To contend as all the Mu’tazilite doctors do that Islam is not a polygamous system because it only tolerates a limited polygamy under stringent conditions which tends to monogamy is but a metaphysical quibble. It is but an attempt to split a hair. It does not alter the fact that when a system permits more than one wife, and its founder sanctioned four, it is certainly not monogamous. Such an argument will not hold water for even a moment. It is but a mere contention--“a bone,” as the Persian proverb says, “thrown to two dogs,” a palpable piece of sophistry. It is but the begging of an obvious fact, a reality that can neither be avoided nor eluded. As Burns so very happily puts it: “But facts are cheels that winna ding An downa be disputed.” From theories such as this, Islam can derive no benefit. Just as in a broad sense she can suffer no disparagement from the fact that she countenances polygamy, she can afford to dispense with any such apologies. It is always a sounder principle to look truth in the face, even if that truth is unpalatable. However much civilization or the march and progress of events may ultimately modify polygamy, the actual custom itself was but an outcome of circumstances and conditions that at the time were inevitable and did not (as they do not now) imply a crime against or subversion of natural laws. To stigmatize a system that time and usage have sanctified for thousands of years, merely because it offends _the easily outraged feelings of a super-sensitive Christendom_, or even on other grounds, is, to say the least of it, undignified. To impute a crime to the thing itself is almost, but not quite, on a par with the theology that pronounces a child to be the product of a sinful act. If the cause is sinful, the effect must also be sinful? Such a theory is certainly unnatural, if not monstrous! It is a perversion of that Nature from which we ourselves have evolved, and of that God or First Cause from which all causes and effects have proceeded.