"Polygamy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I tell him, that smacks of Shintoism, wherein the living feed the dead! Then he points in holy indignation to the Bible. Bah! Cannot I prove anything I may wish from your Bible? What will you have? Polygamy? Incest? Murder? Graft? Hand me your Bible, and I will establish its divinity. No, my good friend. When you come to me with proofs that you really do the works of him whom you profess to follow, then will I gladly listen, for I, too, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... social life of Tecumseh there were many things worthy of notice. He was opposed, on principle, to polygamy, a practice almost universal among his countrymen. He was married but once; and this union, which took place at the age of twenty-eight, is said to have been more in compliance with the wishes of ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... 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 ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... of logs completely covered with earth. They are eagerly obtaining from the Government such comforts of civilization as they can—reapers, cooking-stoves, baking-powder, and the like. And yet this people display some of the grossest elements of savagery. Polygamy is common. The disgusting scaffold burials still go on, and the air in the neighborhood of the village is sometimes foul from the adjacent cemetery. Buffalo heads and poles with red streamers, as offerings ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... inequality between the sexes is due simply to the fact that 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 ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... the pope.' I must also express my conviction that the charge against the Wesleyans made by the priests of adopting as proselytes all who offer without examination is quite unfounded. The putting away of all but one wife—no small sacrifice on the part of a people who have practised polygamy for ages—is always insisted on as a first step, and regular attendance on religious worship is also expected. Among the older Christians I saw every evidence of their having adopted the new faith from conscientious conviction, and the chiefs of the highest distinction are probably ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 invaded by ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... were few cases of adultery among them, and the unfaithful wife was severely punished. Men and women, without seductive spectacles or convivial banquets, were fenced around with chastity, and bound together by family ties. Polygamy was unknown, and the marriage obligation was sacred. The wife brought no dowry to her husband, but received one from him, not frivolous presents, but oxen, a caparisoned steed, a shield, spear, and sword, to indicate that ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... 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 ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 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 of two "and the twain were made one flesh." Time passed; "the sons of God saw the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... advocate polygamy. The Koran says a man must have four wives in order to always be able to find one in a good humor. There is one answer to polygamy which forever settles the question. The highest orders of animals and men are gifted by nature with an instinct prompting ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... 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 ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... corner-stone of which should be, protection to the "Divine" institution of slavery. For there were people who believed in the "divinity" of human slavery, as there are now people who believe Mormonism and Polygamy to be ordained by the Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; that some of the extreme Southern States would go ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... and his 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
... and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about—rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Polygamy is permitted, but the wives must belong to different gentes. The first wife remains the head of the ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... course of elimination. The wild-beast desire to fight is one of these, and this has been encouraged, not checked, by religion.... Another bestial tendency is the lust of the male for the female apart from love, duty, and loyalty; this again has been encouraged by religion, as witness the polygamy and concubinage of the Hebrews—as in Abraham, David, and Solomon, not to mention the precepts of the Mosaic laws—the bands of male and female prostitutes in connection with Pagan temples, and the curious outbursts of sexual passion in connection ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... fact, that in the countries where it is established, more females are born than males. This appears to be an indication of nature, and to nature apparently reasonable speculations must yield. A further conclusion obviously presents itself; if polygamy be necessary, woman must be inferior to man, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... 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 ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... so many solemn and particular ties of oaths, and covenants, and vows, and confessions, as we have lying on us. 5. Let no man wonder that such particular escapes are not always reproved in scripture, who considers that the fathers' polygamy, though so frequent among them, was not laid to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Temple, stood the three 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 his wisdom was worth ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the important personages who came to the village to employ the talent of our artist was a Mr. Rooky Rooky (and he was always very particular in remembering the Mister); he brought four of his wives with him, leaving six more at home (polygamy in New Zealand being allowed to any extent). One of this man's wives was a little girl not more than ten years of age, and she excited a great deal of interest amongst us, which, when he discovered, he became very anxious to dispose of her to any of us. He importuned ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... 25, 1869.