"Polygamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sin and Its Bitter Consequences. David's high ideals and noble chivalry could not withstand the enervating influence of his growing harem. The degrading influence of polygamy with its luxury, pleasure seeking and jealousies was soon to undermine his character. His sins and weak indulgencies were destined to work family and national disaster. These sins reached a climax in his trespass with Bathsheba, ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... 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 are; I well remember M. Jacot coming ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... bring my reflections on the preceding legends to an end. Polygamy apparently was unknown in the distant times we are considering. But the marriage bond was not indissoluble, and the initiative in the separation was ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... in his thigh, which the missionary had succeeded, after much difficulty, in extracting. Consequently, his gratitude was unlimited, and he evinced it in a very practical manner, by commanding some hundreds of his subjects to become Christians under pain of death. And, being aware that polygamy would not be tolerated by Mr. Deighton, he went a step further, and ordered all those of these forced converts who had more than one wife to send them to his own harem. This addition to his family duties, was, however, ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... And yet they would do me gross injustice, for I would, if called upon, die a martyr for the Christian religion, so completely is (in my poor opinion) its divine origin proved by its beneficial effects on the state of society. Were we but to name the abolition of slavery and of polygamy, how much has in these two words been granted to mankind by the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "Now, 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 ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... population of Ladakh and Baltistan is Mongoloid, but the Baltis (72,439) have accepted Islam and polygamy, while the Ladakhis have adhered to Buddhism ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... you bring to bear on your argument, that polygamy leads to more morality in the homes of the land than our present conditions illustrate, I must ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... remained Musselman schuettes—a sect to which the conquerors of the country had belonged. They, however, have only conserved a vague shadow of Islamism, the character of which manifests itself in their ceremonials and in the polygamy which they practice. Some lamas affirmed to me that they did not despair of one day bringing them back to the faith of ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... that such things are the decrees of a just and loving God who created this world? Slavery, Polygamy, Famine, and Plague were once universal scourges and accepted as the mysterious ways of God. We have outgrown them all and created a new and nobler God. We find that these things are not the results of his law, but the results ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... flee away, if she can, to secret hiding-places. He will not compare her eyes to the stars; nor will she dream that he is Apollo; nor will the pair moon in the twilight over the love of Hero and Leander. And the many monogamic generations out of which he has descended would fail to prevent polygamy did another woman chance to strand ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... 1860 contained forty thousand white people, nearly all Mormons. These people, as we have seen, when driven from Missouri, built the city called Nauvoo in Illinois. Their leaders now introduced the practice of polygamy, and in various ways opposed the state authorities. In 1844 they came to blows with the state; the leaders were arrested, and while in jail Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered by a mob. Brigham Young then became head of the church, and in the winter ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... ownership of private property is the greatest of all good things, individual ownership denotes respectability, comfort, ability to buy outright. Hence we have monogamy for wives and mistresses in general, and polygamy for men. ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... actions is no comment on their moral character. It vouches for them as facts, not as virtues. It records without rebuke, Noah's drunkenness, Lot's incest, and the lies of Jacob and his mother—not only single acts, but usages, such as polygamy and concubinage, are entered on the record without censure. Is that silent entry God's endorsement? Because the Bible, in its catalogue of human actions, does not stamp on every crime its name and number, and write against it, this is a crime—does that wash out its guilt, and bleach ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that of the family relations. Polygamy was rare, monogamy the rule; but the right of concubinage was unlimited. While a high position was accorded both by affection and custom to the married wife, traces still existed of a state of society ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... same kind of 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 person in the present world? Is it ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... gratifying to the people. But he never committed the folly of ordering any solemnity. He neither learned nor repeated any prayer of the Koran, as many persons have asserted; neither did he advocate fatalism, polygamy, or any other doctrine of the Koran. Bonaparte employed himself better than in discussing with the Imaums the theology of the children of Ismael. The ceremonies, at which policy induced him to be present, were to him, and to all who accompanied him, mere matters of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Polygamy is not uncommonly practised; and an old man, especially, among other privileges, may have as many gins, or