There is a little dialogue of Hume’s that suggests the nature of the problem and hints at a solution in a way altogether charming. “My friend, Palamedes,” the narrator begins, “who is as great a rambler in his thoughts as in his person, ... surprised me lately with an account of a nation with whom he told me he had passed a considerable part of his life, and whom he found, in the main, a people extremely civilized and intelligent. “‘There is a country,’ said he, ‘in the world called Fourli, no matter for its longitude and latitude, whose inhabitants have ways of thinking in many things, particularly in morals, diametrically opposite to ours.... “‘As it was my fortune to come among this people on a very advantageous footing, I was immediately introduced to the best company; and being desired by Alcheic to live with him, I readily accepted his invitation, as I found him universally esteemed for his personal merit, and indeed regarded by every one in Fourli as a perfect character.’” And we are thereupon regaled with a display of Alcheic’s virtues. We accompany him first in a serenade that he offers, not indeed to his lady-love, but to a certain youth, and we learn in this connection, that Alcheic, himself, who had been very handsome in his youth, had been courted by many lovers, but had bestowed his favors chiefly on the sage Elcouf, to whom he was supposed to owe, in great measure, the astonishing progress he had made in philosophy and wisdom. “It gave me great surprise,” the traveller adds, “that Alcheic’s wife (who by-the-by, happened also to be his sister) was no wise scandalized at this species of infidelity.” Later it appears that Alcheic was a murderer and a parricide; and when asked what was his motive for this action, he replies coolly that he “was not then so much at ease in his circumstances as he is at present, and that he had acted in that particular at the advice of all his friends.” But that, of all his actions, which was most highly applauded by the Fourlians, was the assassination of Usbek. “This Usbek had been to the last moment Alcheic’s intimate friend, had laid many high obligations upon him, had even saved his life on a certain occasion, and had, by his will, which was found after the murder, made him heir to a considerable part of his fortune. Alcheic, it seems, conspired with about twenty or thirty more, most of them also Usbek’s friends; and falling all together on that unhappy man when he was not aware, they had torn him with a hundred wounds, and given him that reward for all his past favors and obligations.” Usbek “had many great and good qualities; ... but this action of Alcheic’s sets him far above Usbek in the eyes of all judges of merit; and is one of the noblest that ever perhaps the sun shone upon.”