The writer evidently confounds love with lust. He will grant unstinted
reign to the lusts of man, but requires woman to be restrained, offering
as an apology for such a manifest unfair and unphilosophical
discrimination that "man is differently constituted from a woman,
sexually, requiring more active exercise of the sexual functions," a
conclusion which could be warranted only by the selection, as a typical
specimen of the male part of humanity, of a man with an abnormal
development of the animal propensities.
A correct understanding and application of the laws of sexual hygiene
would effectually sweep away every vestige of argument based on this
foundation.
4. In proof of the propriety of polygamy, as well as of its necessity,
the author referred to cites the well-known fact that Plato, Aristotle,
Bacon, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Burns, Byron, Augustus, Webster,
and numerous others of the noted men of all ages have been incontinent
men. The fact that these men were guilty of crime does not in the least
degree detract from the enormity of the sin. It is equally true that
many great men have been addicted to intemperance and other crimes.
Alexander was a Sodomite as well as a lecherous rake. Does this fact
afford any proof that those crimes are virtues instead of vices? Such
argument is hardly worthy of serious refutal, since it stultifies
itself.
5. The fact that monogamy was practiced among the ancient Greeks and
Romans is in no way derogatory of it as an institution. Even if it could
be shown that it originated with those nations, still this would in
no way detract from its value or respectability. Do not we owe much
to those grand old pagans who laid the foundation for nearly all the
modern sciences, and established better systems of political economy,
and better schools for uniform culture of the whole individual, than
any the world has seen since? But monogamy did not originate with the
Greeks, neither was it invented by the Romans, nor by any other nation.
It originated with the great Originator of the human race. It is an
institution which has come down to us, not from Greece or Rome, but
from Paradise.
If it was so important that man should have more than one woman to supply
his sexual demands, why was the Creator so short-sighted as to make
but one Eve? It would have been as easy to remove two or three or half
a dozen ribs from Adam's side as one; and as the whole world had yet
to be populated, a plurality of wives would certainly have accelerated
the process. Surely, if polygamy was ever required or excusable, it
ought to have been allowed at the start.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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