to want and misery, and but too often
to ridicule also. But few know what the discrepancy in numbers between
the two sexes is due to; many are ready with the hasty answer: "There
are too many girls born." Those who make the claim are wrongly
informed, as will be shown. Others, again, who admit the unnaturalness
of celibacy, conclude from the fact that women are more numerous than
men in most countries of civilization, that polygamy should be allowed.
But not only does polygamy do violence to our customs, it, moreover,
degrades woman, a circumstance that, of course, does not restrain
Schopenhauer, with his underestimation of and contempt for women, from
declaring: "For the female sex, as a whole, polygamy is a benefit."

Many men do not marry because they think they cannot support a wife, and
the children that may come, according to their station. To support _two_
wives is, however, possible to a small minority only, and among these
are many who now have two or more wives,--one legitimate and several
illegitimate. These few, privileged by wealth, are not held back by
anything from doing what they please. Even in the Orient, where polygamy
exists for thousands of years by law and custom, comparatively few men
have more than one wife. People talk of the demoralizing influence of
Turkish harem life; but the fact is overlooked that this harem life is
possible only to an insignificant fraction of the men, and then only in
the ruling class, while the majority of the men live in monogamy. In the
city of Algiers, there were, at the close of the sixties, out of 18,282
marriages, not less than 17,319 with one wife only; 888 were with two;
and only 75 with more than two. Constantinople, the capital of the
Turkish Empire, would show no materially different result. Among the
country population in the Orient, the proportion is still more
pronouncedly in favor of single marriages. In the Orient, exactly as
with us, the most important factor in the calculation are the material
conditions, and these compel most men to limit themselves to but one
wife. If, on the other hand, material conditions were equally favorable
to all men, polygamy would still not be practicable,--for want of women.
_The almost equal number of the two sexes, prevalent under normal
conditions, points everywhere to monogamy._

As proof of these statements, we cite the following tables, that Buecher
published in an essay.[92]

In these tables the distinction must be