The Making of Arguments
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Title: The Making of Arguments
Author: J. H. Gardiner
Release date: August 3, 2004 [eBook #13089]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAKING OF ARGUMENTS ***
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.
CHAPTER II
PLANNING THE ARGUMENT
10. Preparations for the Argument. When you have chosen the subject
for your argument there is still much to do before you are ready to
write it out. In the first place, you must find out by search and
reading what is to be said both for and against the view you are
supporting; in the second place, with the facts in mind you must analyze
both them and the question to see just what is the point that you are
arguing; then, in the third place, you must arrange the material you are
going to use so that it will be most effective for your purpose. Each of
these steps I shall consider in turn in this chapter.
As a practical convenience, each student should start a notebook, in
which he can keep together all the notes he makes in the course of his
preparations for writing the argument. Number the pages of the notebook,
and leave the first two pages blank for a table of contents. A box of
cards, such as will be described on page 31, will serve as well as a
notebook, and in some ways is more convenient. From time to time, in the
course of the chapter I shall mention points that should be entered.
For the sake of convenience in exposition I shall use as an example the
preparations for an argument in favor of introducing the commission form
of government into an imaginary city, Wytown; and each of the directions
for the use of the notebook I shall illustrate by entries appropriate
to this argument. The argument, let us suppose, is addressed to the
citizens of the place, who know the general facts relating to the city
and its government. In creating this imaginary city, let us give it
about eight thousand inhabitants, and suppose that it is of small area,
and that the inhabitants are chiefly operatives in a number of large
shoe factories, of American descent, though foreign-born citizens and
their offspring are beginning to gain on the others. And further, let us
suppose that this imaginary city of Wytown now has a city government
with a mayor of limited powers, a small board of aldermen, and a larger
city council. The other necessary facts will appear in the introduction
to the brief.
11. Reading for the Argument. The first step in preparing for an
argument is to find out what has been already written on the general
subject, and what facts are available for your purpose. For this purpose
you must go to the best library that is within convenient reach. Just
how to look for material there I shall discuss a few pages further on;
here I shall make some more general suggestions about reading and taking
notes.
Almost always it pays to give two or three hours to some preliminary
reading that will make you see the general scope of the subject, and the
points on which there is disagreement. An article in a good encyclopedia
or one in a magazine may serve the purpose; or in some cases you can go
to the opening chapter or two of a book. If you have already discussed
the subject with other people this preliminary reading may not be
necessary; but if you start in to read on a new subject without some
general idea of its scope you may waste time through not knowing your
way and so following false leads.
In your reading do not rest satisfied with consulting authorities on
your own side only. We shall presently see how important it is to be
prepared to meet arguments on the other side; and unless you have read
something on that side, you will not know what points you ought to deal
with in your refutation. In that event you may leave undisturbed in the
minds of your readers points which have all the more significance from
your having ignored them. One of the first reasons for wide reading in
preparation for an argument is to assure yourself that you have a
competent knowledge of the other side as well as of your own.
In using your sources keep clearly and constantly in mind the difference
between fact and opinion. The opinions of a great scholar and of a
farseeing statesman may be based on fact; but not being fact they
contain some element of inference, which is never as certain. When we
come to the next chapter we shall consider this difference more closely.
In the meantime it is worth while to urge the importance of cultivating
scruples on the subject and a keen eye for the intrusion of human, and
therefore fallible, opinion into statements of fact. A trustworthy
author states the facts as facts, with the authorities for them
specifically cited; and where he builds his own opinions on the facts he
leaves no doubt as to where fact ends and opinion begins.
The power to estimate a book or an article on a cursory inspection is of
great practical value. The table of contents in a book, and sometimes
the index, will give a good idea of its scope; and samples of a few
pages at a time, especially on critical points, which can be chosen by
means of the index, will show its general attitude and tone. The index,
if properly made, will furnish a sure guide to its relevance for the
purpose in hand. Half an hour spent in this way, with attention
concentrated, will in most cases settle whether the book is worth
reading through. An article can be "sized up" in much the same way:
if it is at all well written the first paragraphs will give a pretty
definite idea of the subject and the scope of the article; and the
beginnings, and often the ends, of the paragraphs will show the course
which the thought follows. Though such skimming cannot be relied on for
a real knowledge of the subject, it is invaluable as a guide for this
preliminary reading.
12. Taking Notes. In reading for your argument, as for all
scholarly reading, form early your habits of taking thorough and
serviceable notes. Nothing is more tantalizing than to remember that you
once ran across a highly important fact and then not be able to recall
the place in which it is to be found.
One of the most convenient ways to take notes for an argument is to
write each fact or quotation on a separate card. Cards convenient for
the purpose can be had at any college stationer or library-supply
bureau. If you use them, have an ample supply of them, so that you will
not have to put more than one fact on each. Leave space for a heading at
the top which will refer to a specific subheading of your brief, when
that is ready. Always add an exact reference to the source--title, name
of author, and, in case of a book, place and date of publication, so
that if you want more material you can find it without loss of time,
and, what is more important, so that you can fortify your use of it by a
reference in a footnote. When you find a passage that you think will be
worth quoting in the original words, quote with scrupulous and literal
accuracy: apart from the authority you gain by so doing, you have no
right to make any one else say words he did not say. If you leave out
part of the passage, show the omission by dots; and in such a case, if
you have to supply words of your own, as for example a noun in place of
a pronoun, use square brackets, thus []. On the following page are
examples of a convenient form of such notes.
* * * * *
RESULTS IN DES MOINES
The streets have been kept cleaner than ever before for $35,000.
The rates for electric lights have been reduced from $90 to $65.
Gas rates have dropped again from $22 to $17.
Water rates have dropped from 30¢ to 20¢ per 1000 gal.
The disreputable district has been cleaned up and bond sharks
driven out of business.
The Des Moines Plan of City Government, _World's Work_, Vol. XVIII,
P. 11533.
PRESIDENT ELIOT'S VIEWS
"Now city business is almost wholly administrative and executive
and very little concerned with large plans and far-reaching legislation.
There is no occasion for two legislative bodies, or even one, in the
government of a city.... Now and then a question arises which the
will of the whole people properly expressed may best settle; but
for the prompt and conclusive expression of that will the initiative
and referendum are now well-recognized means."
C. W. Eliot, City Government by Fewer Men, _World's Work_, Vol. XIV
p. 9419.
* * * * *
In making notes, whether for an argument or for general college work, it
is convenient, unless you know shorthand, to have a system of signs and
abbreviations and of contractions for common words. The simpler
shorthand symbols can be pressed into service; and one can follow the
practice of stenography, which was also that of the ancient Hebrew
writing, of leaving out vowels, for there are few words that cannot be
recognized at a glance from their consonants. If you use this system at
lectures you can soon come surprisingly near to a verbatim report which
will preserve something more than bare facts.
In your reading for material do not cultivate habits of economy or
parsimony. You should always have a considerable amount of good fact
left over, for unless you know a good deal of the region on the
outskirts of your argument you will feel cramped and uncertain within
it. The effect of having something in reserve is a powerful, though an
intangible, asset in an argument; and, on the other hand, the man who
has emptied his magazine is in a risky situation.
13. Sources for Facts. In the main, there are two kinds of sources
for facts, sources in which the facts have already been collected and
digested, and sources where they are still scattered and must be brought
together and grouped by the investigator. Obviously there is no sharp or
permanent distinction between these two classes. Let us first run
through some of the books which are commonly available as sources of
either kind, and then come back to the use of them.
To find material in books and magazines there are certain well-known
guides. To look up books go first to the catalogue of the nearest
library. Here in most cases you will find some sort of subject
catalogue, in which the subjects are arranged alphabetically; and if you
can use the alphabet readily, as by no means all college students can,
you can soon get a list of the books that are there available on the
subject. On many subjects there are bibliographies, or lists of books,
such as those published by the Library of Congress; these will be found
in every large library. For articles in magazines and weekly journals,
which on most current questions have fresh information, besides a great
deal of valuable material on older questions, go to Poole's "Index to
Periodical Literature," which is an index both by title and subject to
the articles in important English and American magazines from 1802 to
1906, and to "The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature," which began
in 1901 and includes more magazines, and which is brought up to date
every month.
For other material the works listed below will be serviceable; they are
the best known of the reference books, and some of them will be found in
all libraries and all of them in large libraries. The books on this list
by no means exhaust the number of good books of their own kind; they are
good examples, and others will ordinarily be found on the same shelves
with them.
DICTIONARIES
THE NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY (MURRAY'S) Unfinished: to have ten volumes,
of which nine have now been published. This gives the history of each
word for the last seven hundred years, with copious quotations, dated,
to show the changes in its use.
THE CENTURY DICTIONARY, CYCLOPEDIA OF NAMES, AND ATLAS New edition,
1911, in twelve volumes. This has fuller information about the meanings
of the words than is usually found in a dictionary.
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY (WEBSTER'S) New edition, 1910,
enlarged, with copious and exact etymologies.
ROGET'S THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES A standard book of
synonyms.
FERNALD, ENGLISH SYNONYMS, ANTONYMS, AND PREPOSITIONS With illustrations
and expositions of the differences in meaning.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA Very full; highly authoritative; 11th edition,
1910.
NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA Briefer; reedited in 1904.
LA GRANDE ENCYCLOPIDIE; BROCKHAUS, KONVERSATIONS-LEXIKON Both copious
and authoritative.
ALLUSIONS AND QUOTATIONS
CRUDEN'S CONCORDANCE An index to every word in the Bible.
BARTLETT'S CONCORDANCE TO SHAKESPEARE An index to every word in
Shakespeare.
BARTLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS An index to a very large number of the
quotations most frequently met with.
BREWER'S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE This explains a great quantity
of common allusions in words and phrases.
DICTIONARIES OF PROPER NAMES
CENTURY CYCLOPEDIA OF NAMES This includes not only names of real
persons, but also those of many famous characters in fiction.
LIPPINCOTT'S UNIVERSAL PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY OF BIOGRAPHY AND MYTHOLOGY
DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY Revised edition. Confined to English
biography, and to persons dead at the dale of publication of Supplement
(1909). The articles are full, and of the highest authority. In the
index and epitome is a convenient summary of dates and facts.
APPLETON'S CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY Six volumes, 1887-1901; with
supplement (unfinished), bringing it down to date.
WHO'S WHO An annual publication; English, but with some American names;
living persons only.
WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA; WER IST'S; QUI ÊTES-VOUS Corresponding works for
America, Germany, and France.
