"Not yet. I want you to hear me out. And, I'm going to ask a rather special favor, Carl. Judge the plans on the merits of its logic alone. For the moment, imagine you have no emotion."
"I can, but it won't do any good. Afraid I have emotion, Douglas."
"I see. Tell me, if it is so valuable a thing as to be allowed to cloud your reasoning, why would you instantly throw it away if something called patriotic duty were suddenly thrust upon you?"
"It would shake me up a little of course—"
"Yes, but you'd chuck it. You'd perform the duty."
"All right. I don't know the tricks of debate, you do. Go ahead, I'm listening."
"I'll begin this way. If, we'll say, an infantry captain realized that by sacrificing the lives of three of his men and possibly his own, he could save the lives of his entire company, what would he do, if he were what is termed a 'good' officer?"
"Why, if that were his only alternative—"
"I assure you, it would be, for the purposes of my analogy."
"He'd—he'd save the company. That's happened."