—Mr. Julian introduced the following bill into Congress to discourage polygamy in Utah by granting the right of suffrage to the women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... survey with 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 in which she was regarded as property that went with the inheritance. The marriage of relations ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... with extreme violence; but when the peasants rose, with their just and reasonable demands, and threatened Saxony, he issued a tract insisting that they should be cut to pieces. He valued the royal prerogative so highly that he made it include polygamy. He advised Henry VIII that the right way out of his perplexity was to marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... socially and morally, a synthesis of a great variety of domestic traditions and ethical habits. Into the modern Utopia there must have entered the mental tendencies and origins that give our own world the polygamy of the Zulus and of Utah, the polyandry of Tibet, the latitudes of experiment permitted in the United States, and the divorceless wedlock of Comte. The tendency of all synthetic processes in matters of law and custom is ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... attempting any reform beyond teaching monogamy in the future. Nothing will assure the enmity of a savage more than to ask him to discard any of his wives, and especially the mother of his children. While I would be the last man on earth to advocate polygamy, I can truthfully say that one of the happiest and most harmonious families I ever knew was that of the celebrated Little Crow (who, during all my official residence among the Dakotas, was my principal advisor and ambassador, and who led the massacre in 1862), who had four wives; ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... men, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, upheld the institution of polygamy—I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and conquest—I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men wrote that it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she happened to differ with him on the subject of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... advantage over the man in being able to transmit her rank to her children, a survival of the matriarchate custom once ruling the world. Polygamy was rarely indulged, though not forbidden. A chief here and there might have two or three wives. Women were allowed only one husband, but often avowed lovers were tolerated, if not feared, by the husband. Mr. Banks, president of the Royal Astronomical Society of England, was ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the Mormons had 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 Mormons to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... cannot exist on the Dark Continent without strong support from Government. Nor can we explain this honourable reception by the "licentiousness" ignorantly attributed to Al-Islam, one of the most severely moral of institutions; or by the allurements of polygamy and concubinage, slavery,[FN330] and a "wholly sensual Paradise" devoted to eating, drinking[FN331] and the pleasures of the sixth sense. The true and simple explanation is that this grand Reformation of Christianity was urgently wanted when it appeared, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... human development as peace is natural to another. My brother has the spirit of revenge. Shall I call him a demon? Is not his spirit natural to his condition? War is not evil or repulsive except to a man of peace. Who made the non-resistant? Polygamy is as natural to one stage of development as oranges are natural to the South. Shall I grow indignant, and because I am a monogamist, condemn my kinsman of yore? Who made him? Who made me? We both came up under the confluence of social and ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... 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
... Y's. Professor M. was there, etc. He says we've got to have polygamy in Europe after the war to keep ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... cliff-dwellers to the details of the Dingley bill, not skipping accurate information on the process of whiskey-making in Kentucky, a crocodile-hunt in Florida, suffrage in Wyoming, a lynching-bee in Texas, polygamy in Utah, prune-drying in California, divorces in Dakota, gold-mining in Colorado, cotton-spinning in Georgia, tobacco-raising in Alabama, marble-quarrying in Tennessee, the number of Quakers in Philadelphia, one's sensations while being scalped by Sioux, how marriages ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... mean to hint at anything in the way of polygamy, I hope. He doesn't keep an omnibus with seats for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... 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, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... East they are extremely strict, And wedlock and a padlock mean the same: Excepting only when the former's picked It ne'er can be replaced in proper frame; Spoilt, as a pipe of claret is when pricked: But then their own polygamy's to blame; Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur, man ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... not; anyhow, he falls in love with the girl of the house. Unfortunately, rumour—a nasty, ill-natured thing—has it that Smith is a criminal. Evidence is collected, and a Grand Jury inquire into the charges, which include Bigamy, Murder, Polygamy, Burglary. It looks as if Smith is in for a very uncomfortable time, and the wedding bells are a long way ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... becomes the mere slave of passion, and, instead of holding her sphere as the emblem of civilization she becomes its barrier. The absence of real love engendered by a plurality of wives, is an absolute bar to progress; and so long as polygamy exists, an extension of civilization is impossible. In all tropical countries polygamy is the prevailing evil: this is the greatest obstacle to Christianity. The Mahommedan religion, planned carefully for Eastern habits, allowed a ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... characteristics of much importance common to both. In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, etc.; or castration; or selling of children into slavery; or polygamy; or the feeling of unlimited obedience toward one man: all customs which might be pointed out as existing among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, etc. The habit of running, wrestling, boxing, etc., in gymnastic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... nations are obliged to put constraint upon uncivilised ones 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 be held any just excuse ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rested for some days, making observations on the manners and customs of the Kurds. She was not prepossessed in their favour by what she saw: the women are idle, ignorant, and squalid; the men work as little and rob as much as they can. Polygamy is practised; and religion is reduced to the performance of a few formalities. The costume of the wealthier Kurds is purely Oriental, that of the common people varies from it a little. The men wear wide linen trousers, and ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... 