DEBRETT'S PEERAGE A repository of a great mass of facts concerning
English families of historical distinction.
FOR CURRENT OR HISTORICAL FACTS
THE STATESMAN'S YEAR BOOK Arranged by countries; contains a great mass
of facts; has a bibliography at the end of each country or state.
THE WORLD ALMANAC; THE TRIBUNE ALMANAC Examples of annuals issued by
large newspapers, which contain an enormous mass of facts, chiefly
American.
WHITAKER'S ALMANAC Much miscellaneous information about the British
empire and other countries.
THE ANNUAL REGISTER; THE NEW INTERNATIONAL YEARBOOK; THE AMERICAN
YEARBOOK These three give information about the events of the preceding
year.
INDEX TO THE LONDON _Times_
MISCELLANEOUS WORKS
LIPPINCOTT'S NEW GAZETTEER A geographical dictionary of the world.
THE CENTURY ATLAS With classified references to places.
THE HANDY REFERENCE ATLAS Small size (octavo); a most useful book for
the desk or library table.
PLOETZ'S EPITOME OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY A very compact epitome of history,
with all the important dates.
NOTES AND QUERIES A periodical devoted to notes and queries on a
multitude of curious and out-of-the-way facts; yearly index volumes are
issued.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES ISSUED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
SONNENSCHEIN'S THE BEST BOOKS A guide to about fifty thousand of the
best available books in a great variety of fields, classified by
subject.
Make yourself familiar with all of these books which are within your
reach. Get into the habit, when you have a few minutes to spare, of
taking them down from the shelves and turning over the pages to see what
they contain. And whenever a question of fact comes up in general talk,
make a mental note of it, or better, one in writing, and the next time
you go to the library hunt it up in one of these reference books. You
will be surprised to see, when once you have made the habit, how short a
time it takes to settle disputes about most facts; and at the same time
you will be extending your general knowledge.
In learning the use of these and other books, do not forget the most
important source of all, the librarian. The one guiding principle of
modern librarianship is to make the books useful; and it gives every
proper librarian active pleasure to show you how to use the books in his
charge.
In using books and magazines scrutinize the character of the source. Is
it impartial or partisan? Is its treatment of the subject exhaustive and
definite, or cursory and superficial? Does the author know the subject
at first hand, or does he rely on other men? On such points the second
book or article will be easier to estimate than the first, and the third
than the second; for with each new source you have the earlier ones as a
basis for comparison. In any case do not trust to a single authority: no
matter how authoritative it is, sooner or later the narrow basis of your
views will betray itself, for an argument which is merely a revamping of
some one else's views is not likely to have much spontaneity.
In many subjects, and especially those of new or local interest, you
will not find the facts gathered and assimilated for you; you must go
out and gather your own straw for the making of your bricks. Such are
most questions of reform or change in school or college systems, in
athletics, in municipal affairs, in short, most of the questions on
which the average man after he leaves college is likely to be making
arguments.
To get decisive facts on such questions as these you must go, in the
case of local subjects, to the newspapers, to city and town reports, or
to documents issued by interested committees; for college questions you
go to the presidents' reports and to annual catalogues or catalogues of
graduates, or perhaps to _Graduates' Bulletins_ or _Weeklies_; for
athletic questions you go to the files of the daily newspapers, or for
records to such works as the _World_ or _Tribune Almanacs_; for school
questions you go to school catalogues, or to school-committee reports.
You will be surprised to find how little time you use to get together
bodies of facts and figures that may make you, in a small way, an
original authority on the subject you are discussing. It does not take
long to count a few hundred names, or to run through the files of a
newspaper for a week or a month; and when you have done such
investigation you get a sense of surety in dealing with your subject
that will strengthen your argument. Here, as in the larger discussions
of later life, the readiness to take the initiative and the ingenuity in
thinking of possible sources are what make you count.
Such sources you can often piece out by personal inquiry from men who
are conversant with the subject--town or city officers, members of
faculties, principals of schools. If you go to such people hoping that
they will do your work for you, you will not be likely to get much
comfort; but if you are keen about your subject yourself, and ready to
work, you will often get not only valuable information and advice, but
sometimes also a chance to go through unpublished records. A young man
who is working hard and intelligently is apt to be an object of interest
to older men who have been doing the same all their lives.
EXERCISES
1. Name those of the sources on pages 34-36, which are available to you.
Report to the class on the scope and character of each of them. (The
report on different sources can be divided among the class.)
2. Name some sources for facts relating to your own school or college;
to your own town or city; to your own state.
3. Report on the following, in not more than one hundred words, naming
the source from which you got your information: the situation and
government of the Fiji Islands; Circe; the author of "A man's a man for
a' that"; Becky Sharp; the age of President Taft and the offices he has
held; the early career of James Madison; the American amateur record in
the half-mile run; the family name of Lord Salisbury, and a brief
account of his career; the salary of the mayor of New York; the island
of Guam: some of the important measures passed by Congress in the
session of 1910-1911. (This exercise a teacher can vary indefinitely by
turning over the pages of reference books which his class can reach; or
the students can be set to making exercises for each other.)
14. Bibliography. Before starting in earnest on the reading for your
argument, begin a bibliography, that is, a list of the books and
articles and speeches which will help you. This bibliography should be
entered in your notebook, and it is convenient to allow space enough
there to keep the different kinds of sources separate. In making your
bibliography you will use some of the sources which have just been
described, especially "Poole's Index," and "The Reader's Guide," and the
subject catalogue of the library. Make your entries so full that you can
go at once to the source; it is poor economy to save a minute on copying
down a title, and then waste ten or fifteen in going back to the source
from which you got it. On large subjects the number of books and
articles is far beyond the possibilities of most courses in
argumentation, and here you must exercise your judgment in choosing the
most important. The name of the author is on the whole a safe guide: if
you find an article or a book by President Eliot on an educational
subject, or one by President Hadley on economics, or one by President
Jordan on zoology, or one by any of them on university policy, you will
know at once that you cannot afford to neglect it. As you go on with
your reading you will soon find who are authorities on special subjects
by noting who are quoted in text and footnotes. If the subject happens
to be one of those on which a bibliography has been issued either by the
Library of Congress or from some other source, the making of your own
bibliography will reduce itself to a selection from this list.
Keep your bibliography as a practical aid to you in a very practical
task. Do not swell it from mere love of accumulation, as you might
collect stamps. The making of exhaustive bibliographies is work for
advanced scholarship or for assistant librarians. For the practical
purposes of making an argument a very moderate number of titles beyond
those you can actually use will give you sufficient background.
Notebook. Enter in your notebook the titles of books, articles, or
speeches which bear on your subject, and which you are likely to be able
to read.
Illustration. Bibliography for an argument on introducing
commission government of the Des Moines type into Wytown.
BOOKS
WOODRUFF, C. R. City Government by Commission. New York, 1911.
Bibliography in appendix.
HAMILTON, J. J. The Dethronement of the City Boss. New York, 1910.
ARTICLES
From Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Vol. II (1905-1909).
(There are thirty entries here under the heading, Municipal Government,
and the subheading, Government by Commission. Of these I omit those
dealing with cities in Texas, as not bearing directly on the Des Moines
plan, and select seven of the most recent.)
"Another City for Commission Government," _World's Work_, Vol. XVIII
(June, 1909), p. 11,639.
"City Government." _Outlook_. Vol. XCII (August 14, 1909), pp.
865-866.
BRADFORD, E. S. "Commission Government in American Cities," National
Conference on City Government (1909), pp. 217-228.
PEARSON, P. M. "Commission System of Municipal Government"
(bibliography), Intercollegiate Debates, pp. 461-477.
ALLEN, S. B. "Des Moines Plan," National Conference on City
Government (1907), pp. 156-165.
"Des Moines Plan of City Government," _World's Work_, Vol. XVIII
(May, 1909), p. 11,533.
GOODYEAR, D. "The Example of Haverhill," _Independent_, Vol. LXVI
(January, 1909), p. 194.
From Reader's Guide (1910). (Seven entries, of which I select the
following.)
GOODYEAR, D. "The Experience of Haverhill," _Independent_, Vol.
LXVIII (February, 1910), p. 415.
"Rapid Growth of Commission Government," _Outlook_, Vol. XCIV (April,
1910), p. 822.
TURNER, G. K. "New American City Government," _McClure's_, Vol. XXXV
(May, 1910), pp. 97-108.
"Organization of Municipal Government," American Government and
Politics; pp. 598-602.
15. Planning for a Definite Audience. Before setting to work on the
actual planning of your argument there are still two preliminary
questions you have to consider--the prepossessions of your audience, and
the burden of proof; of these the latter is dependent on the former.
When you get out into active life and have an argument to make, this
question of the audience will force itself on your attention, for you
will not make the argument unless you want to influence views which are
actually held. In a school or college argument you have the difficulty
that your argument will in most cases have no such practical effect.
Nevertheless, even here you can get better practice by fixing on some
body of readers who might be influenced by an argument on your subject,
and addressing yourself specifically to them. You can hardly consider
the burden of proof or lay out the space which you will give to
different points in your argument unless you take into account the
present knowledge and the prepossessions of your audience on the
subject.
Where the question is large and abstract the audience may be so general
as to seem to have no special characteristics; but if you will think of
the differences of tone and attitude of two different newspapers in
treating some local subject you will see that readers always segregate
themselves into types. Even on a larger scale, one can say that the
people of the United States as a whole are optimistic and self-confident
in temper, and in consequence careless as to many minor deficiencies and
blemishes in our national polity. On a good many questions the South,
which is still chiefly agricultural, has different interests and
prepossessions from the North; and the West, being a new country, is
inclined to have less reverence for the vested rights of property as
against the rights of men, than the Eastern states, where wealth has
long been concentrated and inherited.
As one narrows down to the immediate or local questions which make the
best subjects for practice the part played by the audience becomes more
apparent. The reform of the rules of football is a good example: a few
years ago an audience of elderly people would have taken for granted the
brutality of the game, and its tendency to put a premium on unfair play;
the rules committee, made up of believers in the game, had to be
hammered at for several years before they made the changes which have so
greatly improved it. So in matters of local or municipal interest, such
as the location of a new street car line, or the laying out of a park,
it will make a vast difference to you whether you are writing for people
who have land on the proposed line or park, or for the general body of
citizens.
