At the dissolution of the Roman Empire the enlightened Roman law remained as a precious legacy to Western civilisations. But, as Maine points out, its humane and civilising influence was injured by its fusion with the customs of the barbarians, and, in particular, by the Jewish marriage system. The legislature of Europe "absorbed much more of those laws concerning the position of women which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilisation. The law relating to married women was for the most part read by the light, not of Roman, but of Christian Canon Law, which in no one particular departs so widely from the enlightened spirit of the Roman jurisprudence than in the view it takes of the relations of the sexes in marriage." This was in part inevitable, Sir Henry Maine continues, "since no society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law." It is not possible for me to follow this question further. One thing is incontrovertibly certain, that woman's position and her freedom can best be judged by the equity of the moral code in its bearing on the two sexes. Wherever a different standard of moral conduct is set up for women from men there is something fundamentally wrong in the family relationship needing revolutionising. The sexual passions of men and women must be regulated, first in the interests of the social body, and next in the interests of the individual. It is the institution of marriage that secures the first end, and the remedy of divorce that secures the second. It is the great question for each civilisation to decide the position of the sexes in relation to these two necessary institutions. In Rome an unusually enlightened public feeling decided for the equality of woman with man in the whole conduct of sexual morality. The legist Ulpian expresses this view when he writes--"It seems to be very unjust that a man demands chastity from his wife while he himself shows no example of it."[312] Such deep understanding of the unity of the sexes is assuredly the finest testimony to the high status of Roman women.