THE ARGUMENT WRITTEN OUT
49. The Brief and the Argument. If your brief is thoroughly worked
out, and based on a careful canvass of the evidence, the work on your
argument ought to be at least two thirds over. The last third, however,
is not to be slighted, for on it will largely depend your practical
results in moving your readers. Even a legal argument rarely goes to the
court on a written brief alone; and the average reader will never put
himself to the effort of reading through and grasping such a brief as we
have been planning here. Furthermore, if your complete argument is
merely a copying out of the brief into consecutive sentences and
paragraphs, you will get few readers. The making of the brief merely
completes what may be called the architectural part of your labors; the
writing of an argument will use all the skill you have in the choice of
words and putting them together.
We saw in Chapter I that argument has two kinds of appeal to its reader:
on the one hand, through its power of convincing it appeals to his
reason; on the other, through its persuasive power it appeals to his
feelings and his moral and practical interests. Of these two kinds of
appeal the convincing power is largely determined by the thoroughness of
the analysis and the efficiency of the arrangement, and therefore in
large part hangs on the work done in making the brief; the persuasive
power, on the other hand, though in part dependent on the line of
attack laid out in the brief and the choice of points to argue, is far
more dependent on the filling in of the argument in the finished form.
Even the severest scientific argument, however, is much more than the
bare summary of the line of thought which would be found in a brief; and
in an argument like the speeches in most political campaigns a brief of
the thought would leave out most of the argument. Wherever you have to
stir men up to do things you have only begun when you have convinced
their reason.
50. The Introduction of the Argument. Much depends on the first
part of your argument, the introduction. Its length varies greatly, and
it may differ largely in other ways from the introduction to your brief.
If the people you are trying to convince are familiar with the subject,
you will need little introduction; a brief but clear statement of
fundamentals will serve the purpose. For such an audience it is chiefly
important to make the issues stand out, so that they shall see perfectly
distinctly the exact points on which the question turns. Then the sooner
you are at work on the business of convincing them, the better. In such
arguments the introduction will perhaps not differ greatly in substance
from the introduction to the brief, though it must be reduced to
consecutive and agreeable form. At the other extreme is such an argument
as that of Huxley's (p. 233), where he had to prepare the way very
carefully lest the prejudice against a revolutionary and unfamiliar view
of the animate world should close the minds of his hearers against him
before he was really started. Accordingly, before getting through with
his introduction he expounded not only the three hypotheses between
which the choice must be made, but also the law of the uniformity of
nature and the principles and nature of circumstantial evidence. Where
one shall stop between these two extremes is a question to be decided in
the individual argument.
One thing, however, it is almost always wise to do; indeed, one would
not go far wrong in prescribing it as a general rule: that is, to state
with almost bald explicitness just how many main issues there are, and
what they are. In writing an argument it is always safe to assume that
most of your readers will be careless readers. Few people have the gift
of reading closely and accurately, and of carrying what they have read
with any distinctness. Therefore make it easy for your readers to pick
up and to carry your points. If you tell them that you are going to make
three points or five, they are much more likely to remember those three
or five points than if they have to pick them out for themselves as they
go along. Huxley, perhaps the ablest writer of scientific argument in
the language, constantly practiced this device. In his great argument on
evolution, he says (see p. 235): "So far as I know, there are only three
hypotheses which ever have been entertained, or which well can be
entertained, respecting the past history of nature"; and then, as will
be seen, he takes up each in turn, with the numbering "first," "second,"
and "third." In the same way in his essay "The Physical Basis of Life"
he says, not far from the beginning, "I propose to demonstrate to you
that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold
unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity
of substantial composition--does pervade the whole living world." Burke,
in his great speech "On Conciliation with America," said, "The capital
leading questions on which you must this day decide are two: first,
whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought
to be."
It is hardly too much to say that those writers whose sense of style is
most developed are most likely to state the issues with the baldest and
most direct precision.
The statement of the issues will bring out the importance of closely
limiting the number of main issues. There are few subjects of argument
which do not conceivably touch the interests and beliefs of their
audiences in many directions; but out of these aspects some obviously
count far more than others. If in your introduction you try to state all
these issues, small and great, you will surely leave confusion behind
you. Very few people are capable of carrying more than three or four
issues distinctly enough to affect their judgment of the whole case; and
even of these some will not take the trouble to do so. If you can simmer
down the case to one or two or three critical points, you are making a
good start toward winning over the minds of your readers.
A good statement of the history of the case is apt to be a useful and
valuable part of an introduction, especially for arguments dealing with
public policies. If you remind readers of what the facts have been, you
can more easily make clear to them the present situation from which you
make your start. An argument for raising or lowering the tariff on some
article would be apt to recount the history of the tariff so far as it
concerned that article, and the progress in importing it and
manufacturing it within the country. In writing out the argument from
the brief on page 90 one would almost inevitably include the recent
history of the city government.
In general it is best to make this preliminary statement of the history
of the case scrupulously and explicitly impartial. An audience is likely
to resent any appearance of twisting the facts to suit the case; and if
on their face they bear against your contentions, it is wiser to
prepare for your argument in some other way. There are more ways of
beginning an argument than by a statement of facts; and resource in the
presentation of a case goes a long way toward winning it.
It is often wise to state your definitions with care, especially of
terms which are at the bottom of your whole case. The definition from
Bagchot on page 58 is a good example. Here is the beginning of an
address by President Eliot, in 1896, on "A Wider Range of Electives in
College Admission Requirements":
As usual, it is necessary to define the subject a little. "A wider range
of electives in college admission requirements." What field are we
thinking of when we state this subject? If we mean the United States,
the range of electives is already very large. Take, for example, the
requirements for admission to the Leland Stanford University. Twenty
subjects are named, of very different character and extent, and the
candidate may present any ten out of the twenty. Botany counts just as
much as Latin. There is a wide range of options at admission to the
University of Michigan, with its numerous courses leading to numerous
degrees; that is, there is a wide range of subjects permissible to a
candidate who is thinking of presenting himself for some one of its many
degrees. If we look nearer home, we find in so conservative an
institution as Dartmouth College that there are three different degrees
offered, with three different assortments of admission requirements, and
three different courses within the college. I noticed that at the last
commencement there were forty-one degrees of the old-fashioned sort and
twenty-seven degrees of the newer sorts given by Dartmouth College. Here
in Harvard we have had for many years a considerable range of electives
in the admission examinations, particularly in what we call the advanced
requirements. We therefore need to limit our subject a little by saying
that we are thinking of a wider range of admission electives in the
Eastern and Middle State colleges, the range of electives farther west
being already large in many cases.[54]
Professor William James, in his essay "The Will to Believe," in which he
argues that it is both right and unavoidable that our feelings shall
take part in the making of our faiths, begins with a careful definition
and illustration of certain terms he is going to use constantly.
Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options
may be of several kinds. They may be (1) _living_ or _dead_; (2) _forced_
or _avoidable_; (3) _momentous_ or _trivial_; and for our purposes we
may call an option a _genuine_ option when it is of the forced, living,
and momentous kind.
1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I
say to you, "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead
option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if
I say, "Be an agnostic or be a Christian," it is otherwise: trained as
you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your
belief.
2. Next, if I say to you, "Choose between going out with your umbrella
or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not
forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I
say: "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it
false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me,
neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as
to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it,"
I put you on a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of
the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction,
with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind.
3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North
Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably
be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either
exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at
least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a
unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed.
_Per contra_ the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique,
when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if
it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific
life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its
verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments
prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital
harm being done.
It will facilitate our discussion if we keep all these distinctions well
in mind.[55]
In some arguments the working out of the definitions of a few principal
terms may occupy much space. Matthew Arnold, a famous critic of the last
generation, wrote as an introduction to a volume of selections from
Wordsworth's poems an essay with the thesis that Wordsworth is, after
Shakespeare and Milton, the greatest poet who has written in English;
and to establish his point he laid down the definition that "poetry is
at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his
powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life--to the question,
How to live." To the development of this definition he gave several
pages, for the success of his main argument lay in inducing his readers
to accept it.
Many legal arguments are wholly concerned with establishing definitions,
especially in those cases which deal with statute law. The recent
decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Corporation
Tax cases and the Standard Oil Case are examples: in each of these what
was at issue was the exact meaning of the words used in certain statutes
passed by Congress. In the common law, too, there are many phrases which
have come down from past centuries, the meanings of which have been
defined again and again as new cases came up. We have seen (p. 63) how
careful definition the word "murder" may need. "Malice aforethought" is
another familiar instance: it sounds simple, but when one begins to fix
the limits at which sudden anger passes over into cool and deliberate
enmity, or how far gone a man must be in drink before he loses the
consciousness of his purposes, even a layman can see that it has
difficulties.
In such cases as these a dictionary definition would be merely a
starting point. It may be a very useful starting point, however, as in
the following extract from an article by Mr. E.P. Ripley, president of
the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company, on "The Railroads
and the People":
There is one point regarding this matter that many forget: this is that
in all affairs there are two kinds of discrimination. There is the kind,
which, as the dictionary expresses it, "sets apart as being different,"
which "distinguishes accurately," and there is the widely different kind
which "treats unequally." in all ordinary affairs of life we condemn as
"undiscriminating" those who have so little judgment or fairness as not
to "distinguish accurately" or "set apart things that are
different"--who either treat equally things that are unequal, or treat
unequally things that are equal. Now, when the railway traffic manager
"sets apart things that are different," and treats them differently, he
simply does what it is the duty of every one to do.[56]
Then he goes on to develop this definition by showing the facts on which
it has to bear.
On the other hand do not bore your readers with dictionary definitions
of words whose meaning no one doubts; that is a waste of good paper for
you, and of good time for them; and we have seen in Chapter II the
futility of the dictionary for cases in which there is real disagreement
over the meaning of a word.
It will be seen, then, that the analysis you have made in preparation
for the brief may spread out large or small in the argument itself. It
is wise, therefore, to look on the work done for the introduction to the
brief as work done largely to clear up your own thought on the subject;
when you come to writing out the argument itself, you can go back to the
introduction to the brief, and see how much space you are now going to
give it.
In a college or school argument you will usually follow it rather
closely; and you do well to do so, for you will thus fix in your mind a
useful model. But when you get out into the world, you will have to
consider in each case the needs and prepossessions of the particular
audience. Here as everywhere in the argument you must exercise judgment;
there is no formula which will fit all cases. The scheme of analysis of
the case which has been expounded in Chapter II has stood the test as
the best means yet found of exploring a subject and insuring clarity of
thought and certainty of attack;[57] but I know of no single fixed scheme
for the argument itself which will not be racked apart by the first half
dozen practical arguments you apply it to.
51. The Body of the Argument. In the main body of the argument the
difference from the brief will be largely a matter of expansion: the
brief indicates the evidence, the argument states it at length. Here
again you cut your argument to fit your audience and the space at your
command. In an argument in the editorial of a newspaper, which is rarely
longer than a long college theme, there is little space for the
statement of evidence. In Webster's argument in the White Murder Case,
which has some thirteen thousand words and which must have taken two
hours or more to deliver, the facts are studied in minute detail. Most
people are surprised to see the way in which a full statement of
evidence eats up space; if the facts are at all complicated, they must
be analyzed and expounded one by one and their bearing on the case laid
out in full. This necessity of using space in order to make facts clear
is the reason why it is so hard to find adequate and convincing
arguments which will print in less than fifteen or twenty pages. The
trouble with a swift and compact argument like that of Macaulay's on the
authorship of the _Junius Letters_ (see p. 155) is that unless you have
gone into the question for yourself, you do not know whether to accept
the stated facts or not. If you do accept them, the conclusion is
inevitable; but if you happen to know that scholars have long held the
decision doubtful, you want to know more about the facts in detail
before surrendering to Macaulay's conclusion. For an average reader
to-day, who knows little of the facts, this argument would have to be
greatly expanded.
In this expansion comes the chance for all the skill in exposition that
you can muster, and for that subtle appeal to your readers' feelings
which lies in vividness and precision of phrasing, considerations with
which I will deal separately further on. Questions of proportion of
space we may consider here.
