"Polygamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while to say that such practices lead to physical degradation. The woman who acknowledges more than one husband is generally sterile; the man who has several wives has usually a weakly offspring, principally males. Nature attempts to check polygamy by reducing the number of females, and failing in this, by enervating the whole stock. The Mormons of Utah would soon sink into a state of Asiatic effeminacy were ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... POLYGAMY, n. A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where, however, they were not fully settled ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Crimes might be falsely imputed. This he admitted; but only partially. Witchcraft, he believed, was the secret of poisoning, and therefore deserved the severest punishment. That there should be a number of convictions for adultery, where polygamy was a custom, was not to be wondered at; but he feared, if a sale of these criminals were to be done away, massacre would be ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... that this sense of filial duty and affection among the Negroes should be less ardent towards the father than the mother. The system of polygamy, while it weakens the father's attachment, by dividing it among the children of different wives, concentrates all the mother's jealous tenderness to one point, the protection of her own offspring. I ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... had not forfeited their right to a residence in Freeland—a circumstance that led to not a few embarrassments. The ultimate result was that in a very short time the once so licentious Masailand was changed into a model country of good morals. The hitherto prevalent polygamy died out, and several hundred good schools arose in different parts of the country, which in that way made gigantic ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... customs of that country. And the tale tells that a week or it might be ten days after his meeting with Florimel, Jurgen married her, without being at all hindered by his having three other wives. For the devils, he found, esteemed polygamy, and ranked it above mere skill at torturing the damned, through a literal interpretation of the saying that it is better ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... concluding with a treatment of the same in the West Indies and America. Considering the mulatto the key to the race problem in America, Mr. Reuter undertakes to show the extent of race mixture, its nature and growth. He discusses the intermarriage of the races, unlawful polygamy, intermarriage with Indians, intermixture during slavery and concubinage of black women with white men. He seems to know nothing of the numerous facts easily accessible in various works, which show that during slavery there ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... wives, in the hills just above and south of the town itself. The Englishmen who worked in the bank, and the three Boer foremen also, had houses up there where it was cooler, but Von Blitz was the only one who practised polygamy. His wives were Persian women and handsome ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... takes his seat in the upper house of Congress with a first purpose of carrying forth, so far as lies within his hands, the plans of the conspirators. What is the purpose of the conspirators? To protect themselves and their fellow Mormons in the criminal practice of polygamy, and prevent their prosecution as ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... enshrines the best theological and ethical ideas of Arabia at the time when it was written: God was an oriental monarch, ruling in heaven; utter submission to the fate which he decreed was the one law of human relationship with him; and on earth slavery and polygamy and conversion of unbelievers by force were recognized as right. The Koran was ahead of its day, but having been by a theory of inspiration petrified into artificial finality it became the enemy of all opinions which would pass beyond ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... to the honor of the Borneons, that they neither cock-fight nor smoke opium; and in the military train of their rajah they find at Kuching few conveniences and fewer luxuries. Like all the followers of Islam, they sanction polygamy; and the number of their women, and, probably, the ease and cheerfulness of the seraglio, contrasted with the ceremonial of the exterior, induce them to pass a number of their hours amid their women, and excite habits of effeminacy and indolence. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... idea of home become fully developed. Home with the savage is but a herding, a servitude. Even among many of the Jews it was little better than a Mahommedan seraglio. The most eminent of the heathen world degrade the family by making it the scene of lust, and introducing concubinage and polygamy. Plato, one of the most enlightened of the heathen, had base conceptions of home, and abused its highest and holiest prerogatives by his ideas of polygamy. We find too that in the ethics of Aristotle, the most lovely and sacred attributes of the family ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... himself by means of social institutions, all of which originate as private property. The primitive social family was not a state of promiscuity nor even the voluntary pairing of animals and birds, but it was private property in women, beginning as wife-capture and becoming wife-purchase and polygamy. Natural selection, too, is transcended when cannibalism ceases. The self-conscious victor enslaves his enemy and reduces him to property. Next, government arises as private despotism, and with it the land becomes the property of the chief. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... or to do things which he did not do. He sinned in one instance: but, as far as I can see, only in that one—I mean against what he must have known to be right. I allude to his relaxing in his own case those wise restrictions on polygamy which he had proclaimed. And yet, even in this case, the desire for a child may have been the true cause of his weakness. He did not see the whole truth, of course: but he was an infinitely better ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... hand, a reconciliation cannot be effected, the law insists on a separation of the parties, who, however, may be reconciled at any time. As neither is allowed to marry again, polygamy is forbidden, and as irregularities are out of the question, a reconciliation can almost always be effected, unless, indeed, there is some cause sufficiently grave to render a separation necessarily final. Such causes are exceptional in ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... plantation organization replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief with far greater and more despotic powers. Forced and long-continued toil became the rule of life, the old ties of blood relationship and kinship disappeared, and instead of the family appeared a new polygamy and polyandry, which, in some cases, almost reached promiscuity. It was a terrific social revolution, and yet some traces were retained of the former group life, and the chief remaining institution was the Priest or Medicine-man. He early appeared on the plantation and found his ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... before long I will get busy and write you of a visit I shall make to a Mormon bishop's household. Polygamy is still practiced. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... vision truly surprising, considering his own youth and what we may venture to call the youth of his subject. The reader will be able to appreciate this, and to discern at the same time the arbitrary nature of Montesquieu's method, if he will contrast, for example, the remarks of this writer upon polygamy with the far wider and more sagacious explanation of the circumstances of such an institution given by Turgot.[54] Unfortunately, he has left us only short and fragmentary pieces, but they suggest more than many large and complete works. