Quote: Nahua philosophers saw humans as creatures yearning for rootedness — i.e. for a deep, firm, and lasting anchoring for their lives — and who restlessly search for it. Obtaining well-rootedness enables one to become an “upright man” (tlacamelahuac, trans. by Lopez Austin 1988:I,p.189) and to live a balanced, pure, and genuinely human life. Without roots, one finds neither balance, purity, nor humanness. Obtaining well-rootedness is difficult, and in their search many humans give their hearts to what appears to be well-rooted and authenthic but is not. Since this cannot provide grounding and stability, humans eventually become dissatisfied with it and abandon it, only to begin their search anew, often times repeating the process over and over again. Their hearts eventually become scattered, unbalanced, and lost (Lopez Austin 1988:II, Appendix 5). As Nezahualcoyotl put it, “If you give your heart to each and everything, you lead it nowhere: you destroy your heart” (Cantares mexicanos fol.2, v., trans. by Leon-Portilla 1963:5). Such humans become vagabonds, wandering about aimlessly from one illusion to the next. They become beastly, unstable, unbalanced, impure, perverse, dull-witted, intemperate, and vicious. They fail to realize their humanness and merely appear to be human. They become deceivers, rogues, and dissimulators. They “act on things with [their] humanity dead” (Lopez Austin 1988:I,p.189). They are “lump[s] of flesh with two eyes” (Sahagun 1953-82:X,pp.3,11) and “defective human weight[s]” (Sahagun 1953-82:X,p.11, trans. by Lopez Austin 1988:II,p.271).