The only rule that can be laid down for the distribution of your space
is to use your sagacity, and all your knowledge of your subject and of
your audience. In a written argument you have the advantage that you can
let your pen run on your first draft, and then go back and weigh the
comparative force of the different parts of the argument, and cut out
and cut down until your best points for the purpose have the most space.
In a debate the same end is gained by rehearsals of the main speeches;
in the rebuttal, which is best when it is spontaneous, you have to trust
to the judgment gained by practice.
Other things being equal, however, brevity carries an audience. If you
can sum up your case in half the time that it takes the other side to
state theirs, the chances are that your audience will think you have the
right of it. Above all, beware of boring your readers by too exhaustive
explanation of details or of aspects of the case which they care nothing
about. I suppose there is no one of us who has not a worthy friend or
two who will talk through a whole evening on whether a lawn should be
watered in the evening or the early morning, or whether the eighth hole
on the golf course should not be fifty yards longer. One must not be
like the man who in the discussion of bimetallism a few years ago used
to keep his wife awake at night expounding to her the iniquities and
inequalities of a single standard. It is safer to underestimate than to
overestimate the endurance and patience of your audience.
52. The Refutation. The place of the refutation will, as we have
seen in the chapter on planning (see p. 82), vary greatly with the
argument and with the audience. Its purpose is to put out of the way as
effectively as possible the main points urged by the other side. In an
argument of fact this is done both by exposing weak places in the
reasoning and by throwing doubt on the facts cited, either through proof
that they are contradicted by better evidence, or that the evidence
brought forward to establish them is shaky or inconclusive. In an
argument of policy the points on the other side are met either by
throwing doubt on the facts on which they rest, or by showing that the
points themselves have not coercive force.
Where there are really strong points on the other side, in either kind
of argument, it is often sound policy to admit their strength. This is
especially true in arguments of policy where the advantages are closely
balanced. If you are trying to convince a boy that he should go to your
college rather than to another, you do not gain anything by telling him
that the other college is no good; if he is worth gaining over he will
know better than that. And in general if you have given a man to
understand that there is nothing to be said for the other side, and he
afterwards finds that there are strong grounds for it, your argument
will have a fall in his estimation.
In the manner of your refutation lean towards the side of soberness and
courtesy. It has been said that the poorest use you can put a man to is
to refute him; and it is certain that in the give and take of argument
in active life the personal victories and defeats are what are soonest
forgotten. If after a while you have to establish a fact in history or
in biology, or to get a verdict from a jury or a favorable report from
the committee of a legislature, you will think a good deal more about
the arguments of your opponents than about them personally. There are
few arguments in which you can afford to take no notice of the strong
points of the other side; and where the burden of proof is strongly with
you, your own argument may be almost wholly refutation; but it is
always worth bearing in mind that if it is worth while for you to be
arguing at all, there is something, and something of serious weight, to
be said on the other side.
53. The Conclusion. The conclusion of your argument should be short
and pointed. Gather the main issues together, and restate them in terms
that will be easy to remember. Mere repetition of the points as you made
them in your introduction may sound too much like lack of resource; on
the other hand, it helps to make your points familiar, and to drive them
home. In any event make your contentions easy to remember. Most of us go
a long way towards settling our own minds on a puzzling question when we
repeat to some one else arguments that we have read or heard. If you can
so sum up your argument that your readers will go off and unconsciously
retail your points to their neighbors, you probably have them. On the
other hand, when you have finished your argument, if you start in to
hedge and modify and go back to points that have not had enough emphasis
before, you throw away all you have gained. In arguing nothing succeeds
like decision and certainty of utterance. Even dogmatism is better than
an appearance of wabbling. It is the men like Macaulay, who see
everything black and white with no shades between, who are the leaders
of the world's opinion. Sum up, then, wherever it is decent to do so, as
if there were only one side of the case, and that could be stated in
three lines.
54. The Power of Convincing. The convincing power of an argument
depends on its appeal to the reason of its readers. To put the same fact
in another way, an argument has convincing power when it can fit the
facts which it deals with smoothly and intelligently into the rest of
the reader's experience. If an argument on a complicated mass of facts,
such as the evidence in a long murder case, makes the reader say, "Yes,
now I see how it all happened," or an argument for the direct election
of United States senators makes him say, "Yes, that is a plain working
out of the fundamental principles of popular government," then he is
convinced. In this aspect argument merges into exposition. It is
significant that, as has already been noted, Matthew Arnold's argument
that Wordsworth is the greatest English poet after Shakespeare and
Milton, and Huxley's argument that the physical basis of animal and
plant life is the same, are both used in a book of examples of
exposition.[58] The essential difference between argument and exposition
from this point of view lies in the emphasis: normally an explanation
covers the whole case evenly; an argument throws certain parts and
aspects of the case into relief.
If, therefore, to be convincing, your argument must provide a reasonable
explanation of the whole state of affairs to which the case belongs, you
can use all the devices there are for clear and effective explanation. I
will therefore briefly review a few of these.
Of the value of an introduction which lays out the ground to be covered
I have already spoken. The more distinct an idea you can implant in your
readers' minds of the course you are going to follow in your argument,
the more likely they will be to follow it. Since the success of your
argument hangs on carrying them with you on the main issues, let them
know beforehand just what those issues are, and in such a way that they
can hold them with a minimum of effort. The value of a clear and, as it
were, maplike introduction is even greater in an argument than in an
exposition.
In the second place, use your paragraphing for all that it is worth, and
that is a great deal. The success of any explanation or argument springs
from the way in which it takes a mass of facts apart, and rearranges
them simply and perspicuously; and there is no device of composition
which helps so much towards clearness as good paragraphing. Accordingly
when you come to make your final draft, make certain that each paragraph
has unity. If you have any doubts see if you can sum up the paragraph
into a single simple sentence. Then look at the beginnings of the
paragraphs to see whether you have made it easy for your readers to know
what each one is about. Macaulay's style is on the whole clearer and
more effective for a general audience than that of any other writer in
English; and his habit of beginning each paragraph with a very definite
announcement of its subject is almost a mannerism. Incidentally there is
no better rough test of the unity of your paragraphs than thus to give
them something of the nature of a title in the first sentence. Often,
too, at the end of an important paragraph it is worth while to sum up
its essence in pithy form. Mankind in general is lazy about thinking,
and more than ready to accept an argument which is easy to remember and
repeat. The end of a paragraph is the place for a catchword.
