The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Murders In The Rue
Morgue
by Edgar Allan Poe
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he
hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not
beyond all conjecture.
--Sir Thomas Browne.
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
analyse. 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.
Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the
calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been
known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while
eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a
similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best
chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of
chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those
more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I
say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which includes a
comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be
derived. These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently
among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary

understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so
far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the
rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the
game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a
retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are points commonly
regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond
the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes,
in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his
companions; and the difference in the extent of the information
obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the
quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to
observe. Our