The modern civilized man can quietly accustom himself to the idea that the old patriarchal family under the dominion of the father-right will gradually disappear; and that at the same time the patriarchal conventional marriage of ancient times, still to all appearance so firmly established, will be replaced by other, freer forms. The idea of marriage, and its value as a form of social life, remains meanwhile unaffected. It is possible to be a critic of the old, outlived form of marriage, without therefore being exposed to the suspicion of wishing to dispense with the idea of “marriage” altogether. The one-sided, juristic, political, sacramental, and ecclesiastical conception of the past does justice neither to the social nor to the individual significance of marriage. He who, like Westermarck, regards monogamic marriage as something primitively ordained, as if it were a biological fact, and denies completely the =development= of that institution out of lower forms, denies also the possibility of any extensive transformation of the existing forms of marriage. The common mistake is, to place on the one hand monogamy in its most ideal form, that of life-long marriage, and on the other hand, the so-called “free love,” understanding by free love completely unregulated extra-conjugal sexual intercourse. It is not a matter for surprise that, in respect of both of these extreme forms of sexual relationship, a pessimistic view should easily gain ground. According to the point of view, one party will insist on the intolerable character, in relation to the need for individual freedom and as regards the development of personality, of a lifelong marriage of duty; whilst the other party will lay stress upon the equally great, if not greater, dangers of the unrestrained practice of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse.