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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
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