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He will make one family out of all the families of the state. He

will select the finest specimens of men and women and breed from

these only.

Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part

of human nature will from time to time assert itself in the

disguise of philosophy as well as of poetry), and also because

any departure from established morality, even where this is not

intended, is apt to be unsettling, it may be worth while to draw

out a little more at length the objections to the Platonic

marriage. In the first place, history shows that wherever

polygamy has been largely allowed the race has deteriorated. One

man to one woman is the law of God and nature. Nearly all the

civilized peoples of the world at some period before the age of

written records, have become monogamists; and the step when once

taken has never been retraced. The exceptions occurring among

Brahmins or Mahometans or the ancient Persians, are of that sort

which may be said to prove the rule.