Differences in thy prepossessions of your audience and in their
knowledge of the subject have, therefore, a direct and practical effect
on the planning of your argument. Suppose you are arguing in favor of
raising the standard of admission to your college; if your argument is
addressed to the faculty you will give little space to explaining what
those requirements now are; but if you are sending out an address to the
alumni you must give some space to telling them clearly and without
technicalities what present conditions are and explaining the changes
that you propose. Theoretically an argument should change in form and
proportions for every audience which you address. The theory may be
pushed too far; but in the practice of real life it will be found nearly
true. With different audiences you will unconsciously make different
selection of material, and you will vary your emphasis, the place of
your refutation, and the distribution of your space.
Notebook. Enter the audience for whom your argument might be
written, and note what you think would be their knowledge of the
subject, and their prepossessions toward it.
Illustration. The citizens of Wytown. They are convinced that
there should be a change in the city government; but they are not yet
familiar with the Des Moines plan.
EXERCISES
1. Bring to class editorials from different newspapers on the same local
subject, and point out differences of attitude which they assume in the
audiences they address.
2. Suggest three different possible audiences for your argument, and
show what differences you would make in your argument in addressing each
of them.
16. The Burden of Proof. The principle which underlies the
responsibility for the burden of proof may be summed up in the adage of
the common law, _He who asserts must prove_.
At the law this principle has been elaborated into a large and abstruse
subject; in ordinary arguments where there is no judge to make subtle
discriminations, you must interpret it in the broadest way. The average
man lacks both the interest and the capacity for making keen
distinctions; and when you are writing for him you would make a mistake
if you were to stickle for fine points concerning the burden of proof.
In general, the principle as it bears on the arguments of everyday life
implies that any argument in favor of a change shall accept the burden
of proof. This application of the principle is illustrated in the
following extract from an editorial article in _The Outlook_ some years
ago, on a proposed change in the law of New York concerning the
safeguards of vivisection.
* * * * *
The real question is not as to the merits of vivisection, but as to the
proper safeguards with which the law should surround it.
At present the law of New York state applies to experiments upon animals
the same principle that it applies to surgical operations upon men,
women, and children. It does not attempt to prescribe the conditions
under which either experiments or operations should be conducted; but it
does prescribe the standards of fitness which every person who may
lawfully engage in surgery and which every person who may lawfully
engage in animal experimentation must meet. It penalizes with fine or
imprisonment or both the unjustifiable injuring, mutilating, or killing
of animals; and it confines to regularly incorporated medical colleges
and universities of the state the authority under which animal
experimentation may be conducted.
The burden of proof rests upon those who would have the state abandon
this principle and substitute for it the principle of prescribing the
conditions of scientific investigation. It rests upon them to prove, in
the first place, that the present law is inadequate. It is not
sufficient for them to produce lawyers who give opinions that the law
is not efficient. There are lawyers of the highest standing in the state
who declare that it is efficient. The only adequate mode of proof would
be by the prosecution of an actual abuse. So far as we have been able to
learn, only one authentic case of alleged unjustifiable experimentation
has been brought forward by the supporters of the bills. This is
certainly not proof that the present law is inadequate.
In the second place, the burden of proof rests upon them to show that
legal restrictions on the methods of science would not vitiate
investigations, and would not, therefore, entail upon human beings
greater suffering than would otherwise be inflicted upon animals ...
It is because _The Outlook_ is convinced by overwhelming evidence that
the practice of vivisection has not increased suffering but has rather
widened immeasurably the merciful ministrations of medicine and surgery
that it regards as dangerous unintelligent interference with
vivisection, and urges the maintenance of the principle underlying the
present New York law.
* * * * *
So with other questions of policy, the burden of proof would be on any
one who proposed a change from a policy long established, such as free
trade in England, and to a less extent protection in this country, the
elective system in many American colleges, the amateur rule in school
and college athletics.
Always, one must remember that the burden of proof depends on the
prepossessions of the audience, and that on the same question it may
change within a moderately small number of years. Ten years ago, on the
question of the popular election of senators the burden was clearly on
the side of those who advocated a change in the Constitution. By this
time (1912) the burden of proof has for a majority of the people of the
United States probably swung to the other side. In the state of Maine,
where prohibition had been embodied in the state constitution for a
generation, the burden of proof was on those who in 1911 argued for its
repeal; whereas in Massachusetts, which has done well for many years
with local option and high license, the burden would still be on those
who should argue for state prohibition. In the discussions of the game
of football a few years ago the burden of proof before an audience of
athletes would have been on those who declared that the game must be
changed; with college faculties and men of like mind the burden of proof
would have been on those who defended the old game. In each case that
comes up, you cannot place the burden of proof until you know whether
the people you are trying to convince have any prepossessions in the
matter: if they have, the burden of proof is on him who attempts to
change those prepossessions; if they have not, the burden is on him who
is proposing to change existing views or existing policies.
In no case, however, with a popular audience is it very safe to depend
much on the burden of proof; almost always it is better to jump in and
actively build up the argument on your own side. In argument, as in
strategy, take the offensive whenever you can.
* * * * *
Notebook. Note whether the burden of proof is with you or against
you, taking into account the probable prepossessions of the audience you
have selected.
* * * * *
Illustration. In the argument for the introduction of the
commission form of government into Wytown the burden of proof is on the
affirmative to show that the Des Moines plan of city government will
cure the evils of the present government of Wytown. With the audience
assumed (see p. 43), there is no burden of proof on the affirmative to
establish the need of a change.
EXERCISES
1. In three subjects which you might choose for an argument show where
the burden of proof would lie.
2. In the case of one of these arguments show how the burden of proof
might change with the argument.
17. The Brief. When you have settled these preliminary questions of
the audience you wish to win over to your view, and of the way their
prepossessions and knowledge of the subject will affect your
responsibilities for the burden of proof, you are ready to begin work on
the brief, as the plan for an argument is called. This brief it is
better to think of as a statement of the logical framework of the
argument, which you are constructing for the purpose of clearing up your
own mind on the subject, and especially to help you to see how you can
most effectively arrange your material. It differs from the usual brief
in a case at law in that the latter is ordinarily a series of compact
statements of legal principles, each supported by a list of cases
already decided which bear on that principle. The brief you will be
making now will consist of an _introduction_, which states whatever
facts and principles are necessary to an understanding of the brief, and
the _brief_ itself, which consists of a series of propositions, each
supporting your main contention, and each in turn supported by others,
which again may each be supported by another series. Such an analysis
will thoroughly display the processes of your reasoning, and enable you
to criticize them step by step for soundness and coerciveness.
I shall first explain the several steps which go to the making of the
introduction to the brief; and then come to the making of the brief
itself.
18. The Proposition. The first step in making the introduction to your
brief is to formulate the question or proposition (the two terms are
interchangeable in practice). Until you have crystallized your view of
the subject into a proposition you have nothing to argue about.
"Commission form of government" is a subject, but it is not arguable,
for it gives you no hold either for affirming or denying. "Commission
government should be adopted in Wytown," or "Commission government has
improved political conditions in Des Moines," are both propositions
which are arguable (though not yet specific enough), for it is possible
to maintain either the affirmative or the negative of either of them.
The proposition must be single. If it be double, you have what the
lawyers call "a squinting argument," that is, an argument which looks in
two directions at the same time. For example, the proposition,
"Commission government would be a good thing for Wytown, but the
initiative and referendum are wrong in principle," involves two separate
and unconnected principles, since commission government as first
embodied at Galveston does not include the initiative and referendum.
Many people, including those of Galveston and other places in Texas,
would accept the first half of the proposition, and disagree with the
second half. On the other hand, "Wytown should adopt a commission
government on the Des Moines plan," would not be a double proposition,
though this plan includes the initiative and referendum; for the
proposition makes the issue that the plan should be adopted or rejected
as a whole.
In some cases a proposition may be grammatically compound, and yet carry
a single assertion. "Municipal government by commission is more
economical and efficient than municipal government with a mayor and two
chambers," is really a single assertion of the superiority of the
commission plan of government. In this case there is no danger of
getting into a split argument; but even here it is safer to reduce the
proposition to one which is grammatically single, "Municipal government
by commission has proved itself superior to municipal government with a
mayor and two chambers." A predicate wholly single is a safeguard
against meaning two assertions.
The proposition must not be so abstract or vague in terms that you do
not know whether you agree or disagree with it. Macaulay summed up this
difficulty in one of his speeches in Parliament:
* * * * *
Surely my honorable friend cannot but know that nothing is easier than
to write a theme for severity, for clemency, for order, for liberty, for
a contemplative life, for an active life, and so on. It was a common
exercise in the ancient schools of rhetoric to make an abstract
question, and to harangue first on one side and then on the other. The
question, Ought popular discontents to be quieted by concession or
coercion, would have been a very good subject for oratory of this kind.
There is no lack of commonplaces on either side. But when we come to the
real business of life, the value of these commonplaces depends entirely
on the particular circumstances of the case which we are discussing.
Nothing is easier than to write a treatise proving that it is lawful to
resist extreme tyranny. Nothing is easier than to write a treatise
setting forth the wickedness of wantonly bringing on a great society the
miseries inseparable from revolution, the bloodshed, the spoliation, the
anarchy. Both treatises may contain much that is true; but neither will
enable us to decide whether a particular insurrection is or is not
justifiable without a close examination of the facts.[4]
In other words, though the word "insurrection" seems to be plain in
meaning, yet when we make it one term of a judgment of which the other
term is "justifiable," we find that we do not know whether we agree or
not. The terms of the proposition are so vague that there can be no
meeting of minds. If we limit the subject to a specific case,
insurrection in Venezuela, or insurrection in Cuba, then we have made a
beginning toward making the proposition arguable. In these particular
cases, however, it would probably be necessary to go further, and
specify which insurrection in Venezuela or in Cuba was intended, before
the average American would be prepared either to affirm or to deny.
Wherever the terms of a proposition are too vague to provoke profitable
discussion they must be narrowed down to a specific case which will draw
forth affirmation and denial.
A common case where the vagueness of the proposition leads to
difficulties in the argument is described in the following passage:
* * * * *
An equally common form of argument, closely allied to the argument by
analogy, and equally vague, is that which is popularly known as the
objection to a thin end of a wedge. We must not do this or that, it is
often said, because if we did we should be logically bound to do
something else which is plainly absurd or wrong. If we once begin to
take a certain course there is no knowing where we shall be able to stop
with any show of consistency; there would be no reason for stopping
anywhere in particular, and we should be led on, step by step, into
action or opinions that we all agree to call undesirable or untrue....