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 that situation; and upon an application of the Company ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... Encouragement, of several brutal and scandalous Customs, that are too much practised: Such as giving them a Number of Wives, or, in short, setting them up for Stallions to a whole Neighborhood; when it has been prov'd, I think, unexceptionably, that Polygamy rather destroys than multiplies the Species; of which we have also living Proofs under the Eastern Tyrants, and amongst the Natives of America; so that it can in no Manner answere the End; and were these Masters to calculate, they'd find a regular Procreation would ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... St. Peter, St. Paul, or St. Lucia." Nor did he shrink from applying his views to particular cases, as is instanced by his correspondence with Philip von Hessen, whose constitution appears to have required more than one wife. He here lays down explicitly the doctrine that polygamy and concubinage are not forbidden to Christians, though, in his advice to Philip, he adds the caveat that he should keep the matter dark to the end that offence might not be given. "For," says he, "it matters not, provided one's conscience ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... next place of refuge, but here, too, Smith's profligacy aroused the hostility of the Missourians, which was increased by propaganda among the Mormons for a "war of extermination against the Gentiles." In Illinois, whither many of the "Saints" now removed, Smith had a revelation approving polygamy, which pleased him very much, but which roused opposition among his followers as well as his persecutors. In 1844 he and his brother Hyrum were arrested on a charge of treason in the town of Nauvoo which they had founded and imprisoned at Carthage. On the night of June 27, a mob, ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... tolerated, our Saviour himself gives the true explanation when he says: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so." Matt. 19:8. This general principle applies also to polygamy and the modified form of servitude which prevailed among the Hebrew people. That the Mosaic economy suffered, for the time being, certain usages not good in themselves, is no valid objection to it, but rather ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... 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 wife of Uriah. In this crime he fell from ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... it devolves finally to determine every thing, are communicated. Public speaking, it is seen, is practiced in the infancy of Greek society. (2) Customs. People live in hill-villages, surrounded by walls. Life is patriarchal, and, as regards the domestic circle, humane. Polygamy, the plague of Oriental society, does not exist. Women are held in high regard. Slavery is everywhere established. Side by side with piracy and constant war, and the supreme honor given to military prowess, there is a fine and bountiful hospitality which is held to be a religious ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... violation by a large number of the prominent and influential citizens of the Territory of Utah of the laws of the United States for the prosecution and punishment of polygamy demands the attention of every department of the Government. This Territory has a population sufficient to entitle it to admission as a State, and the general interests of the nation, as well as the welfare of the citizens of the Territory, ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... disorganise the country, and that is war, caused, in the first instance, by polygamy, producing a family of half-brothers, who, all aspiring to succeed their father, fight continually with one another, and make their chief aim slaves and cattle; whilst, in the second instance, slavery keeps them ever fighting and reducing their numbers. The government revenues are levied, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... new master was 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... indiscretions, is winning for himself the new 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
... Hastings, the daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon. She came near bringing about a marriage between the two, in face of the fact that the two churches of which Ivan and she were respectively the heads were agreed in condemning polygamy ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... freedom of thought and of discussion, which was awakened during the process of change. But however familiar such a truth may be to us, it was absolutely hidden from the England of the time. Men heard with horror that the foundations of faith and morality were questioned, polygamy advocated, oaths denounced as unlawful, community of goods raised into a sacred obligation, the very Godhead of the Founder of Christianity denied. The repeal of the Statute of Heresy left indeed the powers of the Common Law intact, and Cranmer availed himself of these to send heretics of the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... to prove that the jealous fury of the males of certain animals proves nothing with regard to man; and the exceptional case of those southern regions were polygamy is the established custom, only confirms the rule, since it is the plurality of wives that gives rise to the tyrannical precautions of the husband, and the consciousness of his own weakness makes the man resort to constraint to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... instances of it had been proved. Crimes might be falsely imputed. This he admitted; but only partially. Witchcraft, he believed, was the secret of poisoning, and therefore deserved the severest punishment. That there should be a number of convictions for adultery, where polygamy was a custom, was not to be wondered at. But he feared, if a sale of these criminals were to be done away, massacre would ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... friends on whom his nature was quite dependent. His religious