Aristotle has not fully considered all that Plato says, when he blames him for inconsistency in proposing to keep properties equal, without taking pains to impose and maintain a constant limit on offspring in families. Ἄτοπον δὲ καὶ τὸ τὰς κτήσεις ἰσάζοντα (Plato) τὸ περὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολιτῶν μὴ κατασκευάζειν, ἀλλ’ ἀφεῖναι τὴν τεκνοποιΐαν ἀόριστον, &c. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, p. 1265, a. fin.)
What Plato really directs is stated in my text and in my note immediately preceding.
[170] Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1334, b. 39. εἴπερ οὖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τὸν νομοθέτην ὁρᾷν δεῖ, ὅπως βέλτιστα τὰ σώματα γένηται τῶν τρεφομένων, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπιμελητέον περὶ τὴν σύζευξιν, πότε καὶ ποίους τινὰς ὄντας χρὴ ποιεῖσθοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους τὴν γαμικὴν ὁμιλίαν, &c. He names thirty-seven as the age proper for a man, eighteen for a woman, to marry. At the age of fifty-five a man becomes unfit to procreate for the public, and none of his children are to appear (ἀφεῖσθαι τῆς εἰς τὸ φανερὸν γεννήσεως, vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 36).
The paramount necessity of limiting the number of children born in each family, here enforced by Plato and Aristotle, rests upon that great social fact which Malthus so instructively expounded at the close of the last century. Malthus, enquiring specially into the law of population, showed upon what conditions the increase of population depends, and what were the causes constantly at work to hold it back — checks to population. He ranged these causes under three different heads, though the two last are multiform in detail. 1. Moral or prudential restraint — the preventive check. 2. Vice, and 3. Misery — the two positive checks. He farther showed that though the aggregate repressive effect of these three causes is infallible and inevitable, determined by the circumstances of each given society — yet that mankind might exercise an option through which of the three the check should be applied: that the effect of the two last causes was in inverse proportion to that of the first — in other words, that the less there was of prudential restraint limiting the number of births, the more there must be of vice or misery, under some of their thousand forms, to shorten the lives of many of the children born — and é converso, the more there was of prudential restraint, the less would be the operation of the other checks tending to shorten life.
Plato and Aristotle saw the same law as Malthus, but arranged the facts under a different point of view.
Three distinct facts — preventive restraint, vice, and misery — having nothing else in common, are arranged under one general head by Malthus, in consequence of the one single common property which they possess — that of operating as checks to population. To him, that one common property was the most important of all, and the most fit to be singled out as the groundwork of classification, having reference to the subject of his enquiry. But Plato and Aristotle looked at the subject in a different point of view. They had present to their minds the same three facts, and the tendency of the first to avert or abate the second and third: but as they were not investigating the law of population, they had nothing to call their attention to the one common property of the three. They did not regard vice and misery as causes tending to keep down population, but as being in themselves evils; enemies among the worst which the lawgiver had to encounter, in his efforts to establish a good political and social condition — and enemies which he could never successfully encounter, without regulating the number of births. Such regulation they considered as an essential tutelary measure to keep out disastrous poverty. The inverse proportion, between regulated or unregulated number of births on the one hand, and diminution or increase of poverty on the other, was seen as clearly by Aristotle and Plato as by Malthus.
Regulations of Plato and Aristotle as to number of births and newborn children.
But these two Greek philosophers ordain something yet more remarkable. Having prescribed both the age of marriage and the number of permitted births, so as to ensure both vigorous citizens and a total compatible with the absence of corrupting poverty — they direct what shall be done if the result does not correspond to their orders. Plato in his Republic (as I have already stated) commands that all the children born to his wedded couples shall be immediately consigned to the care of public nurses — that the offspring of the well-constituted parents shall be brought up, that of the ill-constituted parents not brought up — and that no children born of parents after the legitimate age shall be brought up.[171] Aristotle forbids the exposure of children, wherever the habits of the community are adverse to it: but if after any married couple have had the number of children allowed by law, the wife should again become pregnant, he directs that abortion shall be procured before the commencement of life or sense in the fœtus: after such commencement, he pronounces abortion to be wrong.[172] On another point Plato and Aristotle agree: both of them command that no child born crippled or deformed shall be brought up:[173] a practice actually adopted at Sparta under the Lykurgean institutions, and even carried farther, since no child was allowed to be brought up until it had been inspected and approved by the public nurses.[174]
[171] Plato, Republ. v. pp. 459 D, 460 C, 461 C.
[172] Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, 10, p. 1335, b. 20. Περὶ δὲ ἀποθέσεως καὶ τροφῆς τῶν γιγνομένων, ἔστω νόμος, μηδὲν πεπηρωμένον τρέφειν· διὰ δὲ πλῆθος τέκνων, ἐὰν ἡ τάξις τῶν ἐθῶν κωλύῃ, μηδὲν ἀποτίθεσθαι τῶν γιγνομένων· ὥρισται γὰρ δὴ τῆς τεκνοποιΐας τὸ πλῆθος. ἐὰν δέ τισι γίγνηται παρὰ ταῦτα συνδυασθέντων, πρὶν αἴσθησιν ἐγγενέσθαι καὶ ζωήν, ἐμποιεῖσθαι δεῖ τὴν ἄμβλωσιν· τὸ γὰρ ὅσιον καὶ τὸ μὴ διωρισμένον τῇ αἰσθήσει καὶ τῷ ζῇν ἔσται. For the text of this passage I have followed Bekker and the Berlin edition. As to the first half of the passage there are some material differences in the text and in the MSS.; some give ἐθνῶν instead of ἐθων, and ὡρίσθαι γὰρ δεῖ instead of ὥρισται γὰρ δὴ. Compare Plato, Theætêt. 149 C.