He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences.

Time after time he had fallen into the Cartesian fallacy, mistaking clear reasoning for correct reasoning.

Up to this point White has been following well-known analysis, but now he makes a fatal error - he begins to use his own head.

It was a mess. How could a man think clearly when he could not distinguish between an idiotic subconscious urge and common sense?

Solomon made a great mistake when he asked for wisdom.

I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.

His thoughts grew confused, and he mistook that quality for complexity.

no one, in his present case, would have been so dangerous as Jarno, a man whose clear intellect could form a just and rigorous decision about present things; but who erred withal in enunciating these particular decisions with a kind of universal application; whereas, in truth, the judgments of the understanding are properly of force but once, and that in the strictest cases, and become inaccurate in some degree when applied to any other.

I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.