[442] Quoted by Taylor, Ancient Ideals (1896), vol. i, p. 247.
[443] Christian Ethics (1873), vol. i, p. 63.
[444] The Greek View of Life (1909), p. 205.
[445] If we contrast the Greek conception of man’s nature with that of certain systems of Christian theology, we shall better understand the ethical value of such ideas and beliefs. On the occasion of a college commencement one of the speakers, a stout upholder of the doctrines of the fall of man, original sin, and the utter depravity of the natural man, roundly denounced this injunction of Pindar’s. He said to the young people who had chosen as their class motto, “Be what you are,” that that was just what they ought not to be. He then went on to show them that their nature was wholly corrupt, that all their natural inclinations were toward evil continually, and that if they ever hoped for salvation they must become what they were not.
[446] “Aristotle may be almost said to have made the difference between Greek and barbarian the basis of his moral code.”—Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 200.
[447] Politics, i. 7, sec. 5; 8, sec. 12; vii. 14, sec. 21.
[448] For the ethics of Greek slavery consult Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. ii, S. 203–219.
[449] Thebes, but not from moral scruples seemingly, prohibited under the penalty of death the destruction of healthy infants.
[450] The reader of Plato will recall how Socrates uses this practice of the exposition of infants to illustrate his art of bringing to birth true and false ideas (“lies and shadows”) in the minds of his pupils, and exposing to die those that are vain shadows. See his Dialogues, tr. Jowett, vol. iii, pp. 350 f.
[451] The practice of the exposition of female infants in the Hellenistic Age, when luxury increased and children became a burden, seems to have been more common than in earlier times.