Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/415

Rh ; a father cannot love twenty children with the same tenderness as a mother can love two. It is much worse when a wife has many husbands; for then paternal love is only held by this opinion, that a father may believe, if he will, or that others may believe, that certain children belong to him.

May I not say that a plurality of wives leads to that passion which nature disallows? for one depravation always draws on another. I remember that in the revolution which happened at Constantinople, when sultan Achmet was deposed, history says, that the people having plundered the Kiaya's house they found not a single woman; they tell us that at Algiers, in the greatest part of their seraglios, they have none at all.

Besides, the possession of many wives does not always prevent their entertaining desires for those of others: it is with lust as with avarice, whose thirst increases by the acquisition of treasures.

In the reign of Justinian, many philosophers, displeased with the constraint of Christianity, retired into Persia. What struck them the most, says Agathias, was, that polygamy was permitted amonogst men who did not even abstain from adultery.

ROM the law which permitted a plurality of wives followed that of an equal behaviour Rh