Of course we know, Junior, that infant exposure was a fairly common practice in the ancient world, and not just in the case of the Spartans. And not just for reasons of eugenics, but also for sex-selection and economic reasons. Not even to mention the practice of infant sacrifice.
But in the long course of the historical and cultural evolution of mankind, Western civilization arguably has tried to move away from such evil practices, with notable success. Among other things, it has ended slavery; it has promoted religious tolerance and human rights; it has worked to "civilize" warfare so as to spare non-combatants; it has promulgated mass education; etc., etc.
But then, comes along in the nineteenth century a thoroughly atavistic work entitled The Descent of Man. If anything, this book can be fairly understood as a recursion to a more primitive state of mind. IMHO it does not represent an evolution of human consciousness, but a devolution, a recursion, a “throwback” to a more savage past. Clearly it legitimates the practice of eugenics. And when you boil it all down, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the practice of eugenics and “ethnic cleansing.”
Now Hitler was arguably a “primitive,” too, in his habits of mind. And I am mindful that he commonly referred to the Jews as “apes” – as a line of special development less fit and therefore unworthy to survive. Forced sterilization of “undesirables,” or their outright liquidation (as in the case of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, etc.), was all the rage with Hitler.
Now from whence do you suppose he most likely got these ideas? From Sparta? Or from Darwin? Or to put it another way, of the two, which is more likely to justify what Hitler did, in his own mind?
Neither. It was probably from Martin Luther. Martin Luther's dirty little book.:
So vehemently did Luther speak against the Jews, and the fact that Luther represented an honorable and admired Christian to Protestants, that his written words carried the "memetic" seeds of anti-Jewishness up until the 20th century and into the Third Reich. Luther's Jewish eliminationist rhetoric virtually matches the beliefs held by Hitler and much of the German populace in the 1930s.
IMHO also! Thanks for the heads up!
I sample here and there and there and there and there again and see nothing but a very curious and observant mind from 131 years ago, at work on the question of from whence arose humankind. So I guess you disagreed with something at some point?
Except, dear heart, the Spartans specifically did it as method to strengthen their gene pool, not to simply eliminate an unwanted mouth-to-feed. This is eugenics, and it was practiced 2300 years ago.
Great point! Moreover, what the evolutionists always ignore, is that Darwinism laid the foundation for Hitler's mass murders in the public mind. It legitimized such views. It called them science. Therefore Hitler just reaped what Darwin had sowed.