In Saint Paul, Charles took up a new project: understanding William James and Plato; James because he was such a genial and erudite companion, the explorer of the will to believe when there was ‘nothing’ to believe in, Plato because Plato defied understanding at every turn and yet seemed to have set out a model for government that no one could shake off. If Charles could bring James to Plato or Plato to James, maybe he could find ‘something’ to believe in strongly enough to efface his bone-deep feeling that it was an illusion that he was even alive — along with the honing of an ability to keep the world of objects and other people in close but not threatening proximity, while at the same time maintaining in perfect, nearly silent but faintly humming equipoise, the working of his own physical organs and processes, and the turbulent, sometimes frightening thoughts his mind bore and nurtured, in what seemed a universe parallel to, but completely separate from, the one in which his body took up space.