same moral purpose (as Dill has pointed out) distorts Salvian’s picture of the vices of fifth century Gaul. (I may add that some of the evidence in favor of the sexual freedom involved by early Teutonic faiths and customs is brought together in the study of “Sexual Periodicity” in the first volume of these Studies; cf. also, Rudeck, Geschichte der oeffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, 1897, pp. 146 et seq.).

The freedom and tolerance of Russian sexual customs is fairly well-known.  As a Russian correspondent writes to me, “the liberalism of Russian manners enables youths and girls to enjoy complete independence.  They visit each other alone, they walk out alone, and they return home at any hour they please.  They have a liberty of movement as complete as that of grown-up persons; some avail themselves of it to discuss politics and others to make love.  They are able also to procure any books they please; thus on the table of a college girl I knew I saw the Elements of Social Science, then prohibited in Russia; this girl lived with her aunt, but she had her own room, which only her friends were allowed to enter:  her aunt or other relations never entered it.  Naturally, she went out and came back at what hours she pleased.  Many other college girls enjoy the same freedom in their families.  It is very different in Italy, where girls have no freedom of movement, and can neither go out alone nor receive gentlemen alone, and where, unlike Russia, a girl who has sexual intercourse outside marriage is really ‘lost’ and ‘dishonored’” (cf. Sexual-Probleme, Aug., 1908, p. 506).

It would appear that freedom of sexual relationships in Russia—­apart from the influence of ancient custom—­has largely been rendered necessary by the difficulty of divorce.  Married couples, who were unable to secure divorce, separated and found new partners without legal marriage.  In 1907, however, an attempt was made to remedy this defect in the law; a liberal divorce law has been introduced, mutual consent with separation for a period of over a year being recognized as adequate ground for divorce (Beiblatt to Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, Heft 5, p. 145).

During recent years there has developed among educated young men and women in Russia a movement of sexual license, which, though it is doubtless supported by the old traditions of sexual freedom, must by no means be confused with that freedom, since it is directly due to causes of an entirely different order.  The strenuous revolutionary efforts made during the last years of the past century to attain political freedom absorbed the younger and more energetic section of the educated classes, involved a high degree of mental tension, and were accompanied by a tendency to asceticism.  The prospect of death was constantly before their eyes, and any pre-occupation with sexual matters would have been felt as out of harmony with the