the difference is not sufficiently great to require the introduction
of polygamy as a remedy for enforced celibacy. At any rate this would
be unnecessary until all bachelors had been provided with wives, when
there would be found no necessity for further provision, since there
are large numbers of women who are utterly unfit to marry, who would
be injured by so doing, and would only serve to degenerate the race,
besides making themselves more wretched than they already are.
Again, it is a well-known fact that more males than females are born,
the preponderance of adult females being caused by a greater mortality
among male children, together with the losses from accidents and war.
By a correct observance of the laws of health, together with the
abolition of wars, the disparity in relative numbers of the sexes would
disappear. Indeed, it might happen that men would be in the
preponderance.
Still again, it is only in a few very populous and long-settled
communities that there are more women than men, as in the States of
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a few others of the Eastern States,
and a few countries of Europe. In all newly settled countries the
reverse is true. The inquiry naturally arises, What shall be done under
these circumstances? Shall a woman be allowed more than one husband,
as is actually the case in some countries? "Oh! no;" our polygamist
replies, "A woman is not capable of loving more than one man, and is
not even able to satisfy the sexual demands of a single husband; so,
of course, a plurality of husbands is out of the question. A man is
capable of loving any number of women, being differently constituted
from a woman; and so the same rule does not apply."
The writer evidently confounds love with lust. He will grant unstinted
reign to the lusts of man, but requires woman to be restrained, offering
as an apology for such a manifest unfair and unphilosophical
discrimination that "man is differently constituted from a woman,
sexually, requiring more active exercise of the sexual functions," a
conclusion which could be warranted only by the selection, as a typical
specimen of the male part of humanity, of a man with an abnormal
development of the animal propensities.
A correct understanding and application of the laws of sexual hygiene
would effectually sweep away every vestige of argument based on this
foundation.