The great writer, Aristotle, seems to have seen the principle even more clearly than Plato. He fixes the age of marriage for men in his Republic actually at thirty-seven; and, even with this late marriage, he foresaw that there might be too many children, so that he proposed that the number allowed to each marriage should be regulated. Aristotle accuses Plato of not being sufficiently attentive to the population difficulty, and for proposing to equalise property without limiting the number of children (_De Repub._ lib. ii. ch. vi.). This may be a hint to modern Socialists, especially to those of Germany, where Socialism seems to be becoming the creed of the masses, in despair at ever hearing any good thing from the military despots now in power. Aristotle justly observes that the laws require to be much more definite and precise in a state where property is equalised, than in others, since, in ordinary circumstances, an increase of population would only occasion a further sub-division of landed property, whereas, in a state of communism, the supernumeraries would be altogether destitute, because the lands, being reduced to equal elementary parts, would be incapable of further sub-division. He remarks that it is necessary in all cases to regulate the number of children, so that they may not exceed the proper number. In doing this, death and sterility are of course to be taken into account. But if, he says in chapter vii., every person be left free to have as many children as he pleases, the necessary consequence will be poverty: and poverty is the mother of crime and sedition. For these very reasons, an ancient writer on politics, Pheidon of Corinth, introduced a regulation to limit population without equalising wealth. Speaking again, in book ii. ch. vii., of schemes for the equalisation of wealth, Aristotle says that, in order that such schemes should be successful, it would be imperative to regulate at the same time the size of families. For, if children multiply beyond the means of supporting them, the law will necessarily be broken, and families will be suddenly reduced from opulence to beggary, a revolution always dangerous to public tranquility. In Sparta the landed property had passed into the hands of a very small number of the citizens: and Aristotle remarks that in such a state the encouragement of large families by rewards could only have for its effect to cause an immense accumulation of indigence, so long as a better distribution of the land were not secured. It would have been well for European nations up to this time, had their rulers known even as much as Aristotle and Plato of this matter: they would have avoided those disastrous historical incentives to procreation, which must always have ended only in increasing indigence and premature death.