Our tables also permit us to get an approximate idea of the extent of selection by death among children in the first five years of life. The minimum of infant mortality is reached among those children whose parents have attained 85 years of age. Since these represent the strongest constitutions, the mortality of their children would appear to represent an absolute minimum, made up almost wholly of chance, non-selective, unavoidable deaths. As the number of children from marriages, both parties to which reached 85 years of age, is so small as to render any safe conclusions impossible, our only recourse is to take the children of the 85-year-old fathers and the children of the 85-year-old mothers, add them together, and strike an average. But we must recognize that the minimum so obtained is nevertheless still too large, because among the consorts of the long-lived fathers and mothers, some died early with the result of increasing the infant mortality. The infant mortality with the 85-year-old fathers and mothers is found to be 11.2%-15.4%, average about 13%. The total child-mortality reaches 31-32%, of which the 13% make about 40%. Accordingly at least 60%, and considering the above mentioned sources of error we may say two-thirds, of the child mortality is selective in character. That accords reasonably well with the 55-74% which Pearson found for the extent of selective deaths in his study.
In general, then, one may believe that more than a half of the persons who die nowadays, die because they were not fit by by nature (i. e., heredity) to survive under the conditions into which they were born. They are the victims of lethal natural selection, nearly always of the non-sustentative type. As Karl Pearson says, "Every man who has lived through a hard winter, every man who has examined a mortality table, every man who has studied the history of nations has probably seen natural selection at work."