But they maintain that this need not always be effected by means of continued cohabitation. On the other hand, this may often be necessary, and in such cases they subordinate their personal claims of happiness to those of the race. One who holds these opinions regards him who gives the same answer in every case—whether this answer be “freedom at any price” or “renunciation at any price”—simply as a moral automaton. It is true that modern men and women are less able to bear unhappiness in marriage than were those of former times. This shows that connubial idealism makes greater demands than formerly. The conscious will to live, of our time, revolts against the meaningless sufferings through which the people of bygone days, above all the women, allowed themselves to be degraded, benumbed, and embittered. A finer knowledge of self, a stronger consciousness of personality, now puts a limit to one’s own suffering, since the danger is understood of taking hurt in one’s soul. This determination of individualism makes it impossible for the modern woman to be fired by the ideal of Griselda—if for no other reason, because she feels how all-suffering meekness increases injustice. The “good old” marriages, sustained by the willing sacrifice of wives, are disappearing—that is happily true! But no one takes notice of the new good ones that are coming in their place. If those who now grudgingly reckon up divorces would also count all happy marriages, it would be seen that new formation has proceeded further than dissolution. It must be evident that the question of divorce is the pursuance of the line of development of Protestantism. With the formation of a right and a left party, as usual in the treatment of a problem of culture, the Reformation succeeded only in asserting the right of the senses in human life. That it is the right of the soul in sexual life that is now most intimately affected by the question, people will not understand. Against the right of the individual they set up that of the child. If there is none, then a certain number of Christians are willing to admit that divorce is sometimes justified. Unhappy parents, on the other hand, must remain together for the sake of the children. But the erotically noble person of the present day cannot, without the deepest sense of humiliation, belong to one he does not love, or by whom he knows he is not loved. Thus for one or both of the parties a marriage that is persisted in without the love of one or both causes profound suffering either through this humiliation or through lifelong celibacy.