beliefs had become what would at present be called Unitarian, and he did not associate with any of the existing denominations; in private theory he had even come to believe in polygamy. At home he is said to have suffered from the coldness or more active antipathy of his three daughters, which is no great cause for wonder if we must credit the report that he compelled them to read aloud to him in foreign languages ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Department, as I understand it, instead of arising in their might and passing a law that any one admitting he is a Mormon shall simply be deported and as it were kicked out of this free country in which we haven't got any room for polygamy and the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 so wild a supposition, has actually happened in ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... recognise polyandry and polygamy is well known. Very little, however, has hitherto transpired as to the actual form of these marital customs, so that the details which follow, startling as they may seem when regarded from a Western standpoint, will be found ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... mostly in the open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia, chiefly of the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the Turkish strain in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in a species of fin-de-siecle polygamy. Sherman's prize "bummer" was not in it with Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I suspected him of actual plundering, so copiously did he bring in supplies, and so little had I to pay for them; but I was not long in discovering ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... United States. The Mormons who founded Salt Lake City supposed themselves to be settling on Mexican territory, outside the jurisdiction of American law. Woman suffrage was almost coincident with its beginnings, and it came as a legitimate part of the union of state and church, of communism, of polygamy. The dangers that especially threaten a republican form of government are anarchy, communism, and religious bigotry; and two of these found their fullest expression, in this country, in the Mormon creed and practice. Fealty to Mormonism was disloyalty to the United ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... than forty editions. The least delicate ears would be offended by an enumeration of all the horrors it contains. Incest, if not detected, was to cost five groats; and six, if it was known. There was a stated price for murder, infanticide, adultery, perjury, burglary, &c. Polygamy cost six ducats; sacrilege and perjury, nine; murder, eight; and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... borrow of their neighbours, than have wives of their own; except they may, as some princes and great men do, keep as many courtesans as they will themselves, fly out impune, [5776]Permolere uxores alienas, that polygamy of Turks, Lex Julia, with Caesar once enforced in Rome, (though Levinus Torrentius and others suspect it) uti uxores quot et quas vellent liceret, that every great man might marry, and keep as many wives as he would, or Irish ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... 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, however, the gospel did take hold ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... very reverent hand the garment hem of dogmas, and held to the spirit of Scripture rather than its letter, it must be remembered that she lived in a time when the Bible was cited in defence of slavery, as it is now in Utah in support of polygamy; and she may well be excused for some degree of impatience with those who, in the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, neglected the weightier matters of the law of justice ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... disputed, if, under the matriarchal system of polygamy, the moral condition of the people was higher than under the patriarchal system, and probably no satisfactory conclusion can be reached upon this point, save and except that any condition, however primitive, which permitted to the female freedom of choice, must be ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... the world to come, and they don't know, either, that there are thousands of choice spirits in the spirit world waiting to tabernacle in the flesh. Of course, there are lots of these things that you ain't ready to hear yet, but now you know that polygamy is necessary for our exaltation to the fulness of the Lord's glory in the eternal world, and after you study it you'll like the doctrine. I do; I can swallow it without ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... witches. In point of fact, practices of this kind—which follow quite naturally from various forms of primitive belief that are most sincerely held—are habitually put down by civilized peoples that are responsible for the government of less developed races. The British law recognizes polygamy in India, but I imagine it would not be open either to a Mahommedan or a Hindu to contract two marriages in England. Nor is it for liberty of this kind that the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... where winter lasts seven months in the year. They had a schoolmaster, and he was also a preacher; but they did not seem to appreciate that luxury of civilization, utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to forsake polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the doctrinal discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian. They smoked their pipes during service time, and left Old Montagu, who still survived, to lend a vicarious attention ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... there does not seem to be much difficulty about the matter. Men of the Far East will submit to very low wages for the same reason that they will submit to "the punishment known as Li, or Slicing"; for the same reason that they will praise polygamy and suicide; for the same reason that they subject the wife utterly to the husband or his parents; for the same reason that they serve their temples with prostitutes for priests; for the same reason that they sometimes ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... takes the form of polyandry. On the Canary Islands, at the time of their conquest in 1402, polyandry existed in Lancerote and possibly in Fuerteventura, often assigning one woman to three husbands; but in the other islands of the group monogamy was strictly maintained.