James Campbell

“ Everybody is born with a propensity to love, and everybody that is willing to marry may marry, and indulge that propensity in innocence and purity. Within this limit the gratification of love affords us the most exquisite pleasure, promotes health, conduces to longevity, and is entirely consistent with the rules of morality and religion. But when it oversteps this limit prescribed by our Creator, and bursts the barriers of chastity, it then assumes the form of unprincipled lust, and inflicts upon its miserable votaries the utmost torture of body, degradation of mind, and remorse of conscience. ”

“ To an active and an ingenuous mind there is no pursuit more fascinating than the pursuit of knowledge, no pleas- ure more exquisite than the discovery of truth. All those who would enjoy this pleasure in its highest sense must love Truth for herself alone ; they must emancipate themselves from the trammels of prejudice and public opinion, and dare to follow Truth wherever she may lead. ”

“ LOVE INHERENT IN ALL. That the language of love is universally understood, and that its varied delineations by the inspiration of art are always and everywhere delightfully recognized, is sufficient proof that the sentiment is universally experienced. It is not confined to the gifted, the highborn, or the rich, nor is it peculiar to any period of the world, or to any condition of life. All have possessed the sensibility, if they have not experienced the passion ; they have felt the want of love, if they have not enjoyed its fruition. ”

“ There is nothing so great, so difficult, or so self-sacrificing that love will not inspire men to dare and to do. But it is not more in splendid achievements or wonder- ful adventures, than it is in the innumerable little things, which conspire to make up the happiness of social life, that the greatest victories of love are won. We cannot love any person, without seeking his or her benefit ”

“ Preface to 1885 edition This little book disdains disguise, and paints humanity as it is. As the artist delineates the exact forms of Nature, although his living models are never perfect, either in feature or in attitude, so should the moral writer portray both the beauiies and the blemishes of social life, without omitting even those which are most repulsive. It is an axiom of prudence, never to shut our eyes against a painful truth, but to know the worst, and to provide for it. ”

“ We must not ridicule the passion of love, which he who never felt, never was happy ; and he who laughs at never deserves to feel, — a passion which has inspired heroism, and subdued avarice ; a passion which has caused the change of empires, and the loss of worlds. ”

“ Love paints the cheek with roses, adds new lustre and intelligence to the eye, imparts strength and elasticity to the step, grace and dignity to the mien, courage to the heart, elo- quence to the tongue, and poetry to every thought. ”

“ In my analysis of the laws of love and marriage on which depends the mutual relation of the two sexes, I shall be obliged to speak of that relation with unusual familiarity ; even though I may sometimes offend our modern notions of modesty and propriety — notions which I shall not now stop to discuss, whether they be true or false ; it matters not. Truth rises superior to every consideration of fastidiousness, and it is high time that these truths should be demonstrated. ”

“ Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse : Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty brecdeth beauty, Thou wast begot — to get it is thy duty. Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, Unless the earth with thy increase be fed ? By law of Nature thou art bound to breed, That thine may live, when thou thyself art dead ”

“ I blush for humanity that so many debasing crimes against the laws of chastity should ever be committed ; but I do not blush to know when and by whom they have been committed, nor to know what are their terrible consequences. This knowledge has been a part of human experience and history, which it, is not only proper, but important, for every one to know ”

“ If the writer, on the contrary, shall seem prejudiced in favor of polygamy, let it be attributed to his love of fair play, and his desire to let both sides be heard, rather than to any undue bias of mind preventing him from doing equal justice to the arguments in favor of either system. ”

“ It is attested and proved by competent authority, which no one doubts, that polygamy, or that social system which permits a plurality of wives, has always prevailed in most countries and in all ages of the world, from time immemorial ; but this form of marriage, being foreign to the customs of modern Europe and her colonies in America, is very naturally regarded throughout these enlight- ened regions as something heathenish and barba- rous. And modern writers, whose works are the exponents of European civilization, have hitherto said every thing against it, and nothing for it. ”

“ LOVE IS THE RIGHT OF ALL. In plainer terms, the laws of God and of nature clearly indicate that every man and every woman, possessing sufficient health and vitality to experience the passion of love, is benefited by its proper grati- fication ; and those laws both allow and invite every one to enjoy it in its full fruition. A man is not wholly a man, nor a woman wholly a woman, who has never experienced the ecstasies of gratified love. ”

“ And it is as truly and fundamentally a law of human nature as electricity is of material nature, — to which it bears a curious analogy. We can scarcely reason with more certainty upon the laws of electricity than upon those of love, for we have the assistance of consciousness in one case which we want in the other. ”

“ Chapter II. Primary Laws of Love LOVE LIKE ELECTRICITY Among all the inherent properties of mankind, none is more important than that of love ; and no one more clearly eviuces the wisdom and benevolence of his Creator. Love, in its primary sense, to which it will be restricted in this treatise, is the mutual attraction of the two sexes. It exists in all persons, either as a sensibility or a passion. It is a sensibility when in a state of rest, or when exercised towards the whole of the opposite sex indiscriminately ”

“ But as a venerable institution the social system of polygamy does not deserve such supercilious treatment. Such treatment, besides being unjust, is unphilosoph- ical, and unworthy a liberal and an enlightened age. ”

“ Truth dreads no scrutiny ; shields herself behind no breastwork of established custom or of respectable authority, but proudly stands upon her own merits. I will not despair, therefore, of gaining the atten- tion of every lover of the truth while I attempt to develop and demonstrate the laws of God and of nature upon the important subjects of love and mar- riage, and to apply those laws to the two systems of monogamy and polygamy. ”

