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nondescript human
Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 1,079
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Everything you didn't want to know about the subject
in one slim volume.
AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM.
Philosophy takes nothing for granted. It doubts all things
that it may prove all things. The marriage question is a
proper subject of philosophical inquiry, involving an
examination and analysis of both polygamy and monogamy. Of
the latter form of marriage the Christian world has known too
much, and of the former too little, to have felt, hitherto,
the need of any analysis of either. We have inherited our
monogamy, or the marriage system which restricts each man to
one wife only, and have practised it as a matter of
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course, without any special examination or inquiry: so that
we really know little concerning its origin or its early
history; while we know still less of the system of polygamy.
We read something of it in the Bible and in the history of
Eastern nations, and we learn something more from the
reports of modern travellers; and it cannot be denied that
what we know of it has come to us in such a form as to
prejudice our minds against it. This prejudice is unfavorable
to a just and candid philosophical inquiry; and while
pursuing this inquiry, let us hold this prejudice in
abeyance. Let us not forget that what we have seen of this
system is in its most unfavorable aspects. Most travellers
carry their native prejudices abroad, and look upon the
customs of distant countries with less astonishment than
contempt. And they remember, when writing up their accounts
of those countries, that their books are made to be sold at
home; and they must not institute comparisons unfavorable to
their own laud, but must flatter the conceit of their
fellow-countrymen be assuring them that their own social and
political institutions are vastly better than those of other
lands.
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So, also, with history: it presents human affairs in a
perspective view, painting its roughest mountains with
distinct exactness, but casting its peaceful plains quite
into the shade. It devotes a hundred pages to the details of
wars and intrugues, illustrating the crimes of men, in
proportion to a single page of descriptions of common life
and domestic tranquility, illustrating their virtues.
If the writer, on the contrary, shall seem prejudiced in
favor of polygamy, let it be attributed to his love of fair
play, and his desire to let both sides be heard, rather than
to any undue bias of mind preventing him from doing equal
justice to the arguments in favor of either system.
It is attested and proved by competent authority, which no
one doubts, that polygamy, or that social system which
permits a plurality of wives, has always prevailed in most
countries and in all ages of the world, from time immemorial;
but this form of marriage, being foreign to the customs of
modern Europe and her colonies in America, is very naturally
regarded throughout those enlightened regions as something
heathenish and barbarous. And modern writers, whose works
are the
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Exponents of European civilization, have hitherto said every
thing against it, and nothing for it. But they have
condemned it almost without examination or debate, rather
because it is strange than because they have proved it to be
at fault. No one has given to the subject the time and
research necessary to its fair elucidation. But as a
venerable institution the social system of polygamy does not
deserve such supercilious treatment. Such treatment, besides
being unjust, is unphilosophical, and unworthy a liberal and
an enlightened age. Its great antiquity alone should entitle
it to sufficient respect to be heard, at least, in its own
defence. It constitutes an important part of human history.
It is a great fact that cannot be ignored; and as such, it
must be studied and known. To insist upon the condemnation
of this system, without hearing its defence, is oppression.
It is even the worst kind of oppression; for, in such case,
it must be allied with ignorance and bigotry. But if there
ever was a time, when polygamy could properly be thrust aside
with a sneer, and it was satisfactory to Christian justice to
condemn it unheard and unexamined, it can be so no longer;
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for, with the general diffusion of knowledge and the
increased facilities of modern intercourse, our speculative
inquires are seeking a range of cosmopolitan extent, and we
are brought into daily contact with the opinions and the
practices of the antipodes. If we disapprove of their
practices we should be prepared to make substantial
objections to them; and if we wish to teach them our own, we
should be able to give equally substantial reasons. If the
advocates of polygamy are in the minority in the Christian
world, let the common rights of the minority be granted them,
- freedom of debate and the privilege of protest; and let
their solemn protest be listened to with respect, and be
spread upon the current records of the day. And, on the
other hand, if those who practise this ancient system do
constitute the majority of mankind, it cannot be either
uninteresting or unimportant to inquire what has made it so
nearly universal, and caused it to be adopted by so many
different nations, and even different races of men, among
whom are, no doubt, some persons who are justly distinguished
for their wisdom, their piety, and their humanity.
