Page:Walter Matthew Gallichan - Women under Polygamy (1914).djvu/19

 very aggressive towards other males, and sometimes their battles end fatally. A young stag will fight for as many hinds as he can obtain; and the group of females remains his exclusive possession until wrested from him by a more powerful antagonist.

In the marriage customs of mankind we trace, as Goethe said, "the beginning and the end of all culture." The history of civilisation is chiefly the history of the loves of men and women. We must inquire, therefore, into the origin of the widespread polygamy and concubinage, practised from the earliest period of civilisation, as dispassionately as we examine the source of monogamy.

Plurality of wives has been denounced by Schlegel and numerous Western historians and moralists as abominable and unnatural. Are we justified in accepting such condemnation without careful examination of the system? There is not a stable form of sexual morality for all times and all peoples. Sheer biological necessity, quite apart from ethical ideas, has chiefly determined human sexual relationships throughout all the stages of man's development.

Polygamous marriage in ancient communities grew in some instances through a preponderance in the number of women, just as polyandry arose through a preponderance of men in the tribe. This is not the sole and the invariable cause of either kind of marriage,