“ Still less is it good for the woman to be alone, for u she was created for the man," and every woman wants a man to love ; for love is her life, and it is only while she loves, or hopes to love, that she lives to any happy or useful or honest purpose. It has been said that as woman was taken out of man in her creation, so it is man's instinctive desire to seek her and to reclaim her as his own counterpart, or that portion of himself which is required to complete the symmetry of his nature and the happiness of his life. ”

“ It is a great fact that cannot be ignored ; and as such, it must be studied and known. To insist upon the condemnation of this system, without hearing its defence, is oppression. It is even the worst kind of oppression ; for, in such case, it must be allied with ignorance and bigotry. But if there ever was a time, when polygamy could properly be thrust aside with a sneer, and it was satisfactory to Christian justice to condemn it unheard and unexamined, it can be so no longer ”

“ We have iuherited our monogamy, or the marriage system which restricts each man to one wife only, and have practised it as a matter of course, without any special examination or inquiry : so that we really know but little concerning its origin or its early history ; while we know still less of the system of polygamy. We read some- thing of it in the Bible and in the history of Eastern nations, and we learn something more from the reports of modern travellers ; and it cannot be denied that what we know of it has come to us in such a form as to prejudice our minds against it. ”

“ Their mistake is one which has always been too common, and from which no one, perhaps, is altogether free. It consists in assuming that because we are honest in our belief, and mean to be right, others who essentially differ from us are dishonest and wrong ; and in presuming to judge the conduct of others by what we feel to be right, i.e., by our own standard of morality, instead of judging them by what we know to be right, according to the infallible standard of divine truth. ”

“ Bat there are always some individuals among them who need a great deal of encouragement before they will advance and propose ; and others who are almost destitute of the common sensibility of love, and who will neither make proposals nor receive them.
LOVE REFINES AND ENNOBLES. Love sheds on earth something of the beauty and the light of heaven. Love develops the no- blest traits of humanity ; and often brings them out from those persons who had given little promise of possessing them, until they were brought under the influence of this master passion. ”

“ So it is found that love exists in different states in the two sexes, and in different degrees of intensity in different individuals of the same sex. Males are positive, and females negative ; and while the latter differ less from each other than the former do, being nearly all of them susceptible to the proper proposals of genuine love, yet they are not so much affected by sponta- neous passion as the former are, who usually ex- perience it with great intensity, and are impelled to make the first advances. ”

“ Hence, we are deeply indebted to this sentiment for those qualities of mind and person which com- bine to constitute us social beings ; since it does not more certainly impel us to the acquisition of what is beautiful and becoming in dress and de- portment, than to the attainment of intelligence and politeness, and to surround ourselves with all the embellishments of civilization. Love refines all that it touches. ”

“ But, even in this respect, there is no real disagreement between the laws of morality and those of Nature : when they are properly un- derstood, they are each equally explicit in forbid- ding every form of licentious impurity. The most loathsome and incurable diseases are the penalties imposed by natural law, and the severest retribu- tions of eternity, the penalties imposed by divine law, upon the promiscuous and unrestrained in- dulgence of the amorous propensity. ”

“ Many of them, particularly those who possess a great regard for the authority and the dogmas of the church, and who reason rather from the " tradition of the elders," than from the laws of Nature or of God, have rigidly enforced monogamy among their converts ; and if any one becomes a Christian while living in polygamy, such missionaries require him to repudiate all his wives but one. ”

“ It is a just cause of complaint against the men, that they have too long kept the women in subjection and ignorance ; first withholding from them the key of knowledge, and then charging them with incapacity for many responsible duties and employments, for which an equal share of knowledge would have qualified them. ”

“ LOVE MUST BE RESTRICTED WITHIN THE LIMITS OF CHASTITY Tet men and women must not rush into sensual pleasure like brutes, for we are moral beings, as well as corporeal beings, and, as such, the subjects of moral law, which requires us to govern our passions, and circumscribe them within the limits of purity. ”

“ And those men and women who are spending their most vigorous period of life in cold and barren celibacy, without ever having yielded to the warm desires of reproduction, are living, every moment, in debt to their Creator and to the commonwealth of mankind. They have never fulfilled some of the most important purposes of their being. ”

“ For the chastity of the women hitherto irreproachable would be tarnished by their repudiation : they would often be left without a home and without support ; and, like other dis- graced and destitute women of all lands, they would be thrust upon a life of infamy and vice. ”

“ In the following pages, I have depicted some of the evils of society, but only in order to demonstrate them to be evils, and to point out a remedy for them which is desirable, practicable, and beneficent. ”

“ It doubts all things that it may prove all things. The marriage question is a proper subject of philosophical inquiry, involving an examination and analysis of both polygamy and monogamy. Of the latter form of marriage the Christian world has known too much, and of the former too little, to have felt, hitherto, the need of any analysis of either. ”

“ It is a melancholy and an hu- miliating fact that the opinions of most people are de- termined more by what others around them think and say than by what they believe themselves. They are not accustomed to the proper exercise of their own reason, and do not follow the convictions of their own minds. ”

“ If we disapprove of their practices we should be prepared to make substantial objections to them ; and if we wish to teach them our own, we should be able to give equally substantial rea- sons. If the advocates of polygamy are in the minority in the Christian world, let the common rights of the minority be granted them, — freedom of debate and the privilege of protest ”