For my part, I believe that they are both, like St. Patrick, "gentlemen,
and come of decent people;" and I have a great respect and affection for
them both, as long as each keeps in his own place and minds his own
business.
Now you must understand that, as soon as these two baby giants were born,
Lady Why, who sets everything to do that work for which it is exactly
fitted, set both of them their work. Analysis was to take to pieces
everything he found, and find out how it was made. Synthesis was to put
the pieces together again, and make something fresh out of them. In a
word, Analysis was to teach men Science; and Synthesis to teach them Art.
But because Analysis was the elder, Madam How commanded Synthesis never
to put the pieces together till Analysis had taken them completely apart.
And, my child, if Synthesis had obeyed that rule of his good old
grandmother's, the world would have been far happier, wealthier, wiser,
and better than it is now.
But Synthesis would not. He grew up a very noble boy. He could carve,
he could paint, he could build, he could make music, and write poems: but
he was full of conceit and haste. Whenever his elder brother tried to do
a little patient work in taking things to pieces, Synthesis snatched the
work out of his hands before it was a quarter done, and began putting it
together again to suit his own fancy, and, of course, put it together
wrong. Then he went on to bully his elder brother, and locked him up in
prison, and starved him, till for many hundred years poor Analysis never
grew at all, but remained dwarfed, and stupid, and all but blind for want
of light; while Synthesis, and all the hasty conceited people who
followed him, grew stout and strong and tyrannous, and overspread the
whole world, and ruled it at their will.
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