Natural selection means for the most part a struggle ensuring the death of the weak and the 'unfit.' The survival of the fittest means that those creatures survive who are best adapted to all their circumstances, whether these are favourable or unfavourable to the maintenance of a high standard of living. That 'nature' may carry out selection it is necessary that there shall be no outside interference, say of man, able to stave off death, whether of the individual or of the race. Death, you see, is the protagonist in this biological play, or rather the mainspring of the machine. And, undoubtedly, death is not only conspicuous in nature but is of profound significance for life. Is it or is it not also of value in a sense surpassing that which the biologist acknowledges? Ought we to look upon it as the enemy or as the friend of life? One thing is plain. Those men of science who saw it as protagonist were right in thinking that by the death, that is, by the natural selection, of the unfit from among the fit, the survival of useful variations may be assisted. Death, of course, cannot have anything to do directly with the originating of better lives (that is of better accommodated lives), but once they have come into being it can help to keep them in the ascendant as begetters of their kind. Natural selection has its use—shall we say its value?—for the advance of life. Need we be surprised at this, we who have a more than scientific sense of values and have discovered purpose? Need we be surprised to find death a friend to life, seeing it everywhere? Matter is life's friend as well as means and hindrance. So too is death. Let us consider the beginning of death on the earth; that is, of natural, not of merely accidental death. For it had a beginning, not coeval with the coming of life. There are living creatures now who normally escape it, who die only by accident, are, in fact, if they die, always killed. There are creatures alive now whose years are to be numbered by thousands upon thousands upon thousands, yet who have never grown old. The Pyramids of Egypt are of yesterday compared with the amoeba in the nearest pond.