well-known American poets and in the forefront of the New Poetry
movement.


The extent of this correction of a salient evil of monogamy is very
considerable; its operations explain the private disrepute of perhaps
a majority of first-rate men; its advantages have been set forth in
George Moore's "Euphorion in Texas," though in a clumsy and
sentimental way. What is behind it is the profound race sense of
women--the instinct which makes them regard the unborn in their
every act--perhaps, too, the fact that the interests of the unborn are
here identical, as in other situations, with their own egoistic
aspirations. As a popular philosopher has shrewdly observed, the
objections to polygamy do not come from women, for the average
woman is sensible enough to prefer half or a quarter or even a tenth
of a first--rate man to the whole devotion of a third--rate man.
Considerations of much the same sort also justify polyandry--if not
morally, then at least biologically. The average woman, as I have
shown, must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain
disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot
help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact
that he is their father, nor can she help feeling guilty about it; for she
knows that he is their father only by reason of her own initiative in
the, proceedings anterior to her marriage. If, now, an opportunity
presents itself to remove that handicap from at least some of them,
and at the same time to realize her ideal and satisfy her vanity--if
such a chance offers it is no wonder that she occasionally embraces
it.