208 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE y 



causes of these events. But beneath all this 

 superficial turmoil lay the deep-seated impulse 

 given by unlimited multiplication. In the swarms 

 of colonies thrown out by Phoenicia and by old 

 Greece ; in the vcr sacrum of the Latin races ; 

 in the floods of Gauls and of Teutons which 

 burst over the frontiers of the old civilisation 

 of Europe ; in the swaying to and fro of the 

 vast Mongolian hordes in late times, the popula- 

 tion problem comes to the front in a very visible 

 shape. Nor is it less plainly manifest in the 

 everlasting agrarian questions of ancient Rome 

 than in the AiTeoi societies of the Polynesian 

 Islands. 



In the ancient world, and in a large part 

 of that in which we live, the practice of in- 

 fanticide was, or is, a regular and legal custom ; 

 famine, pestilence, and war were and are normal 

 factors in the struggle for existence, and they 

 have served, in a gross and brutal fashion, to 

 mitigate the intensity of the effects of its chief 

 cause. 



But, in the more advanced civilisations, the 

 progress of private and public morality has 

 steadily tended to remove all these checks. We 

 declare infanticide murder, and punish it as such ; 

 we decree, not quite so successfully, that no one 

 shall die of hunger; we regard death from pre- 

 ventive causes of other kinds as a sort of construc- 

 tive murder, and eliminate pestilence to the best 



