The symbiotic relationship between Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes in their efforts to quell threats to Victorian society serves as an astute allegory for the concept of the soul asserted by Plato. Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories evoke a synergic adaption for Plato’s analogy of the “tripartite soul of reason, high spirit (or thumos), and appetite” (Smith, p. 32). Holmes’ position in this spiritual design is undoubtedly the proprietor of reason who is stringent in his rational applications and will “never guess. It is a shocking habit- destructive to the logical faculty” (Doyle, p. 101). His partner the somewhat naive Doctor Watson is representative of the high spirit who is simultaneously intrigued by both the hero’s ability and the malign criminal acts. Considering Plato designed this theory of the soul to correspond with the just state, the criminal elements in Doyle’s stories represent the appetite or baser instincts of the soul. This is evident from the fact that many of the criminals in Doyle’s tales are not necessarily malevolent but have been led astray by a desire for vice. Usually this particular immoral lust is motivated by greed for money as demonstrated by the capitulation to criminality displayed by the villains of A Case of Identity and The Man with the Twisted Lip, the opposition of these acts from Holmes’ reason can sometimes leave the hero on the periphery of the law himself: “The law cannot, as you say, touch you, yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more” (Doyle, p. 482). Doyle positions Doctor Watson as the Victorian citizen who may deem his gallant partners’ more apathetic narcotic engagements as slightly dubious but is ultimately enthralled and aspires to this man’s rationality. Watson’s part in this relationship is pivotal because he becomes the interpreter of the adventures who is “eternally baffled, eternally well-meaning, eternally one of us, who witnesses and interprets Holmes’s lifelong masque of reason, and in interpreting it validates it for precisely the middle-class world it is intended to reassure” (McConnell, p.179). The need for reassurance in the era that Doyle proposed his detective fiction was a necessity following Darwin’s theories which were a scientific tremor upon the accepted knowledge of the time. The theory of evolution had, if nothing else produced a sufficient challenge to creationism and to a certain extent rendered the philosophical considerations of the social world at the time unstable. Thus, akin to the parallel that Plato draws between the tripartite soul and the virtuous state, the symbiosis of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson serves to exemplify that the appropriate method to combat the insecurity of the post-Darwinian world is adherence to reason.
While the dynamics of the affiliation between Watson and Holmes endeavours to curtail hysteria deriving from scientific discovery, it conversely engages in a celebration of the possibilities that science offers society. Significantly the commencement of this friendship in A Study in Scarlet is situated in a laboratory where Holmes’ perfunctory scientific exertions exhume the prospect of an advanced judiciary system which could have led to “hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes” (Doyle, p. 16) Evaluating the measures utilised by Holmes to assess clues that are instrumental in the detection of crime, it could be reasoned that the examples of his scientific knowledge of various tobacco types, chemical agents and handwriting styles; serve to lull any of the insecurities that were felt in the Victorian society regarding this discipline. Perhaps due to his own history as a medical practitioner Doyle was aware of the beneficial aspects of science and was intrigued by the “few adventurous physicians versed in anatomy, pharmacy, and microscopy were beginning to use their skills in the study of unexplained sudden death”(Wagner, p. 4). This fascination is replicated in Watson’s admiration for Holmes’ aptitude in the application of such scientific deduction which at times leads him to almost question the humanity of the protagonist: “How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head” (Doyle, p. 177). There is a sense that Watson almost deifies Holmes and this is perhaps akin to Doyle, a medical man who since Darwin’s revelation had fully assimilated science as the optimum explanation for the human condition. Ultimately, the attitudinal contrast toward scientific advancement illustrated by Doyle through the relationship between Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes delves into a philosophical aspect within the imperialist mindset which would later be pronounced by George Orwell as doublethink: “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting them both”(Kehl, p.59).
Clarity in the Confusion 