sphere of sex.  But that morality is one which belongs mainly to the sphere of property and was very largely developed on a property basis.  All the historians of morals in general, and of marriage in particular, have set forth this fact, and illustrated it with a wealth of historical material.  We have as yet no generally recognized sexual morality which has been based on the specific sexual facts of life.  That becomes clear at once when we realize the central fact that the sexual relationship is based on love, at the very least on sexual desire, and that that basis is so deep as to be even physiological, for in the absence of such sexual desire it is physiologically impossible for a man to effect intercourse with a woman.  Any specific sexual morality must be based on that fact.  But our so-called “sexual morality,” so far from being based on that fact, attempts to ignore it altogether.  It makes contracts, it arranges sexual relationships beforehand, it offers to guarantee permanency of sexual inclinations.  It introduces, that is, considerations of a kind that is perfectly sound in the economic sphere to which such considerations rightly belong, but ridiculously incongruous in the sphere of sex to which they have solemnly been applied.  The economic relationships of life, in the large sense, are, as we shall see, extremely important in the evolution of any sound sexual morality, but they belong to the conditions of its development and do not constitute its basis.[267]

The fact that, from the legal point of view, marriage is primarily an arrangement for securing the rights of property and inheritance is well illustrated by the English divorce law to-day.  According to this law, if a woman has sexual intercourse with any man beside her husband, he is entitled to divorce her; if, however, the husband has intercourse with another woman beside his wife, she is not entitled to a divorce; that is only accorded if, in addition, he has also been cruel to her, or deserted her, and from any standpoint of ideal morality such a law is obviously unjust, and it has now been discarded in nearly all civilized lands except England.

But from the standpoint of property and inheritance it is quite intelligible, and on that ground it is still supported by the majority of Englishmen.  If the wife has intercourse with other men there is a risk that the husband’s property will be inherited by a child who is not his own.  But the sexual intercourse of the husband with other women is followed by no such risk.  The infidelity of the wife is a serious offence against property; the infidelity of the husband is no offence against property, and cannot possibly, therefore, be regarded as a ground for divorce from our legal point of view.  The fact that his adultery complicated by cruelty is such a ground, is simply a concession to modern feeling.  Yet, as Helena Stoecker truly points out ("Verschiedenheit im Liebesleben des Weibes und des Mannes,” Zeitschrift