Of late there have been attempts to build up a new conception of love which shall incorporate the best features of romantic love and at the same time make the transition to the conjugal affection less difficult.  This new conception has grown up through the increasing freedom of women and the constant association of the sexes in the educational and business world as well as in the social life.  This free companionship of men and women has done much to destroy the illusions about each other which were formerly supposed to be so necessary a component of romantic love, but it has also created the basis for a broader sympathy and a deeper comradeship which is easily carried over into the married relation.

The new ideal of love which is being thus developed combines complete understanding and frankness with erotic attraction and the tenderness of romanticism.  It implies a type of marital relationship in which there is preservation of the personality and at the same time a harmony and union of interests that was often absent from the old-fashioned marriage, when the wife was supposed to be more limited in her interests than her husband.  It may well be that the evolution of this new ideal of love, which grants personal autonomy even within the marriage bond, will solve a great deal of the present conflict between the individualistic impulses and the exercise of the erotic functions as permitted by the group.

It is, of course, an open question as to how far the interests of the individual and the group can be made to coincide.  Group survival demands that the most vital and intelligent members shall be those to carry on the reproductive functions.  Therefore from the social viewpoint, it is quite justified in setting up the machinery of social approval and in establishing emotional attitudes by this means that will insure that this takes place.  On the other hand, it may be that the individuals who will be thus coerced will be as rebellious against new forms of social control as they are restless under the present methods of restraint.

If we free ourselves from a manner of thinking induced by inhibitions developed through ages of taboo control, and look at the problem rationally, we must admit that the chief interest of society would be in the eugenic value of the children born into it.  At the present time, however, the emphasis seems to be chiefly upon the manner of birth, that is, the principal concern is to have the parents married in the customary orthodox fashion.  Only in view of the necessities of the recent war have the European nations been forced to wipe out the stain of illegitimacy, and in America we are still blind to this necessity.  Only Scandinavia, under the leadership of such minds as Ellen Key’s, was roused to this inconsistency in the mores without external pressure, and enacted legislation concerning illegitimacy which may well serve as a model to the whole world.  The main points of the Norwegian