Following after appearances we lose the spirit.

"What is the 'root' of the universe? Some say man, some say God. It is often convenient to have two names for one thing: spiritual, material; human, divine; free-will, determinism; relative, absolute. But if we think of the essence of things as the root and the things themselves as branches and leaves, we are allowing these 'thoughts' and 'words,' spoken of in the previous verse, to divide once more what is a living unity into a duality that is dead as such. For whether we look at things in their multifariousness, their variety and differences, or at the common elements, the 'Life-force,' the principles of Science, we are still far from the root, which is not either, not both, not a thing at all--yet it is not nothing.

"Buddhists say the mind is the root of things, but it is not something inside us. Christians say it is God,-but it is not something outside us. But to know, to realize, the inside and outside as one, that my profit is your profit, that your loss is my loss, to make this fact, this dead matter-of-fact into a living, yea-saying Fact,--this is our own and our only problem.

"When this is solved, in our thinking and speaking, all is solved. When it is not solved, every thought is twisted, every word is sophisticated."