Pre – Diseño

Doyle takes another cue from Hume when it comes to evaluating character and motivation. Though the detective might have his suspicions about, and in some cases, factual proof of, a

person’s evil intentions or deeds, he does have moments when he allows his better nature to guide

his actions. As Hume suggests in his Essays Moral and Political, published in 1741: “It has also been found, as the experience of mankind increases, that people are no such dangerous monsters

as they have been represented, and that ’tis in every respect better to guide them like rational

creatures than to lead or drive them like brute beasts” (Burton Vol. I 138). Holmes follows that

advice in “The Blue Carbuncle,” when he sets the confessed, first-time thief free: “I suppose that I

am committing a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life” (Vol. I 396). In “The Second Stain,” Holmes agrees to overlook the

theft committed by Lady Hilda, “going far to screen” her from the one-time breach in her

otherwise impeccable moral code (Vol. I 1056). After identifying and confronting the murderer, Dr. Sterndale, in “The Devil’s Foot,” Holmes gives the avenging killer leave to return to his research in Africa and commiserates with the pain that drove him to commit a crime: “I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done” (Vol. II 491). After coaxing a confession from the murderous father in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” Holmes lets him go free, choosing to believe the killer’s claim that he resorted to violence to protect his daughter and realizing that the man had but a short time to live. Most notably, Holmes and Watson collude as judge and jury to absolve Captain

Croker from any guilt, despite the sailor’s having bludgeoned an abusive husband to death in “The Abbey Grange”:

This is a very serious matter, though I am willing to admit that you acted under the most extreme provocation to which any man could be subjected. I am not sure that in defence of your life your action will not be pronounced legitimate. Meanwhile, I have so much sympathy for you that, if you choose to disappear in the next twenty- four hours, I will promise you that no one will hinder you. (Vol. I 1032)

Burton does caution, however, that human error is not to be ignored when analyzing

reason and suggests that therein lies the most significant accomplishment of Hume’s A Treatise of

Human Nature:

The greatest service which the Treatise has done to philosophy is that purely incidental one of teaching human reason its own weakness – of showing how easily the noblest fabric of human thought may be undermined by a destroying agency of power not greater than that of the constructive genius which has raised it. In this respect it has done to philosophy the invaluable service of teaching philosophers their own fallibility. In all the departments of thought, and not only in the world of thought but in that of action, the spirit of human infallibility is the greatest obstacle to truth and goodness. (Vol. I 90)

Doyle does not shy away from his character’s fallibility. Though contemporary reincarnations would have television viewers and movie-goers believe that Holmes always solves the crime, catches the crook, and restores order out of chaos, achieving those ends often involves some miscalculation along the way. In a few cases, Holmes is not victorious at all. In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” his enormous ego convinces him that the mystery has been solved, so he puts off retrieving the incriminating photo of Irene Adler and the Bohemian king – only to find that Adler has outwitted him in the end, taking the photo and leaving another in its place. In “The Solitary Cyclist,” the heroine nearly meets a violent her end when Holmes’s oversight of the railroad timetables delays him, forcing him to scramble to save her at the last minute. The final solution to “The Musgrave Ritual” is almost lost until Holmes is reminded that he skipped the last direction in the treasure hunt. At the start of the “Silver Blaze” Holmes snarls, “I made a blunder, my dear

Watson – which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only

knew me through your memoirs” (Vol. I 522). In two instances in “The Priory School,” Holmes

expresses frustration at his mistakes, calling himself a “blind beetle” and lamenting that he had

been “warm, as the children say, at that inn; I seem to grow colder every step that I take away from

it” (Vol. I 873-874). Holmes’s most- quoted admission of fallibility comes in the same story, when

Watson describes the detective’s proposed solution as “impossible.” “A most illuminating remark!” Holmes replies. “It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have

stated it wrong” (Vol. I 870). Clearly, Holmes has learned Hume’s contention, put forth in his

essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” that “among a thousand different opinions which different men

may entertain of the same subject there is one, and but one, that is just and true, and the only difficulty is to fix and ascertain it” (Bizzell 832). And as Holmes reminds Watson in “The Yellow

Face,” “Any truth is better than indefinite doubt” (Vol. I 562).