You will nevertheless admit, I hope, that we ought to discard a few of these absurd expressions. That we know how to make love is not much to boast about, after all. The only important point for us as philosophers is to know whether our ideal is really the higher ideal—whether our treatment of woman is really more worthy both of her and of ourselves than the pagan treatment which prevails among the Eastern nations? Here at once crops up the elementary dispute between the votaries of polygamy and monogamy. Both these institutions are based upon divine and human laws, both are written down and defined in moral codes, and in sacred books. One takes its origin in the Bible, and remains faithful to its traditions; the other has developed at some period, from the simple conventions of a new social order. We must not conclude that we alone possess the knowledge of absolute truth, merely because our conceit postulates for us the superiority of our time-honoured civilisation. All wisdom proceeds from God alone, and truth is for us only relative to place, time, and habit. Was not Jacob, when he married at the same time Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, nearer than we are now to the primitive sentiment of the laws of nature and of revelation? Do you presume to blame him, insignificant being that you are, because yielding to the supplication of his beloved Rachel he espoused—somewhat superfluously it may be—her handmaid Bala, with the simple object of having a son by her? In presence of this idyl of the patriarchal age, what becomes of all our theories, our ideas, and our prejudices, the fruits after all of a hollow and worthless education?

You will not, I trust, do me the wrong of believing that I, wavering in my faith, intend forthwith to abandon the principles in which I was brought up. But a subject so serious as the one I have been devoting myself to, demands the most frank and honest examination. I will not deliver a judgment; I will merely state the facts. Now it is an established fact that the people who permit by their laws a plurality of wives are, even at the present time, far more numerous than the monogamists. Statistics prove that out of the thousand million inhabitants of this globe, Christianity with all its sects, and Judaism thrown in, does not number more than two hundred and sixty millions according to Balbi, or two hundred and forty millions according to the London Bible Society.

Since the remainder, consisting of Mahometans, Buddhists, Fire-worshippers, and Idolaters, all practise polygamy more or less, it follows that on this globe of ours, the monogamists constitute one-fourth only of the whole population. Such is the naked, unadorned truth!

Are we wrong? Are they right? It is not my business to decide this point. Philosophers and theologians far more patient than I am, have given it up as a bad job. Voltaire, with his subtle genius, settled the question in his own characteristic fashion, by supposing that an imaginary God had from the beginning decreed an inequality in this matter, regulated by geographical situation, in these words:—

"I shall draw a line from Mount Caucasus to Egypt, and from Egypt to Mount Atlas; all men dwelling to the east of this line shall be permitted to marry several wives, while those to the west of it shall have one only."

And, as a matter of fact, it is so.

But having disposed of this important point, there remains a loftier question for us to elucidate—one consisting entirely of sentiment. The treatment of woman being our only objective, our present business is to decide on which side of the line its character is the most respectful, the most worthy and the most flattering towards her. Certainly our doctrine is purer, our law more divine. Nevertheless, as sincere judges, we ought, perhaps, to examine and see whether we do not transgress against our absolute principles. And I must confess that I cannot now approach this delicate question without some misgiving. In the judgment of every tribunal, the case of polygamy is a hopelessly bad one. That I am ready to admit; but might it not be urged against the other side that in practice the court knows very well that the law is not observed? What judge can be found, however austere, who has never offended against it? To sum the matter up briefly (whispering low our confessions, if you like), what man is there among us—I am not talking of Don Juans, who catalogue their amours, nor of Lovelaces, but of ordinary men of say thirty years old—who can remember how many mistresses he has had? What, is this the monogamy we have been making such a flourish about?

Perhaps you will say that we need not see in these irregularities anything more than a sort of licensed depravity, tolerated for the sake of maintaining a virtuous ideal. But consider the fatal consequences of this hypocrisy. What becomes of our aspirations of the age of twenty, of our dreams and poetic fancies, after we have plunged into these wretched connections, these degrading, promiscuous attachments which form the current of our present habits, and from which we emerge at the age of thirty, sceptics, and with hearts and souls tarnished? What do we reap from these frenzies of unhealthy passion, but contempt for woman, and disbelief in anything virtuous?

For the Turk there is no such thing as illegitimate love, and woman is the object of absolute respect. Never having more than one master, she cannot fall in his esteem. Having been bought as a slave, she becomes a wife directly she sets foot in the harem; her rights are sacred, and she cannot any more be abandoned. The laws protect her; she has a recognised position, a title; her children are legitimate, and if by chance—

I suspend this philosophical digression, in order to inform you of a momentous occurrence. El-Nouzha has just been the scene of a sanguinary drama. A rebellion has broken out among my sultanas.