It was by virtue of a new kind of marriage. Sometimes, indeed, brothers and sisters married. Later on, men sought their wives outside the clan, the tribe, the civic community. The beloved became the stranger, the unknown. This is indicated in certain Greek myths like that of the rape of Helen and again in the Scandinavian and Germanic myths of Sigurd and Gudrun.
Love becomes an adventure, woman a conquest from afar.
This change from patriarchial marriage to free marriage corresponds to the new development of man's intellectual faculties, of the Ego. Let us now turn to Christianity. The new, mysterious and transcendental element in Christianity is that it creates divine Love, the power which transforms man from within, the leaven by which the whole world is raised. Love extends beyond the bounds of family to all human beings and is changed into vivifying, creative, transmuting power. It is destined to change the very essence of all religion, of all cults, of all science.