Far from its being the duty of any thoughtful person to lull to rest this despondency of the young, we should render the best service to them and to life by taking from them everyday contentment and the calm of resignation; for only the suffering which is kept awake, the longing which remains alive, can become forces in the revolt against that order of society which has added meaningless pangs, hostile to life, to those that the laws of life and life’s development still necessarily involve in the relations of sex. All confined forces, which do not find employment, may degenerate; and our time, with its repression of the erotic forces, can show even among women such signs of degeneration. It is therefore a necessary self-assertion when those who are excluded from love seek to preserve their health and enrich their life with the sources of joy which are at the disposal of every living person. Even he who is chained to an uninteresting work can find some moments to feel his way along some path which leads to a glimpse of the infinite space of science. Almost every kind of work may bring with it an increase of individual capacity, and therewith also of joy at feeling one’s value as a workman and one’s dignity as a personality enhanced. There is no day which may not bring with it a glimpse of delight in beauty. Finally there is no hour—except the heaviest hours of sorrow—in which a human being cannot feel the strength and greatness of his own soul; its independence of all external fortunes; its power of seeking itself, finding itself, enhancing itself through all and in spite of all. The words which Victor Hugo put to a young woman in sorrow: _N’avez-vous pas votre âme?_ are addressed to all who have been badly treated by life. And whatever belief or unbelief a person may profess, it is in the last resort this consciousness of his own soul’s worth which saves him when no other help is to be found—and there is no other help. In this sense it is doubtless true that the human being, woman as well as man, is an end in herself; that she has fulfilled her task if she has not suffered injury to her soul, even if she has gained nothing else from life; if she has increased the power of her soul, discovered her own individuality and realised it; for this alone is saving one’s soul. In this sense it is true that the “mission” of woman as of man cannot be the sexual mission, which does not depend upon our own will alone; nor, therefore, can he who has not fulfilled this be said to have lived in vain. In this sense also there is at bottom a certain agreement between the feeling of self-glorification just described and that of those who think that neither woman’s nor man’s highest destiny can be love, but only the life of an eternal being above all earthly and social considerations; that the highest reality of every human being is within himself, and that his highest happiness can be only to grow in holiness and godliness.