Under all circumstances, however, the parents thus criminal are objects of pity. Misery is blind, and crime is blind. But what shall we say to those priests of humanity, those sacred and reverend interpreters of nature,—the philosophers who come forward to sanction and justify the practice? It would be criminal to disguise the fact, that both Plato and Aristotle, the great representatives of the wisdom of the Pagan world,[344] conceived infanticide, under certain circumstances, to be allowable. Near, therefore, as the former stood to the truths of Christianity, there was still a cloud between him and them. What he saw, he saw through a glass darkly. Christ had not then stamped the seal of divinity upon human nature, had not shed abroad that light by which alone we discover the true features of crime, no less than the true features of holiness. Philosophy is beautiful; but with the beauty of one involuntarily polluted. Religion alone, breathing of heaven, radiant with light, reflected on its whole form from the face of God, is lovely altogether without spot or blemish. The Greeks wanting this guide went astray. They looked at the question of population as coarse utilitarians,—all but the gross, unintellectual Thebans, who, relying on the vast fertility of their soil, or led by some better instinct, on this point soared high above their cultivated neighbours, an example of how the foolish things of this world, even in the unregenerate state of nature, may sometimes confound the wise. Among the Tyrrhenians,[345] likewise, a people of Pelasgian origin, infanticide was unknown, probably because among them it was accounted no disgrace to be the parents of illegitimate offspring; indeed the sense of shame could not, in any case, be very keen among a people whose female slaves served naked at table, and where even the ladies appeared at public entertainments in the same state, drinking bumpers and joining freely in the conversation of the men. Footnote 344: Plato, de Rep. v. § 9. p. 359. Stallb. Aristot. Pol. vii. 16. Cf. Lips. Epist. ad Belg. Cent. 1. c. 85. with the work of Gerard Noodt, entitled “Julius Paulus,” in opp. Lugd. Bat. 1726. pp. 567, seq. 591. seq. Elmenhorst. ad Minuc. Felic. Octav. 289. ed. Ouzel. Footnote 345: Athen. xii. 14.