Many girls are, however, so overwhelmed by spiritual gifts, nowadays, that the position of the man, his material wealth, is often foolishly overlooked. On the whole this is not quite the fault of the modern girl. This Age, for some reason or other, sets enormous store by spiritual gifts. Girls are brought up in an atmosphere steeped in the worship of intellect. “Clever”—this is the most coveted adjective. Is he clever? Is she clever? Very often the most unhappy marriages are consummated precisely owing to the absurdly exaggerated value that is attached to cleverness. I do not lose sight of the fact that great spiritual gifts are frequently accompanied by great sexual exuberance in a man, and I make allowances for that and for the temptation such a man may certainly prove to the positive girl; but his spiritual gifts ought not to be allowed to weigh against his poverty if he be poor, or his inferiority as an animal, if he have bad teeth, an undersized and weak frame, a delicate constitution, or foul breath. Only girls, of course, whose minds have been perverted in this matter, make the mistake of taking a poor clever man, or an unappetizing clever man, in preference to a duller though wealthier or more appetizing suitor; for the instinct of the female when unperverted is to find not only a secure support for her offspring, but also a mate whom it will at least not disgust her to embrace. And, after all, what does this spiritual fascination amount to for women, apart from its occasional correlation with high sexual exuberance? If you ask yourself what it is you tire of first in life; if you inquire to which kind of phenomenon you can relevantly apply the expression “hackneyed” when you have seen or heard it once too often—what is your inevitable reply? The word “hackneyed” can be used relevantly only in regard to products of the spirit. A song, however beautiful, repeated too often becomes a bore. A picture seen too often begins to pall. (It is only because we scarcely ever notice with deep attention the pictures on our walls, that we can endure them. In time, they form part of the general scheme of decoration.) The finest poem read too frequently becomes insufferably wearisome; and who can read even the best novel more than three times? I confess I have read _Wuthering Heights_ three times; but I doubt whether I could perform the feat a fourth time. All these things, however, are of the spirit, products of spiritual gifts. It would not sound strange or irrelevant to apply the epithet “hackneyed” to any one of them, provided that their charms had been impressed upon us once too often. This fact alone should make us suspicious of the spirit as a phenomenon possessing lasting powers of attraction.