The German multiplicity of States, that was in fullest bloom in the eighteenth century, presented a piebald map of the most different social conditions and legislative codes. While in the minority of the States efforts were made to improve the economic situation by promoting new industries, by making settlement easier and by changing the marriage laws in the direction of facilitating wedlock, the majority of the States and statelets remained true to their backward views, and intensified the unfavorable conditions of marriage and settlement for both men and women. Seeing, however, that human nature will not allow itself to be suppressed, all impediments and vexations notwithstanding, concubinage sprang up in large quantity, and the number of illegitimate children was at no time as large as in these days when the "paternal regiment" of the absolute Princes reigned in "Christian simplicity." The married woman of citizen rank lived in strict seclusion. The number of her tasks and occupations was so large that, as a conscientious housewife, she had to be at her post early and late in order to fulfil her duties, and even that was possible to her only with the aid of her daughters. Not only were there to be filled those daily household duties which to-day, too, the small middle class housewife has to attend to, but a number of others also, which the housewife of to-day is freed from through modern development. She had to spin, weave, bleach and sew the linen and clothes, prepare soap and candles, brew beer,--in short, she was the veriest Cinderella: her only recreation was Sunday's church. Marriage was contracted only within the same social circles; the strongest and most ludicrous spirit of caste dominated all relations, and tolerated no transgression. The daughters were brought up in the same spirit; they were held under strict home seclusion; their mental education did not go beyond the bounds of the narrowest home relations. On top of this, an empty and hollow formality, meant as a substitute for education and culture, turned existence, that of woman in particular, into a veritable treadmill. Thus the spirit of the Reformation degenerated into the worst pedantry, that sought to smother the natural desires of man, together with his pleasures in life under a confused mass of rules and usages that affected to be "worthy," but that benumbed the soul.