For it must not be forgotten that in all disputes of this kind there are
two parties opposed to each other, and that what divides them is
precisely their lack of agreement on the question what principle is
really involved. Those who see a proposal as a thin end of a wedge
always see the principle as a wider, more inclusive one, than those who
make the proposal; and what gives them freedom so to see it is merely
the fact that it remains indefinite.[5]
As a practical example of this confusion, consider the following extract
from a speech in the United States Senate opposing the popular election
of senators:
* * * * *
Every intelligent student of the present rapid trend toward popular
government must see what would happen when this sentimental bar of the
States being represented by two Senators instead of by the people in the
United States Senate is thrown down. The initiative, the referendum, and
the recall are but symptoms of the times. That the people will have
their way, because they, and they alone, are the government, is the
underlying spirit of our institutions, of our newest State
Constitutions, and of our progressive laws. Skillful agitation seizes
upon every pretext and eagerly grasps and enlarges every opportunity for
appeal to the passions in an advancement of its purposes. The next cry
will necessarily be, "Why not elect the Supreme Court of the United
States by popular vote? Why not elect the Federal Judiciary everywhere
by popular vote?"[6]
* * * * *
Here the proposition, "That the people will have their way, because
they, and they alone, are the government, is the underlying spirit of
our institutions, of our newest state constitutions, and of our
progressive laws," is not only obscure in terms, but it is wholly vague,
for it does not define how far the progressive party propose to carry
popular direct government. Until the two sides agree on that point they
have nothing definite enough for profitable argument.
It is surprising to notice how often in political debates this fallacy
is committed. It is human nature to believe for the time being that the
other side will do the worst thing that the circumstances make possible.
Fortunately, human nature just as constantly refutes the error.
To make clearer this necessity of having a definite proposition to
argue, let us take one of the subjects suggested on page 10 which is not
yet in a form for profitable argument, and amend it. "The standard for
graduation from this college should be raised," is a subject that can be
discussed, but as it stands it would not be a good proposition for an
argument, because it is vague. How much should the standard be raised?
By what method should it be raised? These and other questions you would
have to answer before you would have a proposition definite enough to be
argued with profit. The proposition could be made definite enough by
such amendments as the following: "The standard for graduation from this
college should be raised by requiring one eighth more hours of lecture
or recitation in each of the four years"; or, "The standard for
graduation from this college should be raised by increasing the pass
mark in all courses from fifty per cent to sixty per cent"; or, "The
standard for graduation from this college should be raised by allowing
no student to have his degree who has fallen below sixty per cent in one
fourth of his work, and has not attained eighty per cent in at least one
eighth of his college work." In each of these cases the proposition is
so definite that you could find exactly how many students would be
affected. A proposition which involves a definite body of facts is
arguable; one which involves an indefinite and incalculable body of
facts is not.
To take another example from the brief we shall be working out in this
chapter, the proposition, "Wytown should adopt the commission form of
government," is not definite enough, for there are various forms of
commission government, such as the Galveston plan, the Des Moines plan,
and by this time a considerable variety of others; and citizens who are
at all particular in their voting would want to know just which of these
was proposed for their approval. The proposition, therefore, would have
to be limited to, "Wytown should adopt a commission government after the
Des Moines plan."
The exact form of your proposition will not always come to you at the
first try. It may easily happen that you will not see the exact issue
involved in the argument until you have gone some way with the processes
of analysis which we shall be considering in the rest of this chapter.
Always hold yourself ready to amend your proposition, if you can thereby
come closer to the question.
Notebook. Enter the exact proposition which you are to argue.
Illustration. Wytown should adopt the commission form of
government, in the form now in practice at Des Moines, Iowa.
EXERCISES
1. Make three arguable propositions on the subject, "Entrance
examinations for college."
2. Criticize the following propositions and amend them, if necessary, so
that they might be argued with profit:
a. Freshmen should be required to keep reasonable hours.
b. The honor system should be introduced everywhere.
c. This city should do more for its boys.
d. The street railway companies in this city should be better
regulated.
e. The amateur rules for college athletes are too stringent.
f. Intercollegiate football is beneficial.
19. Definition of Terms. Making a proposition definite is chiefly
a process of defining terms which are found in it; but when these are
defined you may still in your argument use others which also need
definition. In general the definition of terms, whether in the
proposition or not, implies finding out just what a term means for the
present purpose. Almost every common word is used for some variety of
purposes. "Commission," for example, even within the field of
government, has two very different meanings:
As applied to state and national administration, the term "commission
government" is used in connection with the growing practice of
delegating to appointed administrative boards or commissions--the
Interstate Commerce Commission, state railroad commissions, tax
commissions, boards of control, etc.--the administration of certain
special or specified executive functions ...From the standpoint of
organization, then, "commission government," as applied to the state,
connotes decentralization, the delegation and division of authority and
responsibility, and the disintegration of popular control ...As applied
to city administration, however, commission government has a very
different meaning. In striking contrast to its use in connection with
the state, it is used to designate the most concentrated and centralized
type of organization which has yet appeared in the annals of
representative municipal history. Under so-called commission government
for cities, the entire administration of the city's affairs is placed in
the hands of a small board or council--"commission"--elected at large
and responsible directly to the electorate for the government of the
city.[7]
Furthermore, even the term "commission government for cities" is not
wholly definite, for there are already several recognized types of such
government, such as the Galveston type, the Des Moines type, and recent
modifications of these. If you are making an argument for introducing a
commission government, therefore, you must go still further with your
definitions, and specify the distinguishing features of the particular
plan which you are urging on the voters, as is done in the definition on
page 59. In other words, you must make exactly clear the meaning of the
term for the present case.
Your first impulse when you find a term that needs defining may be to go
to a dictionary. A little thought will show you that in most cases you
will get little comfort if you do. The aim of a dictionary is to give
all the meanings which a word has had in reasonable use; what you need
in an argument is to know which one of these meanings it has in the
present case. If you were writing an argument on the effects or the
righteousness of the change wrought in the English constitution by the
recent curtailment of the veto power of the House of Lords, and wished
to use the word "revolution," and to use it where it was important that
your readers should understand precisely what you intended it to convey,
you would not burden them with such a definition as the following, from
an unabridged dictionary: "Revolution: a fundamental change in political
organization, or in a government or constitution; the overthrow or
renunciation of one government and the substitution of another, by the
governed." Such a definition would merely fill up your space, and leave
you no further ahead. A dictionary is studiously general, for it must
cover all possible legitimate meanings of the word; in an argument you
must be studiously specific, to carry your readers with you in the case
under discussion.
Moreover, words are constantly being pressed into new uses, as in the
case of "commission" (see p. 54); and others have entirely legitimate
local meanings. Only a dictionary which was on the scale of the New
English Dictionary and which was reedited every five years could pretend
to keep up with these new uses. In an unabridged dictionary dated 1907,
for example, the full definition of "amateur" is as follows: "A person
attached to a particular pursuit, study or science, as to music or
painting; especially one who cultivates any study or art, from taste or
attachment, without pursuing it professionally." Of what use would such
a definition be to you if you were arguing in favor of strengthening or
relaxing the amateur rules in college athletics, in which you had to
follow through the intricacies of summer baseball and of reimbursements
for training table and traveling expenses? Such a definition hardly
comes in sight of the use of the word which is most in the mouths of
college students in America. Words mean whatever careful and accepted
writers have used them to mean; and the business of a dictionary is so
far as possible to record these meanings. But language, being a living
and constantly developing growth, is constantly altering them and adding
to them.
What a dictionary can do for you, therefore, is merely to tell you
whether in the past the word has been used with the signification which
you wish to give to it; but there are very few cases in which this will
be much help to you, for in an argument your only interest in the
meaning of a term is in the meaning of that term for the case under
discussion.
There are two quite different kinds of difficulty in putting the right
interpretation on a statement, and a dictionary can only remove one of
these, and by far the less important one. When you meet with a statement
containing an unfamiliar word--say, the word "parallax," or
"phanerogamous," or "brigantine"--and when you understand all the rest
of the statement except that word, then as a general rule the dictionary
will help to make the meaning clear. But when the difficulty is caused,
not by a word being unfamiliar, but by its being used in a certain
context, then the best dictionary in the world is, for your purpose, of
no use at all. The nature of every dictionary is necessarily such that
it entirely leaves out of account all doubts about meaning which are of
this second kind. The most that a dictionary can do is to tell us the
meaning of a word in those cases where the context in which it is used
is _not_ such as to make the meaning doubtful.[8]
In practice the words which most often need definition are those which
are, as it were, shorthand symbols for perhaps a very extensive meaning.
Unless the limits of this extended meaning are clearly marked out you
cannot tell whether the minds of your readers are, as the lawyers say,
running on all fours with your own or not. This extended meaning may be
of various sorts: for example, it may be a large general principle, as
in the case of "evolution" or "culture"; or it may be a general system
or practice, as in the case of "commission government," "honor system,"
or "high standards for graduation"; or it may be a general class of
things, persons, or events, as in the case of "secondary school,"
"professional coach," or "murder." When you use any such term in an
argument, it is essential that your readers shall have the same set of
details, ramifications, or instances in mind as you have yourself. For
this purpose you must define the term; or, in other words, you must lay
out or display the ramifications and limitations of the principle, the
details of the system or practice, or the exact kinds of things,
persons, or events, which you have in mind when you use the term. A few
examples will make this practical meaning of defining clear.
Sometimes the definition proceeds by careful and specific limitation of
the general signification of a word, as in the following example from
Bagchot:
I should say that except where it is explained to the contrary, I
use the word "toleration" to mean toleration by law. Toleration by
society of matters not subject to legal penalty is a kindred
subject, on which if I have room I will add a few words; but in the
main I propose to deal with the simpler subject, toleration by law.
And by toleration, too, I mean, when it is not otherwise said,
toleration in the public expression of opinions; toleration of acts
and practices is another allied subject, on which I can, in a paper
like this, but barely hope to indicate what seems to me to be the
truth, and I should add that I deal only with the discussion of
impersonal doctrines: the law of libel, which deals with accusations
of living persons, is a topic requiring consideration by itself.[9]
Sometimes the definition is rather an unfolding and displaying of the
implications (from the Latin, _implicare_, to fold in) of the term.
