Where infanticide is not sanctioned by custom, the occasional commission of it has a tendency to call forth disapproval or excite horror. The Blackfeet are said to believe that women who have been guilty of this crime will never reach the happy mountain after death, but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes, with branches of trees tied to their legs.141 Speaking of another North American tribe, the Potawatomis, Keating observes:—“In a few instances, it is said that children born deformed have been destroyed by their mothers, but these instances are rare, and whenever discovered, uniformly bring them into disrepute, and are not unfrequently punished by some of the near relations. Independently of these cases, which are but rare, a few instances of infanticide, by single women, in order to conceal intrigue, have been heard of; but they are always treated with abhorrence.”142 Among the Omahas “parents had no right to put their children to death.”143 The Aleuts believed that a child-murder would bring misfortune on the whole village.144 The Brazilian Macusis145 and Botocudos146 look upon the deed with horror. At Ulea, of the Caroline Islands, “the prince would have the unnatural mother punished with death.”147 So, too, Herr Valdau tells us of a Bakundu woman who, accused of infanticide, was condemned to death.148 In Ashanti a man is punished for the murder of his child.149 Among the Gaika tribe, of the Kafirs, the killing of a child after birth is punishable as murder, the fine going to the chief.150 Nay, even peoples among whom infanticide is habitual seem now and then to have a feeling that the act is not quite correct. Mr. Brough Smyth asserts that the Australian Black is himself ashamed of it;151 and Mr. Curr has no doubt that he feels, in the commencement of his career at least, that infanticide is wrong, as also that its committal brings remorse.152

The custom of infanticide in most cases requires that the child should be killed immediately or soon after its birth. Among certain North American Indians “the right of destroying a child lasted only till it was a month old,” after which time the feeling of the tribe was against its death.153 Ellis says of the Society Islanders:—“The horrid act, if not committed at the time the infant entered the world, was not perpetrated at any subsequent period…. If the little stranger was, from irresolution, the mingled emotions that struggled for mastery in its mother’s bosom, or any other cause, suffered to live ten minutes or half an hour, it was safe; instead of a monster’s grasp, it received a mother’s caress and a mother’s smile, and was afterwards nursed with solicitude and tenderness.”154 Almost the same is said of other South Sea Islanders155 and of tribes inhabiting the Australian continent.156 That the custom of infanticide is generally restricted to the destruction of new-born babies also appears from various statements as to the parental love of those peoples who are addicted to this practice.157 In Fiji “such children as are allowed to live are treated with a foolish fondness.”158 Among the Narrinyeri, “only let it be determined that an infant’s life shall be saved, and there are no bounds to the fondness and indulgence with which it is treated”;159 and with reference to other Australian tribes we are told that it is brought up with greater care than generally falls to the lot of children belonging to the poorer classes in Europe.160 Among the Indians of the Pampas and other Indians of that neighbourhood, who abandon deformed or sickly-looking children to the wild dogs and birds of prey, an infant becomes, from the moment it is considered worthy to live, “the object of the whole love of its parents, who, if necessary, will submit themselves to the greatest privations to satisfy its least wants or exactions.”161 In Madagascar, according to Ellis, “nothing can exceed the affection with which the infant is treated by its parents and other members of the family; the indulgence is more frequently carried to excess than otherwise.”162 From these and similar facts, as also from the general absence of statements to the contrary, I conclude that murders of children who have been allowed to survive their earliest infancy are very rare, though not quite unknown,163 among the lower races.

The custom of infanticide prevails, or has prevailed, not only in the savage world, but among semi-civilised and civilised races. In the poorest districts of China female infants are often destroyed by their parents immediately after their birth, chiefly on account of poverty.164 Though disapproved of by educated Chinese, the practice is treated with forbearance or indifference by the mass of the people, and is acquiesced in by the mandarins.165 “When seriously appealed to on the subject,” says the Rev. J. Doolittle, “though all deprecate it as contrary to the dictates of reason and the instincts of nature, many are ready boldly to apologise for it, and declare it to be necessary, especially in the families of the excessively poor.”166 However, infanticide is neither directly sanctioned by the government, nor agreeable to the general spirit of the laws and institutions of the Empire;167 and it is prohibited both by Buddhism and Taouism.168 According to Dr. de Groot, the belief that the spirits of the dead may, with authorisation of Heaven, take vengeance on the living, has a very salutary effect on female infanticide in China. “The fear that the souls of the murdered little ones may bring misfortune, induces many a father or mother to lay the girls they are unwilling to bring up in the street for adoption into some family, or into a foundling-hospital.”169

In ancient times the Semites, or at least some of them, not only practised infanticide, but, under certain circumstances, approved of it or regarded it as a duty. According to an ancient Arabic proverb, it was a generous deed to bury a female child;170 and we read of ʿOṣaim the Fazarite who did not dare to save alive his daughter Lacîṭa, without concealing her from the people, although she was his only child.171 Considering that among the nomads of Arabia, who suffer constantly from hunger during a great part of the year, a daughter is a burden to the poor, we may suppose, with Professor Robertson Smith, that “infanticide was as natural to them as to other savage peoples in the hard struggle for life.”172 It was condemned, however, by the Prophet:—“Slay not your children for fear of poverty: we will provide for them; beware! for to slay them is ever a great sin.”173 In the Mosaic Law, on the other hand, infanticide is never touched upon, and, in all probability, it hardly occurred among the Hebrews in historic times. But we have reason to believe that, at an earlier period, among them as also among other branches of the Semitic race, child-murder was frequently practised as a sacrificial rite.174

