THE MAKING OF ARGUMENTS
J.H. GARDINER
FORMERLY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1912
TO MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES ON THE STAFF OF ENGLISH A
PREFACE
The object of this book is to lay out a course in the writing of
arguments which shall be simple enough for classes which give only a
part of the year to the work, and yet comprehensive enough for special
classes in the subject. It is especially aimed at the interests and
needs of the student body as a whole, however, rather than at those of
students who are doing advanced work in argumentation. Though few men
have either the capacity or the need to become highly trained
specialists in the making of arguments, all men need some knowledge of
the art. Experience at Harvard has shown that pretty much the entire
freshman class will work with enthusiasm on a single argument; and they
get from this work a training in exact thought and a discipline that
they get from no other kind of writing.
Accordingly I have laid out this book in order to start students as soon
as possible on the same kind of arguments that they are likely to make
in practical life. I have striven throughout to keep in mind the
interests and needs of these average individuals, who in the aggregate
will tread such a variety of paths in their passage through the world.
Not many of them will get to Congress, there to make great orations on
the settlement of the tariff, and the large majority of them will not go
into the law; and even of the lawyers many will have little concern with
the elaborate piecing together of circumstantial evidence into the basis
for a verdict. But all of them will sooner or later need the power of
coming to close quarters with more or less complicated questions, in
which they must bring over to their views men of varying prepossessions
and practical interests; and all of them all their lives will need the
power of seeing through to the heart of such questions, and of grasping
what is essential, though it be separated by a hair's breadth from the
inessential that must be cast to one side. It is for this training of
the powers of thought that a course in the making of arguments is
profitable, even when pursued for so short a time as can be given to it
in most schools and colleges.
In laying out the book I have had these three purposes in mind: first,
that the student shall without waste of time be set to exploring his
subject and running down the exact issues on which his question will
tarn; second, that as he collects his material he shall be led on to
consider what part of it is good evidence for his purpose, and how to
test his reasoning from the facts; third, that with his material
gathered and culled and his plan settled he shall turn his attention to
presenting it in the most effective way possible for the particular
occasion.
Throughout I have tried to lay stress on the making of arguments, not as
an end in themselves, and to fit certain more or loss arbitrary
formulas, but as the practical kind of appeal that every young man is
already making to his fellows on matters that interest him, and that he
will make more and more in earnest as he gets out into the world. The
tendency of some of the books to treat argumentation, especially in the
form of debating, as a new variety of sport, with rules as elaborate and
technical as those of football, turns away from the subject a good many
young men to whom the training in itself would be highly valuable. The
future of the subject will be closely dependent on the success of
teachers in keeping it flexible and in intimate touch with real affairs.
I have made some suggestions looking towards this end in Appendix II.
My obligations to earlier workers in the field will be obvious to all
who know the subject. In especial, I, like all other writers on the
subject, have built on foundations laid by Professor George Pierce
Baker, of Harvard University.
For permission to use the articles from _The Outlook_ I am indebted to
the courtesy of the editors of that journal; for the article on "The
Transmission of Yellow Fever by Mosquitoes," to the kindness of General
Sternberg, and of the editor of _The Popular Science Monthly_.
J.H. GARDINER
THE MAKING OF ARGUMENTS
CHAPTER I
WHAT WE ARGUE ABOUT, AND WHY
1. What Argument is. When we argue we write or speak with an active
purpose of making other people take our view of a case; that is the only
essential difference between argument and other modes of writing.
Between exposition and argument there is no certain line. In Professor
Lamont's excellent little book, "Specimens of Exposition," there are two
examples which might be used in this book as examples of argument; in
one of them, Huxley's essay on "The Physical Basis of Life," Huxley
himself toward the end uses the words, "as I have endeavored to prove to
you"; and Matthew Arnold's essay on "Wordsworth" is an elaborate effort
to prove that Wordsworth is the greatest English poet after Shakespeare
and Milton. Or, to take quite different examples, in any question of law
where judges of the court disagree, as in the Income Tax Case, or in the
Insular cases which decided the status of Porto Rico and the
Philippines, both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinions of
the judges are argumentative in form; though the majority opinion, at
any rate, is in theory an exposition of the law. The real difference
between argument and exposition lies in the difference of attitude
toward the subject in hand: when we are explaining we tacitly assume
that there is only one view to be taken of the subject; when we argue we
recognize that other people look on it differently. And the differences
in form are only those which are necessary to throw the critical points
of an argument into high relief and to warm the feelings of the readers.
2. Conviction and Persuasion. This active purpose of making other
people take your view of the case in hand, then, is the distinguishing
essence of argument. To accomplish this purpose you have two tools or
weapons, or perhaps one should say two sides to the same weapon,
_conviction_ and _persuasion_. In an argument you aim in the first place
to make clear to your audience that your view of the case is the truer
or sounder, or your proposal the more expedient; and in most arguments
you aim also so to touch the practical or moral feelings of your readers
as to make them more or less warm partisans of your view. If you are
trying to make some one see that the shape of the hills in New England
is due to glacial action, you never think of his feelings; here any
attempt at persuading him, as distinguished from convincing him, would
be an impertinence. On the other hand, it would be a waste of breath to
convince a man that the rascals ought to be turned out, if he will not
on election day take the trouble to go out and vote; unless you have
effectively stirred his feelings as well as convinced his reason you
have gained nothing. In the latter case your argument would be almost
wholly persuasive, in the former almost wholly a matter of convincing.
