This is the kernel of the question, which is avoided by all who, in their care for the children, forget that the parents must nevertheless be considered as an end in themselves. It is not asked that for the sake of the children they should commit other crimes; thus a woman who committed forgery to support her child would be disapproved of. But other women are judged leniently who “for the sake of their children” feel themselves prostituted year after year in their marriage. That married people are to be found who continue to live as friends, since the erotic needs of both are small; that others do not feel the humiliation of cohabitation without love; that the former as well as the latter are probably acting best for the children in keeping together a home for them—this does not prevent others under similar circumstances from suffering in such a way that life loses all its value. And these are they who end either in adultery or divorce. Even if an enemy of divorce admits these difficulties, he replies, that the individual must still suffer for his erotic as for his other mistakes, since only so can people be taught not to commit mistakes. But the true state of the case may be, that just as in old times murders increased in proportion to the number of executions people witnessed, so unhappy marriages may become more frequent, the more there are at present; for it is, above all, the whole spirit that prevails around us which determines our action. If the young are accustomed to see their elders content with false and ugly relations, they will learn to be so likewise. If they see around them an aspiration towards ideal conditions in love—an idealism which is revealed now in a beautiful married life, now in the dissolution of one that is not beautiful—then their ideals will also be lofty. Those again, who have once made a mistake, will perhaps be more clear-sighted if they choose again. But neither those who make mistakes nor those who witness them can be saved by the misfortunes of others from that great source of error, erotic illusion. And until erotic sympathy has become more refined, these mistakes are the most innocent of all. Every lover believes himself to be exempted from the sacrifice of illusion and no experience of the irretrievable erotic mistakes of others has ever opened the eyes of one blinded by love. As it is recognised that society ought to make the lives of all as valuable as possible, this involves the claim that innocent mistakes should cause as little ruin as need be. In marriage as in other fields, the modern principle must be put in force, that punishment should improve the faulty and prepare the way for a higher idea of justice. But this higher idea is that marriage should be contracted under gradually improving conditions, not that it should continue under gradually deteriorating influences.