Walter Matthew Gallichan

“ As a purely speculative statement, though one not without a groundwork of evidence, it might be said that a form of recognised polyandry, rather than polygamy, may possibly one day be practised in the West, side by side with monogamous marriage. It is a significant fact that the predominant sex tends to exhibit the plurality impulse. The militarist patriarch obtains, by purchase or warfare, as many mates as he can afford to keep. A rich man in the East impresses his neighbours and demonstrates his social importance by the maintenance of a costly harem. ”

“ This insistence upon the economic freeing of women is based upon an appreciation of the status of the sex in the period of mother-right. In America over five million women earn a livelihood without dependence upon men. Japan has a large population of industrial women. The entrance of women into almost every field of employment has its menace; but the long age is nearing the end during which women had no trade but marriage.
Wider knowledge for women is the rock upon which the system will ultimately wreck itself. This is not stating that polygyny will disappear entirely in civilised nations. ”

“ Monogamy grows out of polygyny whenever and wherever the ideal of close personal attachment between the sexes satisfies the emotional and physio- logical needs of the race. In the West the conception of romantic love is associated with devotion to, and lasting affection for, one member of the opposite sex. This conception of monogamic marriage for the whole life of the united pair arose very early from the instinct of races in the course of evolution, though the strict observance of monogamy has rarely been general in the monogamic nations. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX MONOGAMY AND POLYGYNY IN this survey I have noted a present-day monogamic trend in the races of the East. The movement may not be widespread, nor readily recognisable in the more stationary nations practising polygamy, but it un- doubtedly manifests itself among the newer Eastern spirits.* It would be rash to infer from this slight in- dication of changing opinion that plural marriage will entirely disappear in the future. Perhaps we may assume that, with the spread of discontent among the cultured women of the East, polygamy will lessen very gradually. ”

“ The tendency to ascendancy among the energetic, educated women of the West has led to considerable speculation as to what will happen if women become supreme in social rule. There is no question that an important proportion of advanced women are inclined to criticise the existing form of legal sex relationshipsr-- During the past fifty years indissoluble monogamous marriage has been dissected and assailed. I am not inclined to predict a popular campaign in favour of polygamy, under the advocacy of European women. ”

“ To a few minds have come beautiful foreshadowings of a nobler estimate of love, potent to overcome the evil and the misery that spring more often from low ideals and ignorance than from depravity of heart. ”

“ But the monogamic ideal is the expression of a genuine sentiment of love between men and women.
Courtship under the monogamous system of mar- riage is the prelude to union. During this period the man and the woman have each at least the opportunity for ascertaining their lover's salient virtues, foibles, and defects of character, and this probation often pre- pares the way for pacific matrimony. No such period of wooing is permissible under the Eastern system of purchase, or arranged, marriage. In most instances the contracting persons are strangers to one another ”

“ While polygamy favours male supremacy, and pro- vides for the wandering amative impulses of men, in its Oriental form the practice militates against woman's influence in many of the wider interests of social life. It is the wastage of a highly valuable social force that a large number of women should be segregated and immured in harems. ”

“ Although men scarcely realise the fact, women in civilised communities are the predominant controllers of the sex relations. If women in England elected to live either in polygamy or in polyandry men would be forced sooner or later to accept the condition. ”

“ Un- restricted polygyny leads to the inequality exampled in Dahomey, where the king possessed thousands of wives, and his chiefs hundreds, while the ill-paid soldier could not maintain even one woman.
It is a menace of the power of wealth that a rich man's money should enable him to fill his harem with a multitude of women, while great masses of the popu- lation earn barely sufficient to provide for one wife and her children. ”

“ The thousand devices of Nature for the free play of the selective will in the matings of animals seem a con-
vincing argument against any form of human marriage that negatives this free play. The idyllic courtship of birds foreshadows the passionate, romantic wooing of human beings.* Even among the polygamous mammals and among birds there is love-making in both sexes as an introduction to physical mating. ”

