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Nevertheless many animals, which are strictly monogamous, especially birds, display strongly-marked secondary sexual characters; whilst some few animals, which are polygamous, do not have such characters. We will first briefly run through the mammals, and then turn to birds.
I had no company save a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs incurably monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a fondness for living in trios.
Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over and care for the young with extreme solicitude.
A plan that suggests itself is the amelioration of the position of the monogamous husband, now rendered increasingly uncomfortable by the laws of most Christian states. I do not think that the more intelligent sort of women, faced by a perilous shortage of men, would object seriously to that amelioration.
Hence it appears that amongst birds there often exists a close relation between polygamy and the development of strongly-marked sexual differences. I asked Mr. It deserves notice that the instinct of pairing with a single female is easily lost under domestication. The wild-duck is strictly monogamous, the domestic-duck highly polygamous. The Rev.
Of course I knew about those monogamous birds and beasts too, that mate for life and show every sign of mutual affection, without ever having stretched the sex relationship beyond its original range. But what of it? "Those are lower forms of life!" I protested.
Marriage rests upon the fact that you cannot have your cake and eat it; that you cannot lose your heart and have it. But, as I have said, there is perhaps no place in literature where we feel more vividly the sense of this monogamous instinct in man than in David Copperfield. A man is monogamous even if he is only monogamous for a month; love is eternal even if it is only eternal for a month.
The domestic stories of the Patriarchs were not rejected as unprofitable when Israel became deeply impregnated with the monogamous teachings of writers like the author of the last chapter of Proverbs; the character of David was idealised by the spiritual associations of the Psalter, parts of which tradition ascribed to him; the earthly life was etherialised and much of the sacred literature reinterpreted in the light of an added belief in immortality; God, in the early literature a tribal non-moral deity, was in the later literature a righteous ruler who with Amos and Hosea loved and demanded righteousness in man.
My constraint and embarrassment were increased by a certain sense of guilt, a feeling which no one in this vast throng, either man or woman, seemed to share. The place had its own standard of ethics, and they were shocking enough to a man nurtured in a human society founded on the sanctification of monogamous marriage.
Among some tribes freedom is permitted to the women before marriage. Heriot states that the natives who allow this justify the custom, and say “that a young woman is mistress of her own person, and a free agent.” The tie of marriage is, however, observed more strictly than among many civilised monogamous races.
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