s, who are not to be compared with Goethe, yet
without in the least losing the esteem and respect of society. All that
is needed is a respectable position, the rest comes of itself. All this
notwithstanding, the liberties of a Goethe and a George Sand are
improper, judged from the standpoint of bourgeois morality, and stand in
contradiction with the nature of its social principles. Compulsory
marriage is the normal marriage of bourgeois society: it is the only
"moral" union of the sexes: all other sexual union, by whomsoever
entered into, is immoral. Bourgeois marriage--we have proved the point
beyond cavil--is the result of bourgeois property relations. This
marriage, which is intimately related with private property and the
right of inheritance--demands "legitimate" children as heirs: it is
entered into for the purpose of acquiring these: under the pressure of
social conditions, it is forced even upon those who have nothing to
bequeath:[225] it becomes a social law, the violation of which the State
punishes by imprisoning for a term of years the men or women who live in
adultery and have been divorced.

In future society there is nothing to bequeath, unless the domestic
equipment and personal inventory be regarded as inheritance: the modern
form of marriage is thus devoid of foundation and collapses. The
question of inheritance is thereby solved, and Socialism need not
concern itself about abolishing the same. No right of inheritance can
arise where there is no private property.

Woman is, accordingly, free, and her children, where she has any, do not
impair her freedom: they can only fill all the fuller the cup of her
enjoyments and her pleasure in life. Nurses, teachers, female friends,
the rising female generations--all these are ready at hand to help the
mother when she needs help.

It is possible that there may be men in the future who will say with
Alexander von Humboldt: "I am not built for the father of a family.
Moreover, I consider marriage a sin, and the begetting of children a
crime." What of it? The power of natural instincts will restore the
equilibrium. We are alarmed neither by a Humboldt's hostility to
marriage nor by the philosophic pessimism of a Schopenhauer, a
Mainlaender or a v. Hartmann, who raise to man the prospect of
self-destruction in the "ideal State," In this matter we hold with Fr.
Ratzel, who justly says:

"Man may no longer look upon himself as an exception to the laws of
Nature;