Schlegel says[99]—
“I have laid it down as an invariable maxim to follow historical tradition, and to hold fast by that clue, even when many things in the testimony and declarations of tradition appear strange and almost inexplicable; or, at least, enigmatical; for so soon as, in the investigations of ancient history, we let slip that thread of Ariadne, we can find no outlet from the labyrinth of fanciful theories and the chaos of clashing opinion.”
I propose to give a few instances of tradition, casually selected, which appear to me to be in illustration of this dictum of Schlegel’s.
Take, in illustration, the question whether mankind commenced with the state of monogamy. Not that there is any obscurity on this point in the Book of Genesis. It is indeed sometimes loosely said that we find instances of polygamy in patriarchal times; but, as our Lord said, it was not so in the beginning; and the Book of Genesis exhibits mankind as commencing with a single pair, and subsequently as re-propagated through a group of families, all represented to us at their commencement as monogamous. But if this highest testimony is discarded, and men gravely discuss whether or not they commenced with a state of promiscuity, the argument from tradition will go for as much as the argument from the analogy of circumstances and conditions as inferred from the existing state of savages, since this state, from our point of view, must have been the result of degeneracy.[100]
I must, moreover, contend that the practice of monogamy, in any one case, must weigh for very much more than the practice of polygamy in ten parallel instances; because the natural degeneracy and proclivity of man in his fallen state is in this direction.
And also, polygamy is much more naturally regarded as the departure from monogamy, than the latter as the restraint of, or advance out of, a state of promiscuity.
It may further, I think, be maintained that monogamy—in the way of separation with a single woman by reason of strong love or preference—would be the more probable escape from the state of promiscuity than through the intermediary and progressive stage of polygamy.[101]
Now, I need scarcely say, that the opponents of monogamy can show no instance of an advance out of the state of promiscuity either to monogamy or polygamy. But they can point to certain communities in ancient and modern times in a state of polygamy.
Either, then, they must have degenerated into this state from the primitive monogamous family system, or they must have arrived at the stage in growth and progress out of a state of promiscuity.
Does tradition give any clue out of this labyrinth? To simplify the question, I will consent to appeal to the identical tradition to which the advocates of an original promiscuity direct our attention.