A Study in Scarlet, II: Sherlock’s “Great Mind”

     A Study in Scarlet was the original Sherlock Holmes story, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in England in 1887. The story is divided into two parts. Part One ends with the case solved and the murderer caught in London; however, the first three chapters of Part Two mysteriously transport the audience decades into the past in Utah. This sudden change reveals that solving the facts of a mystery does not necessarily mean understanding the reasons behind them. Although Holmes believes that “to a great mind, nothing is little,” his ability to see the smallest details does not always extend to understanding the people behind them.

     Holmes can look at a person and deduce their occupation from small details in their appearance, and he can use seemingly insignificant clues to solve an entire mystery. However, he only sees the importance of things that interest him. He can become completely absorbed in deductive reasoning, yet he becomes bored when the subject turns to social circumstances and the people behind the facts.

    G.K. Chesterton makes a similar distinction in his book Heretics when he separates people into the “bores” and the “bored.” The “bore” is someone who can find endless interest in a subject that others might consider uninteresting, while the “bored” person is uninterested because they fail to see anything worth discovering. Chesterton argues that the problem is not necessarily that a subject is boring, but that the person looking at it is uninterested. Holmes is the “bore” when discussing deduction because he can find endless interest in even the smallest details, but he becomes the “bored” when he is faced with something he does not consider useful. He might be able to deduce that a person is a certain kind of worker, but his partner Watson might be more likely to stop and wonder why that particular person chose that career in the first place. Holmes sees the facts, but he does not always see the humanity behind them. 

     This may be why Part II is necessary. Holmes solves the facts of the mystery, but he does not understand the entire reason behind them. The reader is left to learn the missing story and decide what to make of it. Holmes may believe that nothing is too little for a great mind, but his greatest weakness is that he sometimes considers people too little to be worth understanding. His mind is remarkably good at finding facts, but facts alone cannot always explain why people do what they do. According to Sherlock’s own reasoning, the reader’s mind is greater than his own for finding the humanity within the mystery.