594 POLYGAMY AND MONOGAMY. 



The natural position of the female sex in this respect is indicated at 

 once by the relation of numbers. In Europe, for every 106 male births 

 there are 100 female, and as the sex of offspring is influenced by the 

 relative ages of the parents, the older parent giving a tendency to its own 

 sex, we may reasonably suppose that in the infants born of polygamy 

 the males will preponderate, reversing the result which is observed in the 

 great cities of Western Europe, in which the ratio of female births rises 

 above its true mean by nearly four per cent, when those births are ille- 

 gitimate. In that term of the market, four per cent., what a volume of 

 information is here conveyed ! It tells us that the European female does 

 not fall at once ; that there intervene years of resistance to temptation, a 

 struggle of virtue against penury and distress, but it also reveals the 

 precocious wickedness of man ! 



Considering, therefore, the near equality of male and female births, we 

 may truly assert that monogamy is the proper condition of our species, 

 and that, apart from its social evils and criminality, polygamy is an un- 

 natural state. I shall pass, as unworthy of notice, the assertion of those 

 who, in this Christian country, practice so shameful a vice, that we might 

 as well divide the number of square acres on the face of the globe by the 

 number of its inhabitants, and declare it to be immoral in any one to 

 possess a larger estate than corresponds to the quotient thereof. Ac- 

 knowledging the natural depravity of the human heart, I accept with 

 humiliation the rebuke that the most enlightened communities exhibit 

 in these respects a deplorable spectacle, and that the vices of the Mo- 

 hammedan harems find their full counterpoise in the general, the awful, 

 and, in many places, the legalized prostitution of Christian cities. 



Europe has adopted as the fundamental basis of its religious: system 

 Effects of o- *ke S ran ^ Asiatic truth of the unity of God, but in its family 

 lygamy and system it has rejected the immemorial and widespread Asi- 

 mogamy. ^^ p ract j ce O f polygamy. That circumstance has made it 

 what it is. The monogamous habit has tended to draw the family tie 

 more firmly, and has led to the accumulation and transmission of wealth 

 from generation to generation in the same house. "With this have arisen 

 a liability to concentration of power in castes, and the use of surnames 

 which have perpetuated family interests and family pride. In Europe 

 the career of improvement is in the society ; in Asia it is in the individ- 

 ual ; the unknown, starving, illiterate, but strong-willed soldier of to-day 

 is the Pasha, the Caliph, the Emperor to-morrow. The castes of India 

 The respective form but a trifling exception to the fact that, in the midst of 

 STandEu- a uinversa l despotism, the primest democratic element is 

 rope. concealed, for the career is open to talent. Through this, 



Asia has asserted her superiority again and again. Europe has never 

 produced a great lawgiver ; Asia has produced many. Generations of 



