One can hardly understand, without some personal observation, and thinking out what has been observed, how completely these oriental systems extinguish liberty in every matter. Not only do they deny to nations the right to frame their laws in conformity with the varying needs of times and circumstances, but they even abrogate the liberty of the individual to exercise his own judgment with respect to almost everything he has to do, and almost to say, throughout life. Law being a fixed immutable thing, it becomes unavoidable but that customs and manners should be equally fixed and immutable. The extent to which this is carried is, till one has witnessed it oneself, something difficult to believe, indeed to comprehend. Every thought and emotion must be swathed up in a certain prescribed form of words. The mummy of an Egyptian of the old times tightly bandaged, stiff and lifeless, is the image of the modern Egyptian’s mind. He has no kind of freedom. He is but a walking and breathing mummy. Everything in the political, social, moral, and intellectual order has been arranged and settled for everybody; and everybody thoroughly and completely accepts the whole settlement, because it comes to him from God, because it is the same to all classes and individuals as to himself, and because the reasons, and, as far as they go, the advantages, of the settlement are obvious, and commend themselves to his understanding. In no mind, therefore, is there anything to give rise to the germ of a desire to disturb the settlement. Here, then, there is nothing which can cause the idea of political liberty to germinate. Let the seed be sown again and again, it will fall always upon the rock. CHAPTER XLII. POLYGAMY.—ITS CAUSE. Presto maturo, presto marcio.—_Italian Proverb._