Then, by a common trick of thought, the conclusion was drawn that the mighty development of culture which had taken place under monogamy would have been impossible if this had not been the sole legitimate form of sexual relationship. And thus it was established as the indispensable condition of all higher culture! The import of the moral controversies which now arise with increasing frequency is _the examination of the relatively higher value for real sexual morality of marriage or love_. So long as man believed that he had been created perfect, had then fallen and continued in everlasting strife between the spirit and the flesh, no doubt could arise of the absolute value of the Christian ideal of morality. Even those who strove hardest to attain this ideal, even those vanquished in the strife, confessed themselves sinners in so far as the flesh triumphed over the spirit. It was evolutionism that first gave man courage to wonder whether he may not also be “sinning” when the spirit triumphs over the flesh; to ask himself whether perchance marriage did not exist for mankind, and not mankind for marriage; to assert the right of the present time to more universal experience with regard to the sexual customs most favourable to the development of the race. For “the idea of marriage” is to them nothing else than to further this development. But universal experience cannot be won so long as religion and law prescribe a single custom as certainly the right custom and all others are thus condemned and obstructed—as soon as they show themselves with serious frankness—while secret trespass against the monogamous ideal is countenanced. It cannot be denied that the sanctioning of this ideal has incited many to try to realise it; indeed, hypocrisy itself is an indirect tribute to its worth. But its fixity has now become a danger to continued evolution. On the question of marriage, as in all other respects, Lutheranism is a compromise, a bridge between two logical views of the universe: the Catholic-Christian and the Individualistic Monist. And bridges are made to go over, not to stand upon. None of our “immoral” authors has insisted more strongly than Luther and Olaus Petri on the power of the sexual life. Both regard modesty without marriage as unthinkable. Both see in marriage the means given by God to satisfy desire, just as food is the means given by God to satisfy hunger. But man has as little right to satisfy the former by unchastity as he has to still the latter by theft. There would be nothing to object to in this if unchastity had not been made synonymous with every form of sexual relation outside matrimony, while chastity became equivalent to every form of marriage.