" And he proceeds to
advise (ib. vii. 16-15) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, let
there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but where there are
too many (for in our State population has a limit) when couples have
children in excess and the state of feeling is adverse to the exposure
of offspring, let abortion be procured."
The difficulty of over-population was conspicuous in the minds of
Aristotle and Plato, and these philosophers both held that the State had
a right and a duty to control it.
But some States were almost annihilated because they were not
sufficiently populous, and Aristotle attributes the defeat of Sparta on
one celebrated occasion to this fact. He says:--"The legislators wanting
to have as many Spartans as they could, encouraged the citizens to have
large families, and there is a law at Sparta, that the father of three
sons should be exempt from military service, and he who has four, from
all the burdens of the State. Yet it is obvious that if there were many
children, the land being distributed as it is, many of these must
necessarily fall into poverty."
The problem in the mind of the Greek philosophers was this.
Over-population is a cause of poverty; under-population is a cause of
weakness.
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