[998] In Oceanica polygamy, monogamy or polyandry prevails according to a man's means, the poverty of the islands, and the supply of women. A plurality of wives is always the privilege of the chiefs and the wealthy, but all three forms of marriage may be found on the same island. Scarcity ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Escam? (Gibbon has written incorrectly Eslam, an unknown name. The officer of Attila, called Eslas.) In either case the construction is imperfect: a good Greek writer would have introduced an article to determine the sense. Nor is it quite clear, whether Scythian usage is adduced to excuse the polygamy, or a marriage, which would be considered incestuous in other countries. The Latin version has carefully preserved the ambiguity, filiam Escam uxorem. I am not inclined to construe it 'his own daughter' though I have too little ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the moral law of nature justified self-murder." Lord Bolingbroke claimed that it enjoined polygamy; and neither Blount nor Bolingbroke prohibited fornication, or adultery, or incest, except between ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... Turanian race akin to the Tatars, Huns, Avars, Petchenegs and Finns, made their appearance on the banks of the Pruth in the latter part of the 7th century. They were a horde of wild horsemen, fierce and barbarous, practising polygamy, and governed despotically by their khans (chiefs) and boyars or bolyars (nobles). Their original abode was the tract between the Ural mountains and the Volga, where the kingdom of Great (or Black) Bolgary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... mother or children. Again, a first wife can, on entering into the married state, make a bargain that her husband shall marry no other wife. This, however, is very rarely done, as the women are the great upholders of polygamy, which not only provides for their surplus numbers but gives greater importance to the first wife, who is thus practically the head of several households. Marriage is looked upon as primarily a civil contract, and, subject to certain conditions and to a proper provision for children, is dissoluble ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... succeeding years. Utah, with ample population, was kept where the Federal Government could control it because of the practices taught by its Church. The Mormons had made a prosperous Territory in Utah by 1850. They had flourished ever since, but their institution of polygamy frightened the United States and created permanent hostility to their admission. In 1882 the Territory was placed under a commission, and thereafter polygamous citizens were brought to punishment. In 1890 the ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... prejudices—produced humility, forgiveness of injuries, regard to truth, justice, and honesty, firmness under persecution, patience under worldly afflictions, and calmness and resignation at the approach of death—discouraged fornication, polygamy, adultery, divorces, suicide, and duels—checked infanticide, cruel sports, the violence of war, the vices of Kings and the assaults of princes—and rendered its sincere professors true, honest, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... remains a remnant of barbarism, 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 be protected in the worship of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... But they say God couldn't do away with slavery suddenly, nor with polygamy all at once—that He had to do it gradually—that if He had told this man you mustn't have slaves, and one man that he must have one wife, and one wife that she must have one husband, He would have lost the control over them ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... His command, or prohibition, the intrinsic exigency, or intolerableness, of the thing to man would still remain, being as inseparable from humanity as certain mathematical properties from a triangle. Pride is not made for man, nor fornication, nor lying, nor polygamy [Footnote 14]: human nature would cry out against them, even were the Almighty in a particular instance to withdraw His prohibition. What would be the use, then, of any such withdrawal? It would not make the evil thing good. An evil thing it would still remain, unnatural, irrational, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... people who had neither an idea of a God, nor who performed any idolatrous rites; who failed to see that there was anything more agreeable to flesh and blood in our customs than in their own; but who allowed that the missionaries were a wiser and superior race of beings to themselves; who practised polygamy, and looked with a very jealous eye on any innovation that was likely to deprive them of the services of their wives, who built their houses, gathered firewood for their fires, tilled their fields, and reared their ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... Waldenses flourished in Provence, various heretical sects arose in the west of Germany and in the Netherlands; prominent among them were the Apostolics, who took the Gospels literally, and introduced communism and polygamy, and the communities of the Beghards and Beguines, which roused little public attention, and did not aim at reform, but advocated a life of contemplation. They found supporters in all ranks of the community, and were connected with the later German mystics. An indictment preserved ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... "Polygamy is bad enough—especially as instances are not wanting of a man being married at the same time to a mother and her daughters, or several sisters, and in at least one instance to mother, daughter, and granddaughter; ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... indeed; there is no sensual charin or allurement in Mahommedanism for the African mind, whilst its fasts and commands of abstinence from strong drinks deter thousands from embracing the religion of the false Prophet. It cannot allure the African by polygamy, because the African has as many women as he pleases by the permission of his native superstition. Islamism, therefore, takes no hold of the native African mind. There are a few Tuaricks scattered amongst all this population, but living generally out of the villages by themselves; they are ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... 