>While all three were superficially aware of being in a mental hospital, none of them had even the vaguest insight into the meaning of their situation. Only Leon was able to grasp—and with a sensitivity that amazed us—the purpose of the research project in reasonably realistic terms: that we had come “to agitate one against the other” for the purpose of trying to alter their beliefs. Almost immediately after the initial encounter, all three were able to produce rationalizations that explained away the others’ claims to be God or Christ. It is clear that these three psychotic men, like all men, were stimulated by their environment and responded to it. Like all men, they immediately perceived their personal and social situation, were affected by it, tried to understand it, thought about it, and formulated hypotheses designed to explain it. The three Christs were, if not rational men, at least men of a type we had all encountered before; they were rationalizing men.