Commentary on Fiction

Is Sherlock Holmes real? Of all the fictional characters in the history of literature, Sherlock Holmes would probably be most likely to have been considered to be a real person. This is probably true because Arthur Conan Doyle so ingeniously provided such exact detail to his description of the character of Sherlock Holmes.

We know family and friends better than any writer could describe them because we observe every detail of their characters. Real persons have real characteristics and fictional persons comprise these same kinds of real characteristics even though the fictional persons are not real. Therefore, what is real and not real about Sherlock Holmes?

When Arthur Conan Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes, he used only real mental representations of real characteristics of a person who could have been real. In other words, Doyle used a combination of real ideas to create the unreal person of Sherlock Holmes.

So what is real and not real about Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock Holmes is real in the fact that he was created by a writer to accomplish a useful purpose. Doyle created this character and his stories for the useful purpose of entertaining anyone who reads them. In only this sense is Sherlock Holmes real, as a real combination of real ideas for the useful purpose of entertaining people.

In order to consider the unreality of Sherlock Holmes, one must subtract from his character everything that is real. The entire set of real ideas that compose the character of Sherlock Holmes must be thus subtracted. Then what is left? The obvious answer is nothing. The unreality of Sherlock Holmes equals nothing. Sherlock Holmes is a real name applied to a real combination of real ideas created by a writer upon the background canvas of a real nothingness.

But if even the nothingness upon which Sherlock Holmes was created is real, then where is the unreality of Sherlock Holmes? The obvious answer can only be that he exists nowhere and at no time. The fiction of Sherlock Holmes consists in the fact that he has never existed as a real person at no place and at no time. The real idea of nothing hides the unreality of Sherlock Holmes.

All of this means that the mind can never be directly conscious of unreality because it does not exist. The mind can be conscious of the real idea of nothingness that hides unreality, but never directly aware of unreality itself. This can only mean that every basic idea and impression that occurs to the mind, whether abstract or concrete, must be real. In fact, the very purpose of the mind is to cause reality to exist. The only unreality lies behind the idea of nothing inherent in all false combinations. Even though Sherlock Holmes is a real combination of real ideas for the real and useful purpose of entertaining people, in a sense he is also a false combination of real ideas because he has never existed as a real person at any place or at any time. In other words, as a real person, Sherlock Holmes nonexists as an absolute nothingness.