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 was also a concubinage ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... that we must not remodel our whole society, and recreate our moral standards, to meet a passing and an artificial state of affairs. That is my answer to those who seem to think the solution of all our difficulties is to be found in the adoption of polygamy. Now polygamy is a perfectly respectable institution in a large number of countries. It is quite an old idea. It has not occurred to people for the first time between last Sunday and to-day. It has ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... Mormon women presented a petition to the government at Washington protesting against any interference with their abominable polygamy and they insist that their cherished system is sustained by ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... they are extremely strict, And Wedlock and a Padlock mean the same; Excepting only when the former 's pick'd It ne'er can be replaced in proper frame; Spoilt, as a pipe of claret is when prick'd: But then their own Polygamy 's to blame; Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life Into that moral ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Arabs, like many other peoples, seem to have set no limit to the number of wives a man might possess. Women were regarded by them as mere chattels, and female infants were frequently put to death. Mohammed recognized polygamy, but limited the number of legitimate wives to four. At the same time Mohammed sought to improve the condition of women by forbidding female infanticide, by restricting the facilities for divorce, and by insisting on kind treatment of wives by their husbands. "The best of you," ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that the persistent attitude of Mohammedans toward slavery and toward polygamy has had a deleterious effect upon ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... 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. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 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 ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... this report that though prior to March, 1885, there had been but 6 convictions in the Territories of Utah and Idaho under the laws of 1862 and 1882, punishing polygamy and unlawful cohabitation as crimes, there have been since that date nearly 600 convictions under these laws and the statutes of 1887; and the opinion is expressed that under such a firm and vigilant execution of these laws and the advance of ideas opposed to the forbidden practices polygamy ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... of that science, by T. Bell, M.D., with twenty-four plates, and printed in London in 1821. It treats of Beauty, of Love, of Sexual Intercourse, of the Laws regulating that Intercourse, of Monogamy and Polygamy, of Prostitution, of Infidelity, ending with a catalogue raisonnee of ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... an argument for or against polygamy. It is a clinical study of how the thing actually occurs among quite ordinary people, innocent of all unconventional views concerning it. The enormous majority of cases in real life are those of people in that position. Those who deliberately and conscientiously profess what are oddly called ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... and a faith which breeds heroes is better than an unbelief which leaves nothing worth being a hero for. Only let us be fair, and not defend the creed of Mohammed because it nurtured brave men and enlightened scholars, or refrain from condemning polygamy in our admiration of the indomitable spirit and perseverance of the Pilgrim Fathers of Mormonism, or justify an inhuman belief, or a cruel or foolish superstition, because it was once held or acquiesced in by men whose ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was off. In that land of polygamy and deportations it is frequent enough that one brother does not know the other by sight; but it must be disconcerting, all the same, to have a supposititious brother sprung on you. He gave a perceptible ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... open to all the cattle of the clansmen. It was in cattle that the wealth of a chief or a rich man lay, and cattle, being the common measure of value, served as currency, as they serve still among the more remote tribes which have not learned to use British coin. Polygamy was practised by all who could afford it, the wife being purchased from her father with cattle, more or fewer according to her rank. This practice, called lobola, still prevails universally, and has caused much perplexity to the missionaries. Its evil effects are obvious, but it is closely ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... great idea of the divinity to 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... line of argument here adopted is no mere false asceticism surviving from an undisciplined and pre-scientific age, as the solemn verbiage of so much second-rate talking expresses it to-day, we may quote some words of David Hume, Huxley's "prince of agnostics," from the Essay on Polygamy and Divorce. The least emotional of philosophers—a hard-headed Scotsman—he makes short work of the sentimentality which is invoked now-a-days against the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... literary recognition will not have to be fought over again: it belongs to the past. The old contempt of editors and publishers, aye, and of readers as well, has gone to join slavery and polygamy and human sacrifices in the chamber of horrors. But we can never forget the woman who braved that contempt, and faced it down by achievement that could not be ignored. Mrs. Croly belonged to the period of that ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... is the crime of having two or more wives, and is also called polygamy. But bigamy literally signifies having two wives, and polygamy any number more than one. These words, in law, are applied also to women having two or more husbands. A person having a lawful husband or wife living, and marrying another person, is guilty of bigamy. An unmarried person, also, who shall marry the husband or wife of another, ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... wives. We think that it would not be very difficult to abolish it among the blacks, who are struck with the pomp of our religious ceremonies: they would be much more inclined to the Catholic religion, if it tolerated polygamy, a habit which will inevitably render all the efforts of the Missionaries abortive, as long as they commence their instruction ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... well, and gives splendid entertainments. He is a most polite gentleman, and is always over here if there is anything going on. The general idea is that he has set his mind on having an English wife, the only difficulty being our objection to polygamy. He has every other advantage, and his wife would have jewels ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... state, at Nauvoo, a group called Mormons, who came here from Missouri, founded their faith upon a new revelation brought to light by two miraculous stones, said to have been discovered by a man named Joseph Smith. They practice polygamy, as in patriarchal times. They are already stirring up opposition to themselves, for where every one is so good and in his own peculiar way, hostility must result. And in this Democracy, so-called, all the really good people are in the business ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... they themselves revered the finger of Heaven." Some of these ancient tribes are said to have been cannibals, and their horrible outrage in serving up to Cyaxares human flesh for game, may be taken to confirm the account Their sensuality was unbridled, so much so that even polygamy was a licence too limited for their depravity. The Huns were worthy sons of such fathers. The Goths, the bravest and noblest of barbarians, recoiled in horror from their physical and mental deformity. Their voices were shrill, their gestures uncouth, and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... despite the laws against it, still practise polygamy, and that they have agents all over the world ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... ne pouvait pas admettre 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 ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... marriage, of female chastity and family honor. Rape and adultery were prohibited under pains and penalties, and behind the sword of the criminal law grew up the moral code. As wealth increased man multiplied his wives and added concubines; but woman was taught that while polygamy was pleasing to the gods polyandry was the reverse—that while the husband was privileged to seek sexual pleasure in a foreign bed, the wife who looked with desiring eyes upon other than her rightful lord merited the scorn of earth and provoked the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... There is only one point in your favor; for as your attentions were not decided, and as the law does not, as yet, permit polygamy—" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was an immemorial custom among the Jews, and their forefathers, the patriarchs, to have sometimes more wives or wives and concubines, than one at the same the and that this polygamy was not directly forbidden in the law of Moses is evident; but that polygamy was ever properly and distinctly permitted in that law of Moses, in the places here cited by Dean Aldrich, Deuteronomy 17:16, 17, or 21:15, or indeed any where else, does not appear to me. And ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... [Marriage.] Polygamy is permitted; but even the most courageous and skilful seldom or never have more than one wife. A young man wishing to marry commissions his father to treat with the father of the bride as to the price; which latterly has greatly ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... were arranged, according to his own 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the hedge into the garden where Mrs. Smith was having tea. In the words of the servant "he looked round at the garden and said, very loud and strong: 'Oh, what a lovely place you've got,' just as if he'd never seen it before." After which the court proceeds to try Smith on a polygamy charge. Documentary evidence shows that Smith has at one time or another married a Miss Green, a Miss Brown, a Miss Black, just as he is now about to marry a Miss Gray, Moon points out that these are all the same lady. Innocent ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... I proved to a demonstration, that such a change would be a mean of annihilating, absolutely annihilating, four or five very atrocious and capital sins.—Rapes, vulgarly so called; adultery, and fornication; nor would polygamy be panted after. Frequently would it prevent murders and duelling; hardly any such thing as jealousy (the cause of shocking violences) would be heard of: and hypocrisy between man and wife be banished the bosoms of each. Nor, probably, would the reproach of barrenness rest, as it now too ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the evils of Mormonism would be nothing strange, but to dedicate a Christian church in Salt Lake City and be silent as to what the teaching and the practice of that church was to be in regard to polygamy would be treason to the Gospel. We therefore made specially prominent at the dedication the broad principles on which our mission rested. Some said they were sorry to hear such things proclaimed; others said nothing, but feared; while ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... physical and social, God placed man on a higher platform for the development of civilization, morals, and religion, and then made the law regulating marriages in the particulars of blood. But he still left polygamy untouched. [Here Dr. Wisner again asked if Dr. R. regarded the Bible as sustaining the polygamy of the Old Testament.] Dr. R.—Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir. Let the reporters mark that question, and my answer. ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... forms this ridiculous accusation enlivens the squibs of the pamphleteers of Queen Anne's reign. In the 'New Atalantis' Mrs. Manley certified that the fair victim was first persuaded by his lordship's sophistries to regard polygamy as accordant with moral law. Having thus poisoned her understanding, he gratified her with a form of marriage, in which his brother Spencer, in clerical disguise, acted the part of a priest. It was even suggested that the bride in this mock marriage was the lawyer's ward. Never squeamish about ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... rise, 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 of a Three Years' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... between them, and gave me much trouble and anxiety for their safety. After Thomas and John arrived to manhood, in addition to the former charge, John got two wives, with whom he lived till the time of his death. Although polygamy was tolerated in our tribe, Thomas considered it a violation of good and wholesome rules in society, and tending directly to destroy that friendly social intercourse and love, that ought to be the happy result of matrimony and chastity. Consequently, he frequently reprimanded ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... Polygamy is, of course, the general custom, the number of a man's wives depending entirely upon his wealth, precisely as would the number of his horses in England. There is no such thing