More general and binding, even, than the economic obligations that marriage entails are the personal claims that it creates. In so far as these claims are psychological--those of affection and habit, or attachment to children--their regulation and abrogation will always afford a problem which must be solved by the two persons concerned. There is at present a strong tendency to equalize the incidence of the laws whereby the State defines these relations and imposes them on married people. The old assumption of feminine inferiority in sexual rights is gradually yielding to a single standard for both sexes. So, also, the requirement that the wife shall in all matters subordinate her will and judgment to the will and judgment of her husband, tends to be modified by the new view of woman as a free agent rather than a mere adjunct to man. Qualifications for marriage and grounds for divorce tend to become the same for both sexes as the State is forced to relinquish its right to regard as offences in one sex actions which it does not recognize as offences in the other. It would appear, indeed, that the time is not far distant when the marriage-law, however humiliating its provisions may be, will bear equally on men and women. But mere equalization of the law’s incidence leaves untouched the previous question whether any third person--and the State assumes the rôle of a third person--has a legitimate right to define and regulate the personal relations of adult and presumably mature people. So long as the basic assumption goes unchallenged that the State may grant to man and woman lifelong monopoly-rights in one another, or monopoly-rights which shall endure, despite the inclination of the persons concerned, during the State’s pleasure, so long will complaints of harsh or unjust marriage or divorce laws prove the truth of Mill’s dictum that “no enslaved class ever asked for complete liberty at once ... those who are under any power of ancient origin, never begin by complaining of the power itself, but only of its oppressive exercise.” Marriage under conditions arbitrarily fixed by an external agency is slavery; and if we allow the right of an external agency--be it State, family, or community--to place marriage in so degrading a position, we necessarily deny the freedom of the individual in this most intimate of relationships, and put ourselves in the position of petitioners for privilege when we sue for an improvement in the rules to which we have subjected ourselves.