The Murders In The Rue Morgue
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although
puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
THE mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little
susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them,
among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed,
a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability,
delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that
moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial
occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of
hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to
the ordinary apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and
essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.
The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and
especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its
retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is
not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the
other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly
misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar
narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert
that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully
tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess.
In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and
variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is
profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an
oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only
manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases
out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In
draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the
probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left
comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by
superior acumen. To be less abstract - Let us suppose a game of draughts where the
pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It
is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by
some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived
of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies
himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods
(sometime indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into
miscalculation.