These two sides of argument correspond to two great faculties of the
human mind, thought and feeling, and to the two ways in which, under
the guidance of thought and feeling, mankind reacts to experience. As we
pass through life our actions and our interest in the people and things
we meet are fixed in the first place by the spontaneous movements of
feeling, and in the second place, and constantly more so as we grow
older, by our reasoning powers. Even the most intentionally dry of
philosophers has his prejudices, perhaps against competitive sports or
against efficiency as a chief test of good citizenship; and after
childhood the most wayward of artists has some general principles to
guide him along his primrose path. The actions of all men are the
resultant of these two forces of feeling and reason. Since in most cases
where we are arguing we have an eye to influencing action, we must keep
both the forces in mind as possible means to our end.
3. Argument neither Contentiousness nor Dispute. Argument is not
contentiousness, nor is it the good-natured and sociable disputation in
which we occupy a good deal of time with our friends. The difference is
that in neither contentiousness nor in kindly dispute do we expect, or
intend, to get anywhere. There are many political speeches whose only
object is to make things uncomfortable for the other side, and some
speeches in college or school debates intended merely to trip up the
other side; and neither type helps to clear up the subjects it deals
with. On the other hand, we spend many a pleasant evening arguing
whether science is more important in education than literature, or
whether it is better to spend the summer at the seashore or in the
mountains, or similar subjects, where we know that everybody will stand
at the end just where he stood at the beginning. Here our real purpose
is not to change any one's views so much as it is to exchange thoughts
and likings with some one we know and care for. The purpose of
argument, as we shall understand the word here, is to convince or
persuade some one.
4. Arguments and the Audience. In argument, therefore, far more than in
other kinds of writing, one must keep the audience definitely in mind.
"Persuade" and "convince" for our purposes are active verbs, and in most
cases their objects have an important effect on their significance. An
argument on a given subject that will have a cogent force with one set
of people, will not touch, and may even repel, another. To take a simple
example: an argument in defense of the present game of football would
change considerably in proportions and in tone according as it was
addressed to undergraduates, to a faculty, or to a ministers'
conference. Huxley's argument on evolution (p. 233), which was delivered
to a popular audience, has more illustrations and is less compressed in
reasoning than if it had been delivered to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences. Not only theoretically, but in practice, arguments must
vary in both form and substance with the audiences to which they are
addressed. An argument shot into the void is not likely to bring down
much game.
5. Profitable Subjects for Arguments. To get the best results from
practice in writing arguments, you must choose your subjects with care
and sagacity. Some classes of subjects are of small value. Questions
which rest on differences of taste or temperament from their very nature
can never be brought to a decision. The question whether one game is
better than another--football better than baseball, for example--is not
arguable, for in the end one side settles down to saying, "But I like
baseball best," and you stick there. Closely akin is such a question as,
Was Alexander Pope a poet; for in the word "poet" one includes many
purely emotional factors which touch one person and not another. Matthew
Arnold made a brave attempt to prove that Wordsworth stood third in
excellence in the long line of English poets, and his essay is a notable
piece of argument; but the very statement of his thesis, that Wordsworth
"left a body of poetical work superior in power, in interest, in the
qualities which give enduring freshness, to that which any of the others
has left," shows the vanity of the attempt. To take a single
word--"interest"--from his proposition: what is the use of arguing with
me, if Wordsworth happened to bore me, as he does not, that I ought to
find him interesting. All I could do would be humbly to admit my
deficiency, and go as cheerfully as might be to Burns or Coleridge or
Byron. Almost all questions of criticism labor under this difficulty,
that in the end they are questions of taste. You or I were so made in
the beginning that the so-called romantic school or the so-called
classical school seems to us to have reached the pinnacle of art; and
all the argument in the world cannot make us over again in this respect.
Every question which in the end involves questions of aesthetic taste is
as futile to argue as questions of the palate.
Other questions are impracticable because of vagueness. Such questions
as, Should a practical man read poetry, Are lawyers a useful class in
the community, Are the American people deteriorating, furnish excellent
material for lively and witty talk, but no one expects them to lead to
any conclusion, and they are therefore valueless as a basis for the
rigorous and muscular training which an argument ought to give. There
are many questions of this sort which serve admirably for the friendly
dispute which makes up so much of our daily life with our friends, but
which dissolve when we try to pin them down.
Some questions which cannot be profitably argued when phrased in general
terms become more practicable when they are applied to a definite class
or to a single person. Such questions as, Is it better to go to a small
college or a large one, Is it better to live in the country or in the
city, Is it wise to go into farming, all lead nowhere if they are argued
in this general form. But if they are applied to a single person, they
change character: in this specific form they not only are arguable, but
they constantly are argued out with direct and practical results, and
even for a small and strictly defined class of persons they may provide
good material for a formal argument. For example, the question, "Is it
better for a boy of good intellectual ability and capacity for making
friends, who lives in a small country town, to go to a small college or
a large," provides moderately good material for an argument on either
side; though even here the limiting phrases are none too definite. In a
debate on such a subject it would be easy for the two sides to pass each
other by without ever coming to a direct issue, because of differing
understanding of the terms. On the whole it seems wiser not to take
risks with such questions, but to choose from those which will
unquestionably give you the training for which you are seeking.
