The Spirit Of Democracy Author:Lyman Abbott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE PAGAN IDEAL OF THE FAMILY Mr. Zangwill has characterized America as a "Melting-Pot." Not merely various races, nationalities, and religious... more » sects are thrown into this melting-pot, but, no less, conflicting ideas and ideals. All creeds, traditions, theories, institutions, are brought into the laboratory by democracy to be analyzed. In this process, the more radical and revolutionary the reformer, the more sure he is of a hearing. Curiosity is agog, and the more novel the hypothesis, the more eager we are to know what it is. The experience of the past counts for little, partly because the modern reformer is often ignorant of the past, partly because in his eager and impatient haste for change he regards the convictions of his ancestors as valuable only because they show him what to avoid. The family is the oldest and the most sacred, as it is the most fundamental, of all social organisms, but the family is not exempt from this process of reinvestigation. There is no possible question about the family that is not aske, no possible change in the family that is not proposed. Ought the family to be one husband and onewife, or one husband and several wives? Polygamy is no longer a relic of ancient times. It has reappeared on American soil in an ecclesiastical organization which absolutely dominates politically one State and holds the balance of power in at least one other State. Philosophers have sometimes excused polygamy as an economic necessity in the earlier stages of society. Jesus explained its permitted existence in the Hebraic Commonwealth as a concession to human passion. But Mormonism has glorified polygamy as a divine institution, has urged it upon women as a condition of future canonization, if not of future salvation. Whether the canonization or t...« less