The sexual question : $b A scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological studyForel, Auguste
Science
The sexual question : $b A scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study
Forel, Auguste
Sex
The Mormons have introduced it into their religion. The negro king of
Loango shows us what degree polygamy may reach among princes and
chiefs, for he possesses seven thousand wives, while the chiefs of the
Fiji Islands are content with twenty to one hundred.
Among savage races we find monogamy in the natives of the Andaman
islands, among the Touaregs, the Weddas, the Iroquois, the Wyandottes,
and even in some Australian tribes. With others, polygamy is only
permitted to the chiefs. But most of the population are monogamous
even among polygamous races, and there are very few peoples in which
all the men possess several wives. In India, 95 per cent. of the
Islamites are monogamous, and in Persia even 98 per cent. Polygamy is
nearly everywhere a privilege of princes, chiefs, and rich men.
The two following facts also show a tendency to monogamy among
polygamous races:
(1). One of the wives, generally the first, has prerogatives over the
others.
(2). In reality, the polygamous man nearly always gives sexual
preference to one only, or to a few of his wives. There are, however,
some polygamous races in which the husband has sexual intercourse with
each of his wives according to a regular programme, taking each of
them in turn for several days, weeks or months. With others, on the
contrary, a number of married women remain in reality virgins, because
the husband does not desire them, and they are nothing more than
domestics. Among these people the husband as a rule only takes a
second wife when the first has grown old, so that bigamy becomes the
ordinary form of marriage.
The Cingalese were polyandrous before the English conquest, and so
many as seven men had one wife in common. Polyandry is especially the
custom in Thibet. Among polyandrous peoples the husbands are not all
on the same footing of equality, some hold an inferior position,
corresponding nearly to that of concubines, another sign of the
tendency to monogamy.
Among the Togas marriage in groups is constituted as follows: All the
brothers are husbands of the wife of the elder brother, and all the
sisters of this wife are at the same time wives of their
brothers-in-law. If we except prostitution, this is the only case in
man which approaches promiscuity. Marriage in groups, however, is
extremely restricted promiscuity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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