Huxley, near the beginning of his three "Lectures on Evolution," made
sure by the following definition that his hearers should have a precise
idea of what he meant by the term "evolution":
The third hypothesis, or the hypothesis of evolution, supposes
that, at any comparatively late period of past time, our imaginary
spectator would meet with a state of things very similar to that
which now obtains; but that the likeness of the past to the present
would gradually become less and less, in proportion to the remoteness
of his period of observation from the present day; that
the existing distribution of mountains and plains, of rivers and
seas, would show itself to be the product of a slow process of
natural change operating upon more and more widely different
antecedent conditions of the mineral framework of the earth;
until, at length, in place of that framework, he would behold only
a vast nebulous mass, representing the constituents of the sun and
of the planetary bodies. Preceding the forms of life which now
exist our observer would see animals and plants not identical with
them, but like them; increasing their differences with their antiquity
and, at the same time, becoming simpler and simpler; until,
finally, the world of life would present nothing but that undifferentiated
protoplasmic matter, which, so far as our present knowledge
goes, is the common foundation of all vital activity.
The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in all this vast progression
there would be no breach of continuity, no point at which
we could say, "This is a natural process," and "This is not a
natural process," but that the whole might be compared to that
wonderful process of development which may be seen going on
every day under our eyes, in virtue of which there arises, out of
the semifluid, comparatively homogeneous substance which we
call an egg, the complicated organization of one of the higher
animals. That, in a few words, is what is meant by the hypothesis
of evolution.[10]
Here Huxley has laid out, in compact form the principal ramifications of
the great principle of evolution, giving his hearers something like an
outline map of it with its limits and principal divisions.
Where you have a practice or system to define, you will be more likely
to do it by specifying the chief and essential details of the system, as
in the following definition of commission government for cities. It will
be noticed that this narrows down the meaning of the term to something
like the Des Moines system, as distinguished from the Galveston plan.
A straight commission form of municipal government, in the judgment of
Dr. Charles W. Eliot, one of its most active advocates, requires a
commission composed of five members elected at large, one of whom is
called the mayor, acting as chairman of the commission, but with no
veto power, or any other special power not shared by the other members
of the commission.
The commission so elected is the source of all authority in the city,
makes all ordinances, appoints all officials, collects taxes, and makes
all appropriations. As set forth by its advocates, the significant
features of the plan, in addition to those already mentioned, are:
Assignment of the important divisions of the city government to
individual members of the commission, or their election thereto by the
voters, each being directly responsible for the conduct of his
particular department; adequate compensation to the commissioners for
their time and labor, the city employing all the commissioners at living
salaries, thus elevating the dignity of municipal service and making it
a public career, and not a mere avocation; regularity, frequency, and
publicity of the meetings of the commissioners; all employees above the
class of day laborers selected from eligible lists based on
examinations, oral and written, carefully devised to develop merit and
fitness; recommendations after examination by an independent civil
service commission; provision for the retention in office of all
employees so appointed during good behavior; the power to initiate
legislation reserved to the people, this right being known as the
initiative; the power to call for a public vote on any measure adopted
by the commission before being given effect as law reserved to the
people, this being known as the referendum; the power at any time to
make any member of the commission stand for reelection reserved to the
people, this being known as the recall; the granting of public franchise
always to be submitted to the approval of the electors.
There are two other important features: the introduction of the
principle of the short ballot and the elimination of ward lines. In the
matured judgment of municipal students these are considered, together
with the concentration of authority, as the most effective features of
the system.[11]
Here is a pretty complete display of all the essential details of the
system which the author of this definition intended to mean by the term
"commission government for cities."
Where the term which is to be defined is the name of a general class,
whether of persons, things, or events, the definition must show just
what persons, things, or events are to be included under the term for
the present purpose. Lincoln gave a famous example of this sort of
definition in the opening of his address at Cooper Institute, February
27, 1860. He took for the text of the first part of his speech a
statement of Senator Douglas.
In his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New York
_Times_, Senator Douglas said, "Our fathers, when they framed the
government under which we live, understood this question just as well,
and even better, than we do now."
I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so
adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for
a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed
by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: What was the
understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?
What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be,
"The Constitution of the United States." That Constitution consists of
the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government
first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed amendments,
the first ten of which were framed in 1789.
Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the
"thirty-nine" who signed the original instrument may be fairly called
our fathers who framed that part of the present government. It is almost
exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say
they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at
that time. Their names being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to
quite all, need not now be repeated. I take these "thirty-nine," for
the present, as being "our fathers who framed the government under which
we live." What is the question which, according to the text, those
fathers understood "just as well, and even better, than we do now"?
It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal authority, or
anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control
as to slavery in our Federal Territories?
Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the
negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this
issue--this question--is precisely what the text declares our fathers
understood "better than we."
Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or any of them, ever acted
upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it--how they
expressed that better understanding.
Here as will be seen, Lincoln took every important word and phrase, and
showed exactly what persons and things were included under them. Then he
went ahead with his argument with the assurance that his audience and he
were treading the same path.
Somewhat similar are the definitions in many cases at law, where the
issue is whether the agreed facts in a case come under a certain term or
not. The Constitution of the United States provides that "direct taxes"
shall be apportioned among the states in proportion to their population,
but makes no such restriction on the levying of "duties," "imposts," and
"taxes." When Congress establishes a new form of tax, therefore, such as
the income tax or the corporation tax, the Supreme Court is pretty sure
to be called on to decide under which of these large constitutional
classes it falls. In such cases as the Income Tax cases, which decided
that the income tax laid in the Act of 1904 was unconstitutional, and in
the Corporation Tax cases, which upheld the Act of 1909, both the
arguments of counsel and the decision of the court deal wholly with the
definition of the term "direct tax." Here the definition takes the form
of an examination of previous cases which involved the term, to see
whether the present case is like those that have been held to be within
it, or like those which have been held to fall outside it. From this
comparison of the two sets of cases the essential characteristics of the
direct tax are brought to the surface.
A good example of the careful distinctions which must be made in
defining a legal term is found in Daniel Webster's famous argument in
the White Murder Case, of which an extract will be found below. The
question here is just how far the term "murder" shall be extended.
There are two sorts of murder; the distinction between them it is of
essential importance to bear in mind: (1) murder in an affray, or upon
sudden and unexpected provocation; (2) murder secretly, with a
deliberate, predetermined intention to commit the crime. Under the first
class, the question usually is, whether the offense he murder or
manslaughter, in the person who commits the deed. Under the second
class, it is often a question whether others than he who actually did
the deed were present, aiding and assisting therein. Offenses of this
kind ordinarily happen when there is nobody present except those who go
on the same design. If a riot should happen in the court-house, and one
should kill another, this may be murder, or it may not, according to the
intention with which it was done; which is always matter of fact, to be
collected from the circumstances at the time. But in secret murders,
premeditated and determined on, there can be no doubt of the murderous
intention; there can be no doubt if a person be present, knowing a
murder is to be done, of his concurring in the act. His being there is a
proof of his intent to aid and abet; else, why is he there?
It has been contended, that proof must be given that the person accused
did actually afford aid, did lend a hand in the murder itself; and
without this proof, although he may be near by, he may be presumed to be
there for an innocent purpose; he may have crept silently there to hear
the news, or from mere curiosity to see what was going on. Preposterous,
absurd! Such an idea shocks all common sense. A man is found to be a
conspirator to commit a murder; he has planned it; he has assisted in
arranging the time, the place, and the means; and he is found in the
place, and at the time, and yet it is suggested that he might have been
there, not for cooperation and concurrence, but from curiosity! Such an
argument deserves no answer. It would be difficult to give it one, in
decorous terms. Is it not to be taken for granted, that a man seeks to
accomplish his own purposes? When he has planned a murder, and is
present at its execution, is he there to forward or to thwart his own
design? Is he there to assist, or there to prevent? But "curiosity"! He
may be there from mere "curiosity"! Curiosity to witness the success of
the execution of his own plan of murder! The very walls of a court-house
ought not to stand, the plowshare should run through the ground it
stands on, where such an argument could find toleration.
It is not necessary that the abettor should actually lend a hand, that
he should take a part in the act itself; if he be present ready to
assist, that is assisting.... The law is, that being ready to assist is
assisting, if the party has the power to assist, in case of need. It is
so stated by Foster, who is a high authority. "If A happeneth to be
present at a murder, for instance, and taketh no part in it, nor
endeavoreth to prevent it, nor apprehendeth the murderer, nor levyeth
hue and cry after him, this strange behavior of his, though highly
criminal, will not of itself render him either principal or accessory."
"But if a fact amounting to murder should be committed in prosecution of
some unlawful purpose, though it were but a bare trespass, to which A in
the case last stated had consented, and he had gone in order to give
assistance, if need were, for carrying it into execution, this would
have amounted to murder in him, and in every person present and joining
with him." "If the fact was committed in prosecution of the original
purpose which was unlawful, the whole party will be involved in the
guilt of him who gave the blow. For in combinations of this kind, the
mortal stroke, though given by one of the party, is considered in the
eye of the law, and of sound reason too, as given by every individual
present and abetting. The person actually giving the stroke is no more
than the hand or instrument by which the others strike." The author, in
speaking of being present, means actual presence; not actual in
opposition to constructive, for the law knows no such distinction. There
is but one presence, and this is the situation from which aid, or
supposed aid, may be rendered. The law does not say where the person is
to go, or how near he is to go, but that he must be where he may give
assistance, or where the perpetrator may believe that he may be assisted
by him. Suppose that he is acquainted with the design of the murderer,
and has a knowledge of the time when it is to be carried into effect,
and goes out with a view to render assistance, if need be; why, then,
even though the murderer does not know of this, the person so going out
will be an abettor in the murder.
20. Definition through the History of the Case. In some cases the
easiest way to put before your readers the precise details or
limitations implied in a term is through a brief review of the history
of the question. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates Lincoln was constantly
showing that Douglas's use of the term "popular sovereignty" must be
understood in the light of the whole history of the slavery question;
that it meant one thing--what Douglas intended it to mean--if the
history of the question before 1850 were left out of sight; but that it
meant a wholly different thing if the steady encroachment of the slave
power from the Missouri Compromise of 1820 on were taken into account.
And Lincoln showed that in reality "popular sovereignty" had come to
mean a power oh the part of the people of a territory to introduce
slavery, but not to exclude it.[12] In our own day "progressive" has a
different meaning when applied to a Republican from Kansas and to one
from Massachusetts or New York.
To know just what is involved by applying the term to any given public
man, one must go back to the recent history of his party in his own
state, and to the speeches he has made. In political discussions popular
phrases are constantly thus blurred in meaning through being used as
party catchwords; and to use them with any certainty in an argument one
must thus go back to their origin, and then dissect out, as it were, the
ambiguous implications which have grown into them.