Roughly speaking, subjects for an argument which are sure to be
profitable may be divided into three classes: (1) those for which the
material is drawn from personal experience; (2) those for which the
material is provided by reading; and (3) those which combine the first
two. Of these there can be no question that the last are the most
profitable. Of the first class we may take for an example such a
question as, Should interscholastic athletics be maintained in----
school? Here is a question on which some parents and teachers at any
rate will disagree with most boys, and a question which must be settled
one way or the other. The material for the discussion must come from the
personal knowledge of those who make the arguments, reenforced by what
information and opinion they can collect from teachers and townspeople.
In Chapter II we shall come to a consideration of possible sources for
material for these and other arguments. There is much to be said for the
practice gained by hunting up pertinent material for arguments of this
sort; but they tend to run over into irreconcilable differences of
opinion, in which an argument is of no practical value.
The second class of subjects, those for which the material is drawn
wholly from reading, is the most common in intercollegiate and
interscholastic debates. Should the United States army canteen be
restored, Should the Chinese be excluded from the Philippines, Should
the United States establish a parcels post, are all subjects with which
the ordinary student in high school or college can have little personal
acquaintance. The sources for arguments on such subjects are to be found
in books, magazines, and official reports. The good you will get from
arguments on such subjects lies largely in finding out how to look up
material. The difficulty with them lies in their size and their
complexity. When it is remembered that a column of an ordinary newspaper
has somewhere about fifteen hundred words, and that an editorial article
such as on page 268, which is thirty-eight hundred words long, is in
these days of hurry apt to be repellent, because of its length, and on
the other hand that a theme of fifteen hundred words seems to the
ordinary undergraduate a weighty undertaking, the nature of this
difficulty becomes clear. To put it another way, speeches on public
subjects of great importance are apt to be at least an hour long, and
not infrequently more, and in an hour one easily speaks six or seven
thousand words, so that fifteen hundred words would not fill a
fifteen-minute speech. This difficulty is met in debates by the longer
time allowed, for each side ordinarily has an hour; but even then there
can be no pretense of a thorough treatment. The ordinary written
argument of a student in school or college can therefore do very little
with large public questions. The danger is that a short argument on a
large question may breed in one an easy content with a superficial and
parrotlike discussion of the subject. Discussions of large and abstract
principles are necessary, but they are best left to the time of life
when one has a comprehensive and intimate knowledge of the whole mass of
facts concerned.
By far the best kind of subject, as has been said, is that which will
combine some personal acquaintance with the facts and the possibility of
some research for material. Many such subjects may be found in the
larger educational questions when applied to your own school or college.
Should the elective system be maintained at Harvard College, Should the
University of Illinois require Latin for the A.B. degree, Should
fraternities be abolished in----High School, Should manual training be
introduced in----High School, are all questions of this sort. A short
list of similar questions is printed at the end of this section, which
it is hoped will prove suggestive. For discussing these questions you
will find considerable printed material in educational and other
magazines, in reports of presidents of colleges and school committees,
and other such places, which will give you practice in hunting up facts
and opinions and in weighing their value. At the same time training of
your judgment will follow when you apply the theories and opinions you
find in these sources to local conditions. Moreover, such questions will
give you practice in getting material in the raw, as it were, by making
up tables of statistics from catalogues, by getting facts by personal
interview, and in other ways, which will be considered in Chapter II.
Finally, such subjects are much more likely to be of a size that you can
bring to a head in the space and the time allowed to the average
student, and they may have some immediate and practical effect in
determining a question in which your own school or college has an
interest. Arguments on such subjects are therefore less likely to be
"academic" discussions, in the sense of having no bearing on any real
conditions. When every college and school has plenty of such subjects
continually under debate, there seems to be no reason for going farther
and faring worse.
The main thing is to get a subject which will carry you back to facts,
and one in which you will be able to test your own reasoning.
6. Suggestions of Subjects for Practice. Many of the subjects in
the list below will need some adaptation to fit them to local
conditions; and these will undoubtedly suggest many others of a similar
nature. Other subjects of immediate and local interest may be drawn from
the current newspapers; and the larger, perennial ones like prohibition,
woman suffrage, immigration laws, are always at the disposal of those
who have the time and the courage for the amount of reading they
involve. The distinction between a subject and the proposition to be
argued will be made in Chapter II.
SUGGESTIONS FOR SUBJECTS OF ARGUMENTS
TO BE ADAPTED TO LOCAL AND PRESENT CONDITIONS
1. Admission to this college should be by examination only.
2. The entrance requirements of this college set a good standard for a
public high-school course.
3. Admission to this college should be by certificate from the
candidate's school, such as is now accepted at----College.
4. The standards for admission to this college or to the State
University should be raised.
5. The standard for graduating from this college should be raised.
6. Attendance at chapel exercises should be made voluntary.
7. The numbers of students in this college should be limited by raising
the standard for admission.
8. A reading knowledge of French or of German, to be tested by an oral
examination, should be substituted for the present requirements for
entrance in those languages.
9. No list of books should be prescribed for the entrance examination in
English.
10. Freshmen should be required to be within bounds by eleven o'clock at
night.
11. Freshmen should not be elected to college societies.
12. Students who have attained distinction in their studies should be
treated as graduate students are, in respect to attendance and leave of
absence.
13. Arrangements should be made by which the work done on college papers
should count toward the degree.
14. The honor system in examinations should be introduced into this
college.
15. The course of study in this college should be made wholly elective.
16. Coeducation should be maintained in this college.
17. Secret societies should be prohibited in----High School.
18. The business course in----High School should be given up.
19. Compulsory military drill should be introduced into----School (or,
into this college).
