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This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

You are correct. There are probably a thousand reasons why even barbarian societies like the Norse chose monogamy as the norm rather than pologyny (multiple wives). I think it had to do with giving every man a sense of rough equality with every other man, with preventing the spread of veneral disease, with social tranquility, and with limiting incest. I think we cast off traditional marriage to our own peril. It seems to me one could almost advance a "Boolean" argument in favor of one man/one wife marriage also, monogamy tends toward a long-term social "plus" wereas polygyny tends toward the "negative" in how it effects society.
Somewhere in the distant past, these European peoples came to the conclusion that polygyny could not be reconciled with the social contract of a free people. It is interesting to note that it is these societies that most influenced and gave us our concepts of liberty. There is some Semitic influence through the Bible. However, by the time of the New Testament, the Jews were almost universally monogamous, and the Lord Jesus Himself put His own imprimatuer on the institution.