In the third place, bind the sentences in your paragraphs together. When
one is building up a first draft, and picking facts from a variety of
sources, it is inevitable that the result shall be somewhat disjointed.
In working over the first draft, really work it over, and work it
together. Make all the sentences point the same way. Pronouns are the
most effective connectives that we have; therefore recast your
sentences so that there will be as little change of subject as possible.
Then use the explicit connectives in as much variety as you can. It is
not likely that you will make your paragraphs too closely knit for the
average reader.
In the fourth place, bind your argument together as a whole by
connectives at the beginnings of the paragraphs and by brief summarizing
paragraphs. In the present generation of schoolboys a good many have
groaned over Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America"; but if the
first time that one of these sufferers must make an argument in real
earnest, he will go back to Burke for some of the devices used to bind
that argument together, he will be surprised to see how practically e
efficient those devices are. And none of them counts more for clarity
and thoroughness than the conscientious way in which Burke took his
hearers by the hand at the beginning of each paragraph, and at each turn
in his argument, to make sure that they knew just how they were passing
from one point to another.
From the doctrine of clear explanation, then, we may carry over to the
making of clear arguments the habit of laying out the ground at the
beginning, of making the paragraphs do their full work by attending to
unity, to emphasis, and to coherence, and of binding the paragraphs
together into a closely knit whole.
55. The Power of Persuading. Finally, we have to consider the
question of how an argument can be made persuasive--probably the most
difficult subject in the range of rhetoric on which to give practical
advice. The key to the whole matter lies in remembering that we are here
dealing with feelings, and that feelings are irrational and are the
product of personal experience. The experience may be bitter or sweet,
and to some degree its effects are modified by education; but in
substance your feelings and emotions make you what you are, and your
capacities in these directions were born with you. If the citizens of a
town have no feeling about political dishonesty, reformers may talk
their throats out without producing any result; it is only when taxes
get intolerable or the sewers smell to heaven that anything will be
done. Many people die for whose deaths each of us ought to feel grief,
but if these people have never happened to touch our feelings, we can
reason with ourselves in vain that we should feel deeply grieved.
Feeling and emotion are the deepest, most primitive part of human
nature; and very little of its field has been reduced to the
generalizations of reason.[59]
When you come, therefore, in the making of your argument to the point of
stirring up the feelings of your readers on the subject, do not waste
any time in considering what they ought to feel: the only pertinent
question is what they do feel. On your shrewdness in estimating what
these feelings are, and how strong they are, will hang your success as
an advocate. Tact is the faculty you need now--the faculty of judging
men, of knowing when they will rise to an appeal, and when they will lie
back inert and uninterested. This is a matter you cannot reason about;
if you have the faculty it will be borne in on you how other men will
feel on your subject. The skill of politicians, where it does not
confine itself to estimating how much the people will stand before
rebelling, consists in this intuition of the movement of public opinion;
and the great leaders are the men who have so sure a sense of these
large waves of popular feeling that they can utter at the right moment
the word that will gather together this diffused and uncrystallized
feeling into a living force. Lincoln's declaration, "A house divided
against itself cannot stand, I believe that this government cannot
endure permanently half slave and half free," brought to a head a
conflict that had been smoldering ever since the adoption of the
Constitution, and made him the inevitable leader who was to bring it to
a close. It will be noticed, however, that the time had to come before
the inspired word could make its appeal. The abolitionists and
antislavery men had long been preaching the same doctrine that Lincoln
uttered, and the folly and wickedness of slavery had been proved by
philosophers and preachers for generations. Until the time grows ripe
the most reasonable doctrine does not touch the hearts of men; when the
time has ripened, the leader knows it and speaks the word that sets the
world on fire for righteousness.
The same faculty, on a smaller scale, is needed by every one of us who
is trying to make other people do anything. The actual use of the
faculty will vary greatly, however, with different kinds of arguments.
In certain kinds of scientific argument any attempt at persuasion as
such would be an impertinence: whether heat is a mode of motion, whether
there are such infinitesimal bodies as the ions which physicists of
to-day assume to explain certain new phenomena, whether matter consists
of infinitesimal whirls of force--in all such questions an argument
appeals solely to the reason; and in such Bacon's favorite apophthegm
has full sway, Dry light is ever the best. In Huxley's arguments for the
theory of evolution feeling had some share, for when the theory was
first announced by Darwin some religious people thought that it cut at
the foundations of their faith, and Huxley had to show that loyalty to
truth is a feeling of equal sanctity to scientific men: hence there is
some tinge of feeling, though repressed, in his argument, and a definite
consciousness of the feelings of his audience.
At the other extreme are the arguments where the appeal to feelings is
everything, since it is clear that the audience is already of the
speaker's way of thinking. Examples of such arguments are most apt to be
found in speeches in political campaigns and in appeals for money to
help forward charities of all kinds. It is probable that most of the
conversions in political matters are through reading; consequently the
purpose of the speeches is to stir up excitement and feeling to such a
heat that the maximum of the party voters will take the trouble to go
out to the polls. Arguments directed to this class, accordingly, are
almost wholly appeals to feeling. The famous debate between Lincoln and
Douglas in 1858 was of this character; of the thousands of people who
heard them in one or another of the seven debates most had taken sides
already. In such a case as this, however, where a change in general
political opinion was impending, the reasoning of the debates had more
force than in ordinary times, and probably helped many voters to a
clearer view of a very distressing and harassing situation. Between
times, however, in politics, where there are no great moral or practical
differences between parties, the purpose of speeches is almost wholly
persuasive. Success one way or another is a question of getting out the
voters who more or less passively and as a matter of habit hold to the
party. Party speakers, accordingly, use every device to wake up their
voters, and to make them believe that there is a real crisis at hand.
Every attempt is made to attach moral issues to the party platforms, and
to show how the material prosperity of the voters will fail if the
other party wins.
Roughly, therefore, we may say that persuasion tends to play a small
part in arguments of facts, and a larger part in questions of policy.
