There is nothing in the objection that all do not practise polygamy. All may practise it, and that is the condition to which the general manners and customs must adjust themselves. What all recognize as right and proper, and what all may act upon, is what has to be provided for. But we have not yet got to the bottom of the matter. Certain manners and customs may be seen clearly to be the consequences of a certain practice: the subject, however, is not fully understood till we have gone one step further, and discovered what gave rise to the practice. The attempt is often made to dispose of this question offhand, by an assumption that passion burns with a fiercer flame in the East than in the West. This is what a man means when you hear him talking of the cold European, and of the fiery Arab; the supposed excessive warmth of the constitution of the latter being credited to the fervour of the Eastern sun. There is, however, no evidence of this in the facts of the case, nor does it account for them. If this is the true explanation, we ought to find polyandry practised as well as polygamy. But there is no evidence that this flame burns with a fiercer heat in Asia than in Europe. The probability is that it is what may be called a constant quantity. In investigating this, just as any other matter, what we have to do is to ascertain the facts of the case, and then to see what can be fairly inferred from them. Now, undoubtedly, the main fact here is that there is a certain polygamic area. It is sufficiently well defined. It embraces North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Persia. I do not mean that polygamy has never been practised elsewhere. Like all other customs it may have been carried beyond its proper boundaries: we know that it has been. What I mean is that the area indicated is, and ever has been, its true and natural home. The monogamic area of Europe is equally distinct. Asia Minor is an intermediate, indeterminate region, which, though it is an outlying peninsula of Asia by situation, approximates more closely to Europe in its general features.