20. Greek should be given up in----School.
21. All students in----School, whether in the business course or not,
should be required to study Latin.
22. Athletics have had a detrimental effect on the studies of those who
have taken part in them.
23.----School should engage in athletic contests with two other schools
only.
24. The school committee in----should be reduced to five members.
25. The school committee in----is at present too large for efficient
direction of the schools.
26. The principal of the high school in----should report directly to
the school committee and not to the superintendent of schools.
27. This city should assign a sum equal to----mills of the whole tax
rate to the support of the public schools.
28. The high school of this city should have a single session each day,
instead of two.
29. This city should substitute a commission government on the general
model of that in Des Moines, Iowa, for the present system.
30. The commission form of government has proved its superiority to
government by a mayor and two legislative boards.
31. This city should elect its municipal officers by preferential
voting.
32. This city should establish playgrounds in the crowded parts of the
city, notably in Wards----and----.
33. Boys should be allowed to play ball in unfrequented streets.
34. This city should set apart----mills on the tax rate each year for
building permanent roads.
35. The laws and regulations governing the inspection and the sale of
milk should be made more stringent.
36. This city should buy and run the waterworks.
37. This city should build future extensions of the street railway
system and lease them to the highest bidder.
38. This city should buy and operate the street railway system.
38. The street railway company in this city should be required to pave
and care for all the streets through which it runs.
40. A committee of business men should be appointed by the mayor to
conduct negotiations for bringing new industries to the city.
41. This city should establish municipal gymnasiums.
42. This city would be benefited by the consolidation of the two street
railway systems.
43. This state should adopt a ballot law similar to that of
Massachusetts.
44. This state should adopt the "short ballot."
45. This state should tax forest lands according to the product rather
than the assessed value of the land.
46. The present rules of football are satisfactory.
47. This college should make "soccer" football one of its major
sports.
48. Unnecessary talking by the players should be forbidden in games of
baseball.
49. Coaching from the side lines should be forbidden in baseball.
50. "Summer baseball" should be regarded as a breach of amateur
standing.
51. An intercollegiate committee of graduates should be formed with
power to absolve college athletes from technical and minor breaches of
the amateur rules.
52. This college should make an effort to return to amateur coaching by
proposing agreements to that effect with its principal rivals.
53. This university should not allow students with degrees from other
institutions to play on its athletic teams.
54. The managers of the principal athletic teams in this college should
be elected by the students at large.
55. The expenses of athletic teams at this college should be
considerably reduced.
7. The Two Kinds of Arguments. With the subject you are going to
argue on chosen, it will be wise to come to closer quarters with the
process of arguing. A large part of the good results you will get from
practice in writing arguments will be the strengthening of your powers
of exact and keen thought; I shall therefore in the following sections
try to go somewhat below the surface of the process, and see just what
any given kind of argument aims to do, and how it accomplishes its aim
by its appeal to special faculties and interests of the mind. I shall
also consider briefly the larger bearings of a few of the commoner and
more important types of argument, as the ordinary citizen meets them in
daily life.
We may divide arguments roughly into two classes, according as the
proposition they maintain takes the form, "This is true," or the form,
"This ought to be done." The former we will call, for the sake of
brevity, arguments of fact, the latter arguments of policy. Of the two
classes the former is addressed principally to the reason, the faculty
by which we arrange the facts of the universe (whether small or great)
as they come to us, and so make them intelligible. You believe that the
man who brought back your dog for a reward stole the dog, because that
view fits best with the facts you know about him and the disappearance
of the dog; we accept the theory of evolution because, as Huxley points
out at the beginning of his essay (see pp. 233, 235), it provides a
place for all the facts that have been collected about the world of
plants and animals and makes of them all a consistent and harmonious
system. In Chapter III we shall come to a further consideration of the
workings of this faculty so far as it affects the making of arguments.
Arguments of policy, on the other hand, which argue what ought to be
done, make their appeal in the main to the moral, practical, Or
aesthetic interests of the audience. These interests have their ultimate
roots in the deep-seated mass of inherited temperamental motives and
forces which may be summed up here in the conveniently vague term
"feeling." These motives and forces, it will be noticed, lie outside the
field of reason, and are in the main recalcitrant to it. When you argue
that it is "right" that rich men should endow the schools and colleges
of this country, you would find it impossible to explain in detail just
what you mean by "right"; your belief rises from feelings, partly
inherited, partly drawn in with the air of the country, which make you
positive of your assertion even when you can least give reasons for it.
So our practical interests turn in the end on what we want and do not
want, and are therefore molded by our temperament and tastes, which are
obviously matters of feeling. Our aesthetic interests, which include our
preferences in all the fields of art and literature and things beautiful
or ugly in daily life, even more obviously go back to feeling. Now in
practical life our will to do anything is latent until some part of this
great body of feeling is stirred; therefore arguments of policy, which
aim to show that something ought to be done, cannot neglect feeling. You
may convince me never so thoroughly that I ought to vote the Republican
or the Democratic ticket, yet I shall sit still on election day if you
do not touch my feelings of moral right or practical expediency. The
moving cause of action is feeling, though the feeling is often modified,
or even transformed, by reasoning. We shall come back to the nature of
feeling in Chapter V, when we get to the subject of persuasion.
