"I says, ‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust, sometimes.’ An’ I says, ‘Don’t you love Jesus?’ Well, I thought an’ thought, an’ finally I says, ‘No, I don’t know nobody name’ Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.’"
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 4. Love is the new religion of ex-preacher and now radical philospher Jim Casy. His is a humanist vision. It is not based on his faith in an unseen deity or Jesus Christ, someone he says he doesn’t know and has never met. Instead the "sperit" is the love that binds the human race together as one community. This is a reference to the "Over-Soul" from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism – a universal spiritual force in which all souls participate.