ADULTERY.
Adherents of the official and theological morality will feel in duty bound to grow indignant over the claim that in reality there is no such thing as adultery. They will believe that the moral world, whose chief aim hitherto seems to have been to create as many crimes as possible, in order to be able to condemn as much as possible, must go to ruin if it is deprived of one of its most piquant crimes. And nevertheless the world will finally have to submit to this loss, and even come to realize that in principle a more severe moral conception is required for the destruction of a piquant crime than for the retention of the same.
If there is to be a breach of marriage, the breach must necessarily extend through that which constitutes marriage, which is its essence, its condition, its sum and substance. Marriage is not a business contract, it is a union of hearts: and love is the condition of this union. A breach of marriage must, therefore, be a breach of love; but love does not break itself; its breaking is, therefore, equivalent to a want of love; and since marriage without love is no longer marriage, so-called adultery can be nothing more than an actual proof that marriage no longer exists.