If you were arguing any question concerning the elective system or the
entrance requirements for your own college, you would often do well to
sketch the history of the present system as a means of defining it,
before you go on to urge that it be changed or kept as it is. So if you
were arguing for a further change in the football rules, your best
definition of the present game for your purpose would be a sketch of the
way in which the game has been changed in the past few years, at the
urgent demand of public opinion. Such a sketch you could easily get by
running through the back numbers of such a magazine as _Outing_, or the
sporting columns of some of the larger weeklies. Or again, if you were
arguing that the street railway systems of your city should be allowed
to combine, your best description or definition of the present situation
might well be a sketch of the successive steps by which it came to be
what it is. Here you would go for your material to the files of local
newspapers, or, if you could get at them, to sets of the reports of the
railway companies.
The definition of terms through the history of the question has the
advantage that, besides helping your readers to see why the terms you
use have the meaning you give them for the present case, it also makes
them better judges of the question by giving them a full background.
Ambiguous definitions, which do not distinguish between two or more
meanings of a term for the case under discussion, are usually avoided by
going back to the history of the case. In Chapter III we shall consider
more fully the fallacies which spring from ambiguous use of words. Here
I shall insist briefly on the necessity of searching into the way terms
have come to be used in specific discussions.
The first of these is the danger which arises when a word in general use
takes on a special, almost technical meaning in connection with a
particular subject. Here you must take some pains to see that your
readers understand it in the special sense, and not in the popular one.
A crass instance, in which there is little real possibility of
confusion, is the use of words like "democratic" or "republican" as the
names of political parties; even with these words stump speakers
sometimes try to play on the feelings of an uneducated audience by
importing the association of the original use of the word into its later
use. There are a good many words used in the scientific study of
government which are also used loosely in general talk. "Federal" has a
precise meaning when used to distinguish the form of government of the
United States from that which usually binds together the counties in a
state; but we constantly use it in a sense hardly distinguishable from
that of "National." The following extract from an editorial on the
Philippine question is a good illustration of this precise and
semitechnical use of words, and the loose, not very accurate use of
everyday speech:
On the other hand, it is said that this policy of the United States
toward its dependencies is insincere; that it is a covert plan of
exploitation; that, as it is practiced, it is a denial in act of a mere
promise to the ear; and that if it were genuine the United States would
bestow self-government upon its dependencies by granting independence.
This criticism is obviously based on a confusion of independence with
self-government. Russia, is independent, but in only a very slight
degree are its people self-governing. Turkey has long been independent,
but until the recent revolution the people of Turkey were self-governing
in no sense at all. On the other hand, Canada, though not independent,
is self-governing.[13]
Many an argument goes to wreck through carelessness in the use of words
of this sort. Wherever the subject under discussion has grown into the
partial possession of a special field, but still uses words drawn from
everyday life, you must be careful that not only you, but your audience
also, understand your terms in the more precise way.
Closely related to this kind of ambiguity, and in practice still more
insidious, is the ambiguity which arises from the connotation or
emotional implications of words. The use of "republican" and "democrat"
cited above runs over into this kind of confusion. In collegiate
athletics "professional" has come to have almost an implication of
moral inferiority, when it is often dependent on pretty technical
considerations of expediency. In politics, to one class of temperaments
"conservative," to another "radical," or at any rate "liberal" or
"progressive," carries the implication of the salvation or the ruin of
the country. All such words introduce a sure element of obscurity and
confusion into an argument. If a word stirs your feelings in one way and
those of some of your readers in another, you cannot use that word
safely; in spite of the most careful definitions and disclaimers the
emotional bias will creep in and twist the effect of your words in the
minds of some of your audience. This emotional ambiguity is the most
insidious of all ambiguities in the use of words. The danger from it is
so real that I shall return to it at greater length (see p. 158).
In a good many cases the necessity of defining the terms to be used,
whether in the proposition itself, or in the argument, changes with the
audience. If you begin a movement to introduce a commission form of
government into the town or the city in which you live, at first you
will have to repeat the definition of commission government a good many
times, in order that most of the voters may know exactly what you want
them to do. If the town once wakes up, however, and gets interested, you
and every one else will be using such technicalities as "Galveston
plan," "Des Moines plan," "recall," "initiative," and the like with no
danger of leaving darkness where there should be light.
So even more obviously with school and college questions: if you are
sending memorials urging the introduction of the honor system or of
student self-government, one to the trustees of your college, and
another to the faculty, and at the same time addressing an appeal to
your fellow students through a college paper, in each of the three cases
your definitions might differ. You could probably assume that both
students and faculty would be more or less familiar with the question,
so that your definitions would be of the nature of precise
specifications of the plan you were urging. With the trustees your
definitions would probably have to be longer and your explanations more
detailed, for such a body would start with only a vague knowledge of the
situation.
As in all other steps in making an argument, so in defining, there is
no formula for all cases. In each case your knowledge of your audience
must guide you, and your own sagacity. Unnecessary definitions will make
them think you a prig; insufficient definition will let them stray away
from your meaning.
Notebook. Enter any terms which need definition for the
audience you are addressing.
Illustration. Commission form of government after the Des Mouses
plan. The essential features of this plan are as follows: The entire
affairs of the city are conducted by a mayor and four councilors,
elected at large for two years; they are nominated at a primary
election; at neither primary nor final election are party designations
allowed on the ballot; these officers are subject to the recall; the
mayor is chairman of the council, but has no power of veto; the
executive and administrative powers are divided into five departments,
each under the charge of a member of the council--(1) public affairs
(under the charge of the mayor), (2) accounts and finances, (3)public
safety,(4) streets and public improvements, (5) parks and public
property; all other offices are filled and their duties prescribed by
majority vote of the council; recall; grants of franchises must be
approved by popular vote; initiative and referendum; a summary of city
affairs must be published and distributed once a month.
Recall, On petition of twenty-five per cent of the voters at the last
election the mayor or any of the councilmen must stand for reelection at
a special election.
Referendum. On petition of twenty-five per cent of the voters any
ordinance must be submitted to popular vote at a special election; no
ordinance goes into effect until ten days after being passed by the
council.
Initiative. On petition of twenty-five per cent of the voters a
proposed measure must either be passed by the council or else submitted
to popular vote.
FINDING THE ISSUES
EXERCISES
1. Write definitions of the system for choice of studies by
undergraduates which is in force at your college; of the terms for
admission to college; of the requirements for the degree.
2. Write a compact description or definition of the form of city
government in your own city or town, like that of the Des Moines plan of
commission government on page 70.
3. Write a definition of the requirements for entrance in English,
according to those set forth by the Conference on Uniform Entrance
Requirements in English.
4. Write a definition of the present system of college societies in your
own college, using the history of their development, for your fellow
students; for an article in a popular magazine.
5. Write a definition of "summer baseball" for an audience of
undergraduates; for the trustees of your college.
6. Write a definition of "professional coach."
7. Write a definition of "squatter sovereignty," as used by Lincoln.
8. Write a definition of "the mutation theory."
9. Write a definition of "the English system of government."
10. Write a definition of "the romantic spirit in literature."
21. Finding the Issues. Your preparation for your argument should now
have given you a clear idea of the interests and prepossessions of your
readers, it should have left you with a definite proposition to support
or oppose, and it should have made you sure of the meaning of all the
terms you are to use, whether in the proposition or in your argument.
The next step in working out the introduction to your brief is to note
down the chief points that can be urged on the two sides of the
question, as direct preparation for the final step, which will be to
find the main issues. These main issues are the points on which the
decision of the whole question will turn. They will vary in number with
the case, and to some extent with the space which you have for your
argument. In a question of fact, which turns on circumstantial evidence,
there may be a number of them. In the White Murder Case, in which as we
have already seen, Webster was the chief counsel for the prosecution, he
summed up the main issues in the following passage. The essential facts
needed to understand the case are that the defendant was Franklin Knapp,
that his sister-in-law, Mrs. Joseph Knapp, was the niece of Captain
White, that by removing and destroying the will of Captain White the
defendant and his brother Joseph supposed that they had made sure that
she would inherit from him a large sum of money, that Richard
Crowninshield, the actual perpetrator of the murder, had killed himself
in prison. To convince the jury of the guilt of the prisoner, Webster
had to carry them with him on the following seven main issues:
Gentlemen, I have gone through with the evidence in this case, and
have endeavored to state it plainly and fairly before you. I think
there are conclusions to be drawn from it, the accuracy of which you
cannot doubt.
I think you cannot doubt that there was a conspiracy formed fur the
purpose of committing this murder, and who the conspirators were:
That you cannot doubt that the Crowninshields and the Knapps were
the parties in this conspiracy:
That you cannot doubt that the prisoner at the bar knew that the
murder was to be done on the night of the 6th of April:
That you cannot doubt that the murderers of Captain White were the
suspicious persons seen in and about Brown Street on that night:
That you cannot doubt that Richard Crowninshield was the perpetrator
of that crime:
That you cannot doubt that the prisoner at the bar was in Brown
Street on that night.
If there, then it must be by agreement, to countenance, to aid the
perpetrator. And if so, then he is guilty as "Principal."
Similarly, in most arguments of policy there are a number of
considerations that converge in favor of or against the proposed policy.
If you were writing an argument in favor of keeping the study of Latin
in the commercial course of a high school, you would probably urge that
Latin is essential for an effective knowledge of English, that it is the
foundation of Spanish and French, languages which will be of constantly
increasing importance to American business men in the future, and that
young men and women who go into business have an even stronger right to
studies which will enlarge their horizons and open their minds to purely
cultivating influences than those who go on to college. Indeed, in very
few questions of policy which are doubtful enough to need argument is
there any single consideration on which the whole case will turn. Human
affairs are much complicated by cross interests, and many influences
modify even one's everyday decisions.
To find the main issues--which are really the critical ones on which
your audience will make up their minds--is a matter largely of native
sagacity and penetration; but thorough knowledge of your whole subject
is essential if you are to strike unerringly to the heart of the subject
and pick out these pivotal points.
A simple and very practical device for getting at the main issues is to
put down on paper the chief points which might be made on the two sides.
Then with these before you, you can soon, by stating them and
rearranging them, simmer down your case into arguable form.
In the argument on introducing a commission form of government into
Wytown this noting down of the chief points which might be urged on the
two sides would be about as follows:
Contentions on the Two Sides. On the affirmative the following points
might be urged:
1. The plan would make the individuals who hold the power directly
responsible at all times to the citizens.
2. It would make the responsibility for all municipal action easy to
trace.
