For if, on the one hand, the sexual customs of the lower class allow more right than those of the upper class to the direct claims of nature, on the other hand, the customs of the latter still provide the same opportunities for the elevation into love of the instinct which, from an historical and ethnographical point of view, has everywhere been provided by self-control. Among those nations with which sexual connections begin early, morals are, as a rule, loose, and where morals are loose, the emotion of love has small importance. The control of sensuality develops the deeper feelings of love. We need not go to the nations of the past, or to existing extra-European peoples, but only to the town and country labourers of our own and other European lands, to see how the feelings become lax and feeble, the senses coarse and greedy, when they have acquired the habit of satisfying physical hunger before that of the soul has awakened. The miserable conditions of dwelling among the lower classes are enough by themselves to rob sexual life of its discretion; immature age or the tie of blood is frequently no hindrance to unchastity, and its consequences—coarseness and lack of responsibility towards one another as well as towards the offspring—at times take hideous forms. The first condition therefore for love’s freedom is that the freedom shall concern love, the most universal sign of which is the desire of continued community of life. As this sign is, as a rule, to be found among young people of the educated class who now claim love’s freedom, they are thus far within their rights, as also are the young people of the lower class when they use the same freedom and as a result form many excellent connubial unions. We could with every reason—and with more reason—draw the same conclusions with regard to the upper class, if it were not the case that among these love has become a so much more penetrating force. While the majority of the working class—for even there a minority with more refined erotic feelings is to be found,—in addition to the satisfaction of its instincts, contents itself with a capable and devoted comrade to bear its burden, the developed man or woman of the present day has deeper erotic needs. It is the satisfaction of these that is often missed by a youthful decision in life; for even when youthful love is soulful—and nearly all youthful love can so be described—it is nevertheless in most cases a longing for love rather than love, a craving for experience rather than the new life itself. And therefore the erotic feelings of early youth are founded upon the illusions which make a Romeo lament the harshness of Rosalind a moment before meeting Juliet, and a Titania to fondle Bottom’s ass’s ears. Never in after life has the world such a marvellous glamour as when the first dream of love has swathed all contours in its opalescent mists of sunrise, but—never do we so easily go astray. It may happen that