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88 passionately in love, and each with a different maiden. Let each one find in his way a rival, to whom external circumstances have given a very decided advantage. Both shall have made up their minds to put each his own rival out of the world; and both shall be secure against any discovery, or even suspicion. But when each for himself sets about the preparations for the murder, both of them, after some inner conflict, shall give up the attempt. They shall render account to us, plainly and truthfully, of why they have thus decided. Now what account Caius shall render, the reader shall decide as he pleases. Let Caius be prevented by religious scruples, by the will of God, by the future punishment, by the coming judgment, or by anything of that sort. Or let him [with Kant] say: 'I reflected that the maxim of my procedure in this case would not have been fit to serve as an universal rule for all possible rational beings, since I should have used my rival as means and not at the same time as End in himself.' Or let him say with Fichte: 'Every human life is Means or instrument for the realization of the Moral Law; therefore I cannot, without being indifferent to the moral law, destroy one who is destined to contribute to that end.' Or let him say, after Wollaston: 'I have considered that the deed would be the expression of an untrue proposition.' Or let him say, after Hutcheson: 'The moral sense, whose sensations, like those of every other sense, are not further to be explained, has determined me to refrain.' Or let him say, after Adam Smith: 'I foresaw that my deed, if I did it, would arouse no sympathy with me in the spectators of the act.' Or, after Christian Wolff: 'I recognized that I should thereby hinder my own growth towards perfection without helping the growth of anybody else.' Or let him say, after Spinoza: 'Homini nihil utilius homine; ergo, hominem interimere nolui.'