This piece is not an argument for or against polygamy. It is a clinical
study of how the thing actually occurs among quite ordinary people,
innocent of all unconventional views concerning it. The enormous
majority of cases in real life are those of people in that position.
Those who deliberately and conscientiously profess what are oddly
called advanced views by those others who believe them to be
retrograde, are often, and indeed mostly, the last people in the world
to engage in unconventional adventures of any kind, not only because
they have neither time nor disposition for them, but because the
friction set up between the individual and the community by the
expression of unusual views of any sort is quite enough hindrance to
the heretic without being complicated by personal scandals. Thus the
theoretic libertine is usually a person of blameless family life,
whilst the practical libertine is mercilessly severe on all other
libertines, and excessively conventional in professions of social
principle.
What is more, these professions are not hypocritical: they are for the
most part quite sincere. The common libertine, like the drunkard,
succumbs to a temptation which he does not defend, and against which he
warns others with an earnestness proportionate to the intensity of his
own remorse. He (or she) may be a liar and a humbug, pretending to be
better than the detected libertines, and clamoring for their condign
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.