Note 470 — Chapter III

It has been said, “the history of property is also that of theft.” In the same way we may say that the history of monogamy is also that of adultery, or in other words, that there is no monogamy without adultery. There must be, therefore, powerful and constant causes occasioning this offense. As we have seen above when we were setting forth briefly the history of marriage, adultery by the man was a permitted act at different stages of the social development.470 If we ask why men committed this permitted act, but one reason can be alleged; they are not monogamous by nature. On the part of the woman the same act constituted, on the other hand, most often a very serious offense, threatened with the most severe penalties, which did not, however, prevent adultery on her side also. The cause is not different for the two sexes; women, too, are not monogamous by nature, though perhaps more nearly so than men.