WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
anderun is peaceful, and that the women are usually good friends.
As I have said before, Professor Westermarck's disapproval of polygamy blinds him to facts which prove that there are certain domestic advantages for women in polygamous societies.
Dr. Polak declares that the love extolled by the Persian poets has "either a symbolic or a very profane meaning"; in fine, it is asserted by several authorities, cited in "The History of Human Marriage," that the Oriental peoples have no conception of the romantic love of the West.
I cannot sympathise with such special pleading. Without offering any apology whatever for plural marriage, one may expose dispassionately all sides of the question, good and evil. The prime error of the writers who champion monogamy, when describing Eastern life, is their invariable tendency to rank all Mohammedans, Hindus, and the greater number of Buddhists as polygamists. We have seen that in all the countries where plurality of wives and the maintenance of concubines are sanctioned, the great bulk of the population live in monogamy.
Surely, when one hears the personal testimony of devout Mohammedan and Hindu men and women, and that of English friends who have lived in the East, one hesitates before making such wide generalisations con-
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