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The writer is not aware that any former attempt has been made
in this country to analyze and explain the social system of
polygamy, or that any works written abroad for this purpose
have ever been current here; at least, he has not been able
to obtain any, [See Appendix] and thus to avail himself of
their assistance. While, therefore, the subject-matter of
this essay is of the most venerable antiquity, the manner of
its discussion must be entirely new; and not only can the
author claim the singular merit of originality, but the
reader can be assured of the no less singular zest of
novelty.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR
Almost everybody who takes up a new book is curious to know
something of the writer; of his special qualifications for
his work, of his opportunities of acquiring a thorough
knowledge of his subject, and of the standpoint from which
he views it. He will, therefore, proceed at once to give
some account of himself, and how he came to write this work.
And the courteous reader will now please permit him to drop
the indirect style of address so
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common among writers, and to introduce himself by speaking in
the first person. I am a native of New England, and was
brought up a strict Puritan. My father always declared his
intention to educate me for the law, and I took to learning
as readily as most boys of my age. I was graduated from
college almost forty years ago, and had nearly completed my
professional studies, when my health suddenly broke down; and
I discovered that I had been bestowing all my care upon the
improvement of the mind, to the total neglect of the
healthfulness of the body. And this, I fancy, was only a
common defect at that time, in our American, or, at least,
our New-England, system of education. The physicians having
prescribed a voyage at sea and a residence of some months in
a tropical climate, the influence of my friends obtained a
foreign situation for me in one our Boston houses having an
extensive business in India; and I became their clerk, and
afterwards their factor. The engagements then entered into
could not easily be broken off, and I have continued in them
many years; and having seen all the continents of the globe,
and many islands of the sea, and having
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observed human society in every climate and in every social
condition, I have at length returned to my native land, an
older, and, I hope, a wiser man. Having become an active
member of the church in my youth, I did not renounce my
Christian character abroad, but have always afforded such
encouragement and assistance as I was able, to our American
and English missionaries, whenever I fell in with them. In
fact, I had long cherished a profound respect and admiration
for the missionary enterprise; and, notwithstanding my
father's wish to educate me for the law, I had, during my
course of study, seriously offered myself as a candidate for
missionary labor; and, had I been deemed worthy of that
honor, I should, no doubt, have devoted my life to that
service. But Providence did not so order it. Yet when I
went abroad, my early predilections easily reconciled me to
the pain of leaving my native land, to the disappointment
which I experienced in renouncing a career of professional
and literary honors, and readily introduced me to the
society of those devoted missionaries whom I would fain have
chosen for my fellow-laborers and life-companions. I was
very much surprised,
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however, soon after my first acquaintance with them, to learn
that, under certain circumstances, they allowed the members
of the native Christian churches a plurality of wives. As I
had been educated a strict monogamists, in New England, I
had never once dreamed that any other social system than
monogamy could be possible among Christian people, anywhere;
and I remonstrated with the missionaries for permitting
polygamy among their converts, under any circumstances
whatever.
WHAT THE MISSIONARIES SAY ABOUT POLYGAMY.
I was answered by them that the Bible has not forbidden it,
but, on the contrary, has recognized it, as sometimes lawful
and proper; and although they themselves did not encourage
it, they could not positively prohibit it. I then endeavored
to recollect some prohibition in the Bible, but could neither
recollect nor find one there. On the contrary, to my own
astonishment, after a careful examination of the Sacred
Scriptures, I did find therein many things to favor it. The
missionaries also said that their experience had taught them
that the converting
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grace of God was granted to those living in polygamy as
often as to others; the natives themselves attach no moral
reproach to it; "and," said the missionaries, "if such
persons give evidence of genuine conversion, 'Can any man
forbid water, that they should not be baptized, who have
received the grace of God as well as we?' Besides," they
added, "if they are not received and recognized as
Christians, how shall we dispose of them? Shall we refuse
them our fellowship, and send them back again to their
idolatry? This would be no less unchristian than unkind.
