History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

382 MORMONISM AND POLYGAMY.
attained to such distinction as in Greece, divorce was
so easy and frequent as to render the marriage ceremony
almost a nullity. There were periods when the
term 'adultery' had no significance as applied to men;
only women were punished for this crime. Persons
five, ten, twenty times married and divorced were not
uncommon. Though monogamy obtained, female life
was lower there than in England under the restoration,
or in France under the regency. Alexander Severus,
the most persistent of all the Roman emperors,
in vainly legislating against vice, provided his provincial
governors, if unmarried, with a concubine as well
as with horses and servants.
The privilege of royalty in having many mistresses,
tolerated until all the people arose and usurped roy-
alty, was but a modified form of polygamy, and is still
secretly practised by individuals.
The question of sensualism has nothing to do with
it. The polygamist, as a rule, is no more sensual
than the monogamist. Your true sensualist does not
marry at all. He holds himself free to taste pleasure
as he can find it. The trammels of matrimony and
the responsibilities of parentage he alike avoids. He
is the most selfish of beings; for his own gratification
he is willing to sacrifice society, debase manhood,
and doom to perdition the highest inspirations and
holiest affections of the race.
Beastliness is hardly a fit word to apply to the
exercise of an animal impulse, the gratification of
animal appetite. It too often maligns the brute creation.
Eating and sleeping are in one sense beastly
while smoking and dram-drinking are worse than
beastly. Beasts are natural in all things. In many
respects they are less open to the charge of beastliness,
as we commonly employ the term, than men
they indulge less in excess; they are sometimes gluttonish,
but they do not intoxicate themselves ; if they
do not regulate intercourse by numbers, they do by
seasons. Their passions are in subordination to the
;