An important practical difference between arguments of fact and
arguments of policy lies in the different form and degree of certitude
to which they lead. At the end of arguments of fact it is possible to
say, if enough evidence can be had, "This is undeniably true." In these
arguments we can use the word "proof" in its strict sense. In arguments
of policy on the other hand, where the question is worth arguing, we
know in many cases that in the end there will be men who are as wise and
as upright as ourselves who will continue to disagree. In such cases it
is obvious that we can use the word "proof" only loosely; and we speak
of right or of expediency rather than of truth. This distinction is
worth bearing in mind, for it leads to soberness and a seemly modesty in
controversy. It is only in barber-shop politics and sophomore debating
clubs that a decision of a question of policy takes its place among the
eternal verities.
With these distinctions made, let us now consider a few of the chief
varieties of these two classes of arguments, dealing only with those
which every one of us comes to know in the practical affairs of life. It
will be obvious that the divisions between these are not fixed, and that
they are far from exhausting the full number of varieties.
8. Arguments of Fact. Among the commonest and most important varieties
of arguments of fact are those made before juries in courts of law. It
is a fundamental principle of the common law under which we live that
questions of fact shall be decided by twelve men chosen by lot from the
community, and that questions of the law that shall be applied to these
facts shall be decided by the judges. Accordingly in criminal trials the
facts concerning the crime and the actions and whereabouts of the
accused are subjects of argument by the counsel. If the prisoner is
attempting to establish an alibi, and the evidence is meager or
conflicting, his counsel and the prosecuting officer must each make
arguments before the jury on the real meaning of the evidence. In civil
cases likewise, all disputed questions of fact go ordinarily to a jury,
and are the subject of arguments by the opposing lawyers. Did the
defendant guarantee the goods he sold the plaintiff? Was undue influence
exerted on the testator? Did the accident happen through the negligence
of the railroad officials? In such cases and the countless others that
congest the lists of the lower courts arguments of fact must be made.
Other common arguments of fact are those in historical questions,
whether in recent or in ancient history. Macaulay's admirable skeleton
argument (p. 155) that Philip Francis wrote the _Junius Letters_, which
so grievously incensed the English government about the time of the
American Revolution, is an example of an argument of this sort; the part
of Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address which deals with the views of the
founders of the nation on the subject of the control of slavery in the
territories is another. Another question concerning facts is that which
a few years ago stirred classical archaeologists, whether the Greek
theater had a raised stage or not. In all such cases the question is as
to facts which at one time, at any rate, could have been settled
absolutely. The reason why an argument about them becomes necessary is
that the evidence which could finally settle the questions has
disappeared with the persons who possessed it, or has been dissipated by
time. Students of history and literature have to deal with many such
questions of fact.
A somewhat different kind of question of fact, and one often extremely
difficult to settle, is that which concerns not a single, uncomplicated
fact, but a broad condition of affairs. Examples of such questions are
whether woman suffrage has improved political conditions in Colorado and
other states, whether the introduction of manual training in a certain
high school has improved the intelligence and serviceableness of its
graduates, whether political corruption is decreasing in American
cities. The difficulty that faces an argument in such cases as these is
not the loss of the evidence, but rather that it consists of a multitude
of little facts, and that the selection of these details is singularly
subject to bias and partisan feeling. These questions of a broad state
of affairs are like questions of policy in that in the end their
settlement depends thus largely on temperamental and practical
prepossessions.
Still another and very important variety of arguments of fact, which are
often conveniently described as arguments of theory, includes large
scientific questions, such, for example, as the origin of our present
species of plants and animals, or the ultimate constitution of matter,
or the cause of yellow fever. In such arguments we start out with many
facts, already gained through observation and experiment, which need the
assumption of some other fact or facts attained through reasoning from
the others, to make them fit together into a coherent and intelligible
system. Every important new discovery in science makes necessary
arguments of this sort. When the minute forms of life that the layman
lumps together under the name "germs" were discovered there was a host
of arguments to explain their manner of life and the way some of them
cause disease and others carry on functions beneficent to mankind. A
notable example of the arguments concerning this kind of fact is that at
page 251 concerning the cause of yellow fever; and another is Huxley's
argument on evolution (p. 233), where he points out that "the question
is a question of historical fact." The element of uncertainty in the
settlement of such questions is due to the facts being too large or too
minute for human observation, or to their ranging through great ages of
time so that we must be contented with overwhelming probability rather
than with absolute proof. Furthermore the facts that are established in
arguments of this sort may have to be modified by new discoveries: for
many generations it was held to be a fact that malaria was caused by a
miasma; now we know that it is caused by a germ, which is carried by
mosquitoes. Arguments of this type tend to go through a curious cycle:
they begin their life as arguments, recognized as such; then becoming
the accepted explanation of the facts which are known, for a longer or
shorter time they flourish as statements of the truth; and then with the
uncovering of new facts they crumble away or are transformed into new
and larger theories. Darwin's great theory of the origin of species has
passed through two of these stages. He spoke of it as an argument, and
for a few years it was assailed with fierce counterarguments; we now
hold it to be a masterful explanation of an enormous body of facts. When
it will pass on to the next stage we cannot foresee; but chemists and
physicists darkly hint at the possibility of the evolution of inorganic
as well as organic substances.
