for the married persons themselves or for the children, under such conditions. On the other hand, the condonation of a single offence would generally be better for all concerned than an application for divorce. The line cannot be drawn at which, with a view to the higher ends which marriage should serve, divorce becomes desirable. It is therefore best that the state, while uniformly allowing the right of divorce where the marriage-bond has been broken by adultery (since otherwise the right of everyone to form a true marriage, a marriage which shall be the basis of family life, is neutralised,) and taking care that procedure for divorce be cheap and easy, should leave the enforcement of the right to the discretion of individuals. 244. On similar grounds, it is undesirable that adultery as such should be treated as a crime, that penal terror should be associated with it. Though rights, in the strict sense, undoubtedly arise out of marriage, though marriage has thus its strictly legal aspect, it is undesirable that this legal aspect should become prominent. It may suffer in respect of its higher moral purposes, if the element of force appears too strongly in the maintenance of the rights to which it gives rise. If a husband who would otherwise be false to the marriage-bond is kept outwardly faithful to it by fear of the punishment which might attend its breach, the right of the wife and children is indeed so far protected, but is anything gained for those moral ends, for the sake of which the maintenance of these rights is alone of value? The man in whom disloyal passion is neutralised by fear of punishment will contribute little in his family life to the moral development of himself, his wife, or his children. If he cannot be kept true by family affection and sympathy with the social disapprobation attaching to matrimonial infidelity (and unless it is a matter of social disapprobation no penalties will be effectually enforced against it), he will not be kept true in a way that is of any value to those concerned by fear of penalties. In other words, the rights that arise out of marriage are not of a kind which can in their essence be protected by associating penal terror with their violation, as the rights of life and property can be. They are not rights to claim mere forbearances or to claim the performance of certain outward actions, by which a right is satisfied irrespectively of the disposition with which the act is done. They are claims which cannot be met without a certain disposition on the part of the person upon whom the claim rests, and that disposition cannot be enforced. The attempt to enforce the outward behaviour in order to satisfy the claim, which is a claim not to the outward behaviour merely but to this in connection with a certain disposition, defeats its own end.