This is a rough generalization only, for every one knows what eloquence
and efforts at eloquence go into the arguments before juries in capital
cases, and how dry and abstract are the arguments before the judges on
points of law, or on questions of public policy in books of political
economy. But in the long run, the less feeling enters into decisions of
questions of fact, the better.
Of the factors which make for the persuasiveness of an argument I will
speak here of three--clearness of statement, appeal to the practical
interests of the audience, and direct appeal to their feelings.
There can be no doubt that clearness of statement is a powerful element
in making an argument persuasive, though the appeal that it makes to the
feelings of the readers is slight and subtle. In practice we mostly read
arguments either to help make up our minds on a subject or to get aid in
defending views for which we have no ready support. In the latter case
we do not need to be persuaded; but in the former there can be no
question that an argument which clears up the subject, and makes it
intelligible where before it was confusing, does have an effect on us
over and above its aid to our thought.
56. The Practical Interests of the Audience. Of directly persuasive
power, however, are the other two factors--the appeal to the practical
interests of readers, and the appeal to their emotions. Of these the
appeal to practical interests has no proper place in arguments on
questions of fact, but a large and entirely proper share in most
arguments of policy. Henry Ward Beecher's speech on the slavery issue in
the Civil War, before the cotton operatives of Liverpool,[60] is a
classic example of the direct appeal to the practical interests of an
audience. They were bitterly hostile to the North, because the supplies
of cotton had been cut off by the blockade; and after he had got a
hearing from them by appealing to the English sense of fair play, he
drove home the doctrine that a slave population made few customers for
the products of English mills. Then he passed on to the moral side of
the question.
Arguments on almost all public questions--direct election of senators,
direct primaries, commission form of government, tariff, currency,
control of corporations, or, in local matters, the size of a school
committee, the granting of franchises to street railroads or water
companies, the laying out of streets, the rules governing parks--are all
questions of policy in which the greatest practical advantage to the
greatest proportion of those who are interested is the controlling force
in the decision. At particular times and places moral questions may
enter into some of these questions, but ordinarily we come to them to
settle questions of practical advantage.
In arguments on all such questions, therefore, the direct appeal to the
practical interests of the people you are addressing is the chief factor
that makes for persuasiveness. Will a change to a commission form of
government make towards a reduction of taxes and towards giving greater
and more equitably distributed returns for those that are levied? Will
the direct primary for state officers make it easier and surer for the
average citizen of the state to elect to office the kind of men he wants
to have in office? Will a central bank of issue, or some institution
like it, establish the business of the country on a basis less likely to
be disturbed by panics? Will a competing street-car line make for better
and cheaper transportation in the city? In all such questions the only
grounds for decision are practical, and founded in the prosperity and
the convenience of the people who have the decision.
To make arguments in such cases persuasive you must show how the
question affects the practical interests of your readers, and then that
the plan which you support will bring them the greatest advantage.
Generalities and large political truths may help you to convince them;
but to persuade them to active interest and action you must get down to
the realities which touch them personally. If you are arguing for a
commission government in your city on the ground of economy, show in
dollars and cents what portion of his income the owner of a house and
lot worth five or ten thousand dollars pays each year because of the
present extravagance and wastefulness. If you can make a voter see that
the change is likely to save him ten or twenty-five or a hundred dollars
a year, you have made an argument that is persuasive. The arguments for
the reformation of our currency system are aimed directly at the
material interests of the business men of the country and their
employees; and the pleas for one or another system attempt to show how
each will conduce to the greater security and profit of the greatest
number of people.
To make such arguments count, however, you must deal in concrete terms.
A recent argument[61] for the establishment of a general parcels post in
this country presents figures to show that for the transportation of a
parcel by express at a rate of forty-five cents, the railroad gets
twenty-two and one-half cents for service which it could do at a
handsome profit for five cents. Of the validity of these figures I have
no means of judging; but the effectiveness of the argument lies in its
making plain to each of its readers a fact which touches his pocket
every time he sends a parcel by express. It is this kind of argument
that has persuasiveness, for the way we spend our money and what we get
for it come close home to most of us. Of all practical interests those
of the purse are of necessity the most moving for all but the very rich.
Money interests, however, are far from being the only practical
interests which concern us: there are many matters of convenience and
comfort where an individual or a community is not thinking of the cost.
Such questions as what kind of furnace to set up, whether to build a
house of brick or of cement, which railroad to take between, two cities,
are questions that draw arguments from other people than advertising
agents. Of another sort are questions that concern education. What
college shall a boy go to; shall he be prepared in a public school, or a
private day school, or a boarding school? Shall a given college admit on
certificate, or demand an examination of its own? Shall a certain public
school drop Greek from its list of studies; shall it set up a course in
manual training? All these are examples of another set of questions that
touch practical interests very closely. In arguments on such questions,
therefore, if you are to have the power of persuading and so of
influencing action, you must get home to the interests of the people you
are trying to move. The question of schools is very different for a boy
in a small country village and for one in New York City; the question
of admission is different for a state university and for an endowed
college; the question of Greek is different for a school which sends few
pupils on to college and for one which sends many: and in each case if
you want to influence action, you must set forth facts which bear on the
problem as it faces that particular audience. Except perhaps for the
highest eloquence, there is no such thing as universal persuasiveness.
The questions which actively affect the average man usually concern
small groups of people, and each group must be stirred to action by
incentives adapted to its special interests.
57. The Appeal to Moral Interests. Still further from the interests
that touch the pocket, and constantly in healthy and elevating action
against them, are the moral interests. The appeal to moral motives is
sometimes laughed at by men who call themselves practical, but in
America it is in the long run the strongest appeal that can be made. We
are still near enough to the men who fought through the Civil War, in
which each, side held passionately to what it believed to be the moral
right, for us to believe without too much complacency that moral forces
are the forces that rule us as a nation. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt
have both been called preachers, and the hold they have had on great,
though differing, parts of the American people is incontestable. If any
question on which you have to argue has a moral side, it is not only
your duty, but it is also the path of expediency, to make appeal through
the moral principle involved.
The chief difficulty with making an appeal to moral principles is to set
them forth in other than abstract terms, since they are the product of a
set of feelings which lie too deep for easy phrasing in definite words.
