Principles of western civilisation

224 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

Greek and Roman peoples. This custom, which involved no moral reprobation, was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the ancient world. It was not only practised from the point of view of expediency to the parent, but it was defended on the grounds of its utility to the community, and Seneca’s dictum on the subject in one of its aspects, “‘non ira, sed ratio est, a sanis inutilia secernere,’’! doubtless faithfully represented the prevailing average view. Such of the exposed children as were rescued were generally brought up as slaves, and the collecting of female infants to be so reared and to be afterwards used for immoral purposes was often followed as an occupation of profit.

One of the earlier results of the changed attitude towards human life in the first centuries of the era in which we are living was the diminution, and in time the cessation, of this practice of infanticide. Now, in a certain class of literature where the attempt is made to derive morality from sympathy and the association of ideas, the effectiveness of humanitarian ideals, arising from sympathy, in suppressing a practice such as infanticide is still often discussed. We can, however, never obtain any deep insight into one of the most distinctive and fundamental principles of our civilisation until we have grasped in all its bearings a fundamental fact connected with this subject. This is, that the humanitarian standards, even of the later time in which we are living, if it were possible to regard them as separated from the characteristic principle of our civilisation to which they are related and from which they proceed, would in themselves represent scarcely more than a

1 De Ira, i. 15.