The murder of female infants, whether by the direct employment of homicidal means, or by exposure to privation and neglect, has for ages been a common practice, or even a genuine custom, among various Hindu castes.175 Yet they are well aware that it is prohibited by their sacred books; according to the Laws of Manu, the King shall put to death “those who slay women, infants, or Brâhmanas.”176 Even the Rajputs, who—out of family pride and owing to the expenses connected with the marriage ceremony—were particularly addicted to infanticide, considered that a family in which such a deed had been perpetrated was, in consequence, an object of divine displeasure. On the twelfth day, therefore, the family priest was sent for, and, by suitable gratuities, absolution was obtained. In the room where the infant was born and destroyed, he also prepared and ate some food with which the family provided him; this was considered a hom, or burnt offering, and, by eating it in that place, the priest was supposed to take the whole hutteea, or sin, upon himself, and to cleanse the family from it.177

Exposure of new-born children was practised by the people of the Vedic age,178 as also by other so-called Aryan peoples in ancient times.179 The Teutonic father had to decide whether the child, whilst still lying on the ground, should be accepted as a member of the family, or whether it should be exposed. If he lifted it up, and some water was poured over it, or a drop of milk or honey passed its lips, it was generally safe. But apart from these restrictions, custom seems to have been in favour of exposure only under certain circumstances, exactly similar to those in which infanticide is practised among many modern savages: if the child was born out of wedlock, or if it was deformed or sickly, or if it was born on an unlucky day, or in case of twins—one of whom was always supposed to be illegitimate—or if the parents were very poor. The exposed infant, however, was not necessarily destined to die, but was, in many cases, adopted by somebody who could afford to rear it.180

The exposure of deformed or sickly infants was undoubtedly an ancient custom in Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was also approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers. Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs, as also those who are born from depraved citizens, to be buried in some obscure and unknown place; he maintains, moreover, that when both sexes have passed the age assigned for presenting children to the State, no child is to be brought to light, and that any infant which is by accident born alive, shall be done away with.181 Aristotle not only lays down the law with respect to the exposing or bringing up of children, that “nothing imperfect or maimed shall be brought up,” but proposes that the number of children allowed to each marriage shall be regulated by the State, and that, if any woman be pregnant after she has produced the prescribed number, an abortion shall be procured before the fetus has life.182 These views were in perfect harmony with the general tendency of the Greeks to subordinate the feelings of the individual to the interest of the State. Confined as they were to a very limited territory, they were naturally afraid of being burdened with the maintenance of persons whose lives could be of no use. It is necessary, says Aristotle, to take care that the increase of the people should not exceed a certain number, in order to avoid poverty and its concomitants, sedition and other evils.183 Yet the exposure of healthy infants, which was frequently practised in Greece, was hardly approved of by public opinion, although tolerated,184 except at Thebes, where it was a crime punishable with death.185

In Rome custom or law enjoined the destruction of deformed infants. According to a law of the Twelve Tables, referred to by Cicero, monstrous abortions were not suffered to live.186 With reference to a much later period Seneca writes, “We destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed”; he adds that it is an act of reason thus to separate what is useless from what is sound.187 But there was no tendency in Rome to encourage infanticide beyond these limits. It has been observed that, whilst the Greek policy was rather to restrain, the Roman policy was always to encourage, population.188 Being engaged in incessant wars of conquest, Rome was never afraid of being over-populated, but, on the contrary, tried to increase the number of its citizens by according special privileges to the fathers of many children, and exempting poor parents from most of the burden of taxation.189 The power of life and death which the Roman father possessed over his children undoubtedly involved the legal right of destroying or exposing new-born infants; but it is equally certain that the act was frequently disapproved of.190 An ancient “law,” ascribed to Romulus—which, as Mommsen suggests, could have been merely a priestly direction191—enjoined the father to bring up all his sons and at least his eldest daughter, and forbade him to destroy any well-formed child till it had completed its third year, when the affections of the parent might be supposed to be developed.192 In later times we find the exposure of children condemned by poets, historians, philosophers, jurists. Among nefarious acts committed in sign of grief on the day when Germanicus died, Suetonius mentions the exposure of new-born babes.193 Epictetus indignantly opposes the saying of Epicurus that men should not rear their children:—“Even a sheep will not desert its young, nor a wolf; and shall a man? ‘What! will you have us to be silly creatures, like the sheep?’ Yet they desert not their young. ‘Or savage, like wolves?’ Yet even they desert them not. Come, then, who would obey you if he saw his little child fall on the ground and cry?”194 Julius Paulus, the jurist, pronounced him who refused nourishment to his child, or exposed it in a public place, to be guilty of murder195—a statement which is to be understood, not as a legal prohibition of exposure, but only as the expression of a moral opinion.196 On the other hand, though the exposure of healthy infants was disapproved of in Pagan Rome, it was not generally regarded as an offence of very great magnitude, especially if the parents were destitute.197 During the Empire it was practised on an extensive scale, and in the literature of the time it is spoken of with frigid indifference. Since the life of the victim was frequently saved by some benevolent person or with a view to profit,198 it was not regarded in the same light as downright infanticide, which, in the case of a healthy infant, seems to have been strictly prohibited by custom.199

As is generally the case in the savage world, so among semi-civilised and civilised nations whose customs allow or tolerate infanticide, the child, if not suffered to live, has to be killed in its earliest infancy. Among the Chinese200 and Rajputs201 it is destroyed immediately after its birth. In the Scandinavian North the killing or exposure of an infant who had already been sprinkled with water was regarded as murder.202 At Athens parents were punished for exposing children whom they had once begun to rear.203