WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
passions, assail and distract them. They are the devoted progenitors of the species.
Monogamy grows out of polygyny whenever and wherever the ideal of close personal attachment between the sexes satisfies the emotional and physiological needs of the race. In the West the conception of romantic love is associated with devotion to, and lasting affection for, one member of the opposite sex. This conception of monogamic marriage for the whole life of the united pair arose very early from the instinct of races in the course of evolution, though the strict observance of monogamy has rarely been general in the monogamic nations.
Religious and ethical precepts and stern legislation have played their part in the enforcement of monogamic sex relationships among individuals of the community predisposed to polygyny. But a great number of men and women need no such counsels and deterrents. They have an innate bias to single marriage, and in that state they find their highest ideal of connubial happiness.
No far-seeing student of the sexual history of mankind can predict a total extirpation of the polygynic impulse, even though polygamous marriage may be doomed.[1] The Western marriage customs, like
- ↑ According to Starcke op. cit. polygamy will disappear.
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