The social instinct, the desire for change,1 the different phases of female beauty, the love of children, the curiosity to compare the pleasures of the sexual act with different women, or men, all favor it; but as Bain well remarks, while "the maternal feeling admits a plurality of objects, while the love of domination needs many subjects,"3 and while many of the lighter elements of affection are best satisfied by diversity, the highest intensity of the love-passion is undoubtedly found in monogamy. True love disdains to measure its object by any other human standard. It sees in that object only an immeasurable superiority, an unapproachable excellence of mind, soul and body; which, having their origin in some special liking, turning on apparently insignificent differences, or similarities of temperament, become in the mind of the subject so exaggerated by constant favorable contemplation as to be, as has been very well remarked, "altogether transcendent.1"

Moden Growth Of The Polygynous Instinct

Although restrained by law, religion, and fixed observances, the natural tendency of our modem social differentiation is undoubtedly toward polygyny. The growth of neurodynamia among our great leisure class; the constant idleness, flattery, temptation and sexual stimulation to which they are continually subject, is always tending to greater sexual liberty. There is a gradual weakening of the domestic tie; that tacit restlessness under restraint,—a true democratic principle,— which comes with the sense of power due, say, to great wealth; and the subtle instinct of a class distinction in which women are graded and tagged for market, just as a farmer grades his fruit; which, in all ages, has taught that the many were created for the use of the few; have unquestionably a similar bearing. Polygyny has been shown to be rare among those savages who know nothing of the artificial disparities of rank and wealth; * but is well known to be common, in spirit if not in form, among the fashionable circles of society today.

' Franklin's asserted aphorism, that all women are alike from the waist down, and an old one better than a young one because she is more grateful for the favor, docs not seem to have attained the popularity among men its lovely unselfishness undoubtedly deserves.

The Rock Veddahs have no class distinction and no polygyny.' Of the Hottentots the same may be said.8 Among the Andamanese, monogamy is instinctive, as in Europe;1 the Mrus, nearly all monogamists, are despised as " wild men" by the polygynous Khyoungtha;* and the California Indians, who are not addicted to polygyny, are utterly ignorant of class distinctions.' Many peoples, known to have been monogamous, have adopted polygyny under the influence of a higher civilization. The Turco-Tartars are one;1 the Karens, who learned polygyny from the Burmese, another;' and the Hindus seem to have learned it subsequent to the Vedic age, since it is not mentioned in the earlier hymns.'

Polyandry also seems to presuppose a certain degree of civilization, as we can find no trace of it among the very rudest nations; but, concerning both these practices, the ground is too vast to cover in a single section of a single volume; those who desire to continue their examination being referred to the various works on anthropology, to Gay a's and Westermarck's valuable treatises on human marriage, and to Kccnigswarter's "History of the Development of Human Society."1