as LOVE in these countries; the ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... a bullet 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, amply compensated for ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... presently shall have occasion to mention, serious thoughts beset me almost without cessation. Even experiences of human nature which were flashed on me at balls and dinners, through that species of mental polygamy of which society essentially consists, helped me to mature projects which I executed under conditions of greater calm elsewhere. In the following chapter I shall speak of country houses, describing the atmosphere and aspect of some of those ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... had to give way. The Amasuka were a polygamous people; all their law and traditions were interwoven with polygamy, and to abolish that institution suddenly and with violence would have brought their social fabric to the ground. Now, as he knew well, the missionary Church declares in effect that no man can be both a Christian and a polygamist; therefore among the followers of that custom the missionary ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... population of Ladakh and Baltistan is Mongoloid, but the Baltis (72,439) have accepted Islam and polygamy, while the Ladakhis have adhered to ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... 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 ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... better 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 made it possible to maintain large households of wives, children, and slaves. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... of the first wife, who shall accordingly receive not only her dowry, but a maneh of silver as well. The payment, in fact, was a penalty on the unfaithfulness of the husband and served as a check upon both divorce and polygamy. ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... 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
... somewhere in 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
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and expositor. Smoot takes his seat in the upper house of Congress with a first purpose of carrying forth, so far as lies within his hands, the plans of the conspirators. What is the purpose of the conspirators? To protect themselves and their fellow Mormons in the criminal practice of polygamy, and prevent their prosecution as bigamists by ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... the strange new developments which occur in the freshly-settled territories of the United States. There, all kinds of social experiments are pushed to the extreme characteristic of American energy. A Salt Lake City and civilised polygamy, and a variety of small communities endeavouring to work out new theories of property and government, attest a frame of mind escaped from the control of tradition, and groping its way to the future. Nothing so extravagant, of course, distinguishes the movement among the agricultural ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... over two months, Carleton started eastward in the late autumn over the Central Pacific railway, writing from Salt Lake City what he saw and knew about Mormonism and the polygamy and concubinage there shamefully prevalent. From the town of Argenti, leaving the iron rails, they enjoyed and suffered seven days and nights of staging until smooth iron was entered upon once more. They passed several ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, "Thus saith the Lord," of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is the head of the church, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... 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) were traversing the island, and winning over crowds of restless and dissatisfied ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... when the Treaty of Westphalia was concluded, Germany was almost a desert. Its population had fallen from twenty millions to four millions. The few remaining people were so starved that cannibalism was openly practised. In the German States polygamy was legalised, and was a recognised ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... priestcraft did begin, Before polygamy was made a sin; When man on many multiplied his kind, Ere one to one was cursedly confined; When nature prompted, and no law denied Promiscuous use of concubine and bride; Then Israel's monarch after Heaven's ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... is, so to speak, rather indicated than described. As nearly the last sentence announces, "Hymen hides the faults of love" wherever it is possible, though it would require a most complicated system of polygamy and cross-unions to enable that amiable divinity to cover them all. There is a villain, but he is a villain of straw, and outside of him there is no ill-nature. There seems to be going to be a touch of "out-of-boundness" ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... what was the matter with him. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else's Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean; and, for Heaven's sake, don't cant about it. It might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 care, and almost with as much pomp, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... that order which they professed. The ease with which this ecclesiastical sanction was obtained, and the vicious disposition of those wretches, open to the practices of fraud and corruption, were productive of polygamy, indigence, conjugal infidelity, prostitution, and every curse that could embitter the married state. A remarkable case of this nature having fallen under the cognizance of the peers, in an appeal from an inferior tribunal, that house ordered the judges to prepare a new bill for preventing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... not know that the American people practise polygamy secretly, while condemning it in words, and that the United States Senate has been nearly two years in pretending to try to find a polygamist in their ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... 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
... was, when religion was a matter of statute People may not be as religious as they once were, but they are certainly more humane. Women are no longer slaves, chattels, with unfeeling husbands. Slavery itself no longer exists in any civilized nation. Polygamy is not practiced to the extent that it was in Biblical days. The world progressed as fear ceased to rule ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves |
