In the last half century, among the Germanic peoples, however, the family life has already undergone essential transformations, while the Romantic world still continues to exhibit features which in the first half of the 19th century were typical even among these peoples. Marriages are arranged by the father, divorce is considered either a sin or a shame, the paternal power is still absolute, the homogeneous relationship among all the members of the family—in joy and sorrow—is inviolable. The feeling of the son for the mother, bordering almost upon Madonna worship, and the passion of the father for their little children, must, however, always have been more characteristic of the Romance peoples than of the Germans. Among the latter the attainment of individualism, first in the sphere of legislation, still more in that of customs, most of all in that of mode of thought and feeling, has altered the position of the individual in the family. While the family exhibited fifty years ago a tightly closed unity, in which women had only slight significance, now the wife as well as the husband, mother as well as father, daughter as well as son, assert their personality, not only _in_ the family, but often even _against_ the family. Wives draw the arguments for their self assertion most frequently from the principles of the woman movement. Truly, in the course of the century, many married women have succeeded in finding expression for their significant universal human or feminine attributes in marriage, and thus have ennobled it. But the self-conscious effort to elevate the position of the wife began simultaneously with the demand that no human right could be denied to a woman upon the ground of her sex, whether within or without marriage. Individualism has already made personal love, instead of family interest, decisive for the consummation of a marriage. In the name of her personality as of her work, woman desires with ever greater right full majority and legal equality with man in marriage. Against individualism, the doctrine of evolution now advocates certain limitations of the personal erotic freedom to consummate marriage, but advocates at the same time, contrary to the Christian sexual ethics, new freedom for the sake of the higher development of the race. Here comes into effect, the new conception of life by which the possibilities of development and of happiness in the earthly life have acquired a new value and force.