cies of ducks when males are in
excess polyandric families are constituted, the two males attending their
female partner without jealousy, but when the sexes again become equal in
number the monogamic order is restored. The natural human deviations from
the monogamic order seem to be generally of this character, and largely
conditioned by the social and economic environment. The most common
variation, and that which most clearly possesses a biological foundation,
is the tendency to polygyny, which is found at all stages of culture,
even, in an unrecognized and more or less promiscuous shape, in the
highest civilization.[371] It must be remembered, however, that recognized
polygyny is not the rule even where it prevails; it is merely permissive;
there is never a sufficient excess of women to allow more than a few of
the richer and more influential persons to have more than one wife.[372]

It has further to be borne in mind that a certain elasticity of the formal
side of marriage while, on the one side, it permits variations from the
general monogamic order, where such are healthful or needed to restore a
balance in natural conditions, on the other hand restrains such variations
in so far as they are due to the disturbing influence of artificial
constraint. Much of the polygyny, and polyandry also, which prevails among
us to-day is an altogether artificial and unnatural form of polygamy.
Marriages which on a more natural basis would be dissolved cannot legally
be dissolved, and consequently the parties to them, instead of changing
their partners and so preserving the natural monogamic order, take on
other additional partners and so introduce an unnatural polygamy. There
will always be variations from the monogamic order and civilization is
certainly not hostile to sexual variation. Whether we reckon these
variations as legitimate or illegitimate, they will still take place; of
that we may be certain. The path of social wisdom seems to lie on the one
hand in making the marriage relationship flexible enough to reduce to a
minimum these deviations--not because such deviations are intrinsically
bad but because they ought not to be forced into existence--and on the
other hand in according to these deviations when they occur such a measure
of recognition as will deprive them of injurious influence and enable
justice to be done to all the parties concerned. We too often forget that
our failure to recognize such variations merely m