However different the causes of the reduplication may be in this case, the phenomenon itself is of near kin to the foregoing one. To keep the general public at a distance, to avoid laying bare his heart, and, most important of all, to avoid the tiresome responsibility entailed by speaking in his own name, Kierkegaard places as many authors between himself and the public as possible. Even taking his reasons into consideration, I confess that to me the proceeding seems super-subtle, a sort of reminiscence of the Romantic irony. For although Kierkegaard, as regards his matter, is in many ways ahead of Romanticism, he is still connected with it by his style. It is natural enough that he cannot, or will not, bear the responsibility for what his imaginary characters, the Assessor and the Seducer, say; but it is pure imagination on his part to suppose himself capable of producing his authors at second hand, to suppose, for instance, that he has created the hero in the Engagement Story exactly as Frater Taciturnus would have created him. Several of his would-be authors, Constantin Constantius and Frater Taciturnus, for example, are scarcely to be distinguished from one another, and there is nothing peculiarly characteristic about their productions. The third part of Stadierne ("Stages on the Road of Life") was, as Kierkegaard's own memoranda show, originally intended to form part of _Enten-Eller_. When he remarks (in _Afstuttende Efterskrift_, p. 216) that the most attentive reader will hardly succeed in finding in that work, either in language or turn of thought, a single reminiscence of Enten-Eller, he betrays great capability of self-deception. Both works show in every line that they are written by the same author; in both we come upon the same thoughts, often expressed in almost the same words. The Assessor in _Stadierne_ judges Aladdin exactly as he is judged by the Æsthete in _Enten-Eller_: "What makes Aladdin so great is the strength of his desire."