In former times, people mended and patched things up endlessly. The psychologically developed generation of the present day is more disposed to allow what is broken to remain broken. For, except in the cases where the cause of rupture has been outward misunderstanding or belated development, patched-up marriages—like patched-up engagements—seldom prove lasting. It has often been profound instincts that caused the rupture; the reconciliation violated these instincts and sooner or later such violation revenges itself. Thus, it happens, that even exceptional natures have a greater burden than they can bear, and then it is not the living together but the dying together of their parents that the children witness. Neither religion nor the law, neither society nor the family, can decide what a marriage kills in a human being or what it may be the means of saving in him. Only he himself knows the one and feels the other. Only he himself can determine how far it may be possible for him to have so far finished with his own existence that he can completely pass into that of his children; to bear the pain of a continued married life so that it may enhance the powers of himself and the children. A mother can do this oftener than a father, but in no case is there any standard that others can use to determine when an excess of suffering is present. More than this, there is strictly no suffering, but only suffering beings who in every case create the suffering anew according to their type of soul.