er, we may rest
assured, the only solution which the growing modern sense of personal
responsibility in sexual matters traced in the previous chapter--the
responsibility of women as well as of men--will be content to accept.

The subtle and complex character of the sexual relationships in a
high civilization and the unhappy results of their State
regulation were well expressed by Wilhelm von Humboldt in his
_Ideen zu einen Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates
zu bestimmen_, so long ago as 1792. "A union so closely allied
with the very nature of the respective individuals must be
attended with the most hurtful consequences when the State
attempts to regulate it by law, or, through the force of its
institutions, to make it repose on anything save simple
inclination. When we remember, moreover, that the State can only
contemplate the final results of such regulations on the race, we
shall be still more ready to admit the justice of this
conclusion. It may reasonably be argued that a solicitude for the
race only conducts to the same results as the highest solicitude
for the most beautiful development of the inner man. For, after
careful observation, it has been found that the uninterrupted
union of one man with one woman is most beneficial to the race,
and it is likewise undeniable that no other union springs from
true, natural, harmonious love. And further, it may be observed,
that such love leads to the same results as those very relations
which law and custom tend to establish. The radical error seems
to be that the law commands; whereas such a relation cannot mould
itself according to external arrangements, but depends wholly on
inclination; and wherever coercion or guidance comes into
collision with inclination, they divert it still farther from the
proper path. Wherefore it appears to me that the State should not
only loosen the bonds in this instance and leave ampler freedom
to the citizen, but that it should entirely withdraw its active
solicitude from the institution of marriage, and, both generally
and in its particular modifications, should rather leave it
wholly to the free choice of the individuals, and the various
contracts they may enter into with respect to it. I should not be
deterred from the adoption of this principle by the fear that all
family relations migh