Chap. IV.] MAXXER OF DEYELOPMEXT. 129 



tuate in number. They cannot steadily and regalarly in- 

 crease, as there is no artificial increase in the supply of 

 food. Savages when hardly pressed encroach on each 

 other's territories, and war is the result ; but they are in- 

 deed almost always at war with their neighbors. They 

 are liable to many accidents on land and water in their 

 search for food ; and in some countries they must suffer 

 much from the larger beasts of prey. Even in India, dis- 

 tricts have been depopulated by the ravages of tigers. 



Malthus has discussed these several checks, but he 

 does not lay stress enough on what is probably the most 

 important of all, namely infanticide, especially of female 

 infants, and the habit of procuring abortion. These prac- 

 tices now prevail in many quarters of the world, and in- 

 fanticide seems formerly to have prevailed, as Mr. M'Len- 

 nan B5 has shown, on a still more extensive scale. These 

 practices appear to have originated in savages recognizing 

 the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of supporting all 

 the infants that are born. Licentiousness may also be 

 added to the foregoing checks ; but this does not follow 

 from failing means of subsistence ; though there is reason 

 to believe that in some cases (as in Japan) it has been in- 

 tentionally encouraged as a means of keeping down the 

 population. 



If we look back to an extremely remote epoch, before 

 man had arrived at the dignity of manhood, he would 

 have been guided more by instinct and less by reason 

 than are savages at the present time. Our early semi- 

 human progenitors would not have practised infanticide, 

 for the instincts of the lower animals are never so per- 

 verted as to lead them regularly to destroy their own off- 

 spring. There would have been no prudential restraint 

 from marriage, and the sexes would have freely united at 

 an early age. Hence the progenitors of man would have 



65 ' Primitive Marriage,' 1865. 