Shall we compel them to put away all their wives, but those
first married, and then receive them into the church? But
in many cases this would be impracticable, in others unjust
in all, cruel. For the chastity of the women hitherto
irreproachable would be tarnished by their repudiation: they
would often be left without a home and without support; and
like other disgraced and destitute women of all lands, they
would be thrust upon a life of infamy and vice. Who,"
continued they, "shall dare assume the responsibility of
separating wife from husband , and children from parents?
Since the Bible expressly forbids a
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Man to divorce his wife, for any cause, except
unfaithfulness to her marriage vow: God is not said in the
Bible to hate polygamy, but it says there that 'he hateth
putting away.'"
I need not say that I was completely disarmed and silenced by
this array of "the law and the testimony;" and was compelled,
by their arguments, to admit that their course was one of
equal justice and mercy. I soon learned, however, that the
rules of the missionaries are by no means uniform upon this
question. Many of them, particularly those who possess a
great regard for the authority and the dogmas of the church,
and who reason rather from the "tradition of the elders,"
than from the laws of Nature or God, have rigidly enforced
monogamy among their converts; and if any one becomes a
Christian while living in polygamy, such missionaries require
him to repudiate all his wives but one. It was not many
months after the conversation above related that one of the
missionaries called my attention to a religious journal that
he had just received from Boston, containing the report of
certain missionaries among the North-American Indians,
giving an account of the conversion of an old and
influential chief.
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THE INDIAN CHIEF AND HIS TWO WIVES
This chief at the time of his conversion to Christianity was
living with two wives. The one first married was now aged,
blind, and childless. The other was young, attractive,
healthful, and the mother of one fine boy. One of these
wives the missionaries required him to put away, as an
indispensable requisite to baptism and church-membership. The
old chief, after careful deliberation, could not decide which
one to repudiate. The first he was bound by every honorable
motive "to love and to cherish," especially on account of her
age and infirmity; while the other was devotedly attached to
him, and was the mother of his only child and heir, which he
could not give up, and from which he could not separate the
mother. He, therefore, submitted the case to the
missionaries to decide which one of them he should put away.
They decided against the younger one. And as he was old
himself and his other wive was barren, that she must also
give up her child. This mandate was obeyed with martyr-like
fortitude, which nothing but the strongest religious motives
could have inspired;
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opposed, as it was, to every natural sentiment of love and
honor. And thus, in one hour, was that young wife and mother
deprived of her husband, her child, her character, and her
home; and sent away a bereaved and lonely outcast into the
wide world. The report which the missionaries themselves
gave of this affair closed by saying that the repudiated wife
and bereaved mother soon died inconsolable and
broken-hearted.
MY OWN REFLECTIONS UPON THIS REPORT
On reading this report, I could not forbear contrasting their
mode of treating polygamy with that of the missionaries in
the East, which had come under my own observation there, and
which I had, at first, so severely criticized. I now began
to blush at my own late ignorance and bigotry. And the more
I thought of the ecclesiastical tyranny of the North-American
missionaries, the higher rose my indignation against it. I
could not fail to see that their narrow attachment to their
own social system had made them judicially blind to the
merits of any other; and that they were more ignorant of the
true spirit of Christianity as well as of the nat-
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ural rights of man concerning the laws of marriage, than even
the poor savages themselves. Yet they undoubtedly supposed
they were doing God essential service by this act of
inhumanity; just as our fathers did when they hanged and
burned honest men because they worshipped God in a different
manner, and entertained different views of divine truth, from
themselves. Their mistake is one which has always been too
common, and from which no one, perhaps, is altogether free.
It consists in assuming that because we are honest in our
belief, and mean to be right, others who essentially differ
from us are dishonest and wrong; and in presuming to judge
the conduct of others by what we feel to be right, i.e., by
our own standard of morality, instead of judging them by what
we know to be right, according to the infallible standard of
divine truth.
