How the religious sanction came about we can readily
see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice
of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The
polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain
conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this took
place polygyny became firmly established as a social institution, very
difficult to uproot, as all the experience of Christian missionaries
among peoples practicing polygyny goes to show. We may note also the
general truth, that while religion does not originate human institutions
or the forms of human association, it is preeminently that which gives
fixity and stability to institutions through the supernatural sanction
that it accords them.
Some judgment of the social value of polygyny may not be out of place in
connection with this subject. Admitting, as all students of social
history must, that in certain times and places the polygynous form of
family has been advantageous, has served the interests of social
survival and even of civilization, yet viewed from the standpoint of
present society it seems that our judgment of polygyny must be wholly
unfavorable.
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