As for poor Synthesis, he really has fallen so low in these days, that one cannot but pity him. He now goes about humbly after his brother, feeding on any scraps that are thrown to him, and is snubbed and rapped over the knuckles, and told one minute to hold his tongue and mind his own business, and the next that he has no business at all to mind, till he has got into such a poor way that some folks fancy he will die, and are actually digging his grave already, and composing his epitaph. But they are trying to wear the bear's skin before the bear is killed; for Synthesis is not dead, nor anything like it; and he will rise up again some day, to make good friends with his brother Analysis, and by his help do nobler and more beautiful work than he has ever yet done in the world.
So now Analysis has got the upper hand; so much so that he is in danger of being spoilt by too much prosperity, as his brother was before him; in which case he too will have his fall; and a great deal of good it will do him. And that is the end of my story, and a true story it is.
Now you must remember, whenever you have to do with him, that Analysis, like fire, is a very good servant, but a very bad master. For, having got his ******* only of late years or so, he is, like young men when they come suddenly to be their own masters, apt to be conceited, and to fancy that he knows everything, when really he knows nothing, and can never know anything, but only knows about things, which is a very different matter. Indeed, nowadays he pretends that he can teach his old grandmother, Madam How, not only how to suck eggs, but to make eggs into the bargain; while the good old lady just laughs at him kindly, and lets him run on, because she knows he will grow wiser in time, and learn humility by his mistakes and failures, as I hope you will from yours.
However, Analysis is a very clever young giant, and can do wonderful work as long as he meddles only with dead things, like this bit of lime. He can take it to pieces, and tell you of what things it is made, or seems to be made; and take them to pieces again, and tell you what each of them is made of; and so on, till he gets conceited, and fancies that he can find out some one Thing of all things (which he calls matter), of which all other things are made; and some Way of all ways (which he calls force), by which all things are made: but when he boasts in that way, old Madam How smiles, and says, "My child, before you can say that, you must remember a hundred things which you are forgetting, and learn a hundred thousand things which you do not know;" and then she just puts her hand over his eyes, and Master Analysis begins groping in the dark, and talking the saddest nonsense. So beware of him, and keep him in his own place, and to his own work, or he will flatter you, and get the mastery of you, and persuade you that he can teach you a thousand things of which he knows no more than he does why a duck's egg never hatches into a chicken. And remember, if Master Analysis ever grows saucy and conceited with you, just ask him that last riddle, and you will shut him up at once.
And why?
Because Analysis can only explain to you a little about dead things, like stones--inorganic things as they are called. Living things--organisms, as they are called--he cannot explain to you at all. When he meddles with them, he always ends like the man who killed his goose to get the golden eggs. He has to kill his goose, or his flower, or his insect, before he can analyse it; and then it is not a goose, but only the corpse of a goose; not a flower, but only the dead stuff of the flower.
And therefore he will never do anything but fail, when he tries to find out the life in things. How can he, when he has to take the life out of them first? He could not even find out how a plum- pudding is made by merely analysing it. He might part the sugar, and the flour, and the suet; he might even (for he is very clever, and very patient too, the more honour to him) take every atom of sugar out of the flour with which it had got mixed, and every atom of brown colour which had got out of the plums and currants into the body of the pudding, and then, for aught I know, put the colouring matter back again into the plums and currants; and then, for aught I know, turn the boiled pudding into a raw one again,-- for he is a great conjurer, as Madam How's grandson is bound to be: but yet he would never find out how the pudding was made, unless some one told him the great secret which the sailors in the old story forgot--that the cook boiled it in a cloth.
This is Analysis's weak point--don't let it be yours--that in all his calculations he is apt to forget the cloth, and indeed the cook likewise. No doubt he can analyse the matter of things: but he will keep forgetting that he cannot analyse their form.
Do I mean their shape?
No, my child; no. I mean something which makes the shape of things, and the matter of them likewise, but which folks have lost sight of nowadays, and do not seem likely to get sight of again for a few hundred years. So I suppose that you need not trouble your head about it, but may just follow the fashions as long as they last.
About this piece of lime, however, Analysis can tell us a great deal. And we may trust what he says, and believe that he understands what he says.
Why?
Think now. If you took your watch to pieces, you would probably spoil it for ever; you would have perhaps broken, and certainly mislaid, some of the bits; and not even a watchmaker could put it together again. You would have analysed the watch wrongly. But if a watchmaker took it to pieces then any other watchmaker could put it together again to go as well as ever, because they both understand the works, how they fit into each other, and what the use and the power of each is. Its being put together again rightly would be a proof that it had been taken to pieces rightly.
And so with Master Analysis. If he can take a thing to pieces so that his brother Synthesis can put it together again, you may be sure that he has done his work rightly.