When custom partly but not entirely tolerates cohabitation, we find the two ideas predominating in different people. Marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is, for those who are favourable to it, the desire for affectionate companionship or for motherly tenderness towards children already existing; for those who are unfavourable it is a lust of the flesh. In like manner there are two estimates of the conduct of a divorced woman who marries again during her first husband’s lifetime. [Sidenote: Illegitimate Unions.] [Sidenote: Cohabitation in large Towns.] [Sidenote: Customs of the Lower Classes.] We may now approach the subject of illegitimate unions. In societies where they are tolerated the idea of companionship prevails; in societies where they are not tolerated the physical aspect of the union immediately suggests itself. In the large towns both of England and France it is not rare amongst the lower classes for men and women to live together without formal marriage. With reference to these cases the complaint of moralists is that the people have no proper sense of the necessity of marriage, they have not the proper consciousness that they are doing wrong. The reason is that these unions are permitted by the customs of the lower classes, and are scarcely blamed when the man remains faithful to the woman and treats her well; therefore the physical relation is as much ignored as it is in formal marriage, and companionship alone is thought of. [Sidenote: Illicit Unions in the Artistic and Intellectual Classes.] The same great power of custom, in casting a veil over the grosser side of the sexual relation, is seen in higher classes whenever illicit unions are tolerated by public opinion, and they often are so in the artistic and intellectual classes of great capitals when it is evident that the union is one of genuine companionship, and when it is of a lasting character, and both parties remain at least apparently faithful to it. Here is an expression of this toleration by M. Alfred Asseline, true for Paris, but not true for the provinces. I give it in the original, because the exact shades of expression could not easily be reproduced in a translation. [Sidenote: Quotation from M. Alfred Asseline.] “Dans l’état où sont nos mœurs, il est admis que les hommes supérieurs ont le privilège d’imposer à ce qu’on appelle le monde, à la société dont ils sont le charme et l’honneur, une amie,--l’amie,--la femme qu’il leur a plu de choisir comme le témoin voilé de leurs travaux, celle qui, légitime ou non, se tient dans l’ombre, confidente discrète du génie, au moment ou ses rayons s’allument. “Ce n’est pas la vulgaire Égérie, c’est la Muse, c’est l’âme même du poète qu’il nous est permis, dans les épanchements de l’amitié, de voir, d’admirer, de respecter.” [Sidenote: Careful Exclusion of Impure Ideas.]