arriage regulations are
savagely severe, though the heart break. The captain under thirty must
forthwith deposit 30,000 guilders; over thirty years of age, 20,000
guilders; from staff officers up to colonels, 16,000 guilders. Over and
above this, only one-fourth of the officers may marry without special
grace, while a spotless record and corresponding rank is demanded of the
bride. This all holds good for officers of the line and army surgeons.
For other military officials with the rank of officer, the new marriage
regulations are milder; but for officers of the general staff still
severer. The officer who is detailed to the captain of the general staff
may not thereafter marry; the actual captain of the staff, if below
thirty, is required to give security in 36,000 guilders, and later
24,000 more." In Germany and elsewhere, there are similar regulations.
Also the corps of under-officers is subject to hampering regulations
with regard to marriage, and require besides the consent of their
superior officers. These are very drastic proofs of the _purely
materialistic conception_ that the State has of marriage.

In general, public opinion is agreed that marriage is not advisable for
men under twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. Twenty-five is the
marriageable age for men fixed by the civil code, with an eye to the
civic independence that, as a rule, is not gained before that age. Only
with persons who are in the agreeable position of not having to first
conquer independence--with people of princely rank--does public opinion
consider it proper when occasionally the men marry at the age of
eighteen or nineteen, the girls at that of fifteen or sixteen. The
Prince is declared of age with his eighteenth year, and considered
capable to govern a vast empire and numerous people. Common mortals
acquire the right to govern their possible property only at the age of
twenty-one.

The difference of opinion as to the age when marriage is desirable shows
that public opinion judges by the social standing of the bride and
bridegroom. Its reasons have nothing to do with the human being as a
natural entity, or with its natural instincts. It happens, however, that
Nature's impulses do not yoke themselves to social conditions, nor to
the views and prejudices that spring from them. So soon as man has
reached maturity, the sexual instincts assert themselves with force;
indeed, they are the incarnation of the human being, and they demand
sa