Yet infanticide has been practiced not so much by the desperately poor as by small land-holders.
In speaking of infanticide in Japan, let us not forget that every race and nation has been guilty of the same crime, and has continued to be guilty of it until delivered by Christianity.
How frightfully female infanticide has prevailed in India, everyone may read in the official reports of Col.
In some past ages, moreover, knowledge of the fact that all children dying in infancy are saved might have seemed to make infanticide a virtue.
Infanticide and distress, rapid flight, and all the casualties of a protracted conflict, threatened them with speedy destruction.
Infanticide was not common; although, in the latter days, when harassed by daily conflict, the practice, was not unknown.
Nor indeed is secret infanticide unknown in modern Europe, although it may be owing to a different principle.
The same end has been rather more mercifully achieved in earlier periods by infanticide (see Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, Vol.
It must not be supposed that infanticide was opposed to tenderness to children.
In England where a foundling hospital could not be endured for a moment, the crime of infanticideis increasing every year, and the number of murdered children is already an army of martyrs.
But on the other hand it prevented infanticide to a great extent.
Infanticide is one of the most horrible of crimes, and its growth among a people is accompanied by as rapid a growth of vice of every other kind.
It was found upon trying the new system, that infanticide increased with considerable rapidity, as the morning exhibitions at La Morgue greatly indicated.
The practice of infanticide was really based on the recommendation of Sati, literally the "method of purity" which the Hindoo shastras require when they recommend the bereaved wife to burn with her husband.
I think, sir, that this crime of infanticide had its origin solely in family pride, which will make people do almost anything.
The King has prohibited both infanticide and suttee.
To this must be added the cases of infanticidethat are not found out because the murdered child is counted among the still-born.
The women residing in cities have more means at hand to prevent normal child-birth; therefore the cases of abortion were numerous and the cases of infanticide relatively few.
In France child exposure and infanticide have increased as a direct result of French civil law, according to which it is interdicted to investigate paternity.
The trials for infanticide present a sombre but instructive picture.
Leon Richter in "La femme libre" reports a case where a servant girl was convicted of infanticide by the father of her child, a pious lawyer, who was a member of the court.
Infanticide and the suicide of women are in a great many cases caused by the misery and need of forsaken women.
The infanticide who, driven to despair, had killed her own offspring was subjected to cruel death, while no one bothered about the unscrupulous seducer.
Furthermore, the mention ofinfanticide has not yet been explained.
Doubtless you also know the gruesome poem by Lenau, which puts infanticide and the prevention of children on the same plane.
The missionary of whom I inquired denied that theinfanticide at Chao-t'ong was very great--things must be improving!
This and the terribleinfanticide which exists in all poor districts of China menaces the lives of all well-wishers of the entire province of Yün-nan.
The supposed exogamous tribes, according to the theory, enforcing the infanticide of female children, and not permitting marriage within the tribe, must have been wholly dependent upon the endogamous groups for their women.
We have a traditional horror of infanticide which revolts all our best feelings and shocks our principles.
Thus infanticide was a recognized part of the Spartan system, as it was in that of Plato.
This infanticide would matter little to the parents, as they had no control over their coming together, nor concern with the rearing of their offspring.
Thus a daughter became in a Rajput's eyes a long step on the road to ruin, and female infanticide was extensively practised.
Infanticide was formerly common among them, but it is said to have entirely died out.
Meanwhile, over all the island world, abortion and infanticide prevailed.
A case had just been heard--a trial for infanticideagainst an ape-like native woman; and the audience were smoking cigarettes as they awaited the verdict.
Infanticide was not the exception, but a settled custom.
Thus women were afraid to expose their children secretly, and infanticide was stamped out by a Christian doctrine which now seems so brutal.
It is doubtful, for instance, whether femaleinfanticide has been so important a factor in social evolution.
On the other hand, the surplus of men may, in some degree, be ascribed to female infanticide and, still more, to the severe labor and harsh treatment which usually fall to the lot of women among low races.
After the appearance of totem groups, infanticide would be checked by the blood-feud: ibid.
So far as the system of infanticide allowed, the hordes contained young men and women accounted of different stocks, who might intermarry consistently" with the original rule of exogamy.
As medical knowledge advanced, it seems certain, the practice of abortion must have been generally added to that of infanticide in Greece, as later in Rome.
It is misleading to point to the legal veto on infanticide as a great Christian reform without taking these things into account.
The "race" had not lost reproductive power; and even its newer artificial methods of checking numbers were not immeasurably more active than simple infanticide or exposure had been in the palmy days.
But in spite of all enactments, under Christian as under pagan rule, exposure and positive infanticide continued, though Christian sentiment never gave it the toleration exhibited in the drama of Menander.
The objection (which Eugenists share with the majority of the American public) to anything remotely resembling infanticide must have some definite proof of its sincerity.
Abortion and infanticideare equally condemned by Eugenists, although on different grounds.
As to who decides in cases of infanticide we have unfortunately too little information to be able to generalise.
What the result of the intermarriage of cousins is when war, famine, and infanticideare efficient weeders out of the unfit, we cannot say.
It has extirpated thuggism, and put an end to infanticide and the burning of widows.
Such scenes are not frequent now, because the government has repressed them by law, though infanticide is fearfully common in other ways.
