The sense of solidarity and individualism have equally weighty reasons for condemning the existing institution of marriage. It forces upon human beings, who are seldom ideal, a unity which only an ideal happiness renders them capable of supporting. It fulfils one of its missions—that of protecting the woman—in a way that is now humiliating to her human dignity. It performs its second function—that of protecting the children—in an extremely imperfect fashion. Its third—that of setting up an ideal of the morality of sexual relations—it performs in such a way that this ideal is now a hindrance to the further development of morality. From a realistic point of view, what is the value of matrimony to a woman? That the present law compels the husband to provide for his wife and for the children born in wedlock, and that at the death of the husband it secures to her the widow’s share in his estate and to the legitimate children their inheritance. But she pays for these economical advantages by resigning the right over her children, her property, her work, her person, which she possessed when unmarried. Even when there is a marriage settlement the husband—as guardian and administrator of his wife’s property—may squander this, as well as the proceeds of her work; he can forbid her exercise of a calling or sell the implements of its exercise. In the eyes of the law, she is placed on a footing with her children who are under age: her husband has to sue and to answer for her, and there are certain functions of a citizen which she cannot perform at all, while others, which she could perform if unmarried, she can fulfil only with her husband’s consent. As concerns the children, the law leaves those born outside wedlock entirely without rights, except for an insufficient contribution to their bringing-up, if the father does not free himself from this by oath. The law provides very imperfectly for the welfare of the new generation by limiting the right of marriage to certain degrees of affinity, refusing it in the case of certain diseases, and fixing the age for lawful marriage at fifteen to seventeen for the woman and twenty-one years for the man.[8]