s never
attained to such distinction as in Greece, divorce was
so easy and frequent as to render the marriage cere-
mony almost a nulHty. There were periods when the
term 'adultery' had no significance as applied to men;
only women were punished for this crime. Persons
five, ten, twenty times married and divorced were not
uncommon. Though monogamy obtained, female life
was lower there than in England under the restoration,
or in France under the regency. Alexander Seve-
rus, the most persistent of all the Roman emperors,
in vainly legislating against vice, provided his provin-
cial governors, if unmarried, with a concubine as well
as with horses and servants.
The privilege of royalty in having many mistresses, tolerated until all the people arose and usurped roy- alty, was but a modified form of polygamy, and is still secretly practised by individuals.
The question of sensualism has nothing to do with it. The polygamist, as a rule, is no more sensual than the monogamist. Your true sensualist does not marry at all. He holds himself free to taste pleasure as he can find it. The trammels of matrimony and the responsibilities of parentage he alike avoids. He is the most selfish of beings; for his own gratifica- tion he is willing to sacrifice society, debase manhood, and doom to perdition the highest inspirations and holiest affections of the race.
Beastliness is hardly a fit word to apply to the exercise of an animal impulse, the gratification of animal appetite. It too often maligns the brute cre- ation. Eating and sleeping are in one sense beastly ; while smoking and dram-drinking are worse than beastly. Beasts are natural in all things. In many respects they are less open to the charge of beastli- ness, as we commonly employ the term, than men ; they indulge less in excess; they are sometimes glut- tonish, but they do not intoxicate themselves ; if they do not regulate intercourse by numbers, they do by seasons. Their passions are in subordination to the
