“It is only a question of time”--thus Ellen Key concludes her remarks on marriage reform--“when the respect felt by society for the sexual union will not depend upon the form of the life in common, by which two human beings become parents, but only on the worth of the children which these two are producing as new links in the chain of the generations. Men and women will then devote to their spiritual and physical preparation for sexual intercourse the same religious earnestness that the Christians devote to the welfare of their souls. No longer will divine laws regarding the morality of sexual relationships be considered the mainstay of morality; in place of these the desire to elevate the human race and a sense of personal responsibility will be the safeguards of conduct. But the conviction on the part of the parents =that the purpose of life is also their own proper life--that is, that they do not exist only for the sake of children=--should free them from certain other duties of conscience which at present bind them in respect of children--above all, from the duty of maintaining a union in which they themselves are perishing. The home will perhaps become more than it is at present; something at unity with the mother, something which--far from excluding the father--carries within itself the germ of a new and higher ‘family right.’... “A greater and healthier will-to-live in respect of erotic feelings and demands--this it is that our time needs! Here from the feminine side real dangers threaten; and one of several ways in which these dangers must be averted is by the construction of new forms of marriage. “Human material of ever higher worth and capable of higher evolution--it is this which in the first place we have to create. If we preserve coercive forms of the sexual life, the possibility of doing this is a diminishing one; if we adopt free forms of the sexual life, the possibility of doing it will increase. Not only because the present time asks for more freedom are its demands full of promise, but because those demands approximate ever more closely to the central point of the problem--to the conviction that love is the principal condition upon which depends the vital advance of the individual and of humanity at large.”