The conscious mind is an interpreter, a journal. It does not create; neither does it impartially report. Rather does it deflect, refract and so transform what is, into a thing acceptable to the mind’s ego--the journal’s reader. And what it gives, with the nature of its versions, the demand brings about. So now, with Quincy--the call had gone forth for an accounting. It was as if he had sent in his query: “I am here. How did it come about that I am here? And above all, let there be nothing in the report that I can not endure!” For this is the way of all men. And until each man has sharpened his instrument for vision within himself, there is no need in his decrying, or attempting to reform, the frauds and mockeries of government and church and public utterance. The amount of misconception swells with the mass. He who clears the eyes of one child toward itself does more for the truth than the leader of a national rebellion. And until there be a nation made up of men who were just such children, all reform and all revolt must be a romantic variant upon some theme of falsehood. It pleased Quincy, then, to look upon the calamities of college as the result of foolish conduct and false direction. His idealizing, his dream-gathering, his emotion had been at fault. Manifestly, then, the turn to make was away from ideals and dreams and feeling. These things upon which he had leaned had given way. They must therefore have been fictions. For if one leans upon Reality, one finds support. All that Professor Deering and his wife and his attitudes at college seemed to imply must have been fictions. Reality must lie at the outset, in the antipodal direction--away, that is, from culture, truth-seeking, love and the qualities of self. He had been sleeping with stars, creating flowers, parleying with extramundane fires. He had made great mistakes. He could now make reparation. So, in this way of finding superficial fault, Quincy escaped a scrutiny of his more basic weaknesses--escaped the truth.