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284 cause than this. In addition to the marriages of this kind contracted by "degenerates", there are also those entered into by sound, normal beings, capable of love, who yet have married without love from a lack of understanding, from heedlessness or from a cowardly dread of the dangers of the struggle for existence in the midst of a society organized and governed by sheer egotism. It is remarkable that such marriages, contracted in direct opposition to nature and reason, are called marriages of reason. The sin they have thus committed against that fundamental law, sexual selection, is avenged upon them sooner or later, and the later, the more severely. The impulse to love can not be eradicated from their hearts and is continually seeking an outlet through the unyielding walls of legal and social conventionalism, with incessant and most painful exertions. It may happen that such an individual never meets one with whom it has an affinity, throughout its entire life career; in this case the marriage remains undisturbed and the relations between man and wife united from prudential motives, formally correct. But their existence is unfinished and unsatisfactory, they always have the tormenting sensation of a sorrowful unrest and expectation, they are always hoping for something yet to come, that will awaken them from the stupor of their empty lives. The whole being is felt to be fragmentary and they long for the missing portion, but never find it even in the most brilliant gratifications of their vanity or self-interest, because love alone could supply it.

The lives of such persons as well as of the "degenerates" miss the consecration of the ideal; but, more subjectively unhappy than the latter, they have a continual consciousness of what is lacking. They are not blind, but seeing men deprived of the light. This is the case if destiny does not bring them in contact with some