wives, as he can keep, or maintain. Indeed, the maintenance of a wife is not expensive, since they are expected to work; and all the most ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... discord of a bamboo tom-tom. I have reason to believe that even African barbarities had charms for the odd Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... supposed to have subsisted in the first ages of the human race, and tries to trace it down to the point of time "where history and religion begin." "And at this point we first find the Hebrew people, with polygamy still clinging to it as a survival from the times of ignorance, but with the marriage-tie solidly established, strict and sacred, as we see it between Abraham and Sara. Presently this same Hebrew people, with that aptitude which characterized it for being profoundly ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... races in the old world, 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
... 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 have shown that this would probably follow from the females—especially the more vigorous ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... consort, helpmate, partner. Associated Words: uxoricide, uxorious, uxoriousness, coverture, dowry, polygamy, polygamist, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 no ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... marriage has left traces in the guarded king's daughters, the challenging of kings to fight or hand over their daughters, in the promises to give a daughter or sister as a reward to a hero who shall accomplish some feat. The existence of polygamy is attested, and it went on till the days of Charles the Great and Harold Fairhair in singular instances, in the case of great kings, and finally disappeared ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... 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 ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... We propose to give only a brief dissertation on the principles and arguments of these systems, with special reference to their representatives in the nineteenth century. Polygamy has existed in all ages. It is, and always has been, the result of moral degradation or wantonness. The Garden of Eden was no harem. Primeval nature knew no community of love. There was only the union ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... very cautious, and she said that she wuz afraid that such a party given by folks in my high position might have a tendency to encourage polygamy. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... you allude to will also, I think, have been equally uncertain in its results. In the very lowest tribes there is rarely much polygamy, and women are more or less a matter of purchase. There is also little difference of social condition, and I think it rarely happens that any healthy and undeformed man remains without wife and children. I very much ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Highly respectable people—the pride of their parish, when they heard of a lecture "upon the Mormons"- -expected to see a solemn person, full of old saws and new statistics, who would denounce the sin of polygamy, and bray against polygamists with four-and-twenty boiling-water Baptist power of denunciation. These uncomfortable Christians do not like humour. They dread it as a certain personage is said to dread holy water, and for the same reason that thieves fear policemen—it ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... 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 ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... Commandments is wrong, and can understand and practically 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 at first, and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that he 'brothered' 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, and he would not be satisfied ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... and shall prove, in the place of the legitimate offspring of the Nabob, having got him placed by the Company's servants on the musnud, she came to be at the head of that part of the household which relates to the women: which is a large and considerable trust in a country where polygamy is admitted, and where women of great rank may possibly be attended by two thousand of the same sex in inferior situations. As soon as the legitimate son of the Nabob came to the musnud, there was no ground for keeping this woman any longer in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Lake Balkat, a short distance east of the Caspian, where we have already seen Aryan Atlantean colonies planted at an early day. "The third successor of Fuh-hi, Ti-ku, established schools, and was the first to practise polygamy. In 2357 his son Yau ascended the throne, and it is from his reign that the regular historical records begin. A great flood, which occurred in his reign, has been considered synchronous and identical with the Noachic Deluge, and to Yau is attributed the merit ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... with the 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 to marry than ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... character is largely the result of polygamy. His weaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I have considerable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity with which they endure an institution particularly offensive to all women. In their case they ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... to the occasional use of strongly erotic language, as, for example, in the Song of Solomon. A further danger lies in the fact that the Bible contains descriptions of customs which are no longer in harmony with modern ideas; it suffices to mention the accounts of polygamy in the Old Testament. Unless the distinction between what is historical and what is truly religious is carefully explained to the child, the latter's moral ideas will very readily ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... practically one hundred per cent perfect. With short-term marriages, dissolvable at will, there is no reason why they should be otherwise. Curiously enough too, marriages are renewed frequently—more than that, I should say, generally—for life-long periods. Polygamy with the consent of all parties is permitted, but seldom practiced. Polyandry is unlawful, and but few cases of ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... 