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... earth. They are eagerly obtaining from the Government such comforts of civilization as they can—reapers, cooking-stoves, baking-powder, and the like. And yet this people display some of the grossest elements of savagery. Polygamy is common. The disgusting scaffold burials still go on, and the air in the neighborhood of the village is sometimes foul from the adjacent cemetery. Buffalo heads and poles with red streamers, as offerings or invocations to spirits, surmount many of the lodges and bear witness ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... got to trust you. Over here in the wild canyon country there's a village of Mormons' sealed wives. It's in Arizona, perhaps twenty miles from here, and near the Utah line. When the United States government began to persecute, or prosecute, the Mormons for polygamy, the Mormons over here in Stonebridge took their sealed wives and moved them out of Utah, just across the line. They built houses, established a village there. I'm the only Gentile who knows about it. And I pack supplies every few weeks in to these women. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... generations to prefer pairing with certain individuals of the other sex, characterized in some peculiar manner, the offspring would slowly but surely become modified in this same manner. I have not attempted to conceal that, excepting when the males are more numerous than the females, or when polygamy prevails, it is doubtful how the more attractive males succeed in leaving a larger number of offspring to inherit their superiority in ornaments or other charms than the less attractive males; but I ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... satisfactory features of Islam is its attitude toward women. The ancient Arabs, like many other peoples, seem to have set no limit to the number of wives a man might possess. Women were regarded by them as mere chattels, and female infants were frequently put to death. Mohammed recognized polygamy, but limited the number of legitimate wives to four. At the same time Mohammed sought to improve the condition of women by forbidding female infanticide, by restricting the facilities for divorce, and by insisting ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, "Thus saith the Lord," of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... religion ne pouvait pas admettre la polygamie." As relating to the highly developed domestic cult of those communities considered by the author of La Cite Antique, his statement will scarcely be called in question. But as regards ancestor-worship in general, it would be incorrect; since polygamy or polygyny, and polyandry may coexist with ruder forms of ancestor-worship. The Western-Aryan societies, in the epoch studied by M. de Coulanges, were practically [68] monogamic. The ancient Japanese society was polygynous; and polygyny ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... little amusement over polygamy in Utah. That institution shocks Mr. WARD, of New-York, and naturally also Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. Mr. WARD was astonished to see any member standing up in defence of polygamy in the nineteenth century. If ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... demands of the trade exacted that the slaves should be sent in different directions, according to their sex. The traders who buy the men do not buy women. The latter, in virtue of polygamy, which is legal among the Mussulmans, are sent to the Arabic countries, where they are exchanged for ivory. The men, being destined to the hardest labor, go to the factories of the two coasts, and are exported either to the Spanish colonies or to the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... that still lingers among the descendants of the most ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant demons and malicious sprites. They marry exclusively among themselves, and polygamy is common. In appearance, both men and women are repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular being very ugly, and of a strong aboriginal type. The Changars are one of the most miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper provinces. They feed, as it were, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... to despicable objects. Free of this inconvenience, when the majesty and grandeur of our God was manifest to them, they revered His adorable perfections. Even though there were perverse inclinations in the hearts of those natives, they were not given to polygamy; and when the holy law of God was explained to them, and the respect that the sanctity of marriage (which was elevated by Jesus Christ to the dignity of a sacrament) merits among Christians, they received ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... difficulty about the matter. Men of the Far East will submit to very low wages for the same reason that they will submit to "the punishment known as Li, or Slicing"; for the same reason that they will praise polygamy and suicide; for the same reason that they subject the wife utterly to the husband or his parents; for the same reason that they serve their temples with prostitutes for priests; for the same reason that they sometimes ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... and not the rule. These limitations to the roving impulses of love, while very real, to some extent vary at different periods in accordance with the ideals which happen to be fashionable. In more remote ages they have been still more profoundly modified by religious and social ideas; polygamy and polyandry, the custom of marrying only inside one's own caste, or only outside it, all these various and contradictory plans have been easily accepted at some place and some time, and have offered no more conscious obstacle to the free play ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... with the Indian's practice, in times now happily passed away, of polygamy, may be construed into an advocacy of the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill, which engaged the attention of Parliament last session, and bids fair to take up the time and thought of our legislators, in sessions yet to ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... license. Nor is it an expression of that lower love which may prevail in a polygamous state of society, when love is dissipated among many. We have here the love of one for one, an exclusive and absorbing devotion. For though the Bible never prohibited polygamy, the Jews had become monogamous from the Babylonian Exile at latest. The splendid praise of the virtuous woman at the end of the Book of Proverbs gives a picture, not only of monogamous home-life, but of woman's influence at its highest. The ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... educated homosexual prostitutes, resembling those found in China and many regions of northern Asia, bearing also the same name of batsha, are said to be especially common because fostered by the scarcity of women through polygamy and by the women's ignorance and coarseness. The institution of the batsha is supposed to have come to Turkestan from Persia. (Herman, "Die Paederastie bei den Sarten," Sexual-Probleme, June, 1911.) This would ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... existence ever since the origin of the human race." Yes, and so has slavery, and despotism also; and likewise polygamy and idolatry. But what does ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... moment regret our philanthropical move, despite its awful waste of life and gold. England, however can do her duty to Africa without cant, and humbug, and nonsense about the 'sin and crime of slavery.' Serfdom, like cannibalism and polygamy, are the steps by which human society rose to its present status: to abuse them is ignorantly to kick down the ladder. The spirit of Christianity may tend to abolish servitude; but the letter distinctly admits it, and the translators have unfairly rendered 'slave' and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... customs which we think were antagonistic to the spirit of his general doctrines. He was a great temperance man, but recommended a little wine to Timothy for the stomach's sake. And Moses, too, the great founder of the Jewish polity, permitted polygamy because of the