And to such a soul, it will not unfrequently be apparent that the “transgression” was right for one nature and not for the other. The latter will have felt that its innermost being would have been outraged if fidelity to the past had not been preserved to the uttermost—and will have chosen to allow its erotic powers to wither and to live only by the will of duty. Of this kind of self-immolation the same is true as of its bodily counterpart: sometimes they are great souls, sometimes great cowards. Nay, the same sacrifice may be sublime at one period of our lives and shameful at another. Life never shows us “marriage,” but countless different marriages; never “love,” but countless lovers. He who sets up an ideal in these matters must, therefore, be content with possibly working for the future, but should not use his ideal as a criterion for the present. Nay, he ought not even to desire in the future the sole authority of his own ideal—since a descent from the diverse to the uniform would be a retrogressive development. The effort of society to press into a single ideal form life’s infinite multitude of different cases under the same circumstances or of the same cases under different circumstances, the same influences on different personalities or the same personalities under different influences—this has been in the field of sexual morality as violent a proceeding as would be the establishment for all figures of Polycletus’s canon of beauty. The madness of the latter proceeding would be obvious. But violence to souls is not so obvious. Therefore it is always established by law. Not until the diversity of souls becomes in our ideas a truth as real as the diversity of our bodies shall we perceive that of all dogmas monogamy has been that which has claimed most human sacrifices. It will one day be admitted that the _auto-da-fés_ of marriage have been just as valueless to true morality as those of religion were to the true faith. The Grand Inquisitors of the past probably resembled those of the present day in that, when confronted by a particular case within the circle of their own friends and relations, they found easily enough extenuating circumstances which they did not otherwise admit. But we must learn to see that every case is a separate case and that, therefore, sometimes a new rule—not only an exception to an old rule—becomes necessary. We cannot any longer maintain this double standard for known or unknown, for friends or enemies, for literature or life. It must be abolished by an earnest desire for genuine morality. This double standard shows us, however, that even among the orthodox of monogamy the impossibility of carrying out a monogamous morality which shall apply to all is beginning to be perceived. But the effort, nevertheless, to attain in some degree the impossible now stands in the way of the possible, which is germinating here and there: the attainment of the morality of love.