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 physical. Physiological processes with certain inevitable psychological accompaniments are at the bottom of it. Because their natures have not received their natural fulfillment a complicated situation has arisen which cannot be easily lived through, though it may be in the end triumphantly controlled. And if it helps ordinary people to learn that sometimes when they seem to be suffering from a sense of sin they are really only being plagued by indigestion, it may very much more help women in this difficult period to know that they are only going through an inevitable physical readjustment. What is happening is that sexual desire--it may be in vague, unconscious, and very general forms--is asserting itself. Nothing could be more absurd than to suggest that there is anything wrong or immodest in that fact. It is quite inevitable. Indeed, the first step out of the trouble lies in accepting the fact and then in considering how it is to be dealt with.