If there exist but few people who have any taste for synthesis, there are many whose passion for analysis is pushed to the most exaggerated limits.

Certainly, a continual examination of conscience is necessary if we would escape both useless scruples and irrational desires; certainly, it is good to look squarely in the face the near or remote consequences of our actions; certainly, too, we ought to investigate in all sincerity the secret motives which cause our acts, so that we may correct our errors, taste the delight of well-doing, profit by the lessons of the past, and, in short, satisfy the needs of ethical culture.

By criticising ourselves, looking inward, training ourselves in abstract ideas, and submitting to the laws of mental attainment, we gain the moral instinct which everyone should possess.

If, on the other hand, pushed by the desire to be strictly honest, we analyse our actions too minutely, we shall disturb the balance of our judgment; while, if we thus investigate the doings of others, we shall begin to depreciate great or noble actions until, by our false interpretation of them, we lose the power to perceive them at all.

If, taking separately each idea comprised in an abstract general notion, each small fact composing some important action, we study such parts analytically, we falsify their quality and quantity just as we falsify forms observed through a magnifying glass. Trifling defects appear enlarged and developed, and injure the beauty of the whole—the harmony of a great idea, or the carrying out of an enterprise. I do not deny that, to become morally great, we must imagine great things; I know well that an action is only of value in proportion to the virtue of the end in view; I am not ignorant of the fact that it is useful to look inward; but I do say that too severe analysis applied to all our actions, or those of others, as much in the case of trifles as in serious matters, makes one unjust to his neighbour and himself, and always tends to impair the workings of the intellect.

By scrutinising all the motives by which action has been determined, you rob that action either of its beauty or its goodness, and you will suffer doubly—both with regard to yourself and others.

For instance, you say to yourself: “Was I right in doing such a kind action?” And if, in the process of deduction (whether you consider the service useless because rendered to one not perfectly worthy of it, or doubt beforehand of the gratitude due to you), you come to regret the altruistic impulse on which you acted, you will at once destroy all the pleasure you felt, and you will do wrong to the person you have befriended by a coldness of feeling he has not deserved. Examples might be cited indefinitely. By this excessive analysis you can transform an act of self-sacrifice into an act of narrow egotism, an excuse into a meanness, a certainty into an hypothesis, or a sincere affection into a selfish pretence. This, as regards others; in regard to oneself, the result will be great hesitation, confusion of ideas, disturbance of thought, continual uneasiness and dissatisfaction.

I have only spoken of the misuse of analysis, for its normal use in the mental life is useful, especially when the whole of the facts of the case in point are taken into consideration, as they should never fail to be.

Paulhan says: “Though analysis is to some extent necessary to all mental action, it assumes supreme importance in certain operations of the spirit. They are those which we see govern analytical minds lacking the power of synthesis. Observation, the habit of noticing details, rests mainly on analysis, and the same is true of the faculty of comprehending the thoughts of others. Memory, too, especially the organised memory which implies the discrimination between impressions and ideas, is also founded on analysis; the same with criticism, the detailed and reasoned appreciation of a work of art, science, or philosophy. Certain qualities of the mind and even the character, again, imply the faculty of analysis in a high degree; for instance, finesse, delicacy, the spirit of scepticism and the love of detail.”

Granting all this, I say that excessive analysis is a danger. To be useful, it must have the qualities of precision, delicacy, and depth, and not those of vagueness, violence, and exaggeration.