WHAT DEBATE REALLY IS
I have failed in my argument so far unless I have accomplished two
things. First, and most important, I must have convinced you that I am
right as far as I have gone. Second, to have my argument really worth
while, I must have done more—I must have made you want to debate.
For an argument is only half an argument unless it brings you to the
point of doing. In this particular it differs from many other kinds of
speaking—contention for example.
In contention, the contender has very little hope as a rule of changing
his adversary’s mind. He is not arguing; he is simply sticking up for
his point. How much of what passes for argument belongs to this class
of effort! You hear it in the street every day, and on the baseball
diamond—did you ever hear the discussion over a disputed decision by the
umpire? Did you ever hear any _argument_ there? Did Captain Jack, or
Captain Frank, or Captain Chance, or Captain McGraw, ever really think he
could convince any jury, either of players, umpires or spectators, that
he was really right?
=Argument Differs Also From Persuasion.=—There are other forms of mental
effort expressed in spoken word, perfectly legitimate in themselves,
which are not arguments, although generally classed as such. There is a
difference between argument and persuasion.
Can you remember when you were trying to get your friend Bob or perhaps
your whole crowd to follow your suggestion? How you coaxed and urged
and teased. Of course that was many years ago but your argument (!) ran
something like this, didn’t it?
“Oh, I say, Bob, come on down to the creek.”
“Let’s go in swimming!”
“Oh, yes!”
“Let’s!”
“Say, it’s just fun!”
“Oh, never mind getting in that kindling, you can do it after we get
back—sure you can! You’ll have plenty of time, and besides your mother
won’t care very much.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Don’t be a fraid cat!”
“You are a regular sissy! You dassn’t go—you have to stay close home! I
tell you, I just do as I please—my ma lets me do just as I want to. She
knows I would, anyway.”
“Oh, come on, Bob, be a good fellow!”
And so it would run on—not a particle of argument, nothing but appeal to
the emotions, and those not of the loftiest kind.
But is that scene too boyish for you to remember? How about that time
only a little while ago when you were not urging Bob to go down to the
“old swimming hole,” but to a place not quite so harmless as that, the
place where the creek backed up into a pond, muddy and actually shallow
it must be confessed, but none the less better than any marble bath of
emperor or king. Bob didn’t want to play pool with you in that pool-room
your father said was no place for a boy, but you teased him into going.
Your sneers at his desire to keep himself clean and sweet and “mind his
mother” maybe were not quite so obvious as those earlier boyish effusions
but they were none the less appeals to the weaker instincts.
And can you remember that hot day in July away back, when you were only
a youngster you know? How you wanted the worst way to go fishing but Bob
wanted to lie on the ground under the tree and read _Campmates_? How it
just seemed to you as though you simply must go fishing, and yet how
equally determined you were that you would not go alone but that Bob
must go too, book or no book? You can remember how you teased and coaxed
and urged, and finally how you _bribed_ him by offering to give him that
trade on the book he had wanted so long. You carried your point, but was
it argument?
Can’t you remember, too, how you capped your final urgings of Bob only a
few days ago by offering to introduce him to your cousin Nellie who had
come from Fairfield to visit you? You knew Bob admired her greatly and
you imagined that if you couldn’t get Bob to agree to your plan by your
urging and coaxing, you could easily win him over, if you could promise
him the coveted introduction.
No, lad, these scenes are not too boyish. They frame a point for you. The
truth is that, so far as the fact of conviction or persuasion in argument
is concerned, the bribe of the book and of the introduction to Nellie is
on the same plane in the argument as the logic of the offer of money to
the legislator to influence his mind in the debate wherein he engages.
Argument, therefore, is addressed in the first instance to reason alone;
it may or may not be combined with persuasion but the two are absolutely
different. The perfect argument will be so absolutely convincing, its
logic will be so unanswerable that its hearers will be compelled by its
very force to follow its conclusions since they can not escape them.
=Blackhawk’s Appeal.=—Generally, however, to the reasoning of the
argument must be added the persuasion of the appeal to the instincts of
love, duty, patriotism and the like. Now when this appeal is used or
is the essential part of the so-called argument it is outside of true
debate; it falls into a class that in some cases is higher than debate
but nevertheless distinct. So when in our earlier history Blackhawk,
as we say, debated the cause of his Sacs and Foxes, he did not really
argue their case with cold calm reason but appealed to the sentiment of
his hearers, to their sense of patriotism. Pontiac and Osceola never
presented a series of logical reasons why their Indian brothers should
be treated differently, but they did, as did other notable chieftains,
often in passionate oratory, appeal to those emotions which dwell not in
reason but in sentiment. If the questions between the red man and the
white man were debated, reason would say that the red man had failed
to use his heritage to the best advantage. It would argue that he had
kept millions of acres of land in an uncultivated state so that the game
which formed his meat supply could roam undisturbed over hills and plains
which could support in comfort millions of people. It would insist that
a God of bounty and love could never have intended that His gifts should
be so wasted, and His providence so abused. It would show how the very
virtues—if virtues they were—called for by a savage life, hardness,
insensibility to pain and suffering, fierceness, made men more brutal and
savage in their intercourse among themselves. From all these arguments
and from others like them, reason would say that the red man had not
justified his ownership of the soil and that he must yield its control to
the white.
The appeal of the Indian orator, on the other hand, would depict a sylvan
scene of hunting lodge or trapper’s camp. He would picture the primæval
red man, erect, haughty, stern, proud, and possessed of all those virtues
found so plentifully in Cooper’s novels—and so seldom anywhere else. He
would show the simple qualities of the savage brain and the nobler traits
which dwell among uncivilized peoples. He could construct a passionately
moving appeal to the white man to allow this unlettered savage, his red
brother, to remain upon the lands over which his fathers had hunted and
where his tribal lodges had been pitched since “grass grew and water
ran.” The first appeal would be an argument addressed to the hearer’s
logical powers; the second would appeal to the hearer’s sentiment and
emotion.
It must be remembered that often the most awful results follow some forms
of persuasion, some appeals which do not aim at the higher motives but to
passion and prejudice. The hateful story of many a mob shows the effect
of persuasion addressed to the lowest instead of the higher instincts and
emotions, but the persuasion had nothing to do with argument.