The History and Philosophy of Marriage : or, Polygamy and Monogamy Compared (1885)

Philosophy takes nothing for granted. It doubts all things that it may prove all things. The marriage question is a proper subject of philosophical inquiry, involving an examination and analysis of both polygamy and monogamy. Of the latter form of marriage the Christian world has known too much, and of the former too little, to have felt, hitherto, the need of any analysis of either. We have inherited our monogamy, or the marriage system which restricts each man to one wife only, and have practised it as a matter of course, without any special examination or inquiry : so that we really know but little concerning its origin or its early history; while we know still less of the system of polygamy. We read something of it in the Bible and in the history of Eastern nations, and we learn something more from the reports of modern travellers ; and it cannot be denied that what we know of it has come to us in such a form as to prejudice our minds against it. This prejudice is unfavorable to a just and candid philosophical inquiry ; and while pursuing this inquiry, let us hold this prejudice in abeyance. Let us not forget that what we have seen of this system is in its most unfavorable aspects. Most travellers carry their native prejudices abroad, and look upon the customs of distant countries with less astonishment than contempt. And they remember, when writing up their accounts of those countries, that their books are made to be sold at hom.e; and they must not institute comparisons unfavorable to their own land, but must flatter the conceit of their fellow-countrymen by assuring them that their own social and political institutions are vastly better than those of other lands.

So, also, with history: it presents human affairs in a perspective view, painting its roughest mountains with distinct exactness, but casting its peaceful plains quite into the shade. It devotes a hundred pages to the details of wars and intrigues, illustrating the crimes of men, in proportion to a single page of descriptions of common life and domestic tranquillity, illustrating their virtues.

If the writer, on the contrary, shall seem prejudiced in favor of polygamy, let it be attributed to his love of fair play, and his desire to let both sides be heard, rather than to any undue bias of mind preventing him from doing equal justice to the arguments in favor of either system.