WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
from feminine grace and loveliness, so often expressed by the early Christian writers, the Hindus personify Woman as Beauty. Such worship is not simply the outcome of sexual desire. It is also a poetical, æsthetic valuation of the human body. It is the artist's loving appreciation of the form of man and woman, the spirit that animates Rodin when he confesses that, in his eyes, all women are beautiful.
It is true that woman makes a strong sensuous appeal to the Hindu, which he never conceals. But we must remember that "the sensual East" is also the home of the sternest renunciations of carnal pleasures, the strictest asceticism, the most severe penances and self-martyrdom ever known among humankind. No Western saint ever endured as much for the welfare of his soul as the self-imposed torments of the Eastern priests, fakirs, and holy men, and women, in the suppression of desire.
It is the white man who is accountable for the introduction of sexual vices unknown, or rarely practised, in the East before his coming. He has brought venereal disease, and implanted its mortal poisons in the blood of thousands of healthy primitive people. He has taught unclean vulgarity of thought and speech to innocent natives free from its taint. He has introduced intoxicating spirits, and encouraged their use among sober savages. Let the white man
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