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. Passing ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... opposite of a virtue is not necessarily a vice. Because we do not like the taste of one another it does not follow that the cannibal is a person of depraved appetite. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife and several mistresses each it is not certain that polygamy is everywhere—nor, for that matter, anywhere—either wrong or inexpedient. Our habit of wearing clothes does not prove that conscience of the body, the sense of shame, is charged with a divine mandate; for like the conscience of the spirit it is the creature of what it seems to create: ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... mind of Montesquieu, who is really a fellow of genius too in many respects; whenever he wants to support a strange opinion, he quotes you the practice of Japan or of some other distant country, of which he knows nothing. To support polygamy, he tells you of the island of Formosa, where there are ten women born for one man. He had but to suppose another island, where there are ten men born for one woman, and so make a marriage between them.' [Footnote: What my friend treated as ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... encounter some Saracen or Jewish grandmother in their genealogy."[219] Moreover, many had brought back to Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense Credentes, had his harem.[220] The Albigensian movement has been falsely represented as a protest merely against the tyranny of the Church ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... visitors, there were still others who came to him to arbitrate family disputes—which constituted him a sort of Domestic Relations Court—and gave him an insight into a condition that surprised him. Namely, the not uncommon cases of secret polygamy and polyandry. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Polygamy is practised both on the mainland and throughout the islands of Torres Strait. Five is the greatest number of wives which I was credibly informed had been possessed by one man—but this was an extraordinary instance, one, two, or three, being the usual complement, leaving of course ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... repugnant to civilization, to decency, and to the laws of the United States. Territorial officers, however, have been found who are willing to perform their duty in a spirit of equity and with a due sense of the necessity of sustaining the majesty of the law. Neither polygamy nor any other violation of existing statutes will be permitted within the territory of the United States. It is not with the religion of the self-styled Saints that we are now dealing, but with their practices. They will ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... passed over Godfrey's brow as he answered haughtily. "Nonsense, Anthony! you take up this matter too seriously. Women love flattery, and if we are bound in honor to marry all the women we compliment, the law must be abolished that forbids polygamy." ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... 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 ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... altars, and there the king worshipped; and, if he did, he would have a crowd of imitators. The lessons of such a fall are many. First, it teaches the destructive effect of yielding to sensual indulgence. Solomon's unbridled and monstrous polygamy sapped his manhood and his principle, darkened his clear spirit, blinded his keen eye, and turned a youth of noble aspiration and a manhood of noble accomplishment into an old age without dignity, reverence, or calm. All ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that the persistent attitude of Mohammedans toward slavery and toward polygamy has had a deleterious ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... of them. It is therefore a reproach to the Government that in the most populous of the Territories the constitutional guaranty is not enjoyed by the people and the authority of Congress is set at naught. The Mormon Church not only offends the moral sense of manhood by sanctioning polygamy, but prevents the administration of justice ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... 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 ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... 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 these doctrines without any repugnance, since they were already free from the great ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... Sweden, one of the most highly civilized countries in the world, a 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 of marriage mean any of these widely different institutions; ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... on, irresponsive to the principal needs and interests of the times. An ineffectual start was made on two subjects presenting simple issues on which there was an energetic pressure of popular sentiment—Chinese immigration and polygamy among the Mormons. Anti-Chinese legislation had to contend with a traditional sentiment in favor of maintaining the United States as an asylum for all peoples. But the demand from the workers of the Pacific slope for protection against Asiatic competition in the home labor market was so fierce ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... again a twofold question arises. In the first place divines dispute whether Lamech married these two wives on account of lustful passion or for some other cause. My belief is that polygamy was not entered into for the sake of lust, but with the object of increasing his family, and from the lust of dominion, and especially so if, as his name imports, the Lord at that time had been punishing the Cainites, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who are condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... been forbidden since American occupation, but the authorities have not yet been able to entirely do away with slave-trading, polygamy, nor other like peccadilloes, religious toleration being the password to the ultimate civilization of ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... 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