3. It would get abler men to serve the city.
4. It would take municipal government out of politics.
5. It would hold municipal administration up to the same standards
of honesty and efficiency as private business.
6. It would make it difficult to elect representatives of corrupt
interests.
7. It would make possible advantageous dealings with public-service
corporations.
8. It would make possible the immediate removal of an unfaithful
official.
9. It would tend to interest the citizens intelligently in municipal
affairs.
10. It has worked well wherever it has been tried.
On the negative side the following points might be urged:
1. The plan is a complete departure from the traditional American
theory of government.
2. It throws away a chance for training in public affairs for a
considerable body of young men.
3. It might put very great power in the hands of unworthy men.
4. Corrupt interests, having a larger stake, would work harder to
control the city.
5. Past experience gives no reason to expect the constant interest
on the part of citizens which is necessary to make so great
concentration of power safe.
6. With further increase in the foreign population of the city there
will be danger from race and religious clannishness.
7. A return to the old-fashioned town government, or some such
modification of it as has been tried at Newport, would enlist the
active interest of more citizens.
8. The system is still an experiment.
9. The present success of the plan in various places is largely to
be ascribed to its novelty.
10. The present system has in the past given good government.
11. The liability to recall will keep public officials from
initiating advantageous policies if they would be detrimental to
part of the city, or if they were unpopular because of novelty.
In most cases, as here, you will get too many points to argue out in the
space which is at your disposal. Fifteen hundred or two thousand words
are very soon eaten up when you begin to state evidence in any detail,
and arguments written in school or college can rarely be longer. You
must look forward, therefore, to not more than four or five main issues.
In going over and comparing the points which you have jotted down in
this preliminary statement you must consequently be prepared to throw
out all that are not obviously important. Even when you have done this
you will usually have more than enough points left to fill your space,
and must make some close decisions before you get at those which you
finally decide to argue out.
You must also be prepared to rephrase and remold some of the points in
order to get at the most important aspects of the case. This noting down
of the points which might be urged you should therefore regard entirely
as a preliminary step, and not as fixing the points in the form in which
you will argue them out.
In the main issues for the argument on introducing commission government
into Wytown, as they are worked out below, it will be seen that main
issue 4 for the affirmative is derived in part from the points marked
1, 2, 6, and 8 of those for the affirmative, and those marked 3, 4, and
5 for the negative.
Furthermore, it is obvious that the main issues you choose will vary
somewhat with the side of the question which you are arguing. You will
almost surely have to leave out some of the points which might be urged,
and there is no sense in letting the other side choose your ground for
you. Points which from one side may be of no great consequence, or not
very practicable to argue, may on the other be highly effective; and in
arguing you should always take what advantage can fairly be gained from
position.
The phrasing of the main issues, too, will vary with the side on which
you are arguing them. Here, again, you must take every fair advantage
that is to be gained from position. In the main issues of the question I
have been using for an example, as they are stated below, it will be
seen that main issue 1 on the affirmative and main issue 3 on the
negative cover very nearly the same ground; but if you were arguing on
the affirmative you would direct attention to the shortcomings inherent
in the system of government, if on the negative, to the temporary and
removable causes of them. Whichever side you were arguing on there is no
reason that you should lose the advantage of so phrasing the issue that
you can go directly to your work of establishing your contention.
In the argument on introducing commission government into Wytown the
main issues might be as follows:
The main issues as chosen by the affirmative:
1. Is the admitted inefficiency of the city government at present
due to the system of government?
2. Will the adoption of the plan result in more economical
administration?
3. Will the adoption of the plan result in more efficient service
to the city?
4. Will the direct responsibility of the mayor and councilors to the
citizens be a sufficient safeguard for the increased power given to
them?
The main issues as chosen by the negative:
1. Is there danger in putting such large powers into the hands of so
few men?
2. Will the new plan, if adopted, permanently raise the standard of
public servants?
3. Is the inefficiency of the city government at present due to
temporary and removable causes?
4. Has the plan succeeded in other places largely because of its
novelty?
5. Will the liability to recall keep officials from initiating new
policies for fear of unpopularity?
In some cases it will be hard to reduce the number of issues to a
manageable number; in others, for special reasons, it may be possible to
treat a part of them only at length. In such cases one can always adopt
the device of an imaginary "next chapter" or "to be continued in our
next." In considering how many issues you can deal with satisfactorily,
however, you must not leave out of account contentions on the other side
that must be refuted; and in choosing among the possible main issues you
must always exercise judgment. Many points which might be argued are not
worth the space it would take to deal with them; but not infrequently
you will have to let points that have some weight give place to others
that have more.
It is not to be expected that the points made by the two sides will
always exactly pair off, for the considerations which make for a course
of action may be different in kind from those which make against it.
Sometimes one side will contribute more to the final number of main
issues, sometimes the other. Ordinarily your own side will give you the
larger number of points that you think worth arguing out, for an
affirmative and constructive argument usually makes more impression than
a negative one.
Notebook. Enter the chief points which might be made on the two sides
of your question. Then, after studying them and comparing them, enter
the main issues which you decide to argue out.
(The contentions on the two sides and the main issues for the model
argument will be found on pages 74-77.)
EXERCISE
Take one of the questions on pages 10-12, with which you have some
acquaintance, and obtain the main issues by noting down first the points
which might be urged on the two sides.
NOTE. This exercise is a good one for class work. Let the class suggest
the points, and write them, as they come, on the blackboard. Then call
for criticism and discussion of them, in order to come to the main
issues.
22. The Agreed Statement of Facts. Now that you have compared the points
on which the two sides disagree, you can pick out the points on which
they agree, and decide which of the latter will enter into the
discussion. You are therefore in a position to draw up the agreed
statement of facts, in which you will sum up compactly so much of the
history of the case, of the origin of the present question, and other
relevant facts and necessary definitions, as will be needed to
understand the brief. The style of this statement should be strictly
expository, and there should be nothing in it to which both sides could
not agree. It should be similar to the statements of facts in courts of
law, which are sent up with the briefs when a case is appealed on a
point of legal principle.
Since this agreed statement of facts is not argument, it will make small
use of such conjunctions as "because," "for," "hence," and "therefore."
If you find any of them in your agreed statement, it is better to
rearrange it, so that you will not seem to be giving reasons before you
have begun your argument.
In the making of this preliminary statement and to a certain extent in
the framing of the main issues, it is convenient and advisable,
wherever both sides of the question are to be presented in arguments,
whether in writing or in debate, for the two parties to work together.
In this working together they should aim to agree on as many points as
possible. If they meet in a carping and unyielding temper, the result
will be in the end that the patience of the audience will be tried and
its attention dispersed by lengthy arguments on preliminary details. In
making an argument one should never forget, even in school and college
work, that the aim of all argument is to produce agreement. Few people
have much interest in a contest in smartness; and it is a bad habit to
care too much about the mere beating of an opponent on a question where
there are real and serious issues. Any question which is worth arguing
at all will have far more ground to cover, even when everything possible
has been granted by both sides, than the average student can cover with
any thoroughness.
Notebook. Enter those of the essential facts and definitions in
the case which would be agreed to by both sides, and which are needed
for an understanding of the brief.
Illustration. Agreed Statement of Facts. For many years the tax
rate in Wytown has been high, and in the last ten years has not fallen
below twenty-four dollars on one thousand dollars. The city water supply
is of doubtful purity, and nothing has been done to improve it, chiefly
because the city debt is now close to the limit allowed by law. The
police service has been inadequate, especially in the region known as
South Corner. Though two hundred thousand dollars have been spent on the
streets in the last five years, the main street of the city is still
unpaved, and none of the other streets are macadamized. Though under the
local option law the city has uniformly voted for no license, yet there
is much liquor selling. The city officials have regularly been nominated
at Democratic and republican conventions.
The question has arisen at the present time because of quarrels between
the mayor and aldermen, because of the petition of the city government
to the legislature to issue bonds for new waterworks above the
authorized debt limit, because the tax rate last year was higher than
ever before in the history of the city, and because of the formation of
a citizens' association which has been instrumental in securing from the
legislature a bill authorizing the citizens to vote on the adoption of
the proposed plan.
Points which are not discussed here will be taken up in succeeding
papers.
The definitions on page 70 are to be taken as part of this agreed
statement.
EXERCISES
1. Criticize the following sentences for their fitness as parts of
introductions to briefs:
a. It is agreed that the commission form of government has succeeded
in Des Moines because it is simple and easily controlled by the
people.
b. Summer baseball is to be understood as playing baseball for
money, for a man who is given his board and lodging by a hotel for
playing is taking the equivalent of money.
c. (As one of the contentions for the affirmative on the question
whether a street railroad should be compelled to build a certain new
line, which would not be immediately profitable.) The convenience of
the public should be considered before large dividends, since the
public grants the franchise.
2. Make an agreed statement of facts for an argument on one of the
subjects in the list on pages 10-12.
NOTE. This is a good exercise for class use: let the different members
of the class propose facts to be agreed on, and then put them before the
rest of the class for criticism.
23. Arrangement of Material. For the arrangement of the material in
a brief, it is not possible to give much general advice, since this
arrangement would change with the space allotted to the argument, and
especially with the audience. On this point knowledge of your readers,
of their acquaintance with the subject, and of their prepossessions will
count as much as knowledge of the subject when you come to the arguments
of practical life.
In general, if your audience is likely to be lukewarm or indifferent,
begin with a point which will stir them up. In the argument on the
introduction of commission government into Wytown, for which I have
constructed a brief, I assumed that the citizens were already aroused to
the need of some change, and therefore began by showing that the evils
of the present administration can be traced chiefly to the present
system of government. If I had assumed that the people needed first to
be aroused to believing a change to be necessary, I should have put at
the beginning an exposure of the corruption and inefficiency of the
present city government, with specific cases to establish the point.
Likewise for the close of your argument be sure that you have a strong
and effective point. In the case of commission government for Wytown, by
refuting the objection that too much power is given to the councilmen I
provide a chance to show at the same time how completely the commission
government keeps the control in the hands of the people; and the latter
point is the strongest that can be made for the commission form of
government.
24. The Place of the Refutation. The place of the refutation and
its extent also differ greatly with the audience. Sometimes it may
occupy practically the whole space. A few years ago _The Outlook_
published an editorial opposing a change in the laws of New York
relating to vivisection (for a part of it, see p. 44), in which it
refuted the two arguments urged for the change, and then pointed out
that the burden of proof still rested on the other side. Here the
refutation occupied almost the whole of the argument. Huxley, in his
three "Lectures on Evolution," of which the first is printed on page
233, gave the whole of this first lecture to a refutation of the
alternative theories of the origin of plants and animals; since it was
necessary to dispose of accepted theories before the new theory could
get a hearing, he put his refutation first.
