POLYGAMY AND WIFE-PURCHASE 127 
or other wives, to make a home for him and look after his 
banana plots. 
Here is another point for consideration. Among 
these nature-peoples there are no widows unprovided 
for and no neglected orphans. The nearest male 
relative inherits the dead man’s widow, and must 
maintain her and her children. She enters into enjoy- 
ment of all the rights of his other wives, even though 
she can later, with his consent, take another husband. 
To agitate, therefore, against polygamy among 
primitive peoples, is to undermine the whole structure 
of their society. Have we the right to do this if we 
are not also in a position to give them a new social 
order which suits their own circumstances ? Were the 
agitation successful, would not polygamy still continue 
to exist, with the single difference that the later wives 
would be illegitimate ones ? These questions naturally 
cause missionaries much anxious thought. 
But, as a matter of fact, the more developed the 
economic condition of a people becomes, the easier 
becomes the contest with polygamy. When men begin 
to live in permanent houses, and to practise the rearing 
of cattle, and agriculture, it disappears of itself because 
it is no longer demanded by their circumstances, and 
is no longer even consistent with them. Among the 
Israelites, as their civilisation advanced, monogamy 
peacefully drove out polygamy. During the prophetic 
period they were both practised side by side ; the 
teaching of Jesus does not even hint at the existence 
of the latter. 
Certainly mission teaching should put forward 
monogamy as the ideal and as what Christianity 
demands, but it’would be a mistake for the State to 
