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, on the strength of it. On the other
hand, the innocent and conventional people who regard the gallant
adventures as crimes of so horrible a nature that only the most
depraved and desperate characters engage in them or would listen to
advances in that direction without raising an alarm with the noisiest
indignation, are clearly examples of the fact that most sections of
society do not know how the other sections live. Industry is the most
effective check on gallantry. Women may, as Napoleon said, be the
occupation of the idle man just as men are the preoccupation of the
idle woman; but the mass of mankind is too busy and too poor for the
long and expensive sieges which the professed libertine lays to virtue.
Still, wherever there is idleness or even a reasonable supply of
elegant leisure there is a good deal of coquetry and philandering. It
is so much pleasanter to dance on the edge of a precipice than to go
over it that leisured society is full of people who spend a great part
of their lives in flirtation, and conceal nothing but the humiliating
secret that they have never gone any further. For there is no pleasing
people in the matter of reputation in this department: every insult is
a flattery; e