In most cases we know what is right long before we can explain why it is
right; and a man who can put into clear words the moral forces that move
his fellows is a prophet and leader of men. Moreover, it must be
remembered when one is appealing to moral principles that upright men
are not agreed about all of them, and there is even more doubt and
disagreement when one comes to the practical application of the
principles. We have seen in Chapter I what bitter division arose in our
fathers' time over the right and the righteousness of slavery; and how
in many states to-day good and God-fearing people are divided on the
question of prohibition.
But even where the two sides to a question agree on the moral principle
which is involved, it by no means follows that they will agree on its
application in a particular case. Church members accept the principle
that one must forgive sinners and help them to reform; but it is another
thing when it comes to getting work for a man who has been in prison, or
help for a woman who has left her husband. How far is the condoning of
offenses consistent with maintaining the standards of society? And in
what cases shall we apply the principle of forgiveness? In a business
transaction how far can one push the Golden Rule? Life would be a
simpler matter if moral principles were always easy to apply to concrete
cases.
One must use the appeal to moral principles, therefore, soberly and with
discretion. The good sense of readers will rebel if their moral sense is
called on unnecessarily; and even when they cannot explain why they
believe such an appeal unsound, yet their instincts will tell them that
it is so. The creator whose right hand is always rising to heaven to
call God to witness disgusts the right feeling of his audience. On the
other hand, where moral principles are really concerned there should be
no compromise. If in a political campaign the issue is between honesty
and graft in the public service, or between an open discussion of all
dealings which touch the public good, and private bargaining with party
managers, the moral principles cannot be kept hidden. If a real moral
principle is seriously involved in any question, the debate must rise to
the level of that principle and let practical considerations go. And
every citizen who has the advantage of having had more education than
his fellows is thereby placed under obligation to hold the debate to
this higher level.
58. The Appeal of Style. Finally, we have to consider the appeal to
the emotions, which is the distinguishing essence of eloquence, and the
attempts at it. In part this appeal is through the appeal to principles
and associations which are close to the heart of the audience, in part
through concrete and figurative language, in part through the
indefinable thrill and music of style which lies beyond definition and
instruction.
The appeal to venerated principle we have considered already, looked at
from the side of morals rather than of emotions. But morality, so far as
it is a coercive force in human conduct, is emotional; our moral
standards lie beyond and above reason in that larger part of our nature
that knows through feeling and intuition. All men have certain standards
and principles whose names arouse strong and reverent emotions. Such
standards are not all religious or moral in the stricter sense; some of
them have their roots in systems of government. In a case at law, argued
purely on a question of law, there does not seem much chance for the
appeal to feeling; but Mr. Joseph H. Choate, in his argument on the
constitutionality of the Income Tax of 1894, before the Supreme Court
of the United States, made the following appeal to the principle of the
sanctity of private property, and the words he used could not have
failed to stir deep and strong feelings in the court.
No longer ago, if the Court please, than the day of the funeral
procession of General Sherman in New York, it was my fortune to spend
many hours with one of the ex-Presidents of the United States, who has
since followed that great warrior to the bourne to which we were then
bearing him. President Hayes expressed great solicitude as to the future
fortunes of this people. In his retirement he had been watching the
tendency of political and social purposes and events. He had observed
how in recent years the possessors of political power had been learning
to use it for the first time for the promotion of social and personal
ends. He said to me, "You will probably live to see the day when in the
case of the death of any man of large wealth the State will take for
itself all above a certain prescribed limit of his fortune and divide
it, or apply it to the equal use of all the people, so as to punish the
rich man for his wealth, and to divide it among those who, whatever may
have been their sins, at least have not committed that." I looked upon
it as the wanderings of a dreaming man; and yet if I had known that
within less than five short years afterwards I should be standing before
this tribunal to contest the validity of an alleged act of Congress, of
a so-called law, which was defended here by the authorized legal
representatives of the Federal Government upon the plea that it was a
tax levied only upon classes and extremely rich men, I should have given
altogether a different heed and ear to the warnings of that
distinguished statesman.[62]
Our emotions do not rise, however, anymore surely in the case of our
veneration for the basal principles of religion and government than in
that of more personal emotions. The appeal to the Constitution is worn
somewhat threadbare by the politicians who call on it at every election,
small or great, as is the appeal to the principles of the Pilgrim
Fathers. It takes eloquence now to rouse our feelings about these
principles. If you have a case important enough to justify appeal to
such great principles and the skill in language to give your appeal
vitality, you may really arouse your readers. But, on the whole, it is
sound advice to say, Wait a few years before you call on them.
The second mode of appeal to the feelings of your audience, that through
concrete and figurative language, is more within the reach of advocates
who are still of college age. This is particularly true of the use of
concrete language. It is a matter of common knowledge that men do not
rouse themselves over abstract principles; they will grant their assent,
often without really knowing what is implied by the general principle,
and go away yawning. On the other hand, the man who talks about the real
and actual things which you know is likely to keep your attention. This
goes back to the truth that our emotions and feelings are primarily the
reaction to the concrete things that happen to us. The spontaneous
whistling and humming of tunes that indicate a cheerful heart rise
naturally as a response to the sunlight in spring; the fear at the
terror that flies in a nightmare is the instinctive and physical
reaction to indigestion; we sorrow over the loss of our own friends, but
not over the loss of some one else's. The stories that stir us are the
stories that deal with actual, tangible realities in such terms that
they make us feel that we are living the story ourselves. Stevenson has
some wise words on this subject in his essay, "A Gossip on Romance." The
doctrine holds true for the making of arguments.
Even where as in Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America,"
abstractness is not vagueness, the style would be more effective for the
richer feeling that hangs over and around a concrete vocabulary. The
great vividness of Macaulay's style, and its bold over so many readers,
is largely due to his unfailing use of the specific word. If you will
take the trouble to notice what arguments in the last few months have
seemed to you especially persuasive, you will be surprised to find how
definite and concrete the terms are that they use.
Accordingly, if you wish to keep the readers of your argument awake and
attentive, use terms that touch their everyday experience. If you are
arguing for the establishment of a commission form of government, give
in dollars and cents the sum that it cost under the old system to pave
the three hundred yards of A Street, between 12th and 13th streets. The
late Mr. Godkin of the New York _Evening Post_, in his lifelong campaign
against corrupt government, to bring home to his readers the actual
state of their city government and the character of the men who ran it,
used their nicknames; "Long John" Corrigan, for example (if there had
been such a personage); and "Bath-house John Somebody" has been a
feature of campaigns in Chicago. The value of such names when skillfully
used is that by their associations and connotation they do stir feeling.
