ABSTRACT
The plurality of unions or polygamy—whether potential, through the faculty of repudiation, as among the Jews, or actual, through cohabitation, as among the Turks—can be tolerated for families in that purely domestic state of society which precedes any public establishment and is called the patriarchal state. In this original or nearly original state of society, since population is a necessity, sterility is a curse; it is even a disgrace, and whatever may alter the union is a crime. The husband dismisses his wife for sterility, and even for not being found pleasing, propter foeditatem. This is the law of the Jews,–a law clearly directed wholly toward the multiplication of the people, a law which is consequently appropriate to the infancy of a nation; and what demonstrates this is that still today, among savages, as formerly among the Jews.