hardness of men's hearts. So the fathers of the Constitution preferred a constitution with slavery to no constitution at all. Had each of those illustrious men persisted in his own views, we should have had only an autonomy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... dissertation on cookery if something should not be done to improve the degraded condition of the Bantu cooking culture? Not for his physical delectation only, but because his present methods are bad for his morals, and drive the man to drink, let alone assisting in riveting him in the practice of polygamy, which the missionary party say is an exceedingly bad practice for him to follow. The inter- relationship of these two subjects may not seem on the face of it very clear, but inter-relationships of customs very rarely ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... marriage to her father, during marriage to her husband, in widowhood to her son; these states being known as "the three obediences." Sons who do not, however, honour their mothers outrage public opinion. Polygamy is tolerated, secondary wives being sometimes provided by the first wife when she is growing old. Secondary wives are subordinate to first wives. A wife may be divorced for any one of seven reasons. The sale ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... he demanded that Sunday should be observed with rest in all the Mosaic rigour of the term; this rest he identified with that 'inaction,' which formed his idea of true union with God. He proceeded then to advocate polygamy, as permitted to the Jews in the Old Testament: he actually advised an inhabitant of Orlamunde to take a second wife, in addition to the one then living. He began, at the same time, to dispute the real presence ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... any reform beyond teaching monogamy in the future. Nothing will assure the enmity of a savage more than to ask him to discard any of his wives, and especially the mother of his children. While I would be the last man on earth to advocate polygamy, I can truthfully say that one of the happiest and most harmonious families I ever knew was that of the celebrated Little Crow (who, during all my official residence among the Dakotas, was my principal ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... pain, was fired by the same kind of anger, stung by the same kind of lust as our own? Can you say the person who fought many a sanguinary battle, who got through many cunning negotiations with enemies and friends, who personally experienced the troubles of polygamy, was a person sinless and divine? We might allow that these ancient sages are superhuman and divine, then our classification has no business with them, because they do not properly belong to mankind. Now, then, who can point out any sinless ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... religion and morality? How account for the fact that what Yesterday regarded as righteous, To-day condemns as wrong; that what at one period of the world's history is regarded as perfectly natural and right—the practice of polygamy, for example—becomes abhorrent at another period; or that what is regarded with horror and disgust in one part of the world is sanctioned by the ethical codes, and freely practiced elsewhere? Ferri gives two examples of this kind: the cannibalism of Central African tribes, and the killing of parents, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... remarks in reference to polygamy as a mark of the inferiority of women, but they need not be given here, since this evil is not legally recognized by civilized people, with the exception of the Mormons. But there is a polygamy, not sanctioned by law, which ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... scheme. Socialism is against Human Nature. That is true, and it is equally true of everything else; capitalism is against human nature, competition is against human nature, cruelty, kindness, religion and doubt, monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, decency, indecency, piety and sin are all against human nature. The present system in particular is against human nature, or what is the policeman for, the soldier, the debt-collector, the judge, the hangman? What means the glass along my neighbour's wall? Human nature is against human ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... California over two months, Carleton started eastward in the late autumn over the Central Pacific railway, writing from Salt Lake City what he saw and knew about Mormonism and the polygamy and concubinage there shamefully prevalent. From the town of Argenti, leaving the iron rails, they enjoyed and suffered seven days and nights of staging until smooth iron was entered upon once more. They passed several specimens of what Carleton called "pandemonium on wheels,"—those ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... Lake City supposed themselves to be settling on Mexican territory, outside the jurisdiction of American law. Woman suffrage was almost coincident with its beginnings, and it came as a legitimate part of the union of state and church, of communism, of polygamy. The dangers that especially threaten a republican form of government are anarchy, communism, and religious bigotry; and two of these found their fullest expression, in this country, in the Mormon creed and practice. Fealty to Mormonism was disloyalty to the United States Government. Thus, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about—rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders—women ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hoping for a personal word or a hand-shake or an autograph; but there were other hundreds who came with this thing and that thing—axes to grind—and there were newspaper reporters to ask his opinion on politics, or polygamy, or woman's suffrage; on heaven and hell and happiness; on the latest novel; on the war in Africa, the troubles in China; on anything under the sun, important or unimportant, interesting or inane, concerning which one might possibly hold an opinion. He was unfailing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... shot to pieces by the Spaniards; Cretes exiled by the Turks; great personages from Constantinople, escaped from the Sultan's silken bowstring, and displaying proudly their red fez in Paris, where the opera permitted them to continue their habits of polygamy; Americans, whose gold-mines or petroleum-wells made them billionaires for a winter, only to go to pieces and make them paupers the following summer; politicians out of a place; unknown authors; misunderstood poets; painters of the future-in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... But I think she has put herself altogether beyond our sympathy. She was twenty-two years old—no child—and she acted with her eyes open. No deceit was practised with her. She knew the man had a wife, and she was base enough to accept a share of his attentions. Do you advocate polygamy? That is an intelligible position, I admit. It is one way of meeting the ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... another great fact, which is important from its influence both on the political and the social life of Asiatics. "Among all the considerable nations of Inner Asia, the paternal government of every household was corrupted by polygamy; where that custom exists, a good political constitution is impossible. Fathers being converted into domestic despots, are ready to pay the same abject obedience to their sovereign which they exact from their family and dependants in their domestic economy." We should ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... at night, enter with friends and kinsfolk. A medicine-man prays to Naye{COMBINING BREVE}nayezgani, asking his beneficence toward the new home. This ceremony lasts until midnight, when the visitors depart and the marriage is consummated. Polygamy was common. Divorce is effected without ceremony, the discontented one deserting the other and leaving him or her ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Polygamy is permitted, but the wives must belong to different gentes. The first wife remains the head of the household. Polyandry ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... and