WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
The imperturbability that the Oriental often displays in the contemplation of pain, and the commission of acts that appear to us as grossly cruel, is a subject of great psychological interest and importance.
"About the only good and conspicuous virtue that we possess in England," said to me an ex-minister of the Church, "is our kindness and consideration towards animals." In the Mohammedan religion the believer is enjoined to show kindness to brutes and clemency for slaves. Nevertheless, the counsel is frequently, and indeed commonly, set aside when anger is aroused. And apparently much of the cruelty of the East is purposive and carefully devised.
The source of Oriental apathy in relation to pain, and the seeming enjoyment in inflicting physical suffering arises probably from a certain obtuseness of the nerves. When we see the fakirs of Cairo, and elsewhere, walking with bare feet upon bayonet points, and otherwise injuring and mutilating the flesh, as an exhibition of stoicism, we have a marked instance of the Eastern capacity for enduring pain. He who stands torments without an outcry is often unsympathetic at the spectacle of another man's manifest bodily anguish, and may even derive pleasure from witnessing the effect of pain.
Physiologically, the Eastern people show an aptitude for the personal toleration and the infliction of
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