The reformers leave transcendental reason on one side. But they too acknowledge the connection between the real and the rational to this extent, that what has been real, has also been rational—so long as in certain given sociological and psychological conditions it has answered best the needs of humanity in some particular direction. They acknowledge the necessity of fixed laws and customs, since these alone intensify the feelings into sources of impulse, strong enough to be translated into action. They perceive that the conservative, tenacious emotions have the same importance for the soul as the skeleton for the body. But the historical necessity, on the other hand, according to which it is alleged that mankind awaits and surrenders itself to a fate over which it has no control, is to these reformers an absurdity. The “historical necessity” in every age is the realised will of the strongest men, either in number or character, realised in the degree in which nature and history favour their exercise of power. The reformers know that the Western institution of marriage has arisen partly from the permanent, physico-psychological causes of the maintenance of the race, partly from historical causes which were transitory, although their effects in this domain, as in many others, still continue. They know that of all the fabrics of society marriage is the most complicated, the most delicate, and the most significant; they understand, therefore, that the majority must be seized with terror when the shrine of so many generations is threatened. But they know also that all life is subject to transformation; that each transformation involves the death of once active realities, and the formation of new ones. They know that this dying-off and replacing never takes place uniformly; that laws and customs, which have become a drag upon the lives of those in a better position, are still of advantage to the majority, and therefore ought to continue in existence as long as they remain so. But they know at the same time that it is through the few in a better position—those whose needs and powers are most ennobled—that a higher standard of existence will finally become the portion also of the majority. The condition of all development is, not to be content with the present, but to have the courage to ask how everything can be made better and the good fortune to find a right answer to this question in thought or in action.