In several ways future development may be expected to contribute to the solution of our present perplexity concerning sexual conditions, and to the growing stability of the monogamic union. With advancing civilization there seems to go pari passu a diminishing intensity of the sexual passion. A comparison of its uncontrollable power in the lower races with its partial amenability to reason characterizing the higher, justifies this statement and the hope that with further progress will come a still greater weakening of this instinct, possibly down to the limit necessary for race preservation, which ought to be compatible with very low grades of sexuality.
Another important concomitant of civilization is the steadily
growing power of self control, which also becomes apparent on contrasting the impulsive
nature of the savage with the comparatively self contained nature of the modern cultured
man. Continued evolution may be trusted to produce a type of humanity exhibiting far
greater subordination of the lower instincts to the higher faculties than is vouchsafed to us
at present.
The cooperation of these two factors, diminishing sexual passion and increasing
inhibition of the lower centers by the higher, must play a strong part in determining conduct
in the future. The Song of the Sirens will lose much of its fascination, and bands of steel will
hold Ulysses secured to the mast. The outcome of the conflict between duty and desire will
be decided without long and anxious vacillations.
Here, too, we may fitly mention and condemn the artificial excitation of sexual activity
so noticeable everywhere, and so often resorted to from motives of commercial greed. The
immodest fashions in the dress of women, the lascivious exhibitions on the stage, the obscene
art, the pornographic literature, the indulgence in alcohol and in narcotics all are
calculated to arouse prematurely and stimulate continually an instinct sufficiently assertive
by nature, and in need of restraint rather than encouragement. It may not be leaning too far
on the side of optimism to predict that in the future a more rational mode of living will allow
the procreative function to assume a lower habitual level of activity, and will eliminate many
of its undesirable manifestations.
In conclusion, the reader's attention is invited to dwell upon the moulding of sentiments
in conformity with institutions exhibited by societies in all stages of development. Any
particular social arrangement invariably generates in the course of time a body of harmonious
feelings, which make it seem appropriate and rational. Nations practising a form of marriage
widely different from our own, show the same fervor in its defence, and the same intolerance
towards other forms. The polygamous peoples of the East express amazement and loathing
at the one wife system, and sometimes indignantly refuse to believe in its existence.
It is simply impossible, said an Arab sheik to a traveler, that in England a man can be contented
with one wife. In Africa, we are told by Reade, a wife insists that her husband marry again,
and calls him a stingy fellow if he refuses. Livingstone relates that negro women were shocked
on hearing that in Europe a man has only one wife, and said it was not respectable. It is even
hardly necessary to go so far for examples, when in our own midst there exists a polygamous
community, whose women do not feel any repugnance towards the system of plural wives,
"On the contrary", says a recent writer, "I failed to find a single Mormon woman who did not
strongly uphold polygamy and proclaim her regret at its discontinuance. One instance of this
may serve as an example: two young girls who had been bosom friends from infancy, had
planned as their life ideal that they should marry the same man".