Note 123 — Chapter IV

St. Augustine, Grotius, and other authorities, admit that polygamy is more natural than monogamy, yet they declare—and they are followed by Paley—that it would prevent increase of population. The contrary is the case. Hippocrates, Harvey, Willoughby, Forster, and the practice of the Mormons, show, that amongst all animals, mankind included, polygamy tends to population by increasing the births of female children. Dr. Johnson (‘Life,’ vol. iii., p. 71) says it is ‘not natural for a man and a woman to live together in the married state.’ Balzac explains this, by observing that, ‘physically and morally, man is man longer than woman is woman.’ Napoleon, the last of the three Avataras of intellect, declares, in the Code Civile, ‘Le mariage ne dérive pas de la nature.’

In the City of the Saints, I flattered myself it had been proved, that whereas monogamy equalizes the birth of the two sexes, polygamy produces more females, and polyandry more males. Hence came the deduction, that ‘Nature, our plastic mother, had prepared her children for all three systems.’ The ‘British Quarterly Review,’ of Jan. 1st, 1862, in an un-able article, thus reasons upon this adaptation principle:—‘If a man breaks a leg, nature instantly adopts extraordinary measures to insure its repair; but are we entitled to infer that she delights in fractured limbs?’ If this be argument, there can be no more said upon the subject. Polygamy and polyandry, amongst mankind, are the rule, not the exception. Broken legs are the exception, not the rule. The comparison of the ‘learned’ reviewer is, therefore, applicable to monogamy, not to polygamy and polyandry.