Los Dilemas De La Vida Y La Muerte: Una Construcción Narrativa De La Experiencia Familiar

Burton briefly explains select passages from Hume’s Treatise and offers the reactions of

others to the work, all couched in an introduction that admits “the Treatise is among the least systematic of philosophical works – that it has neither a definite and comprehensive plan, nor a

logical arrangement” (Vol. I 66). But one specific part of the Treatise that finds its way into the

Sherlockian canon is worth reviewing: the value of imagination, a facility whose chief asset, Hume states, is “the liberty to transpose and change its ideas” (Section III of Book I). In her book,

Hume’s Imagination, Mary Banwart points out that as the scholar “was interested in the analysis of ideas, he was also interested in the way we join simple ideas to form complex ones and in the way narrative or historical accounts of experience move us to act” (1). The ability to form those complex concepts is often linked to imagination, which Banwart defines as “the one free principle

of association [that] enables us to extend past experience into the future by finding new resemblances between ideas (97). She also points out that Hume describes imagination “as a constructive activity capable of reflection and discovery,” and that activity is both conscious and

deliberate: “Successful associations do not simply happen. According to Hume, they are

something for which we are responsible” (66, 97). In other words, imagination is the ability to connect seemingly disparate ideas to create a new concept, and one that is often acquired through experience, observation, and an understanding of cause and effect. As Hume posits: “Our judgments concerning cause and effect are derived from habit and experience, and when we have been accustomed to see one object united to another, our imagination passes from the first to the second, by a natural transition” (Section XIII).

Sherlock Holmes possessed a powerful and well-honed imagination, the product of his continuing education, knowledge of the past, and astute observational skills. A key factor in his accepting or declining a case was often the level of difficulty it presented to his imagination, as Watson notes in “Black Peter”:

He frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity. (Vol. I 885)

For Holmes, the first challenge usually involved engaging his imagination to reorder otherwise random facts to form an appraisal of a client, victim, or witness. Examples of his capacity to do so, often within seconds, is part of the detective’s enduring allure: By tapping the resources of his imagination, he can assess his subjects in a way that leaves his audience breathless. Just one

nothing but a newspaper in his hands, yet it takes Holmes no time to learn key elements about his client and to explain what association of ideas led to his conclusions:

“Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he

takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he had done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

“How in the name of good-fortune did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked.

“How did you now, for example that I did manual labour? It’s as true as gospel, for I began as a ship’s carpenter.”

“Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more developed.”

“Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?”

“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use and arc-and-compass breastpin.” “Ah, I forgot that. But the writing?”

“What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five inches, and the

left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon the desk?” “Well, but China?”

“The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes’ scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I never!” said he. “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.” “I begin to think, Watson,” said Holmes, “that I make a mistake in explaining. Omne ignotum pro magnifio, you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is,

will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid.” (Vol. I 265-266)

Holmes also employs his imagination to make mental leaps between seemingly unrelated facts and ideas, then arranging them into a cause-and-effect series. One of his most famous cases, “Silver Blaze,” hinged on his ability to connect several such random clues. In this story, a famous racehorse has disappeared, his trainer has been murdered, and Holmes is called in by an out-of- his-depth Inspector Gregson to find the animal and capture the killer before an upcoming big race. Among the mishmash of information Holmes uncovers are several sheep going lame weeks before the disappearance, the presence of an expensive dressmaker’s bill in the dead man’s pocket, and the curried mutton dish served at dinner on the night of the murder. One of the canon’s most famous clues also appears here: the dog that did not bark in the night. While no one involved with

the mystery gave a second thought to the dog, Holmes alone connected the creature’s lack of reaction as an indicator that the killer must have been known and not considered a threat; otherwise, the dog would have raised the alarm. But it is the curried mutton that Holmes calls “the first link in my chain of reasoning,” putting in his mind the idea that a heavily spiced dish would mask the flavor of an opiate that would cause the stable hands to sleep through any disturbance in the night (Vol. I 543).

The ability to imaginatively re-associate disparate elements into orderly facts is a hallmark of Holmes’s success and is on display at some level in every story. But there are also a few lapses, as in the “Thor Bridge” adventure when he admits that failing to exercise his imagination almost changed the outcome of a case involving a vindictive wife who made her suicide appear like a murder to implicate the young governess her husband had fallen in love with. “I feel Watson, that you will not improve any reputation which I may have acquired by adding the case to your annals. I have been sluggish in mind and wanting in that mixture of imagination and reality which is the basis

of my art” (Vol. II 651). Imagination, for Holmes, elevates plodding detective work to an art form.

Holmes reminds Watson of this point on more than one occasion when he comments on the imaginative skills among the various police officials he encounters. Most of these observations are

negative, as in this assessment of Lestrade in “The Norwood Builder.” The long-suffering Scotland

Yard detective is eager to pin a murder on a young lawyer just because he visited the victim on the night of the crime:

It strikes me, my good Lestrade, as being just a trifle too obvious. You do not add imagination to your other great qualities; but if you could for one moment put yourself in the place of this young man, would you choose the very night after the will had been made to commit your crime? Would it not seem dangerous to you to make so very close a relation between the two incidents? Again, would you choose an occasion when you are known to be in the house, when a servant has let you in? And finally, would you take the great pains to conceal the body and yet leave your own stick as a sign you were the criminal? Confess, Lestrade, that all this is very unlikely. (Vol. I 790)

Holmes is equally dismissive of the hapless Inspector Gregory, assigned to investigate the missing

horse in “Silver Blaze.” “Were he but gifted with imagination he might rise to great heights in his

profession,” Holmes says (Vol. I 527). His own ability to sew together the strands of seemingly

unrelated ideas and events enables Holmes to devise a logical, and correct, solution to the mystery. “See the value of imagination,” he points out to Watson. “It is the one quality which Gregory lacks. We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified” (Vol. I 535).