WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
influence. Religion also serves as a restraint upon minds swayed by beliefs and theological precepts. Often, no doubt, the innately polygynous man is hindered from indulging his propensity by reasoned ethical and social considerations.
Nevertheless, it is useless to pretend that the practices of unrecognised polygyny and "wild love" are purely Eastern, or confined entirely to primitive races. As George Meredith said, most Englishmen have not yet "rounded Cape Turk." Chastity is apparent, but to what degree is it actual?
Lucy Garnett, in "The Women of Turkey," is explicit in her comparison of our sexual morality and that of the Turks:—
"Monogamy has in Christendom been a conventional fiction rather than a social fact. And Christianity, having denied to women all rights in sexual relations except under the sanction of indissoluble monogamous marriage, the social evil has in no civilisation whatever been so hideous in its degradation and misery as in Christendom."
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