Ch. xiii. among; the Greeks. 237 



"B 



considered as having given to the state a spurious, 

 profane and incestuous offspring. When both 

 sexes have passed the age assigned for presenting 

 children to the state, Plato allows a great latitude 

 of intercourse ; but no child is to be brought to 

 light. Should any infant by accident be born 

 alive, it is to be exposed in the same manner as if 

 the parents could not support it.* 



From these passages it is evident that Plato 

 fully saw the tendency of population to increase 

 beyond the means of subsistence. His expedients 

 for checking it are indeed execrable ; but the ex- 

 pedients themselves, and the extent to which they 

 were to be used, shew his conceptions of the mag- 

 nitude of the difficulty. Contemplating, as he 

 certainly must do in a small republic, a great pro- 

 portional drain of people by wars, if he could still 

 propose to destroy the children of all the inferior 

 and less perfect citizens, to destroy also all that 

 were born not within the prescribed ages and 

 with the prescribed forms, to fix the age of mar- 

 riage late, and after all to regulate the number of 

 these marriages, his experience and his reason- 

 ings must have strongly pointed out to him the 

 great power of the principle of increase, and the 

 necessity of checking it. 



Aristotle appears to have seen this necessity 

 still more clearly. He fixes the proper age of 

 marriage at thirty-seven for the men, and eighteen 

 for the women, which must of course condemn a 



* Plato 'le Repub. lib. v. 



