eans that we accord in
such cases an illegitimate permission to perpetrate injustice. In those
parts of the world in which polygyny is recognized as a permissible
variation a man is legally held to his natural obligations towards all his
sexual mates and towards the children he has by those mates. In no part of
the world is polygyny so prevalent as in Christendom; in no part of the
world is it so easy for a man to escape the obligations incurred by
polygyny. We imagine that if we refuse to recognize the fact of polygyny,
we may refuse to recognize any obligations incurred by polygyny. By
enabling a man to escape so easily from the obligations of his polygamous
relationships we encourage him, if he is unscrupulous, to enter into them;
we place a premium on the immorality we loftily condemn.[373] Our polygyny
has no legal existence, and therefore its obligations can have no legal
existence. The ostrich, it was once imagined, hides its head in the sand
and attempts to annihilate facts by refusing to look at them; but there is
only one known animal which adopts this course of action, and it is called
Man.

Monogamy, in the fundamental biological sense, represents the natural
order into which the majority of sexual facts will always naturally fall
because it is the relationship which most adequately corresponds to all
the physical and spiritual facts involved. But if we realize that sexual
relationships primarily concern only the persons who enter into those
relationships, and if we further realize that the interest of society in
such relationships is confined to the children which they produce, we
shall also realize that to fix by law the number of women with whom a man
shall have sexual relationships, and the number of men with whom a woman
shall unite herself, is more unreasonable than it would be to fix by law
the number of children they shall produce. The State has a right to
declare whether it needs few citizens or many; but in attempting to
regulate the sexual relationships of its members the State attempts an
impossible task and is at the same time guilty of an impertinence.

There is always a tendency, at certain stages of civilization, to
insist on a merely formal and external uniformity, and a
corresponding failure to see not only that such uniformity is
unreal, but also that it has an injurious effect, in so far as it
checks beneficial variations. The tendency is by no means
confined to t