Especially, should the student be wary in regard to what is termed chess analysis, as applied to the so-called “openings” and to the mid-game. Most chess analysts are compilers of falsities occasionally interspersed with truth. Among the prodigious number of variations which they pretend to establish or refute, none may be implicitly relied on in actual play; few are of value except for merely elementary purposes, and many are fallacies fatal to the user.
The reason for this is: whenever men invited by curiosity, seek to examine circumstantially even the less intricate situations on the Chess-board, they at once become lost in a labyrinth abounding in obscurities and contradictions. Those, who ignorant of the synthetic method of calculation, are compelled to depend upon their analytic powers, quickly find that these, on account of the number of unknown quantities, are utterly inadequate.
Any attempt to calculate the true move in Chess-play by analysis, other than in situations devoid of unknown quantities, is futile.
Yet it is of such folly that the mediocre mind is most enamoured. Content with seeing much, it is oblivious to what it cannot see; and the analytical system consists merely in claiming that there is nothing to see, other than what it does see.
This is that slender reed upon which the so-called “chess-analyst” hangs his claims, oblivious to the basic truth that in analysis, unless all is known, nothing is known.
Many delude themselves to the contrary and strive to arrive at correct conclusions without first having arranged clearly before their minds all the facts.
Hence, their opinions and judgments, being founded in ignorance of all the facts, are to that extent defective; and their conclusions necessarily wrong.
Through action taken upon incomplete knowledge, men are beguiled into error; and it is to such unreason that most human catastrophes are to be attributed.
Most of those who attempt to write on Strategetics, and whether applied to Chess-play or to Warfare, very quickly are compelled to seek refuge in vague phrases; in order to conceal their uncertain grasp on the subject discussed. The uninformed believe in them, because of their reputation, and are satisfied that the thing is so, without understanding _WHY_.