k up, like a stone; or see, as we see the lake out there."

"No, Carmen, the meaning is spiritual--mental; it is not physically
tangible. It is not seen with the fleshly eyes."

"The meaning of a word is the inside of it, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is the inside, the soul, of the word."

"And we don't see the word, either, do we?" She shook her brown curls
in vigorous negation.

"No, little one, we see only written or printed symbols; or hear only
sounds that convey to us the words. But the words themselves are
mental. We do not see them."

"No, we think them." She meditated a while. "But, Padre dear," she
continued, "the inside, or soul, of everything is mental. We never see
it. We have to think it."

"Yes, you are right. The things we think we see are only symbols. They
stand for the real things."

"Padre, they don't stand for anything!" she replied abruptly.

Jose looked down at her in surprise. He waited.

"Padre, the real things are the things we don't see. And the things we
think we see are not real at all!"

Jose had ere this learned not to deny her rugged statements, but to
study them for their inner meaning, which the child often found too
deep for her limited vocabulary to express.

"The things we think we see," he said, though he was addressing his
own thought, "are called the physical. The things we do not see or
cognize with the physical senses are called mental, or spiritual.
Well?" he queried, looking down again into the serious little face.

"Padre, the very greatest things are those that we don't see at all!"

"True, _chiquita_. Love, life, joy, knowledge, wisdom, health,
harmony--all these are spiritual ideas. The physical sometimes
manifests them--and sometimes does not. And in the end, called death,
it ceases altogether to manifest them."

"But--these things--the very greatest things there are--are the souls
of everything--is it not so, Padre dear?"

"It must be, _chiquita_."

"And all these things came from God, and He is everywhere, and so He
is the soul of everything, no?"

He made the same affirmative reply.

"Padre--don't you see it?--we are not seeing things all around us! We
don't see real things that we call trees and stones and people! We see
only what we _think_ we see. We see things that are not there at all!
We see--"

"Yes, we see only our thoughts. And we think we see them as objects
all about us, as trees, and houses, and people. But in the final
analysis we see onl