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PREFACE.
IN this contribution to the literature of chess the authors have attempted to present the elements of a new theory of play. They have confined themselves, in the main, to the exposition of that part of the system which governs the opening of a game; by suggestion, however, if not by definite statement, they hope to have laid before the reader at least the spirit of the complete theory. Leibnitz pronounced chess an exact science, Petroff placed it on a level with the integral calculus, and the great Anderssen declared that its intricacies were more abstruse than the most profound mathematics; the authors of the new theory, agreeing with this trio of distinguished scholars, are tempted to go still further, and to assert, even at the peril of being considered somewhat visionary, not only that chess is a real science, but that it may not unreasonably be regarded as symbolical of the supreme science, the science of force. If this be true, the study of chess may profitably engage the attention of the ablest intellects. Those persons who make light of the wooden puppets that run over the surface of the chess board should recollect that a frame of wires strung with wooden balls was the familiar companion of the earlier mathematicians, that the science of logarithms was perfected by means of wooden pegs and a board pierced with holes, and that Napoleon won his victories before his battles were fought, by sticking his map of Europe full of pins surmounted by divers colored balls of sealing-wax.
"The art of war," declared Napoleon, "can be comprehended only by the exhaustive study and comparison of the campaigns of the great captains." In the same way, by the study and comparison of the recorded games of men who have risen to eminence as chess players, it is possible to discern a similarity in their methods of calculation and procedure, which, if properly comprehended and reduced to a system, must become available as the basis, not only of a theory, but of the true theory, of chess play, and to deduce from this system certain principles whose truth and applicability must be universally obvious at all times and in all circumstances of practice. This is what the authors of this volume have tried to do. Their chief aim has been to render the player, whether he be a master or a novice, independent of all other treatments of the chess openings, and particularly to free him from the slavery of mechanical analysis, by educating him in the guiding, basic principles of scientific chess. They realize the gravity of their undertaking, and for its support they appeal at once to the liberal discussion and dispassionate judgment of the chess world, and to the experience of those beginners who, through the door that is here thrown open, may enter upon and behold the beauties of the noblest mental diversion which the ingenuity of man has devised.
Boston, 1894.
