Although the structure of the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," as Watson recounts them from his notes on his friend's cases, takes the form of several independent narratives, they each paint a picture of Holmes as a detective with a particular set of skills and principles, both practical and moral. Holmes himself, in his characteristic didactic manner, insists to Watson in the beginning of the final tale that these stories would have been better presented as lectures rather than adventures, emphasizing the conceptual consistency behind the various colorful tales. Indeed, the first encounter with Holmes in the first tale has him explain one of his basic working principles to Watson: that is, the difference between unthinking "seeing" and analytical "observation." Although Watson is also a highly educated man, Holmes makes more active use of his knowledge, and furthermore acquires an even broader set of knowledge, so that the particular facts he has in his mind, or in his collection of notes, will much more often match up with something that he sees before him and thus allow him to make one of his astonishing identifications. Aside from knowledge, it is also the attention and will to see things as potential clues with more meaning than would be conventionally apparent that define Holmes' special mode of visual apprehension of the world and people.
The ambivalent relationship that Holmes takes to the social norms of his time, Britain in the 1880s, is also noteworthy. While he recognizes crimes as punishable, he claims to be more interested in cases of a particular logical complexity that are pleasurable to solve. At the same time, he often takes up very conventionally moral positions, such as defending helpless and naïve women against scheming men. Likewise, he usually scoffs at the police but also relies on their assistance from time to time, such as in setting up the ambush for the robbers in "The Red-headed League."
