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 talents 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 preternatural. 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 all 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 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 recherche 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
(sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or
hurry into miscalculation.