Likewise if you are arguing before an audience of graduates for a change
from a group system to a free elective system in your college, you would
use the names of courses with which they would be familiar and the names
of professors under whom they had studied. If you were arguing for the
introduction of manual training into a school, you would make taxpayers
take an interest in the matter if you gave them the exact numbers of
pupils from that school who have gone directly into mills or other work
of the kind, and if you describe vividly just what is meant by manual
training. If your description is in general terms they may grant you
your principle, and then out of mere inertia and a vague feeling against
change vote the other way.
A rough test for concreteness is your vocabulary: if your words are
mostly Anglo-Saxon you will usually be talking about concrete things; if
it is Latinate and polysyllabic it is probably abstract and general.
Most of the things and actions of everyday life, the individual things
like "walls" and "puppies," "summer" and "boys," "buying" and "selling,"
"praying" and "singing," have names belonging to the Anglo-Saxon part of
the language; and though there are many exceptions, like "tables," and
"telephones," and "professors," yet the more your vocabulary consists of
the non-Latinate words, the more likely it is to be concrete, and
therefore to keep your readers' attention and feelings alive. Use the
simple terms of everyday life, therefore, rather than the learned words
which would serve you if you were generalizing from many cases. Stick to
the single case before you and to the interests of the particular people
you are trying to win over. To touch their feelings remember that you
must talk about the things they have feelings about.
The use of similes and metaphors and other figurative language raises a
difficult question. On the whole, perhaps the best advice about using
them is, Don't unless you have to. In other words, where a figure of
speech is a necessity of expression, where you cannot make your thought
clear and impart to it the warmth of feeling with which it is clothed in
your own mind except by a touch of imaginative color, then use a figure
of speech, if one flashes itself on your mind. If you add it
deliberately as adornment of your speech, it will strike a false note;
if you laboriously invent it the effort will show. Unless your thought
and your eagerness for your subject flow naturally and inevitably into
an image, it is better to stick to plain speech, for any suggestion of
insincerity is fatal to the persuasiveness of an argument.
The value of the figure of speech is chiefly in giving expression to
feelings which cannot be set forth in abstract words, the whole of whose
meaning can be defined: in the connotation of words--that indefinable
part of their meaning which consists in their associations,
implications, and general emotional coloring--lies their power to clothe
thought with the rich color of feeling which is the life. At the same
time, they serve as a fillip to the attention. There are not very many
people who can long keep the mind fixed on a purely abstract line of
thought, and none can do it without some effort. Professor William James
is a notable example of a writer whose thought flowed spontaneously into
necessary figures of speech:
When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences,
and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested
moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience
and postponement, what choking down of preference, what
submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very
stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast
augustness,--then how besotted and contemptible seems every
little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths,
and pretending to decide things out of his private dream.[63]
One cannot go to sleep over a style like that, for besides the
obvious sincerity and rush of warm feeling, the vividness of
the figures is like that of poetry. On the either hand, one
must remember that it is given to few men to attain the
unstudied eloquence of Professor James.
Fables and anecdotes serve much the same purpose, but
more especially throw into memorable form the principle
which they are intended to set forth. There are a good many
truths which are either so complex or so subtle that they defy
phrasing in compact form, yet their truth we all know by intuition.
If for such a truth you can find a compact illustration,
you can leave it much more firmly fixed in your readers' minds
than by any amount of systematic exposition. Lincoln in his
Springfield speech, for example, threw into striking form the
feeling which was so common in the North, that each step
forward in the advance of slavery so fitted into all earlier ones
that something like a concerted plan must be assumed:
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are, the
result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different
portions of which we know have been gotten cut at different times and
places and by different workmen,--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James,
for instance,--and we see these timbers joined together, and see they
exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises
exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different
pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too
many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding,--or, if a single piece
be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared
yet to bring such piece in,--in such a case we find it impossible not to
believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one
another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft
drawn up before the first blow was struck.
On the other hand, there is the danger of being florid or of playing the
clown if you tell too many stories. Whether your style will seem florid
or not depends a good deal on the part of the country you are writing
for. There is no doubt that the taste of the South and of a good deal of
the West is for a style more varied and highly colored than suits the
soberer taste of the East. But whatever part of the country you are
writing for, just so soon as your style seems to those special readers
overloaded with ornament it will seem insincere. In the same way, if you
stop too often to tell a story or to make your readers laugh, you will
produce the impression of trifling with your subject. In both these
respects be careful not to draw the attention of your readers away from
the subject to your style.
The ultimate and least analyzable appeal of style is through that thrill
of the voice which in written style appears as rhythm and harmony.
Certain men are gifted with the capacity of so modulating their voices
and throwing virtue into their tones that whoever hears them feels an
indefinable thrill. So in writing: where sounds follow sounds in
harmonious sequence, and the beat of the accent approaches regularity
without falling into it, language takes on the expressiveness of music.
It is well known that music expresses a range of feeling that lies
beyond the powers of words: who can explain, for example, the thrill
roused in him by a good brass band, or the indefinable melancholy and
gloom created by the minor harmonies of one of the great funeral
marches, or, in another direction, the impulse that sets him to
whistling or singing on a bright morning in summer? There are many such
kinds of feeling, real and potent parts of our consciousness; and if we
can bring them to expression at all, we must do so through the rhythm
and other sensuous qualities of the style which are pure sensation.
How is that to be done? The answer is difficult, and like that
concerning the use of figurative language: do not try for it too
deliberately. If without your thinking of it you find yourself becoming
more earnest in speech, and more impressed with the seriousness of the
issue you are arguing, your voice will show it naturally. So when you
are writing: your earnestness will show, if you have had the training
and have the natural gift for expression in words, in a lengthening and
more strongly marked rhythm, in an intangibly richer coloring of sound.
