e full freedom over their
persons, actions and possessions. They must furthermore be on terms of
mutual equality. The creation of these "free" and "equal" people was
precisely one of the main functions of capitalistic production. What
though this was done at first in a half-conscious way and, moreover, in
a religious disguise? Since the Lutheran and Calvinist reformation the
thesis was accepted that a human being is fully responsible for his
actions only then, when these actions were due to full freedom of will.
And it was held to be a moral duty to resist any compulsion for an
immoral action. How did this agree with the prevailing practice of
match-making? Marriage according to bourgeois conception was a contract,
a legal business affair, and the most important one at that, because it
decided the weal and woe of body and spirit of two beings for life. At
that time the agreement was formally voluntary; without the consent of
the contracting parties nothing could be done. But it was only too well
known how this consent was obtained and who were really the contracting
parties. If, however, perfect freedom of decision is demanded for all
other contracts, why not for this one? Did not the two young people who
were to be coupled together have the right freely to dispose of
themselves, of their bodies and the organs of these? Had not sexual love
become the custom through the knights and was not, in opposition to
knightly adultery, the love of married couples its proper bourgeois
form? And if it was the duty of married couples to love one another, was
it not just as much the duty of lovers to marry each other and nobody
else? Stood not the right of lovers higher than the right of parents,
relatives and other customary marriage brokers and matrimonial agents?
If the right of free personal investigation made its way unchecked into
the church and religion, how could it bear with the insupportable claims
of the older generation on the body, soul, property, happiness and
misfortune of the younger generation?

These questions had to be raised at a time when all the old ties of
society were loosened and all traditional conceptions tottering. The
size of the world had increased tenfold at a bound. Instead of one
quadrant of one hemisphere, the whole globe now spread before the eyes
of West Europeans who hastened to take possession of the other seven
quadrants. And the thousand-year-old barriers of conventional medieval
thought fell li