In arguments of fact, it will be noticed, there is little or no element
of persuasion, for we deal with such matters almost wholly through our
understanding and reason. Huxley, in his argument on evolution, which
was addressed to a popular audience, was careful to choose examples that
would be familiar; but his treatment of the subject was strictly
expository in tone. In some arguments of this sort, which touch on the
great forces of the universe and on the nature of the world of life of
which we are an infinitesimal part, the tone of the discourse will take
on warmth and eloquence; just as Webster in the White Murder Case,
dealing with an issue of life and death, let the natural eloquence which
always smoldered in his speech, burn up into a clear glow. But both
Huxley and Webster would have held any studied appeal to emotion to be
an impertinence.
In ordinary life most of us make fewer arguments of fact than of policy.
It is only a small minority of our young men who become lawyers, and of
them many do not practice before juries. Nor do any large number of men
become scholars or men of science or public men, who have to deal with
questions of historical fact or to make arguments of fact on large
states of affairs. On the other hand, all of us have to weigh and
estimate arguments of fact pretty constantly. Sooner or later most men
serve on juries; and all students have to read historical and economical
arguments. We shall therefore give some space in Chapter III to
considering the principles of reasoning by which we arrive at and test
conclusions as to the existence of facts, and the truth of assertions
about them.
9. Arguments of Policy. When we turn from arguments of fact to
arguments of policy it will be noticed that there is a change in the
phraseology that we use: we no longer say that the assertions we
maintain or meet are true or not true, but that the proposals are right
or expedient or wrong or inexpedient; for now we are talking about what
should or should not be done. We say, naturally and correctly, that it
is or is not true that woman suffrage has improved political conditions
in Colorado but it would be a misuse of words to say that it is true or
not true that woman suffrage should be adopted in Ohio; and still more
so to use the word "false," which has an inseparable tinge of moral
obliquity. In questions of policy that turn on expediency, and in some,
as we shall see directly, that turn on moral issues, we know beforehand
that in the end some men who know the subject as well as we do and whose
judgment is as good and whose standards are as high, will still
disagree. There are certain large temperamental lines which have always
divided mankind: some men are born conservative minded, some radical
minded: the former must needs find things as they are on the whole good,
the latter must needs see vividly how they can be improved. To the
scientific temperament the artistic temperament is unstable and
irrational, as the former is dry and ungenerous to the latter. Such
broad and recognized types, with a few others like them, ramify into a
multitude of ephemeral parties and classes,--racial, political, social,
literary, scholarly,--and most of the arguments in the world can be
followed back to these essential and irremovable differences of
character. Individual practical questions, however, cross and recross
these lines, and in such cases arguments have much practical effect in
crystallizing opinion and judgment; for in a complicated case it is
often extremely hard to see the real bearing of a proposed policy, and a
good argument comes as a guide from the gods to the puzzled and
wavering. But though to be effective in practical affairs one has to be
positive, yet that is not saying that one must believe that the other
side are fools or knaves. Some such confusion of thought in the minds of
some reformers, both eminent and obscure, accounts for the wake of
bitterness which often follows the progress of reform. Modesty and
toleration are as important as positiveness to the man who is to make a
mark in the world.
Arguments of policy are of endless variety, for we are all of us making
them all the time, from the morning hour in which we argue with
ourselves, so often ineffectually, that we really ought to get up when
the clock strikes, to the arguments about choosing a profession or
helping to start a movement for universal peace. It would be a weariness
to the flesh to attempt a classification of them that should pretend to
be exhaustive; but there are certain major groups of human motive which
will be a good basis for a rough, but convenient, sorting out of the
commoner kinds of arguments of policy. In practical affairs we ask first
if there is any principle of right or wrong involved, then what is best
for the practical interests of ourselves and other people, and in a few
cases, when these other considerations are irrelevant, what course is
dictated by our ideas of fitness and beauty. I will briefly discuss a
few of the main types of the argument of policy, grouping them according
as they appeal chiefly to the sense of right and wrong, to practical
interests, or to aesthetic interests.
There are many arguments outside of sermons which turn on questions of
right and wrong. Questions of individual personal conduct we had better
not get into; but every community, whether large or small, has often to
face questions in which moral right and wrong are essentially involved.
In this country the whole question of dealing with the sale of alcoholic
drinks is recognized as such. The supporters of state prohibition
declare that it is morally wrong to sanction a trade out of which
springs so much misery; the supporters of local option and high license,
admitting and fighting against all this misery and crime, declare that
it is morally wrong to shut one's eyes to the uncontrolled sales and the
political corruption under state-wide prohibition. The strongest
arguments for limiting by law the hours of labor for women and children
have always been based on moral principles; and all arguments for
political reform hark back to the Ten Commandments. One has the
strongest of all arguments if he can establish a moral right and wrong
in the question.
The difficulty comes in establishing the right and wrong, for there are
many cases where equally good people are fighting dead against each
other. The question of prohibition, as we have just seen, is one of
those cases; the slavery question was a still more striking one. From
before the Revolution the feeling that slavery was morally wrong slowly
but steadily gained ground in the North, until from 1850 it became more
and more a dominant and passionate conviction.[1] Yet in the South,
which, as we must now admit, bred as many men and women of high devotion
to the right, this view had only scattered followers. On both sides
tradition and environment molded the moral principle. In arguing,
therefore, one must not be too swift in calling on heaven to witness to
the right; we must recognize that mortal vision is weak, and that some
of the people whom we are fighting are borne on by principles as
sincerely held to be righteous as our own.
