up from the earth was
suppositional error; and that the record of the Creation which follows
after this was only the human mind's interpretation of the real,
spiritual Creation, that Creation which is the ever unfolding of
infinite Mind's numberless, perfect ideas. The book of Genesis has
been a fetish to human minds; and not until the limitations imposed by
its literal interpretation were in a measure removed did the human
mentality begin to rise and expand. And when, reading from Isaiah, the
grandest of the ancient prophets, the ringing words, "Cease ye from
man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be
accounted of?" the child asked him if that did not refer to the very
kind of people with whom they had daily intercourse, he had been
obliged to say that it did, and that that sort of man was far, very
far, from being the man of God's own creating.

"The mist, child, which is mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis,
is said to have gone up from the ground. That is, it went up from
matter. And so it is typical of materialism, from which all evil
comes. The material is the direct opposite of the spiritual. Every bit
of evil that men think they can see, or know, or do, comes as
testimony of the five material senses. These might well be called the
'ground' senses. In the book of Genesis, you will notice that the
account of the real comes first; then follows the account of its
opposite, the unreal man of dust."

"Surely, Padre!" she exclaimed. "The plus sign is followed by a minus
sign, isn't it? And the man made of dust is the real man with a minus
sign before him."

"The man of dust is the human mind's interpretation of the spiritual
man, dear child," returned Jose. "All human beings are interpretations
by the mortal, or human, mind of infinite Mind, God, and His spiritual
Creation. The interpretation is made in the human mind, and remains
there. The human mind does not see these interpretations outside of
itself--it does not see real men, and houses, and trees, outside of
itself--but it sees its mental interpretations of God, which it calls
men, and houses, and trees, and so on. These things are what we might
call _mental concepts_. They are the man and the creation spoken of in
the second chapter of Genesis after the mist went up from matter, from
the ground, from materialism, resulting in the testimony of the
physical senses."

"But, Padre, they are not real--these mental concepts?"

"No. They