VIRTUE AND CRIME 161 



the three in women for which God exterminated whole families 

 and nations. But until the laws of caste and heredity became 

 the laws of mankind, polygamy was and still is in nations 

 where equality rules, the order of the day, and must be again 

 if we were to do away with social distinctions, an absolute 

 necessity of advancement and of the survival of the fittest. 

 As it is then the only possible way to attain the progression 

 of the human race through the most successful? men getting 

 the greatest number of wives, so with all nations that have no 

 system of social distinctions, it is still the rule and advisedly 

 so. But it is a common mistake to think that polygamy 

 cannot be as moral as monogamy. History shows that it is 

 six to one and half-a-dozen to the other, provided that poly- 

 gamy is carried on under wise laws and restrictions. 



To view this question impartially we must consider the 

 aims for which God created marriage that is, to join in 

 unity and harmony husband and wife, to produce the breeding 

 of the fittest, and to create happy homes, and united interests 

 of labour and self-protection in a family, and to increase the 

 population. I am citing this instance for the reason that 

 extreme cases make the best examples. The reader must bear 

 in mind that the object of this chapter is to show that in the 

 pure abstract nothing is wrong and that it is purely a matter 

 of circumstance, surroundings and conditions that make right 

 and wrong, not the act itself, and it is a law of evolution that 

 evil is justified by good results. I will therefore now point out 

 that a polygamous marriage may be just as moral as a mono- 

 gamous one, if made and conducted in a country where it is 

 legal and under conditions of law and evolution that justify 

 the act, and that so long as the man confines his affections 

 to and devotes his means to making those happy and con- 

 tented who make his home and rear his offspring, it will be a 

 moral home. But the man who lives in a country where it is 

 only permitted to marry one wife, and who devotes his affec- 

 tions to women who do not assist to add to the happiness of 

 his home, and the unity of his offspring, and whose concubines 

 do not increase the family unity, and whose children he ne- 

 glects to provide for, does not carry out the duties of the state 

 of marriage, and lives an immoral life, whereas the man who 

 has two or three wives, and is true to them all, is moral and 

 virtuous. The distinction lies in the different conception of 



I, 



