. Yet, in
practice, it is obvious cruelty to keep two individuals legally bound
together who can no longer live with each other. Thus, the provision
and license of divorce are necessities of civil law which are
certainly not ideal, but which cannot be passed over without favoring
family disturbance and without sanctioning illegality and evil.

Among the most frequent causes of divorce are desire for change in the
husband, venereal diseases, disputes, incompatibility of temper,
mental disorders, immorality, ill-treatment and crime. The sterility
of one of the conjoints and incapacity for coitus may also be
mentioned as reasons for divorce, although in certain circumstances,
as we shall see, limited polyandry or polygyny may be much more humane
than divorce.

As soon as divorce is admitted, important and complicated questions of
law arise when there are children. We shall refer to these later. The
legal license of complete divorce thus transforms marriage into a
temporary contract, which is not so far removed as one would think
from the ideal relations of free love.

We will examine the circumstances which, apart from the procreation of
children, may attribute legal importance to the sexual relations of
two persons. I must first of all observe that, if it wishes, civil
legislation can very well create a state of things which gives to
children born outside marriage the same rights and the same social
position as legitimate children, and I will even add that such social
equality would respond to the most elementary sentiments of human
rights, if these were not already influenced in advance by prejudice
and mysticism.

=Minors.=--Civil law should stipulate that minors have not the right
to marry. This may appear cruel in certain cases, but society has the
right and the duty to intervene. Minors should be protected against
all sexual abuse. A young girl under the age of seventeen and a boy
under eighteen or twenty should be prevented from all sexual
relations. This is a postulate of individual and social hygiene and
consequently of all healthy matrimonial law.

=Lunatics.=--The same applies to lunatics, who are legally comparable
to minors. Have we the right to forcibly separate a married couple, or
a couple living in concubinage, because one of the conjoints has
become insane, when the other does not wish for separation? In Germany
the procedure of nullity of marriage has been invented for these
cases, but without gai