But a man cannot question his own basic terminology without questioning his own purposes. If in large measure he rejects the explanations he once believed, then he has been alienated and has lost a world. He has been “spiritually dispossessed.” If he embraces a set of counter-explanations or invents a set of his own, then he has regained this world, for the world is not merely “out there” but is also what he makes of it.

The growth of involvement is also neatly illustrated by what may occur when you act without much conviction or strong identification, only to find that others assume that you really meant what you had done, but if your motives are suspect, if the claim is discounted, then not only may you live with your act but come to repeat it with growing conviction.