B992 <=> B994 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 993)

“’Here one can now distinguish the woman-mother from the woman-female only if one sees all her manifestations with one’s own eyes.

“’In the European conditions of family life, owing to the absence of the beneficent institution of polygamy – an institution which in my opinion should long ago have been introduced here if only for the simple reason that, as statistics show, the women here far outnumber the men – there are thousands of other discomforts and improprieties which need not exist at all.

“’And so, respected Doctor, the fundamental cause of my second vice was that being born and brought up in traditions of morality entirely opposed to those here, I came here at an age when the animal passions in a man are especially strong. The ensuing evils for me personally arose chiefly from the fact that I came here while still very young, and, according to the notions here, handsome; and owing to my genuine southern type, a great many women here for whom I represented a new and original type of male, began a regular hunt after me.

“’They hunted me like “big game.”

“’And I was big game for them not only on account of my specific type, a genuine southerner, but also on account of my gentleness and courtesy towards women, properties which had been instilled in me from my earliest childhood in my associations with our Persian women-mothers.

“’When I came here and began meeting the women here, I was, of course, even unconsciously on my part, gentle and courteous towards them also.

“’And so, meeting with the women here and at first only talking with them – chiefly on the subject of contemporary civilization and of the backwardness as it were of our Persia in comparison – I then, of course under the influence of alcohol which I was then already consuming in rather large quantities, fell for the first time, that is to say, I, as a prospective father of a family, behaved vilely.