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110 and ethical aims. But what is the aim of mar. riage? As we have seen: propagation, love, friendship. And who will and can impose that as a duty if our own free inclination does not prompt usto it? There are, indeed, duties in marriage, but they do not belong here, because in a true marriage they are recognized and practised spontaneously. With regard to adultery, they could at. most consist in the avoidance of a possible danger into which at last every relationship may drift. To rashly expose the affections to every danger, or to wilfully put them to the test, would be to degrade them beforehand. Who would throw the crystal upon the pavement simply to see whether it would break?

If marriage is released from its present bonds and humanity redeemed from the vice of hypocrisy, then will adultery gradually be lost sight of, both as a conception andasadeed. Whoever is capable of or feels the desire to commit adultery will simply dissolve the marriage; whoever has occasion to commit adultery has simply found another person with whom he enters into a new marriage. Thus adultery will become a change of marriage, especially when the possibility of finding a person who will serve as a mere tool for an adulterous act can no longer be assumed after women have become independent of men and no longer know what it is to give themselves up to prostitution. For in order to assume the present