... alkali synonym, antonym prologue, epilogue nadir, zenith amateur, connoisseur anterior, posterior stoic, epicure ordinal, cardinal centripetal, centrifugal stalagmite, stalactite orthodox, heterodox homogeneous, heterogeneous monogamy, polygamy induction, deduction egoism, altruism Unitarian, Trinitarian concentric, eccentric herbivorous, carnivorous deciduous, perennial esoteric, exoteric endogen, exogen vertebrate, invertebrate ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... question that the state has a right to punish certain kinds of sexual irregularity. No one doubts that the Mormons sincerely believed polygamy to be a desirable practice, yet the United States required them to abandon its legal recognition, and probably any other Christian country would have done likewise. Nevertheless, I do not think this prohibition ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... to the Hebrew conception of family life. It developed toward the Christian ideal. At first, polygamy was permitted; woman was the chattel of man and excluded from any part in the religious rites. But it included the ideal of monogamy in its tradition of the origin of the world, it denounced and punished adultery (Deut. 22: 22), ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... wanted marriage on any terms. Of course the conjugal state was an institution. It was established. Yes, certainly. But what of it? The whole nation believed in it. True, but other nations believed in polygamy. There were other questions that bothered him—such questions as the belief in a single deity or ruler of the universe, and whether a republican, monarchial, or aristocratic form of government were best. In short, the whole body of things material, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Abraham to polygamy, Rebekah was a pattern of lying, and Rachel of deception. The three celebrated women of history are destitute of those characteristics which make of a wife a companion, counsellor, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the polity of instinct and consanguinity alone. They had no laws, but only natural customs. The cacique was an arbitrator: if his decision did not appease a litigant, the parties had an appeal to arms in his presence. Their cacique received unbounded reverence, and for him they would freely die. Polygamy was permitted only to him, but not always practised by him. The Spaniards were so surprised at the readiness with which the natives gave them everything, both food and ornaments, that they declared them to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... philosophy in which you placed your trust. These men put aside revealed religion and refer everything to Nature, but they do not hesitate to oppose the designs of Nature when it suits their purpose. The doctrine of the Church has always been one wife, one husband. Polygamy and polyandry are relatively sterile. It is the acknowledged wife and the acknowledged husband that are fruitful; it is the husband and wife who furnish the world with men and heaven with souls, whereas the lover and the mistress fulfil no purpose, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... speak of having recourse to that cheat and impostor my spirit was grieved within me, and I wrote the Book of Ad myself. And I was heedful to put in none but wholesome and profitable precepts, and more especially did I forbid polygamy, having perceived a certain inclination thereunto ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... 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 Journal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... officers to Utah to "straighten out" the "Mormons." President Grant, no doubt obtained much of his information about the "Mormons" from his friend, the Rev. J.P. Newman. This minister had held a three days' discussion in the Tabernacle at Salt Lake City with Apostle Orson Pratt on the subject of polygamy. Elder Pratt seems to have got the better of the argument, and it can well be imagined what kind of information this preacher gave to ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... 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
... bound up 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 come. The Indian usually sought to marry two ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... 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 ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... would save them damages in Doctors' 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 their eloquence to the greatest ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... which shock their moral sense beyond a certain point—as by cannibalism or human sacrifice. But such interference should stand upon a nice sense of the offender's rights, and in practice does so stand. The custom of polygamy, for instance (as practised abroad), horribly offends quite a large majority of His Majesty's lieges; yet Great Britain tolerates polygamy even in her own subject races. Neither polygamy nor uncleanliness can ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but he couldn't be budged. He said he stood for truth and all that kind of thing. I put it to him that he would expect any foreigner to conform to his national customs. He'd expect a Turk to give up his polygamy, I said, no matter what heart-breakings it cost some of the family. But he had a kink in his thinking, holding that his people had the