her condemnation permanently dependent on the man.
Neither will I investigate how a court comes to treat a suit for divorce like a suit for punishment.
Likewise I will refrain from inquiring whether the young seventeen-year-old wife was in every way responsible in regard to morality — whether she was not through education or circumstances or the fault of another led to take a wrong step.
Nor will I ask whether, before the passing of a sentence which grants a life-long oppressive satisfaction to the offended husband, it ought not to have been investigated and considered in how far he had: through hasty action on his part brought about a union which very soon proved unsuitable for both parties.
All these points I shall dispose of by merely intimating them in order to come to the chief point, which is contained in the question: What sort of a conception did the judges, or rather the lawgivers, have of marriage when they combined an additional punishment with the dissolution of a relationship that has been disastrous to both parties? The "marriage" in question was an evil, a torture, a misfortune to both parties, no matter through whose fault. The thing to be done was, therefore, to put an end to this unhappiness, to dissolve a relationship which had already ceased to be a marriage. To punish one party because the marriage to him was no longer a marriage, is
