Page:Walter Matthew Gallichan - Women under Polygamy (1914).djvu/28

 economic. Moral reprobation of the practice has often been based on the assumption that polygamous marriage grew solely from the "vices" or the sexual acquisitiveness of men. This is not proved in the case of primitive polygamy. And though there is ample testimony showing that savage races are far less incontinent than highly civilised people, it is rarely that celibacy exists among them. Polygamy provides mates for the superfluous women of the group. Polyandry supplies partners for the redundant men. Celibacy is a state regarded by primitive people as unnatural, or as contrary to moral law, and according to such a conception, avoidance of celibacy must be provided for by an adjustment of the marriage customs.

C. N. Starcke finds in the desire of primitive fathers to own many children one of the chief incentives to polygamous marriage. Naturally, the man with the largest number of wives will possess the most numerous progeny. The savage with a goodly number of children owns a retinue of companions for the chase and of workers in the fields and the home.

The craving for dignity, power and riches is clearly one of the main sources of polygamy and concubinage. It has been reiterated again and again by ill-informed writers that "men's lust" alone is the cause of plural