The constitution of an athlete is not
suited to the life of a citizen, or to health, or to the procreation
of children, any more than the valetudinarian or exhausted
constitution, but one which is in a mean between them. A man's
constitution should be inured to labor, but not to labor which is
excessive or of one sort only, such as is practiced by athletes; he
should be capable of all the actions of a freeman. These remarks apply
equally to both parents.
Women who are with child should be careful of themselves; they
should take exercise and have a nourishing diet. The first of these
prescriptions the legislator will easily carry into effect by
requiring that they shall take a walk daily to some temple, where they
can worship the gods who preside over birth. Their minds, however,
unlike their bodies, they ought to keep quiet, for the offspring
derive their natures from their mothers as plants do from the earth.
As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that
no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in
the number of children, if the established customs of the state forbid
this (for in our state population has a limit), no child is to be
exposed, but when couples have children in excess, let abortion be
procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be
lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and
sensation.
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