risy, and that to legally enforce it for life must
be considered as absolutely impossible.

In Catholic countries which prohibit divorce, the latter has been
replaced by separation, and this becomes the most constant source of
adultery. The more the laws of a country impede divorce, the more one
must close one's eyes to promiscuity or prostitution, which has even
been regulated by the State by the aid of proxenetism, all the while
preaching monogamy in a loud voice.

These bitter lessons which practice has given to the partisan, of
obligatory monogamy, prove the absurdity of attempting to restrain the
natural appetites of man by force and by artificial obstacles. That
which succeeds, not without difficulty, with some strong characters,
and more easily with naturally cold temperaments, is impossible to
realize in the masses.

Polyandry is usually the result of poverty, and the polyandrous races
are little fecund and tend to disappear. The normal man is
instinctively more polygynous than the normal woman is polyandrous.
There are, however, cases where polyandry is justifiable. There are
women whose sexual appetite, more or less pathological, is so
insatiable that a normal man is incapable of satisfying it.

If such women were served by several Don Juans by means of a free
contract, this would be better than giving themselves in despair to
prostitution (there are some prostitutes created by nymphomania). This
system would also be better than the seduction of normal young girls
by the Don Juans in question.

Polygyny is still more indicated when the sterility of the woman or
her repugnance to sexual intercourse cause family disturbances.

In speaking of polygamy in Chapter VI, we have shown that it exists in
several forms, and that these are not all so humiliating for the women
as people think, who only know of the shameful abuses of the
Mussulman's harem. What lowers the moral level of polygyny is
especially the barbarous system of marriage by purchase, by which the
women become slaves burdened with heavy labor, and are in a state of
legal dependence. We have seen that polygyny has a higher moral
character among certain Indian tribes where matriarchism rules, and
where the wife is mistress of the house and family. The danger of
degradation of the woman ceases when she is equal to the man as
regards rights and property. In fact, in such a social state, polygyny
can only constitute an exception. It is here entirely fr