Nevertheless, a man must always hold to that which to him seems right,
and fight hard against the wrong, tolerantly and with charity, but with
unclouded purpose. In politics there are still in this country many
occasions when the only argument possible is based on moral right. The
debauching of public servants by favors or bribes, whether open or
indirect, injustice of all sorts, putting men who are mentally or
morally unfit into public office, oppression of the poor or unjust
bleeding of the rich, stirring up class or race hatred, are all evils
from which good citizens must help to save the republic; and wherever
such evils are found the moral argument is the only argument worthy of a
decent citizen.
By far the most numerous of arguments of policy, however, are those
which do not rise above the level of practical interests. The line
between these and arguments of moral right is not always easy to draw,
for in the tangle of life and character right and advantage often run
together. The tariff question is a case in point. Primarily it turns on
the practical material advantage of a nation; but inevitably in the
settling of individual schedules the way opens for one industry or
branch of business to fatten at the expense of another, and so we run
into the question of the square deal and the golden rule.
In general, however, the great questions on which political parties
divide are questions of practical expediency. Shall we, as a nation, be
more comfortable and more prosperous if the powers of the federal
government are strengthened and extended? Shall we have better local
government under the old-fashioned form of city government, or under
some form of commission government? Should we have more business and
more profitable business if we had free trade with the Dominion of
Canada? Shall we be better off under the Republican or the Democratic
party? All these are questions in which there is little concern with
right and wrong: they turn on the very practical matter of direct
material advantage. In some of these cases most men vote on one side or
the other largely through long habit; but there constantly arise,
especially in local matters, questions which cross the usual lines of
political division, so that one, willingly or unwillingly, must take the
trouble of thinking out a decision for himself. Not infrequently one is
a good deal puzzled to decide on which side to range himself, for the
issues may be complex; then one reads the arguments or goes to meetings
until one side or the other seems to present the most and the most
important advantages. When one is thus puzzled, an argument which is
clear and easy to understand, and which makes its points in such a way
that they can be readily carried in mind and passed on to the next
person one meets, has a wonderful power of winning one to its side.
The arguments of policy which, after political arguments, are the most
common, are those on questions of law. As we have seen a few pages
back, such arguments are settled by the judges, while questions of fact
are left to the jury. In the White Murder Case, in which Daniel Webster
made a famous argument, it was a question of fact for the jury whether
the defendant Knapp was in Brown Street at the time of the murder, and
whether he was there for the purpose of aiding and abetting
Crowninshield, the actual murderer; the question whether his presence
outside the house would make him liable as a principal in the crime was
a question of law. This distinction between questions of fact and
questions of law is one of the foundation principles of the common law.
From the very beginning of the jury system, when the jury consisted of
neighbors who found their verdict from their own knowledge of the case,
to the present day when they are required carefully to purge their minds
of any personal knowledge of the case, the common law has always held
that in the long run questions of fact can best be settled by average
men, drawn by lot from the community. Questions of law, on the other
hand, need learning and special training in legal reasoning, for the
common law depends on continuity and consistency of decision; and a new
case must be decided by the principles which have governed like cases in
the past.
Nevertheless, these principles, which are now embodied in an enormous
mass of decisions by courts all over the English-speaking world, are in
essence a working out into minute discriminations of certain large
principles, which in turn are merely the embodiment of the practical
rules under which the Anglo-Saxon race has found it safest and most
convenient to live together. They settle in each case what, in view of
the interests of the community as a whole and in the long run, and not
merely for the parties now at issue, is the most convenient and the
justest thing to do. Mr. Justice Holmes, of the Supreme Court of the
United States, wrote before his appointment to that bench:
"In substance the growth of the law is legislative. And this in a deeper
sense than that what the courts declare to have always been the law is
in fact new. It is legislative in its grounds. The very considerations
which judges most rarely mention, and always with an apology, are the
secret roots from which tine law draws all the juices of life. I mean of
course considerations of what is expedient for the community concerned.
Every important principle which is developed by litigation is in fact
and at bottom the result of move or less definitely understood views of
public policy; most generally, to be sure, under our practices and
traditions, the unconscious result of instinctive preferences and
inarticulate convictions, but none the less traceable to views of public
policy in the last analysis."[2]
In some cases it is obvious that the question of law is a question of
policy, as in the so-called "political decisions" of the United States
Supreme Court. Such were the decisions formulated by Chief Justice
Marshall on constitutional questions, which made our government what it
is. The difference between "the strict construction" of the Constitution
and the "free construction" was due to a difference of temperament which
has always tended to mark the two great political parties of the
country. So with the Insular cases, which determined the status of the
distant possessions of the United Stales, and which split the Supreme
Court into so many pieces: the question whether the Constitution applied
in all its fullness to Porto Rico and the Philippines was essentially a
political question, though of the largest sort, and therefore a question
of policy.
Finally, there are the arguments of policy which deal with matters of
taste and aesthetic preference. The difficulty with these arguments is
that they do deal with questions of taste, and so fall under the ancient
and incontrovertible maxim, _de gustibus non est disputandum_. Artists
of all varieties and some critics are given to talking as if preferences
in color, in shape, in styles of music, were absolutely right and wrong,
and as if they partook in some way of the nature of moral questions; but
any one who has observed for even twenty years knows that what the
architects of twenty years ago declared the only true style of art is
now scoffed at by them and their successors as hopelessly false. The
cavelike forms of the Byzantine or Romanesque which superseded the
wooden Gothic have in turn given way to Renaissance classic in its
various forms, which now in turn seem on the point of slipping into the
rococo classical of the École des Beaux Arts. In painting, the violent
and spotty impressionism of twenty years ago is paling into the study of
the cool and quiet lights of the Dutchmen of the great period.[3] And at
each stage there are strenuous arguments that the ideas of that
particular live years are the only hope for the preservation of the art
concerned.
