“Now there are arguments that survival by weaker children takes and/or produces a greater strength of character and determination, …”
Yes if the weakness is physical but the mind is otherwise possessed of the beneficial attributes. The weakness the author is talking about is mental/moral. We are literally surrounded by people who’d starve to death if we did not pay the taxes we work to pay. These are people who are attacking the order that allows them to attack the order, if that makes any sense.
Not only does it make sense, it is beautiful in its clarity.
The professor did, IIRC, correlate physical weakness with mental weakness. He imparted so damn much information that I can't remember exactly how he arrived at that conclusion.
As I said upthread, there is a countervailing point to be made and that is that the survival of mentally and physically weaker humans can, on occasion, result in some highly desirable(?) characteristics. I use my own mom as an example. She had a very bad case of polio as a child and was not expected to survive. What that polio produced in her was a determination that was truly rare. Even when she finally died at 94, her hospice workers dubbed her "the woman who wouldn't die" because she just wouldn't give up the ghost, spending weeks in a semi-coma without food or water.