These reflections led me to give the whole subject of
marriage, in respect to its divine and natural laws, as
thorough and as critical an investigation as my abilities and
advantages enabled me to do; and to inquire into the origin
and the moral tendencies of the two social systems of
monogamy and polygamy.
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I have now pursued this investigation many years, and have
become convinced that polygamy is not always an immorality;
that sometimes a man may innocently have more than one
woman; and then that it is their right to be married to him,
and his duty to love and cherish them for better for worse,
for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death
shall part them.
WHY I HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK
I am unwilling to leave the world without having given it the
benefit of these reflections. All truth is important. If
these views are true, they ought to be known; if they are not
true let them be refuted. If the prejudices of modern
Christians are opposed to the social system which their
ancient brethren, the earliest saints and patriarchs,
practised in the good old days of Bible truth and pastoral
simplicity, I believe that these prejudices are neither
natural nor inveterate; but that they have been induced by
the corrupted Christianity of the mediaeval priesthood, and
that they will be removed when Christian people become better
informed; and if it be necessary for me to sacrifice my own
ease
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and my own credit, in attempting to remove them, I shall only
suffer the common lot of all reformers before me. Yet I
scarcely expect to see any immediate result of my labors.
It is a melancholy and an humiliating fact that the opinions
of most people are determined more by what others around
them think and say than by what they believe themselves. They
are not accustomed to the proper exercise of their own
reason, and do not follow the convictions of their own minds.
Yet there are some who dare to think and act for themselves;
and into the hands of a few such I doubt not these pages will
fall: and to all such I most heartily commend them. To an
active and an ingenuous mind there is no pursuit more
fascinating than the pursuit of knowledge, no pleasure more
exquisite than the discovery of truth. All those who would
enjoy this pleasure in its highest sense must love Truth for
herself alone; they must emancipate themselves from the
trammels of prejudice and public opinion, and dare to follow
Truth wherever she may lead. And I make no further apology
for calling the attention of an intelligent age to a new
examination of an old institution. Truth dreads no scrutiny;
shields herself behind no
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breastwork of established custom or of respectable
authority, but proudly stands upon her own merits. I will
not despair, therefore, of gaining the attention of every
lover of the truth while I attempt to develop and demonstrate
the laws of God and of nature upon the important subjects of
love and marriage, and to apply those laws to the two systems
of monogamy and polygamy.
THE LAWS OF GOD AND OF NATURE; THE TERMS DEFINED.
To prevent misconception of the meaning intended to be
conveyed by these terms, it is proper to state, that, by the
laws of God, I mean the written laws contained in the Holy
Bible; which I believe to be the most perfect revelation of
the divine will and God's inestimable gift to man. The laws
by which the universe subsists, embracing those of mind as
well as those of matter, are undoubtedly the laws of God
also; but we call them, by way of distinction, the laws of
nature; because it is only by a diligent study of nature; and
by reasoning from cause to effect and from effect to cause,
that they can be determined, yet when determined
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they are always found to harmonize with each other and also
with the written law, which they may safely and properly be
employed to illustrate and explain.
Both these classes of law differ materially from the civil
law, or the laws of States and nations; especially in these
respects: the former are always harmonious with each other,
and equally valid at all times and places, and are,
therefore, infallible and unchangeable. The latter are
always conflicting with and often contradictory to one
another; and are constantly being altered, amended, and
repealed; and, although founded upon truth, in general, and
intended for the public good, and therefore entitled to our
respect and obedience, they are so only in a qualified sense,
far inferior to that profound respect and implicit obedience
due to divine and natural law.
In my analysis of the laws of love and marriage on which
depends the mutual relation of the two sexes, I shall be
obliged to speak of that relation with unusual familiarity;
even though I may sometimes offend our modern notions of
modesty and propriety - notions which I shall now stop to
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discuss, whether they be true or false; it matters not.
Truth rises superior to every consideration of
fastidiousness, and it is high time that these truths should
be demonstrated. Yet it shall be my care so to treat them as
not to offend true modesty unnecessarily: puris omnia pura.
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