The youth of the upper classes ought not, however, in their struggle against actual conditions, to descend to the irresponsibility of the lower classes. Educated young people must set an example to the rest, not only by entering into their matrimonial alliances at the right time, but also in a way that is unimpeachable as regards the claims of the race and of society. The young have a perfect right—like their contemporaries among the people—to assume the responsibility of founding a home, which may be denied to them, before the child is expected. But they have only a right to this kind of defiance if they are willing, as soon as they are able, themselves to provide for the new creatures who will one day replace them in the race. But above all things, educated young people must also take part in the social reform which—speaking broadly—will be the only solution of the marriage question. Instead of defending “free love,” which is a much-abused term capable of many interpretations, we ought to strive for the freedom of love; for while the former has come to imply freedom for any sort of love, the latter must only mean freedom for a feeling which is worthy the name of love. This feeling, it may be hoped, will gradually win for itself the same freedom in life as it already possesses in poetry. The flowering, as well as the budding of love will then be a secret between the lovers, and only its fruit will be a matter between them and society. As always, poetry has pointed out the way to development. A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully-wedded happiness, but often of free and secret love; and in this respect too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. Even the poet of Sakuntala calls that love the most beautiful which gives itself freely in the “Gandoarva marriage,” sanctified only by the fulness of emotion. But even then the danger was recognised of ... _unknown heart closing against unknown heart_. Even then it was uneasiness about the fate of the child which coupled responsibility to society with love’s freedom. The new moral consciousness is thus an old thing. But it must nevertheless be called new, since it is only beginning to be wide-spread. It is becoming plain to more and more people that a man or woman—whether married or free—does wrong to the nobility of self by giving himself or herself to one who is at heart a stranger; it is more and more becoming intuitively felt that it is the sense of home in another soul which gives devotion its sanctity.