tolerate a rival in the marriage relation. Could it, therefore, be doubtful whether a man must restrict himself to one wife at a time, woman would be the one to decide. It would be contrary to reason to assume that the nature of man required several women at the same time, while it was the nature of woman, on the other hand, to treat the removal of this need as a vital question. Where there have been or still are nations among whom the husband, beside his legal wife, kept concubines (for instance among savages, the ancients, and Mussulmen), there we find this abuse founded upon the disqualification and degradation of woman, who will submit to it only so long as she has not attained to a consciousness of herself. Such a degradation has the same origin as that of the women of India, who are obliged to throw themselves into the flames in honor of their dead husbands. I come to the conclusion, therefore, that the claims of men to variety are founded entirely upon past conditions and past education, and that woman will have to recall them within the proper limits. "The man who, on the plane of our civilization, desires several wives at the same time comes, therefore,
1) into opposition with the will of each one of them, and can attain his end only through deceit and concealment;
2) he violates justice;
3) he offends the dignity of woman; and,
4) he destroys marriage, and with it the moral element in the relation of the sexes.
