is forbidden to kill
children for fear of starvation. In modern countries infanticide
has been common or rare according to the penalties, in law or the
mores, upon husbandless mothers. In the sixteenth century, in
Spain, illegitimate births were very common. Infanticide was very
uncommon, but abandonment (foundlings) took its place. The
foundlings became vagabonds and rogues.[983]

+328. Ethics of abortion and infanticide.+ Abortion and infanticide are
at war with the attachment of parents to children, which is a sentiment
common, but not universal, amongst animals while the offspring are
dependent. It might seem that these customs have been abolished by
speculative ethics. In fact, they have not been abolished. They have
been modified and have been superseded by milder methods of
accomplishing the same purpose. It is evidently a question at what point
parental affection begins to attach to the child. We think that we have
gained much over savage people in our notion of murder, but it appears
that primitive men did not dare to take anything out of nature without
giving an equivalent for it, and that they did not dare to kill anything
without first sacrificing it to a god, or afterwards conciliating the
spirit of the animal or of its species. If it is murder to prevent a
life from coming into existence, it would be a question of casuistry at
what point such a crime would ensue. It might be murder to remain
unmarried.

+329. Christian mores as to abortion and infanticide.+ The tradition
against abortion and infanticide came down into our mores from the Jews.
It never got strength in the mores of Christianity until each of those
acts was regarded as a high religious crime because the child died
unbaptized. The soul was held to belong to it from the moment of
conception. In reality nothing has put an end to infanticide but the
advance in the arts (increased economic power), by virtue of which
parents can provide for children. Neomalthusianism is still practiced
and holds the check by which the population is adjusted to the economic
power. There is shame in it. No one dare avow it or openly defend it. A
"two-child system" is currently referred to in French and German
literature as an established family policy, and restriction is certainly
a fact in the mores of all civilized people. It is certain that the
masses of those people think it right and not wrong. They do not accept
guidance from any speculative