"Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living. You had to use it to figure how to get shelter and eating and such for the body. She said you had to use it to mate and have young'uns and such. She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind.
     "Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was always cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them...then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger'n a hickor'nut.
    "Granma said that when your body died, the body-living mind died with it, and if that's the way you thought all you life there you was, stuck with a hickor'nut spirit, as the spirit mind was all that lived when everything else died. Then, Granma said, when you was born back -- as you was bound to be -- then, there you was, born with a hickor'nut spirit mind that had practical no understanding of anything.
     "Then it shrink up to the size of a pea and could disappear, if the body-living mind took over total. In such case, you lost your spirit complete.
     "That's how you become dead people. Granma said you could easy spot dead people. She said dead people when they looked at a woman saw nothing but dirty; when they look at other people they saw nothing but bad; when they looked at a tree they saw nothing but lumber and profit; never beauty. Granma said they was dead people walking around.
     "Granma said that the spirit mind was like another muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with you body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got.
    "Natural, she said, understanding and love was the same thing; except folks went at it back'ards too many times, trying to pretend they loved thing when they didn't understand them. Which can't be done.....
     "Granma said you spirit mind could get so big and powerful that you would eventually know all about your past body lives and would get to where you could come out with no body death atall."

     "Mr. Wine said figuring was important. He said education was a two-part proposition. One part was technical, which was how you moved ahead in your trade. He said he was for getting more modern in that end of education. But, he said, the other part you had better stick to and not change it. He called it valuing.
     "Mr. Wine said if you learnt to place a value on being honest and thrifty, on doing your best, and on caring for folks; this was more important than anything. He said if you was not taught these values, then no matter how modern you got about the technical part, you was not going anywheres atall."

The Education of Little Tree, Third Printing 1992 p59-60 and 164-165