whole, solid, unchanging truth. Of course, the argument came ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... (M83) Polygamy was not common, though concubines were allowed. In the upper classes women were treated with great respect, and were regarded as the equals of men. They ruled their households. The rich were hospitable, and delighted to give feasts, at which were dancers and musicians. They possessed ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the natives. The catechism of the church had been already translated into the Visayan speech; but this version was now entrusted to a committee of six (equally divided between the Jesuits, Augustinians, and regular clergy) for revision. This assembly resolved to attempt the suppression of polygamy among the heathen Indians subject to the Spaniards, and to check the easy divorces prevalent among them. Agurto undertook a visitation in Leyte and Samar, but could not complete it on account of those islands being ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... is, that when the noble uncle of this vile lady—(why don't you call her so as well as I?)—expostulated with her on the scandals she brought upon her character and family, she pretended to argue (foolish creature!) to polygamy: and said, she had rather be a certain gentleman's second wife, than the first to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... its width one hundred and fifty feet. Beside the Tabernacle and the incipient Temple, the only considerable building within the square is the Endowment-House, where those rites are celebrated which bind a member to fidelity to the Church under penalty of death, and admit him to the privilege of polygamy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... he puzzled over the problem. Something must be done. But what? Hale Mordaunt Prince from his bride's arms and bring him penitent to Nunsmere? What would be the good of that, seeing that polygamy is not openly sanctioned by Western civilization? Proceed to Naples and chastise him? That were better. The monster deserved it. But how are men chastised? Septimus had no experience. He reflected vaguely that ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Polygamy is allowed amongst these people; and it is not uncommon for a man to have two or three wives. The women are marriageable at a very early age; and it should seem, that one who is unmarried, is but in a forlorn state. She can with difficulty get a subsistence; at least she is, in a great measure, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton, and made a platform whereby they declared it to be "both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery;" by which vehement and abusive language they excited the bitter resentment of the Southern Democracy. In this convention 110 votes were cast for Lincoln for the second place on the ticket. Lamon tells the little story that ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... 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. Thus the family, the state, protracted ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... Stanley Matthews of the United States Supreme Court stated the same view with even greater clearness in one of the Utah polygamy cases (Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U.S. 44, 45): "It rests with Congress to say whether in a given case any of the people resident in the Territory shall participate in the election of its officers or the making of its ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... 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 persisted, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... hope you won't put your foot into the question of intermarriage of the races. It has no place on our platform, any more than the question of no marriage at all, or of polygamy, and, so far as I can prevent it, shall not be brought there. I beg you therefore not to congratulate him publicly. Were there a proposition to punish the woman and leave the man to go scot free, then we should have a protest to make against the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... worship is Asia; Europe is the precocious, self-centered, forward-striving child; but the land of the mother is and was Africa. In subtle and mysterious way, despite her curious history, her slavery, polygamy, and toil, the spell of the African mother pervades her land. Isis, the mother, is still titular goddess, in thought if not in name, of the dark continent. Nor does this all seem to be solely a survival of the historic matriarchate through ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Polygamy is permitted, but the wives must belong to different gentes. The first wife remains the head of ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... 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
... marry a Protestant who might bear him children. Even my Lord Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Burnet, had, thirteen or fourteen years ago given as his opinion that a barren wife might be divorced, and even that polygamy was not contrary to the New Testament! This, however, Charles had flatly refused to countenance; and, when he thought of it, now and again, shewed her a sort of compassionate kindness, in spite of his distaste for her company. Yet his very ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the precious metal, sometimes as a return gift for rich presents he had given the Egyptian, sometimes as temple-offerings, or as a dowry. Matrimonial alliances were the principal means by which a ruler kept on good terms with neighbouring princes, and Oriental polygamy allowed a great deal to be done in that line. It is noticeable that the claim made by the Egyptian king to divine honours soon began to cause little difficulties in diplomatic intercourse. Not that "the Son of the ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... fact—they didn't. How could they? Back in their prehistoric records of polygamy and slavery there were no ideals of wifehood as we know it, and since then no possibility of ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... seated with him on the same seat or chair. There is no appearance of her having been either a drudge or a plaything. She was regarded as man's true "helpmate," shared his thoughts, ruled his family, and during their early years had the charge of his children. Polygamy was unknown in Egypt during the primitive period; even the kings had then but one wife. Sneferu's wife was a certain Mertitefs, who bore him a son, Nefer-mat, and after his death became the wife of his successor. Women were entombed with as much ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... there are more males than females, and therefore the males must take some pains to secure a mate. But the inequality does not always depend on the numerical preponderance of the males, it is often due to polygamy; for, if one male claims several females, the number of females in proportion to the rest of the males will be reduced. Since it is almost always the males that are the wooers, we must expect to find the occurrence of secondary sexual characters chiefly among them, and to find it especially frequent ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... 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
... product, history and biography, science and legislation, poetry, drama and fiction of a whole people for something like a thousand years, it is possible by judicious selection of texts to prove anything you wish to prove and to justify anything you wish to do. The "Holy Book" being full of polygamy, slavery, rape and wholesale murder, committed by priests and rulers under the direct orders of God, it was a very simple matter for the Protestant Slavers to construct a Bible defense of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Under conditions of polygamy the woman is rarely subjected to sexual intercourse for other than procreative purposes, and even granting that the man has intercourse for procreation only, if he had twelve wives, he would be having it twelve times as frequently as ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... considered to be a person of weak intellect; like Mohammed, he claimed to have received his revelation from the Angel Gabriel; like the Arabian prophet again, he put forth a mixture of Judaism[14] and heathenism which sanctioned polygamy, and whose propagation was to be carried on by the sword. A trifling success over a small English troop gave the necessary impetus to the movement, and soon bands of ardent Hauhaus (as they were called) ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... family without abolishing it. Many unions might continue to be lasting, and the children in any case would remain with one or the other parent. The family has already suffered greater transformations than that suggested by this sect. Polygamy persists, involving its own type of morals and sentiment, and savage tribes show even more startling conventions. Nor is it reasonable to dismiss all ideals but the Christian and then invoke Christian patience to help us endure the consequent evils, which are thus declared ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... term than polygamy—was the inevitable result of the patriarchal system. Man made the law and the law recognized no restraint upon his sexual and parental instincts. Improvements in living added to the resources of the family and ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... pleasing to read of a tribe described by McClintock as superior in domestic virtues to most of their countrymen. The Acawoios, or Kaphons, though warlike, differ from other tribes in many points. Polygamy is not permitted before a suitable age. The women are virtuous, and attentive both in sickness and old age. After a birth, the mother is relieved even from the labour of preparing food for her husband, that she may attend to her child. They are cleanly, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... well-trained and 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.) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... subordinates to him through motives of self-interest as well as personal deference, the man who could defend his property against robbers, could also have his separate household and maintain its sanctity. In this way, it is believed, indissoluble marriage, in its two forms of monogamy and polygamy, originated. That it had already existed sporadically is not denied, but it now acquired such stability and permanence that the older and looser forms of alliance, hitherto prevalent, fell into disfavour. A natural result of the growth of private ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... into the peculiar domestic customs of the inmates of the valley did away in a measure with the severity of my scruples, and convinced me that I was deceived in some at least of my conclusions. A regular system of polygamy exists among the islanders; but of a most extraordinary nature,—a plurality of husbands, instead of wives! and this solitary fact speaks volumes for the gentle disposition of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... 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 old prerogative of ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... Territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery." At Buchanan, recently nominated by the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, it aimed a barbed shaft: "Resolved, That the highwayman's plea that 'might makes right,' embodied in the Ostend circular, was in every respect ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... for political society, "kings are frequently mentioned in the hymns," and "it was regarded as eminently beneficial for a king to entertain a family priest," on whom he was expected to confer thousands of kine, lovely slaves and lumps of gold. In the family polygamy existed, probably as the exception. There is reason to suppose that the brother-in-law was permitted, if not expected, to "raise up seed" to his dead brother, as among the Hebrews.