infanticide, polygamy, judicial torture, religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these "inevitable" things, were defended in the same way, and those who resented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast, the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... conscience against political corruption, party corruption, and interparty as well as intraparty bribery and tyranny. There is accord between all the forces for betterment. Barbarism and cruelty toward the brute creation are as certainly doomed as polygamy and human slavery were. The needs of surgery will be preserved from wanton slaughter in the name of surgery, in times past, and now wrought by men called doctors and by cub-boys called students. The statesmen in politics are realizing this. The demagogues ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... is not strange that Solomon, with his thousand wives, exclaimed: "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." Polygamy is not the natural state ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... artisans belonging to other religious sects came to settle among them. In 1850 the colony was so populous and prosperous that it was organized into a territory of the United States and brought under the supervision of the federal government. Protests against polygamy were raised in the colony and at the seat of authority three thousand miles away at Washington. The new Republican party in 1856 proclaimed it "the right and duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Lord ROBERT CECIL referred to a rumour that the German Government intended to encourage polygamy. Mr. KING, shocked to discover that this charge rested upon a statement in a neutral newspaper, protested against the practice of making speeches "on such miserable foundations." As the bulk of the hon. Member's own utterances have a similar basis the retort ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... he would not excuse me one of the wisest books in it: to which, however, I had no other objection, than that it was called The Proverbs. And as for Solomon, he was then a hated character with me, not because of his polygamy, but because I had conceived him to be such another musty old fellow ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... deliberate violation by a large number of the prominent and influential citizens of the Territory of Utah of the laws of the United States for the prosecution and punishment of polygamy demands the attention of every department of the Government. This Territory has a population sufficient to entitle it to admission as a State, and the general interests of the nation, as well as the welfare of ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... Storm was not so far wrong, after all, and for this polygamy of our 'lavender-glove tribe' the nation itself will be overtaken by the judgment of God ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... immemorial custom among the Jews, and their forefathers, the patriarchs, to have sometimes more wives or wives and concubines, than one at the same the and that this polygamy was not directly forbidden in the law of Moses is evident; but that polygamy was ever properly and distinctly permitted in that law of Moses, in the places here cited by Dean Aldrich, Deuteronomy 17:16, 17, or 21:15, or indeed any where else, does not appear to me. And what our Savior ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... HISTORY.—Egyptian history, in the first ostensible form we have, shows that concubinage and polygamy were in ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... escaped with a burning in effigy when his L'Ecole des Filles was burnt at the foot of the gallows (1672). Lyser, who spent his life and his property in the advocacy of polygamy, was threatened by Christian V. with capital punishment if he appeared in Denmark, and his Discursus Politicus de Polygamia was sentenced to ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... goes out to get what they call converts, preaches a lot about the prophet, and a good deal about the comforts they would have in Utah. So much land for nothing, and so much help to set them up, and all that kind of thing, but mighty little about polygamy and the chance of their being handed over to some man old enough to be their father, and without their having any say in the matter. Howsoever, I did not see as I could interfere, and if I wanted to interfere I could not have done it; because all those ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Austria, by his recent indiscretions, is winning for himself the new title of "His Epistolic Majesty." His suggestion that France ought to have Alsace-Lorraine has grated on the susceptibilities of his brother Wilhelm. But a new fastidiousness is to be noted in the Teuton character. "Polygamy," says an article in a German review, "is essential to the future of the German race, but a decent form must ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... in favour of my old friends the Mormons is an unpardonable offence: the dwarfish and dwarfing demon "Respectability" has made their barbarous treatment a burning shame to a so-called "free" country: they are subjected to slights and wrongs only for practicing polygamy, an institution never condemned by Christ or the early Christians. The calm and dispassionate judgments of Sir Lepel Griffith and the late Matthew Arnold, who ventured to state, in guarded language, that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Instances of polygamy are not so common among the Netchillik nation, for the reason, it is said by the tribes in their vicinity, that they have a custom that prevents the accumulation of women to be taken care of. Their neighbors say that they kill their female ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... G., you heard him prove from the Bible that slavery is right and that therefore secession is. Were you not convinced?" I said, "I was so busy thinking how completely it proved too that Brigham Young is right about polygamy that it quite weakened the force of the argument for me." This raised a laugh, and ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... me, and was angry and put my foot down. But he fell back upon the people and made incantations for three days, in which all hands joined; and then, speaking with the voice of God, he decreed polygamy by divine fiat. But he was shrewd, for he limited the number of wives by a property qualification, and because of which he, above all men, was favoured by his wealth. Nor could I fail to admire, though it was plain that power had turned his head, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... wildest ravings of the supernatural, and pure-minded men embrace French theories of social organization,—when crowds of dullards all aflame with unexpected imagination assemble in ascension-robes to await the apocalyptic trump, and Asiatic polygamy spreads unmolested along our Western rivers,—when the prediction is accomplished, "Old men dream dreams and young men see visions," and the most practical of the ages bids fair to glide ghostly into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... It may be inferred, that in the social life of "eagle-dom" the fair sex have their "rights," and perhaps a little more. One thing is certain, and it seems to be a consequence of this (in compliment to the sex I say it) that nothing like polygamy is known amongst them. Woe to the eagle husband that would even ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... would indeed be an act of humanity. Probably a mandarin without wife or family; a bachelor mandarin whom no relative would regret; or, in the alternative, a mandarin with many wives, whose disgusting polygamy merited severe punishment! An old mandarin already pretty nearly dead; or, in the alternative, a young one just ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... reverse is found to be the case. The new broom sweeps clean; and the white missionary of to-day is often embarrassed by the bigotry of his native coadjutor. What else should we expect? On some islands, sorcery, polygamy, human sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress of the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms against rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. By what criterion is the convert ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... luxuriance, had twined and twisted itself up into the tree, and, after wreathing the entanglement of its tendrils around almost every bough, had caught hold of three or four neighboring trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a summer shower, the fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly impervious mass of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again beneath, as if only a squirrel ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forms of government; socially and morally, a synthesis of a great variety of domestic traditions and ethical habits. Into the modern Utopia there must have entered the mental tendencies and origins that give our own world the polygamy of the Zulus and of Utah, the polyandry of Tibet, the latitudes of experiment permitted in the United States, and the divorceless wedlock of Comte. The tendency of all synthetic processes in matters of law and custom is to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Polygamy prevails in its fullest extent in Siam, especially among those of noble or royal lineage; and the higher the rank the larger the number of wives, those of the supreme king amounting ordinarily to five or six hundred. Of these, the "superior wife" holds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... his wife at pleasure by merely repeating the prescribed sentences. A wife can obtain divorce from her husband for impotence, madness, leprosy or non-payment of the dowry. A woman who is divorced can claim her dowry if it has not been paid. Polygamy is permitted among Muhammadans to the number of four wives, but it is very rare in the Central Provinces. Owing to the fact that members of the immigrant trading castes leave their wives at home in Gujarat, the number of married women returned at the census ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... form; but that falls to dust at the lightest touch, and, indeed, at a longer contact with air, as do sometimes the bones themselves. A smaller skeleton—a woman's—likewise adorned, shares the honors of the gloomy abode. It is the wife, or perchance the favorite wife, polygamy (the custom of having many wives) having long been universal. In a circle around the two principal figures, but at a respectful distance, indicating their subordinate station, are disposed other skeletons, unclothed and unadorned, evidently slaves, probably favorite ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 44, September 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... above. This cannot be effected with polygamists; for they divide conjugial love; and this love when divided, is not unlike the love of the sex, which in itself is natural; but on this subject something worthy of attention may be seen in the section on POLYGAMY. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... recognise it to be so, the seventh is a puzzle to them. At the best they only believe it because we say that it is a Commandment of God. Look at the Canons of the early Church on the question; look how Luther sanctioned the polygamy, the double marriage, of the Landgrave of Hesse! So that although now, thank God, our scholars understand more of what is meant by living with a woman, and the relation of husband and wife is not altogether strange to them, yet it was not so ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her person at his absolute disposal. Cadijah, at the time of her marriage, was forty; Mahomet, twenty-five years of age. Till the age of sixty-four years, when she died, did Cadijah enjoy the undivided affection of her husband; "in a country where polygamy was allowed, the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women: with the sister of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... his laughable doctrine of purgatory? The dead in purgatory dependent upon the living! Why, I tell him, that smacks of Shintoism, wherein the living feed the dead! Then he points in holy indignation to the Bible. Bah! Cannot I prove anything I may wish from your Bible? What will you have? Polygamy? Incest? Murder? Graft? Hand me your Bible, and I will establish its divinity. No, my good friend. When you come to me with proofs that you really do the works of him whom you profess to follow, then will I gladly listen, for I, too, seek truth. But in the present deplorable absence ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... rise, when it is baked. Salt is a luxury; "he eats salt'' being said of a spendthrift. Bars of rock-salt, after serving as coins, are, when broken up, used as food. There is a general looseness of morals: marriage is a very slight tie, which can be dissolved at any time by either husband or wife. Polygamy is by no means uncommon. Hence there is little family affection, and what exists is only between children of the same father and mother. Children of the same father, but of different mothers, are said to be "always enemies to each other.'' (Samuel Gobat's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... practically conducted by purchase, the wife being bought by the husband from her father's family. A relic of this custom perhaps still survives in the modern ceremony, when the father gives the bride in marriage to the bridegroom. Polygamy was not unknown; and it was usual for men to marry their father's widows. The wives, being part of the father's property, naturally became part of the son's heritage. Fathers probably possessed the right of selling their children into slavery; ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... diseases, in which they themselves revered the finger of Heaven." Some of these ancient tribes are said to have been cannibals, and their horrible outrage in serving up to Cyaxares human flesh for game, may be taken to confirm the account Their sensuality was unbridled, so much so that even polygamy was a licence too limited for their depravity. The Huns were worthy sons of such fathers. The Goths, the bravest and noblest of barbarians, recoiled in horror from their physical and mental deformity. Their voices were shrill, their gestures uncouth, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... by what exact right do we call people like the Zulus savages? Setting aside the habit of polygamy, which, after all, is common among very highly civilised peoples in the East, they have a social system not unlike our own. They have, or had, their king, their nobles, and their commons. They have an ancient and elaborate law, and a system of morality ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... general class of poems belongs Anti-Thelypthora, which it is due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in his lifetime. It is an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advocating polygamy on Biblical grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam spiritual counsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... power? One says vice, Another indolence, another dice. Emascle says polygamy. "Not so," Says Impycu—"'twas luxury and show." The parson, lifting up a brow of brass, Swears superstition gave the coup de grace, Great Allison, the statesman-chap affirms 'Twas lack of coins (croaks Medico: "'T was worms") And John P. Jones ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... questions were submitted,—among them, whether the French Jews could regard France as their Fatherland and Frenchmen as their brothers, and the laws of the State as binding upon them. Further points were raised as to polygamy, divorce, and mixed marriages; other questions related to the position of Rabbis and the Jewish laws ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... arranged, according to his own interested views. Gravina refused to subscribe to what he plainly perceived were only extortions; and the girl, in her turn, not only declined any further connection with him, but threatened to publish the act of polygamy. Before they had done discussing this subject, the door was suddenly opened and the two Spanish ladies presented themselves. After severely upbraiding Gravina, who was struck mute by surprise, they announced to the girl that whatever promise or contract of marriage she had obtained from ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... who says so either prates commonplaces (the most likely and charitable suggestion), or is heartless himself, or is most singular and unfortunate in having made no friends. Many such a reasonable mortal cannot have: our nature, I think, not sufficing for that sort of polygamy. How many persons would you have to deplore your death; or whose death would you wish to deplore? Could our hearts let in such a harem of dear friendships, the mere changes and recurrences of grief and mourning would be intolerable, and tax our lives beyond their value. In ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indeed! There is only one point in your favor; for as your attentions were not decided, and as the law does not, as yet, permit polygamy—" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... other. Say, by way of argument, that you have not obtained money by unfounded threats—a crime which the law holds tantamount to highway robbery. You have in that case obtained money for compromising a felony—that of polygamy. An awful position, my good ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... advantage over the man in being able to transmit her rank to her children, a survival of the matriarchate custom once ruling the world. Polygamy was rarely indulged, though not forbidden. A chief here and there might have two or three wives. Women were allowed only one husband, but often avowed lovers were tolerated, if not feared, by the husband. Mr. Banks, president of the Royal Astronomical Society of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... is in morals far superior to his Tibet and Bhotan neighbours, polyandry being unknown, and polygamy rare. This is no doubt greatly due to the conventual system not being carried to such an excess as in Bhotan, where the ties of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... with extracts from Mormon documents. The Book of Mormon is ponderous, but gloomy, and at times incoherent; and I will not, by any means, quote from that. But the Revelation of Joseph Smith in regard to the absorbing question of plurality or polygamy may be of sufficient interest to reproduce here. The reader has my full consent to form his own opinion ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... comparatively frivolous, with anecdotes of Louis Philippe, whom he had seen in Paris. Far-seeing Pedro Guitierrez was gloomily impressed with a Mongolian invasion of California by the Chinese, in which the prevailing religion would be supplanted by heathen temples, and polygamy engrafted on the Constitution. Everybody agreed however, that the vital question of the hour was the settlement of land titles—Americans who claimed under preemption and the native holders of Spanish grants ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... marriage is dissolved if both parties wish it, without any question of conduct. That is what marriage means in Sweden. In Clapham that is what they call by the senseless name of Free Love. In the British Empire we have unlimited Kulin polygamy, Muslim polygamy limited to four wives, child marriages, and, nearer home, marriages of first cousins: all of them abominations in the eyes of many worthy persons. Not only may the respectable British champion ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Although polygamy be allowed by the government, as indeed it could not well happen otherwise where women are articles of purchase, yet it is an evil that, in a great degree, corrects itself. Nine-tenths of the community find it difficult to rear the offspring of one woman by the labour of their hands; ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... which added to the Bible the fruits of centuries of spiritual evolution in the shape of the Talmud, has passed utterly beyond the more primitive stages of the Old Testament, even as it has replaced polygamy by monogamy. That Song of Hate at the Red Sea was wiped out, for example, by the oft-quoted Midrash in which God rebukes the angels who wished to join in the song. "How can ye sing when My creatures are perishing?" The very miracles of the Old Testament were side-tracked by the Rabbinic exposition ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... was the widow of his brother who had always lived with him in the same house, and who died leaving two boys. She is neither young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children, and not to let her marry a stranger. So you see that polygamy is not always sensual indulgence, and a man may practise greater self-sacrifice so than by talking sentiment about deceased wives' sisters. Hassan has 3 pounds a month, and two wives come expensive. I said, laughing, to Omar as we left him, that I did not think the two wives sounded very ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... that ought to be left to the Treasury Department, as I understand it, instead of arising in their might and passing a law that any one admitting he is a Mormon shall simply be deported and as it were kicked out of this free country in which we haven't got any room for polygamy ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Canary Islands, at the time of their conquest in 1402, polyandry existed in Lancerote and possibly in Fuerteventura, often assigning one woman to three husbands; but in the other islands of the group monogamy was strictly maintained.[998] In Oceanica polygamy, monogamy or polyandry prevails according to a man's means, the poverty of the islands, and the supply of women. A plurality of wives is always the privilege of the chiefs and the wealthy, but all three forms of marriage may be found on the same island. Scarcity of women gives rise to polyandry ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... legalisation of free divorce; and the repeal of the ordinances compelling all books to be licensed. If he did not advocate, in any of the works put forth during his lifetime, the legal toleration of polygamy, it was probably only because he perceived that that, at least, did not fall within the scope of practical politics. He defends it in his posthumous treatise, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... unenlightened reason. The Persian's creed only exercised his intellect and gratified his curiosity. It brought no power to bear upon his social relations. Persian history is a mass of crimes, suffering and intolerance. The government was a despotism, and polygamy gave laws to the domestic and private relations ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... are settled by the bridegroom paying a certain sum for the woman, which is calculated at the rate of one or more slaves, or moveable property in shells, cloth, or other articles, to the amount of the specified number of slaves. Polygamy is allowed to any extent, and it is generally carried as far as the means of the gentlemen will admit, as, after a short period, or honeymoon, the women are employee in the fields and plantations, and usually are no better situated than the common ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... race akin to the Tatars, Huns, Avars, Petchenegs and Finns, made their appearance on the banks of the Pruth in the latter part of the 7th century. They were a horde of wild horsemen, fierce and barbarous, practising polygamy, and governed despotically by their khans (chiefs) and boyars or bolyars (nobles). Their original abode was the tract between the Ural mountains and the Volga, where the kingdom of Great (or Black) Bolgary existed down to the 13th century. In 679, under ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Ravandus Madame Pfeiffer rested for some days, making observations on the manners and customs of the Kurds. She was not prepossessed in their favour by what she saw: the women are idle, ignorant, and squalid; the men work as little and rob as much as they can. Polygamy is practised; and religion is reduced to the performance of a few formalities. The costume of the wealthier Kurds is purely Oriental, that of the common people varies from it a little. The men wear wide linen trousers, and over them a shirt confined by a girdle, with a sleeveless ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... in his annual message to Congress, has urged the necessity of stringent legislation for the suppression of polygamy in the Territories, and especially in the Territory of Utah. The existing statute for the punishment of this odious crime, so revolting to the moral and religious sense of Christendom, has been persistently and contemptuously violated ever since its enactment. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... office still another state entered the Union. This was Utah, the state founded by the Mormons. Polygamy being forbidden, it was admitted in ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... from all this is plain. No such thing as property in man is recognized in the Mosaic law; but God, finding polygamy and the law of serfdom existing among the Israelites, did not see fit to abolish them at once, but so hampered and hedged them about by restrictive statutes as gradually and ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... only by our whimsicalness that they presume to be our sovereigns; they abuse their advantages to mislead and control us. For one who inspires us to our good there are a hundred who make us do stupid things." Then he went on to praise polygamy in a very unchivalrous and unsentimental way, saying ironically: "What cause of complaint do you have, after all? Have we not acknowledged that you have a soul? You know that there are philosophers who have weighed it. Do you claim equality? ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... is at least ten too many, and none shall persuade us to pick up the burden of another long story. We swear it and close our ears to our admirers, and to escape them we plunge into consideration of Violet's soul and her aptitudes, saying, and saying well, that if polygamy thrives with Mohammedanism in the East, polyandry has settled down in the West with Christianity, and that since Nora slammed the door the practice of acquiring a share in a woman's life, rather than insisting on the whole of it, has caught ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... from an undisciplined and pre-scientific age, as the solemn verbiage of so much second-rate talking expresses it to-day, we may quote some words of David Hume, Huxley's "prince of agnostics," from the Essay on Polygamy and Divorce. The least emotional of philosophers—a hard-headed Scotsman—he makes short work of the sentimentality which is invoked now-a-days against the natural ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... advocate polygamy. The Koran says a man must have four wives in order to always be able to find one in a good humor. There is one answer to polygamy which forever settles the question. The highest orders of animals and men are gifted by nature with an instinct prompting the union, in pairs, for life of the male ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... the first querists, referring to the passage that a bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy is justifiable in the laity. The society of gentlemen conducting the British Apollo are posed by this casuist, and promise to give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from "the gentlemen", concerning the souls of the dead, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so far as that, nearly all countries and all churches make some such restrictions upon opinion. The United States, that land of abandoned and receding freedoms, imposes upon everyone who crosses the Atlantic to its shores a childish ineffectual declaration against anarchy and polygamy. None of these tests exclude the unhesitating liar, but they do bar out many proud and honest minded people. They "fix" and kill things that should be living and fluid; they are offences against the mind of the race. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... any of the free States. The canvass, therefore, rapidly narrowed to a contest between Buchanan and Fremont in the North. The Republican Convention had declared it to be "both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism,— polygamy and slavery." The Democratic Convention had presented a very elaborate and exhaustive series of resolutions touching the slavery question. They indorsed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and recognized the "right of the people of all the territories to form a constitution with or without ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Polygamy is never thought of by the Sakais but bigamy is not an absolute exclusion although it very rarely takes place because as soon as a woman sees that her husband is enamoured of another she is the first to propose a divorce and ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... circumstances, they are framed into distinct complex ideas, are, as has been shown, so many MIXED MODES, a great part whereof have names annexed to them. Thus, supposing gratitude to be a readiness to acknowledge and return kindness received; polygamy to be the having more wives than one at once: when we frame these notions thus in our minds, we have there so many determined ideas of mixed modes. But this is not all that concerns our actions: it is not enough to have determined ideas of them, and to know what names belong to such ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... whether he is a lunatic or not; anyhow, he falls in love with the girl of the house. Unfortunately, rumour—a nasty, ill-natured thing—has it that Smith is a criminal. Evidence is collected, and a Grand Jury inquire into the charges, which include Bigamy, Murder, Polygamy, Burglary. It looks as if Smith is in for a very uncomfortable time, and the wedding bells are a long ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... by the treaty of June 25, 1855. Though there is but little really good land in this reservation, many of the Indians, by reason of their industry, have succeeded measurably in their farming operations, and may be considered as self-sustaining. In morals they have greatly improved; so that polygamy, the buying and selling of wives, gambling, and drunkenness have ceased to be common among them, as in the past. There are some, however, who are disposed to wander off the reservation, and lead a vagabond life. But little advancement has been ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... instructed that the "Commandments which are called moral" are to be obeyed, but that the "civil precepts" of the Mosaic code ought not "of necessity to be received in any commonwealth;" from which we may conclude that the Church does not feel bound to enforce, as "of necessity," polygamy, prostitution, murder of heretics, and slavery. She does not venture to designate such precepts as immoral, but she does not feel bound in conscience to enforce them, for which small concession we must feel grateful. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... only tends to disorganise the country, and that is war, caused, in the first instance, by polygamy, producing a family of half-brothers, who, all aspiring to succeed their father, fight continually with one another, and make their chief aim slaves and cattle; whilst, in the second instance, slavery keeps them ever fighting and reducing their numbers. The government revenues are levied, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... making a study of monkeys, once told me that he was trying experiments that bore on the polygamy question. He had a young monkey named Jack who had mated with a female named Jill; and in another cage another newly-wedded pair, Arabella and Archer. Each pair seemed absorbed in each other, and devoted and happy. They even hugged each other at mealtime and exchanged bits ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... armchair criticism to historical facts. It will be found that, with scant exceptions, marriage customs are based on social expediency and not on natural instincts. This we learn when we study the fact of monogamy, and the severe prohibition of polygamy, in many times and places, due not to any natural instinct against the practice, but to consideration of the social well-being. We find the same when we study endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, and the control ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Commons: but you rather astonish me—if a wise man should be astonished at any thing in these days—by assuring me that you have lately heard this system eloquently defended by a female philosopher. What can women expect from it but contempt? Next to polygamy, it would prove the most certain method of destroying the domestic happiness of the sex, as well as their influence and respectability in society. But some of the dear creatures love to talk of what they do not understand, and usually show ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and were Christians of a sort; a church had been built; a more or less modern system of agriculture had been introduced, and the most of the population wore trousers or skirts, according to sex. Recently, however, trouble had arisen over the old question of polygamy. The missionaries would not tolerate more than one wife, while the Zulu section of the tribe insisted upon the ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspireth Buddha and Shakespeare and Beethoven and Darwin and Plato? No, not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and rape, in black revenge and in deadly malice, in slavery and polygamy, and the debasement of women, and in the pomps, vanities and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... judge the qualifications of its own members, each House has asserted the power to inquire into the conduct of a member-elect prior to his election. In 1900 the House of Representatives refused to seat a person who practiced polygamy,[131] and in 1928 the Senate voted to exclude a Senator-elect on the ground that his acceptance of large campaign contributions from persons who were subject to regulation by a State Administrative Commission of which he had been Chairman were "contrary to sound public policy" ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... had settled at Nauvoo, Illinois. They were led by Joseph Smith, and not only proposed to run a new kind of religion, but introduced polygamy into it. The people who lived near them attacked them, killed Smith, and drove the Mormons to Iowa, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... numerous opportunities of observing the manners and customs of the Kurds. What she saw by no means prepossessed her in their favour; the women were idle, ignorant, and squalid; the men worked as little and robbed as much as they could. The Kurds practise polygamy; their religion is simply the practice of a few formalities which repetition renders meaningless. The costume of the wealthier is absolutely Oriental, but that of the common people differs in some particulars. The men wear wide linen trousers, and over them a shirt confined ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... quarrels between them, and gave me much trouble and anxiety for their safety. After Thomas and John arrived to manhood, in addition to the former charge, John got two wives, with whom he lived till the time of his death. Although polygamy was tolerated in our tribe, Thomas considered it a violation of good and wholesome rules in society, and tending directly to destroy that friendly social intercourse and love, that ought to be the happy result of matrimony and chastity. Consequently, he frequently reprimanded John, by telling ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... mountains and of women fairer than the women of these days, and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listeners fall apart." They do not deal with "problems" about the propriety of cannibalism or the casuistry of polygamy [Laughter.] The Athenians fined for his modernite the author of a play on the fall of Miletus because he reminded them of their misfortunes. But many of our novelists do nothing but remind us of our misfortunes. Novels are becoming ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... numbers, it became a natural evil, physical and social, God placed man on a higher platform for the development of civilization, morals, and religion, and then made the law regulating marriages in the particulars of blood. But he still left polygamy untouched. [Here Dr. Wisner again asked if Dr. R. regarded the Bible as sustaining the polygamy of the Old Testament.] Dr. R.—Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir. Let the reporters mark that question, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... dedicate a Christian church in New York City and say nothing about the evils of Mormonism would be nothing strange, but to dedicate a Christian church in Salt Lake City and be silent as to what the teaching and the practice of that church was to be in regard to polygamy would be treason to the Gospel. We therefore made specially prominent at the dedication the broad principles on which our mission rested. Some said they were sorry to hear such things proclaimed; others said nothing, but feared; while a few said, ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... don't mean to hint at anything in the way of polygamy, I hope. He doesn't keep an omnibus with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... security what that opinion shall be, strives for the control of the forces that shape it, and is fearful of suffering the people to be educated in sentiments hostile to its institutions. When General Grant attempted to grapple with polygamy in Utah, it was found necessary to pack the juries with Gentiles; and the Supreme Court decided that the proceedings were illegal, and that the prisoners must be set free. Even the murderer Lee was absolved, in 1875, by a ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... didst excite with thy words? It is fit that this boy should succumb to the power of death and lie thus on the ground beside his own sire. Oh, let Vijaya, let him that is called Gudakesa, let this hero with reddish eyes, come back O life. O blessed lady, polygamy is not fault with men. Women only incur fault by taking more than one husband. Do not, therefore, harbour such thoughts (of vengeance).[196] This relationship was ordained by the Supreme ordainer himself. It is, besides, an eternal and unchangeable one. Do thou attend to that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... such that two previous colonies had deserted it,—and in a climate where winter lasts seven months in the year. They had a schoolmaster, and he was also a preacher; but they did not seem to appreciate that luxury of civilization,—utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to forsake polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the doctrinal discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian. They smoked their pipes during service-time, and left Old Montagu, who still survived, to lend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... Polygamy, although one of their institutions, is little practised, as few men have more than one wife at a time. The betrothal of a female takes place in infancy, and often even before birth. A few half-caste children have been born, but they do not appear to thrive, although this does not ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Indians surrendered the regions adjoining Lake Superior, which were promptly settled by white men. Iron was then discovered at Marquette and copper at Kewenaw Point. At Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Mormons had just erected a temple, their revival of patriarchal polygamy excited the wrath of the people. Riots broke out June 27. The Mormon leader, Joseph Smith, and his brother, who had been lodged in jail, were killed. Brigham Young thenceforth became the leader of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... invite us to discuss rationally our inherited customs and ideas as to marriage, which, they say, are by no means so excellent and elevated as we believe. They have never won any serious attention. Some others want to argue in favor of polygamy on grounds of expediency. They fail to obtain a hearing. Others want to discuss property. In spite of some literary activity on their part, no discussion of property, bequest, and inheritance has ever been opened. Property and marriage are in the mores. Nothing can ever change them but ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner |
