Author's Preface

THE ALLEVIATIONS OF MONOGAMY.

This piece is not 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 advanced views by
those others who believe them to be retrograde, are often, and
indeed mostly, the last people in the world to engage in
unconventional adventures of any kind, not only because they have
neither time nor disposition for them, but because the friction
set up between the individual and the community by the expression
of unusual views of any sort is quite enough hindrance to the
heretic without being complicated by personal scandals. Thus the
theoretic libertine is usually a person of blameless family life,
whilst the practical libertine is mercilessly severe on all other
libertines, and excessively conventional in professions of social
principle.

What is more, these professions are not hypocritical: they are
for the most part quite sincere. The common libertine, like the
drunkard, succumbs to a temptation which he does not defend, and
against which he warns others with an earnestness proportionate
to the intensity of his own remorse. He (or she) may be a liar
and a humbug, pretending to be better than the detected
libertines, and clamoring for their condign punishment; but this
is mere self-defence. No reasonable person expects the burglar to
confess his pursuits, or to refrain from joining in the cry of
Stop Thief when the police get on the track of another burglar.
If society chooses to penalize candor, it has itself to thank if
its attack is countered by falsehood. The clamorous virtue of the
libertine is therefore no more hypocritical than the plea of Not
Guilty which is allowed to every criminal. But one result is that
the theorists who write most sincerely and favorably about
polygamy know least about it; and the practitioners who know most
about it keep their knowledge very jealously to themselves. Which
is hardly fair to the practice.

INACCESSIBILITY OF THE FACTS.

Also it is impossible to estimate its prevalence. A practice to
which nobody confesses may be both universal and unsuspected,
just as a virtue which everybody is expected, under heavy
penalties, to claim, may have no existence. It is often assumed--
indeed it is the official assumption of the Churches and the
divorce courts that a gentleman and a lady cannot be alone
together innocently. And that is manifest blazing nonsense,
though many women have been stoned to death in the east, and
divorced in the west,