The essential difficulty with all such arguments is that the aesthetic
interests to which they appeal are personal, and depend on personal
preferences. Most of us in such matters, having no special knowledge,
and liking some variety of differing styles, modestly give way to the
authority of any one who makes a profession of the art. In the laying
out of a park a landscape architect may prefer single trees and open
spaces, where the neighbors and abutters prefer a grove. In the long run
his taste is no better than theirs, though he may argue as if they were
ignorant and uncultivated because they disagree with him. In all such
cases, unless there is some consideration of practical expediency, such
as letting the southwest wind blow through in summer, arguments can do
little except to make and keep everybody angry. Their chief value is to
make us see things which perhaps we had not thought of.
In practice these three kinds of arguments, which turn on moral,
practical, and aesthetic considerations, tend to be much mingled. The
human mind is very complex, and our various interests and preferences
are inseparably tangled. The treacheries of self-analysis are
proverbial, and are only less dangerous than trying to make out the
motives of other people. Accordingly we must expect to find that it is
sometimes hard to distinguish between moral and aesthetic motives and
practical, for the morality and the taste of a given people always in
part grow out of the slow crystallizing of practical expediencies, and
notions of morality change with the advance of civilization.
Furthermore, one must never forget that an argument of policy which
does not involve and rest on subsidiary questions of fact is rare; and
the questions of fact must be settled before we can go on with the
argument of policy. Before this country can intelligently make up its
mind about the protective tariff, and whether a certain rate of duty
should be imposed on a given article, a very complex body of facts
dealing with the cost of production both here and abroad must be
settled, and this can be done only by men highly trained in the
principles of business and political economy. Before one could vote
intelligently on the introduction of a commission form of government
into the town he lives in he must know the facts about the places in
which it has already been tried. It is not too much to say that there is
no disputed question of policy into which there does not enter the
necessity of looking up and settling pertinent facts.
On the other hand, there are some cases of questions of fact in which
our practical interests deeply affect the view which we take of the
facts. In all the discussions of the last few years about federal
supervision and control of the railroads it has been hard to get at the
facts because of the conflicting statements about them by equally honest
and well-informed men. Where there is an honest difference of interest,
as in every case of a bargain, the opposite sides cannot see the facts
in the same way: what is critically significant to the railroad manager
seems of no great consequence to the shipper; and the railroad manager
does not see the fixed laws of trade which make it impossible for the
shipper to pay higher freight rates and add them to the price of his
goods. It is not in human nature to see the whole cogency of facts that
make for the other side. In all arguments, therefore, it must be
remembered that we are; constantly swinging backward and forward from
matters of fact to matters of policy. In practice no hard-and-fast line
separates the various classes and types; in the arguments of real life
we mingle them naturally and unconsciously.
Yet the distinction between the two main classes is a real one, and if
one has never thought it out, one may go at an argument with a blurred
notion of what he is attempting to do. Since argument after school and
college is an eminently practical matter, vagueness of aim is risky. It
is the man who sees exactly what he is trying to do, and knows exactly
what he can accomplish, who is likely to make his point. The chief value
of writing arguments for practice is in cultivating a keen eye for the
essential. To write a good argument means, as we shall see, that the
student shall first conscientiously take the question, apart so as to
know exactly the issues involved and the unavoidable points of
difference, and then after searching the sources for information, he
shall scrutinize the facts and the reasoning both on his own side and on
the other. If he does this work without shirking the hard thinking he
will get an illuminating perception of the obscurities and ambiguities
which lurk in words, and will come to see that clear reasoning is almost
wholly a matter of sharper discrimination for unobserved distinctions.
EXERCISES
1. Find an example which might be thought of either as an argument or an
exposition, and explain why you think it one or the other.
2. Find examples in current magazines or newspapers of an argument in
which conviction is the chief element, and one in which persuasion
counts most.
3. Give three examples from your talk within the last week of a
discussion which was not argument as we use the term here.
4. Show how, in the case of some current subject of discussion, the
arguments would differ in substance and tone for three possible
audiences.
5. Find three examples each of questions of fact and questions of policy
from current newspapers or magazines.
6. Find three examples of questions of fact in law cases, not more than
one of them from a criminal case.
7. Find three examples of questions of fact in history or literature.
8. Find three questions of a large state of affairs from current
political discussions. 9. Find three examples of questions of fact in
science.
10. Find from the history of the last fifty years three examples of
questions which turned on moral right.
11. Give three examples of questions of expediency which you have heard
argued within the last week.
12. Give an example from recent decisions of the courts which seems to
you to have turned on a question of policy.
13. Give two examples of questions of aesthetic taste which you have
recently heard argued.
14. In an actual case which has been or which might be argued, show how
both classes of argument and more than one of the types within them
enter naturally into the discussion.
15. Name three subjects which you have lately discussed which would not
be profitable subjects for a formal argument.
16. Name five good subjects for an argument in which you would draw
chiefly from your personal experience.
17. Name five subjects in which you would get the material from reading.
18. Name five subjects which would combine your own experience with
reading.
19. Find how many words to the page you write on the paper you would use
for a written argument. Count the number of words in a page of this
book; in the column of the editorial page of a newspaper.