“ By enabling a man to escape so easily from the obligations of his polygamous relationships, we encourage him, if he is unscrupulous, to enter into them; we place a premium on the immorality that we loftily condemn." It is equally true that " in no part of the world is polygyny so prevalent as in Christendom."
Chaotic promiscuity, " wild love," and prostitution flourish under our pseudo-monogamic system. _.. It is-- easier to live licenfiously in the West than in the East, and we should face the fact frankly. ”

“ Courtship before mating is the universal rule among the higher animals. It is a natural process of selec- tion, with a very definite aim. Wooing, love-play, and the exercise of choice would seem to be as natural for men as for animals. Polygamy as generally practised in the East appears contrary to the general law of Nature, in so far as it dispenses with preliminary court- ship.
What chance of selection has a Georgian girl of fifteen sold into harem marriage ? ”

“ A passion for educa- tion, for deeper human experiences, and for wider social scope has already fired the bosoms of Turkish, Hindu, and Japanese women. The Oriental Women's Movement will be resisted by patriarchal autocracy, as the parent movement in the West has been combated by men. But it is inevitable that the resistance will be worn down; for there is no plainer sign in human evolution at the present time than the advance of women. ”

“ Monogamy, naturally evolved, and not as it is shaped and controlled by religious beliefs, is now acknow- ledged in our own country as the highest form of love union. ' It is not the legal or religious formality which sanctifies marriage," writes Havelock Ellis, c it is the reality of the marriage which sanctifies the form/' The cardinal virtue of monogamic marriage is its claim that the betrothed pair are irresistibly drawn to one another by affection. That love and passion are often absent, and that marriage is entered into for a variety of social and material reasons, is perfectly true. ”

“ Virtually she is a serf, though her serfdom may not be irksome. In any case, the human right of freedom of choice of a sexual partner is wholly repudiated, and she is merely a pur- chased woman, or human chattel. ”

“ Among the his- toric amorists are a great number of most distinguished and exceptionally gifted men and women. But the paternal man and the maternal woman, the less erotic type common in all the Northern and Western nations, are, probably, the best types for the propagation of the race. ”

“ Sexual variation has always existed, and there is no reason to believe that one stable, rigid form of erotic relationship will ever obtain. But the spread of the revolutionary in- fluence of culture, a perfectly natural process, will cause a steady reduction of the harems of the East. ”

“ The West has practi- cally declared for full sexual equality. No doubt women will lose some of their traditional privileges in the process of equalisation; but they will gain infinitely in mental and moral development. The State that neglects to use the potentialities of its women, and re- gards them only as wives and the mothers of children, will assuredly lag behind in the march of nations. ”

“ To live as one of four wives, or as one of a hundred concubines, is repugnant to the sentiment of the bulk of women reared in the traditions of Christen- dom. But this is not saying that polygamy is repellent to the whole mass of Western women. The fervent advocacy of plural marriage by female converts to Mormonism is sufficient evidence that such a -form of the sex relationship attracts a fair number of European women. It must be remembered that in sex matters
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there is a great diversity of feeling and emotion. ”

“ Western science to-day has begun their work by a thorough study of the sexual impulse, and important pioneering has been effected in the education of the intelligent upon these subjects and in the development of eugenic research."*
It is fairly certain that sexual promiscuity never prevailed among primitive people to the extent that it prevails in the most highly-civilised nations of to-day. ”

“ The Churches do not help to solve the problem by preaching total abstinence and encouraging scientific ignorance; their attitude is part of the con- ventional sexual morality of the time. They can aid in the scientific rehabilitation of a natural chastity only by joining hands with science. ”

“ Such is the ideal of the spirit of modern feminism. An ever- growing number of women of the Western civilisations condemn the economic dependence of their sex. Olive Schreiner explicitly warns women that parasitism re- sults in female degradation. ”

“ The cramping of feminine intelligence is one of the gravest defects of the harem form of polygamic mar- riage. The harem stands for a sign of that aggressive, anti-social affluence that the most thoughtful minds all the world over regard as anomalous and evil. ”

“ We have seen in our investigation that the seraglio is sometimes a symbol of a ruler's might, and that the potentate is forced to maintain such a show of affluence in order to keep up his authority. In like manner, the influential Nair woman maintains her sway by the possession of several husbands. ”