The second marriage attempted
is not only _illicit_, but _invalid_: it is no contract, no marriage
at all, and all cohabitation with the second partner is sheer
adultery. This is a great deal more than saying that polyandry and
polygamy are unlawful.
2. That is by nature no marriage, which is inconsistent with the
natural ends of marriage, _offspring_ and _mutual faith_. But
polyandry is thus inconsistent with the good of offspring, and
polygamy with mutual faith. It is not meant that polyandry makes the
birth of children impossible. But nature is solicitous, not for the
mere birth, but for the rearing and good estate of the child born. Now
a child born fatherless is in an ill plight for its future education.
Posthumous children in lawful wedlock are born fatherless: that is a
calamity: but what shall we think of an institution which makes that
calamity to the child sure always to occur? Such an institution is
polyandry. For in it no man can ever know his own child, except by
likeness, and likeness in a baby face is largely as you choose to
fancy it. Again, is the polyandrous wife to be, or not to be, the head
of the family? If not, the family--for it ought to be one family,
where there is one mother--will have as many heads as she has
husbands, a pretty specimen of a house divided against itself.
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