(4) As to literature, the very structure of the hymns proves that it ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... from 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 of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... 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 some member should stand ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... one need fear the editor who indulged in diatribes against the prevalence of polygamy in Utah, but that malefactors had better look out when an editor took up his pen against abuses in his own city. We all tend to begin our reforms too far away from home. The man who wishes improvement strongly enough to set to work on himself ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... the institution of monogamy have come off worse? Theirs is a dreadful fate: they are human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy. The women whose wretched position is here described are the inevitable set-off to the European lady with her arrogance and pretension. Polygamy is therefore a real benefit to the female sex if it is taken as a whole. And, from another point of view, there is no true reason why a man whose wife suffers from chronic illness, or remains barren, or has gradually become too old for him, should not take a second. The motives which induce ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... when thou 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 relationship. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... important to note that among the Iroquois polygamy is not permitted, nor does it appear ever to be practised. Many instances are reported in the Seneca tribe of a woman having more than one husband, but an Iroquoian man is never allowed more than one wife.[52] This is the more ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... parts of the Empire polygamy prevails for those who can afford it, in Tibet polyandry crops up. Which is the more offensive to good morals we need not decide; but is it not evident that Confucianism shows its weakness on one side as Buddhism does on the other? A people that tolerates ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... 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 such firm root in our civilization that it is no exaggeration ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... accessions were mostly women. The acceptance of Christianity was more difficult to the men. The change in the manner of life involved in it was greater. It meant entire reconstruction of their ideas of life, and in the manner of it, the abandonment of polygamy, the adoption of civilized dress, the spirit of obedience and industry. These were the contradictions to centuries of tradition and custom, and meant to an Indian brave the becoming like a woman. At length, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she provoke us too far. The Ewigweibliche has become too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting woman question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for equal purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of the Orient—" ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... rose beyond them. And it was the same with concepts as with practices. Judaism, 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 ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... fundamental part of any complete Socialist 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? ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... good to thee; remembering all these I have come to this resolution. O revered sir, abandoning me thou mayest obtain another wife. By her thou mayest again acquire religious merit. There is no sin in this. For a man polygamy is an act of merit, but for a woman it is very sinful to betake herself to a second husband after the first. Considering all this, and remembering too that sacrifice of thy own self is censurable, O, liberate today without loss of time thy own self, thy race, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... helpmate, rib, better half, gray mare, old woman, old lady, good wife, goodwife. feme[Fr], feme coverte[Fr]; squaw, lady; matron, matronage, matronhood[obs3]; man and wife; wedded pair, Darby and Joan; spiritual wife. monogamy, bigamy, digamy[obs3], deuterogamy[obs3], trigamy[obs3], polygamy; mormonism; levirate[obs3]; spiritual wifery[obs3], spiritual wifeism[obs3]; polyandrism[obs3]; Turk, bluebeard[obs3]. unlawful marriage, left-handed marriage, morganatic marriage, ill- assorted marriage; mesalliance; mariage de convenance[Fr]. marriage broker; matrimonial agency, matrimonial agent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... whether government ownership of railroads will improve upholstering; to know with certainty of perception that it is a bore to have one's husband laugh at one's pet economy, of matches or string or ice—but to be blandly willing to leave all theories of polygamy and polyandry, monogamy and varietism, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... America, such as Oneida and Wallingsford.[934] Some Socialist thinkers, such as Saint-Simon and Enfantin, following the footstep of Plato, condemn marriage for life and recommend the organisation of procreation by the State. Others, such as Fourier, favour polygamy and polyandry. Others, such as Bellamy[935] and Kautsky,[936] believe that the people will remain attached to marriage as at present constituted. Others again find consolation in the fact that "despite the marital customs of the East, there is in the average ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... marriage-post. The bride is taken for four days to the husband's house and then returns, and is again sent with the usual gauna ceremony, when she is fit for conjugal relations. No price is usually paid for the bride, and each party spends about Rs. 100 on the marriage ceremony. Polygamy and widow marriage are generally allowed, the widow being disposed of by her parents. The ceremony at the marriage of a widow consists in putting vermilion on the parting of her hair and bangles on her wrists. Divorce is allowed on pain of a fine of Rs. 50 if the divorce ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... 