In speech the rhythm is apt to be shown in what is called parallel
structure, the repetition of the same form of sentence, and in
rhetorical questions. In writing, these forms more easily tend to seem
either excited or artificial. Sustained periodic structure, too, can be
carried by the speaking voice, when it would lag if written. Every one
recognizes this incommunicable thrill of eloquence in great speakers and
writers, but it is so much a gift of nature that it is not wise
consciously to cultivate it.
59. Fairness and Sincerity. In the long run, however, nothing makes
an argument appeal more to readers than an air of fairness and
sincerity. If it is evident in an argument of fact that you are seeking
to establish the truth, or in an argument of policy that your single aim
is the greatest good of all concerned, your audience will listen to you
with favorable ears. If on the other hand you seem to be chiefly
concerned with the vanity of a personal victory, or to be thinking of
selfish advantages, they will listen to you coolly and with jealous
scrutiny of your points.
Accordingly, in making your preliminary survey to prepare the statement
of the facts that are agreed on by both sides, go as far as you can in
yielding points. If the question is worth arguing at all you will still
have your hands full to get through it within your space. In particular
waive all trivial points: nothing is more wearisome to readers than to
plow through detailed arguments over points that no one cares about in
the end. And meet the other side at least halfway in agreeing on the
facts that do not need to be argued out. You will prejudice your
audience if you make concessions in a grudging spirit. Likewise,
wherever you have, to meet arguments put forward by the other side,
state them with scrupulous fairness; if your audience has any reason to
suppose that you are twisting the assertions of the other side to your
own advantage, you have shaken their confidence in you, and thereby
weakened the persuasive force of your argument. Use sarcasm with
caution, and beware of any seeming of triumph. Sarcasm easily becomes
cheap, and an air of triumph may look like petty smartness.
In short, in writing your argument, assume throughout the attitude of
one who is seeking earnestly to bring the disagreement between the two
sides to an end. If you are dealing with a question of fact, your sole
duty is to establish the truth. If you are dealing with a question of
policy, you know when you begin that whichever way the decision goes,
one side will suffer some disadvantage; but aim to lessen that
disadvantage, and to discover a way that will bring the greatest gain to
the greatest number. An obvious spirit of conciliation is a large asset
in persuasion.
With the conciliation make clear your sincerity. A chief difficulty with
making arguments written in school and college persuasive is that they
so often deal with subjects in which it is obvious that the writer's own
feelings are not greatly concerned. This difficulty will disappear when
you get out into the world, and make arguments in earnest. A great part
of Lincoln's success as an advocate is said to have been due to the fact
that he always tried to compose his cases and to make peace between the
litigants, and that he never took a case in which he did not believe. If
you leave on your audience the impression that you are sincere and in
earnest, you have taken a long step towards winning over their feelings.
On the whole, then, when one is considering the question of persuasion,
the figure of speech of a battle is not very apt. It is all very well
when you are laying out your brief to speak, of deploying your various
points, of directing an attack on your opponent's weakest point, of
bringing up reserve material in rebuttal; but if the figure gets you
into the way of thinking that you must always demolish your opponent,
and treat him as an enemy, it is doing harm. If you will take the
trouble to follow the controversies which are going on in your own city
and state over public affairs, you will soon see that in most of them
the two sides break even, so far as intelligence and public-spiritedness
go. In every transaction there are two sides; and the president of a
street railroad may be as honest and as disinterested in seeking to get
the best of the bargain for his road as the representatives of the city
are in trying to get the best of it for the public. There is no use
going into a question of this sort with the assumption that you are on a
higher moral plane than the other side. In some cases where a moral
issue is involved there is only one view of what is right; if honesty is
in the balance, there can be no other side. But, as we have seen, there
are moral questions in which one must use his utmost strength for the
right as he sees the right, and yet know all the time that equally
honest men are fighting just as hard on the other side. No American who
remembers the case of General Robert E. Lee can forget this puzzling
truth. Therefore, unless there can be no doubt of the dishonesty of your
opponent, turn your energies against his cause and not against him; and
hold that the proper end of argument is not so much to win victories as
to bring as many people as possible to agreement.
EXERCISES
1. Compare the length of the introductory part of the argument of the
specimens at the end of this book; point out reasons for the difference
in length, if you find any.
2. Find two arguments, not in this book, in which the main points at
issue are numbered.
3. Find an argument, not in this book, in which a history of the case is
part of the introduction.
4. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the definitions of terms
occupy some space.
5. In the argument on which you are working, what terms need definition?
How much space should the definitions occupy in the completed argument?
Why?
6. In the argument on which you are working, how much of the material in
the introduction to the brief shall you use in the argument itself? Does
the audience you have in mind affect the decision?
7. How do you intend to distribute your space between the main issues
you will argue out?
8. How much will explanation enter into your argument?
9. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the explanation chiefly
makes the convincing power.
10. In which of the arguments in this book does explanation play the
smallest part?
11. Examine five consecutive paragraphs in Huxley's argument on
evolution, or _The Outlook_ argument on the Workman's Compensation Act,
from the point of view of good explanation.
12. Find two examples of arguments, not in this book, whose chief
appeal is to the feelings.
13. Find an argument, not in this book, which is a good illustration of
the power of tact.
14. Name an argument which you have read within a few months which made
a special impression on you by its clearness.
15. Find an argument in the daily papers, on local or academic affairs,
which makes effective appeal to the practical interests of its audience.
Analyze this appeal.
16. Name three subjects of local and immediate interest on which you
could write an argument in which you would appeal chiefly to the
practical interests of your readers.
17. Name two current political questions which turn on the practical
interests of the country at large.
18. Name two public questions now under discussion into which moral
issues enter. Do both sides on these questions accept the same view of
the bearing of the moral issues?
19. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the eloquence of the
style is a distinct part of the persuasive power.
20. What do you think of the persuasive power of Burke's speech "On
Conciliation with America"? of its convincing power?
21. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the concreteness of the
language adds to the persuasive power.
22. Find two examples, not in this book, of apt and effective figures of
speech in an argument.
23. Find an example of an apt anecdote or fable used in an argument.
24. In Lincoln's address at Cooper Institute, what do you think of his
attitude towards the South as respects fairness?
25. In the argument on which you are at work, what chance would there be
of inducing agreement between the two sides?