ; that is, the fittest wall survive, the fittest being, 
in each particular case, those -which are superior in the special 
qualities on which safety depends.”—(Darwinism, p. ioj, p. 123.) 
Mr. Wallace says, “though the survival in individual 
cases may be due to accident” But does this fairly 
represent the fact that the great majority of deaths in 
each generation takes place in early life before the power 
of selection can possibly come into play? He says that 
“ the fittest will survive.” We have already seen how his 
assumptions on this point are contradicted in detail by 
our actual experience. No mere repetition of our expe 
rience can “ in the long run ” produce an entirely different 
result. There must be a new heaven and a new earth, 
and an entirely different condition of organic life, if future 
destruction is to be altogether discriminative. But on 
what principle can we assume that this will be the case ? 
Such statements simply amount to the reiteration of the 
logical requirements of the theory in opposition to all 
our experience. Mr. Wallace has no ground for eliminat-