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 relationship even ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... no country goes 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. How is a man then ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... absurd,—what conduct so immoral, as not to find patronage in the journals of the day? or not to find tolerance or protection under the fostering wings of church or state? What is impiously called "free love," as well as avowed infidelity and polygamy, are patronized by constituted authorities in Christendom. When taking a survey of the errors and systems of error, hostile to the honor of Messiah and the free grace of his gospel, how few can be found in the different ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... deep solemnity and an unchanged countenance, to horrify your inspector by avowing the most fearful views. Tell him, that, on long reflection, you are prepared to advocate the revival of Cannibalism. Say that probably something may be said for Polygamy. Defend the Thugs, and say something for Mumbo Jumbo. End by saying that no doubt black is white, and twice ten are fifty. Or a third way of meeting such a man is suddenly to turn upon him, and ask him to give you a brief and lucid account of the views he is condemning. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... has put an end to idolatry in the central and other provinces, and with it a number of cruel and foolish superstitions, together with the use of the Tangena poison-ordeal,[22] infanticide, polygamy, and the unrestricted power ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not favored by legal interference. The change is most ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... account, creditable. However, their arrogant relations with their neighbors and the extreme isolation in which they held themselves soon earned them the dislike and distrust of those about them. The practice of polygamy had begun, although even to the rank and file of the Mormons themselves the revelation commanding it was as yet unknown. Still, rumors had leaked forth. The community, already severely shocked in its economic sense, was only ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... with, 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 in some ways as high as our ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... distinguished by his eloquence and great abilities in the House of Commons? And will not his enemies allow him to be fully equal to the great station he now adorns? But then it must be granted, that he is wholly ignorant in the speculative as well as practical part of polygamy: he knows not how to metamorphose a sober man into a lunatic:[13] he is no freethinker in religion, nor has courage to be patron of an atheistical book,[14] while he is guardian of the Qu[een]'s conscience. Though after all, to speak my private opinion, I cannot think these ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... no Scriptur, stranger, it's d——d heathenism," replied the farmer, who, take him all in all, is a superior specimen of the class of small-planters at the South; and yet, seeing polygamy practised by his own slaves, he made no effort to prevent it. He told me that if he should object to his darky cohabiting with the Colonel's negress, it would be regarded as unneighborly, and secure him the enmity of the whole district! ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... these regions, to whose district his death would be a decided blessing, to kill whom 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 commencing ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... kindred. —— Family, its duration and end, according to Ramusio, origin; last notices of. (For relationship of different Polos, see table). —— Family, branch of S. Geremia. Po-lut (Pa-lut), incense. Polygamy, supposed effect on population. Pomilo (Pamir). Pompholyx. Ponent, or West, term applied by Polo to Kipchak, the Mongol Khanate of the Volga, see Kipchak. Pong (Mediaeval Shan State). Poods, Russian. Popinjays. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the end of each third year either male or female can divorce the other and is free to marry again. At the end of ten years the An has the privilege of taking a second wife, allowing the first to retire if she so please. These regulations are for the most part a dead letter; divorces and polygamy are extremely rare, and the marriage state now seems singularly happy and serene among this astonishing people;—the Gy-ei, notwithstanding their boastful superiority in physical strength and intellectual abilities, being much curbed into gentle manners ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Boggs's "Extraordinary Order," which caused them to gain sympathy as having been persecuted in a slave State. They moved to Hancock county, Illinois, in 1840, and built up Nauvoo by a charter with most unusual privileges. Smith here announced a new revelation, sustaining polygamy, which was supplemented by Young in 1852. His rebellious followers started a paper, which he promptly demolished. He was under arrest by the State authorities when a mob shot him on the 27th of June, 1844. On his death Brigham Young tricked the expectant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... and reproductive powers of the female greatly exceed those of the male; and hence the dissoluteness of morals would be phenomenal, were it not obviated by seclusion, the sabre and the revolver. In cold-dry or hot-dry mountainous lands the reverse is the case; hence polygamy there prevails whilst the low countries require polyandry in either form, legal or illegal (i,e. prostitution) I have discussed this curious point of "geographical morality" (for all morality is, like conscience, both geographical and chronological), a subject so interesting to the lawgiver, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton |
