many gracious and kindly women, plainly made for motherhood and fitted
for a fine part in life, should find themselves held in the clutches of
this insistent problem.

It may well help all such to realize the fact stated above, namely,
that the problem is no part of the eternal and designed order of
things, but one of the results of our social misbehavior. In a very
real sense the women who suffer in this matter suffer vicariously for
the sins of all society. It is not they who are guilty, but all
mankind. For all who mean resolutely to face the problem and to win
through to victory, it is first of all essential that they should
realize the fact that their acute depressions and their restlessness of
mind have really a quite well-defined physical and psychological cause.
Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five these depressions often
become very acute, so that the whole horizon of life is darkened.
Sensitive women often torment themselves by wondering what they have
done that is wrong, for of course all depression is apt to take the
form of a sense of wrongdoing. Further, at this period the religious
sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse. They can no longer
respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths. They find
they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days
when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to
mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so
are tempted to a general cynicism. Envy of others will suggest itself,
and though it be sternly repressed, it still adds to the general
strain, while good advice from others will seem just the last straw
which cannot be borne.

But one half of this problem has disappeared at once for many from the
day when they faced the plain truth that the cause of trouble is