Where there are no such special reasons, it is safe to follow the
principle that you should not draw more attention than necessary to the
arguments on the other side. Refutation of less important statements and
contentions will naturally come at the point of the argument which deals
with that part of the subject. State them fairly always, but do not
magnify their importance by dealing with them at too great length.
It is not often wise to lump the refutation at the end of your argument.
The last impression on your audience is the strongest: it is good
strategy to keep it for your own best points. Sometimes, as in the brief
worked out on page 90, it is possible to combine the refutation with
positive argument which will be effective; but do not forget that
negative argument makes much less impression than that which is positive
and constructive.
25. The Brief Proper. We have seen on page 47 that the brief is in
essence a statement of the logical framework of your argument. Its
purpose is to lay out your reasoning in such a way that you can
scrutinize each link and make sure that each assertion and each group of
assertions is attached to a firm support. For this reason the brief for
a written or spoken argument is best thrown into the form of tabulated
statements marked with a series of numbers and letters which will show
at a glance the exact place of each statement or assertion in the whole
system of reasoning. When you can thus, as it were, strip your argument
to its bones and tendons, you can go ahead with the confidence that your
reasoning is logically coherent.
When you get out into the world you will work out your own way of making
briefs for any arguments that fate imposes on you. The value of practice
now is in being able to get at the work then without wasting time. The
rules below are offered to you as the result of long experiment and
study lay the best authorities. Moreover, if you are working in a class
you should remember that you will get a great deal more out of your
teacher if you save his time by sticking closely to uniformity in
outward form.
I shall first show how a brief is constructed, by following through part
of the process for the argument on the introduction of commission into
Wytown; then I shall give the rules, with some explanation of their
working and of their practical expediency.
We have just seen that the brief is essentially a display of the logical
framework of the argument: it should consist, therefore, of the main
contentions in support of the proposition, with the reasons urged in
support of these contentions, and of the facts and reasons brought
forward in support of these reasons, this successive support of reasons
being carried down to ultimate facts, wherever possible.
When you come to the working out of your brief you start with your main
issues, stated now as assertions. Then for each of them you give one or
more reasons.
In the brief for introducing commission government into Wytown, let us
start with the main issues for the affirmative, transforming them from
questions into assertions. The first main issue would then read:
The admitted inefficiency of the city government at present is
due to the system of government.
The next step is to assign reasons for making this assertion.
Accordingly we should add a "since" or a "for" to the assertion, and
then underneath arrange these reasons in order. Let us suppose that we
put down three reasons:
I. The admitted inefficiency of the city government at present
is due to the system of government; for
A. Partisan politics determine nominations to office;
B. Advantageous contracts cannot be made;
C. The responsibility for expenditures is scattered.
Each of these assertions clearly needs to be supported before it will be
accepted. Let us follow out the support of the first one, and set down
here the reasons and facts which will make it incontestable.
A. Partisan politics determine nominations to office; for
1. The organization of the national parties is permanent.
2. There has been bargaining between parties to reward
political services with city offices.
Of these points the first is an obvious fact; in the argument it will
need only slight development and specification to make its bearing on
the case effective. The second, on the other hand, must be supported by
evidence; and in the brief, accordingly, we should refer to the facts
as stated in newspapers of specified dates from which full quotation
would be made in the argument. Here then, in both cases, though in
different ways, we get down to the bed rock of fact on which the
reasoning is built up. At the same time, each joint in the framework of
the reasoning has been laid bare, so that no weak place can escape
detection. These are always the two main objects of making a brief--to
get down to the facts on which the reasoning is built up, and to display
every essential step in the reasoning.
26. Rules for Briefing. The rules given below are divided into two
groups: those in the first group deal chiefly with the form of the
brief; those in the second go more to the substance; but the distinction
between the two groups is far from being absolute.
I
1. A brief may be divided into three parts: the Introduction, the
Proof, the Conclusion. Of these the Introduction should contain
noncontentious matter, and the Conclusion should be a restatement of the
proposition, with a bare summary of the main issues in affirmative (or
negative) form.
The introduction has already been dealt with at length (see pp. 48-81).
The conclusion brings the main points of the argument together, and
gives an effect of workmanlike completeness to the brief. It should
never introduce new points.
2. In the Introduction keep each step of the analysis by itself, and
indicate the several parts by such headings as "The following terms need
definition," "The following facts are agreed on," "The following points
will be left out of consideration in this argument" "The chief
contentions on the two sides are as follows," "The main issues on which
the argument will be made are as follows."
It is not to be expected that all these steps, with the appropriate
headings, will be necessary in every brief. The only use of a brief is
to aid you to construct a specific argument, and you must consider each
case by itself.
3. Follow a uniform system of numbering throughout, so that each number
or letter used will show whether the statement is one of the main
supports of your case, or in what degree it is subordinated.
In other words, the numbering should show at a glance whether a given
assertion is a main reason, a reason for a reason, or in still more
subordinate degree of support. The system of numbering in the brief on
page 90 is convenient. Whatever system is adopted, it should be followed
by the whole class.
4. The refutation should have a distinct set of symbols.
These symbols may well be uniform with the others, but with the prime
mark to distinguish them (see p. 93).
5. In briefing the refutation always state first the assertion that is
to be refuted, with such connectives as, "Although it is urged ..., yet
the contention is unsound, for ...," "Although the case is cited, ...
yet the case is irrelevant, for ..."
These connectives will vary with the nature of the assertion to be
refuted; the important thing is to state the assertion so clearly that
your critic can judge the relevancy and force of your refutation. (For
examples, see pp. 91-93.)
II
6. A brief in all its parts should be phrased in complete sentences;
mere topics are of no value.
In the brief on page 90, if the headings under I were "A. Party
politics, B. Waste in contracts, C. No responsibility for
expenditures," neither the maker of the brief nor the critic of it could
know with any certainty the course of the reasoning. It is undoubtedly
true that many lawyers and other men of affairs use only topic heads
when they are planning an argument; but it is to be remembered that they
are men who have been training their powers of thought in hard earnest,
and their ability to work out and stick to a train of reasoning with so
little written aid has not much bearing on what is the best practice for
young men who are in the process of gaining this ability. To make a full
outline of the reasoning in a few arguments is the best way to get the
sense for logical and coherent structure.
7. Each heading should contain a single assertion only.
The reason for this rule is obvious: if under each assertion you are
going to set the reasons for that assertion, you will get into trouble
if your assertion is double-headed, since what is a reason for one part
of it may not be a reason for another. If in the brief on page 90
heading I B should read, "Advantageous contracts cannot be made, and
the responsibility for expenditures is scattered," subheading I C 2,
"Accounts are submitted to separate committees of the two boards in
which no members have special responsibility," would have nothing to do
with the making of contracts, and subheading I B 1, "Contracts must be
passed on by both aldermen and common councilmen and the mayor," would
have nothing to do with expenditures.
8. In the body of the brief the assertions should be arranged as
follows: Each main heading should embody one of the main issues as
stated in the Introduction; and each of the subordinate assertions
should stand as a reason for the assertion to which it is subordinate.
The connective between an assertion and one subordinate to it will
therefore be for, since, or because, or the like, not hence or
therefore, or the like.
A brief thus arranged lays out the reasoning in a complete and easily
scrutinized form. Thus in the brief on page 90 for the assertion in the
first main issue, "The admitted inefficiency, of the city government at
present is due to the system of government," three chief reasons are
given: A. "Partisan politics determine nominations to office," B.
"Advantageous contracts cannot be made," and C. "The responsibility for
expenditures is scattered." Then for each of these secondary assertions
reasons in support are adduced; thus for B. "Advantageous contracts
cannot be made," the reasons are I. "Contracts must be passed on
separately by aldermen, common councilmen, and the mayor," and 2.
"Bargains are made between the aldermen representing different wards."
In this case final references are given for each of these subordinate
assertions, so that we get down to the ultimate foundation of verifiable
fact on which the argument is to be built up.
The advantage of this form is that if you have set down several
assertions as reasons for another, and you are doubtful whether they all
belong there, you can test them separately by putting them one by one
after the main assertion they are intended to support with a "for" or a
"since" between.
You put the assertion first and the reason for it afterwards, because
when there is more than one reason in support, if you have the reason
first you must then repeat the assertion with each reason, or run the
risk of confusion. If under I in the brief on page go, for example, you
began with the reason, "In the present system partisan politics
determine nominations to office," and then added the result, "Therefore
the city government is inefficient," you would have to repeat the result
with B and C; and when you came to the third degree of support, the
repetition would be intolerably clumsy and confusing.
9. Headings and subheadings should not have more than one numbering.
The reason for this rule is also obvious: each heading or subheading
marks a step in the argument, and what belongs on one step cannot be on
another at the same time. In the brief on page 90 the assertion that
"Partisan politics determine nominations to office" is stated as a chief
reason for the assertion in the first main issue, that "The admitted
inefficiency of the city government at present is due to the system of
government." It would confuse a reader to mark it A I, as if it wore a
support also in the second degree.
10. The brief should give references to the evidence or authorities
relied on to support assertions.
General references to articles and books which will be constantly
referred to should be put at the beginning of the brief. References to
specific statements of fact or quotations of opinion should be added as
they occur in the brief (see the brief on p. 90).
EXERCISES
1. Criticize the following portion of a brief:
This college should have a longer Christmas vacation, for
I. College life tends to break up family life;
A. Father and son;
B. Younger brothers and sisters;
C. Intimate friends.
2. Criticize the following detached portions of a brief on the
proposition, This city should double its appropriation for the public
library, and amend them if necessary:
a. II. The funds for the purchase of books are insufficient and the
staff is inadequate.
b. B. The reading room is crowded to suffocation, therefore
1. Many people avoid the library.
c. III. Those who oppose the increased appropriation declare that
A. The library is a luxury for the rich; hence
1. The rich should support it; but
2. This is not true, for
a. Most of the borrowers of books are people
of moderate means; therefore
b. The city should support the library.
d. IV. A. The city is able to double the appropriation; for
1. It has spent largely for parks,
a. Which are also for the pleasure and improvement
of the citizens;
b. Hence it can pay for additions to the library.
e. VI. It is not true
A. That the readers want only recent fiction and that they
should buy these books for themselves; for
1. They mostly are not able to buy books; hence
2. They should be encouraged to read other books.
3. Give an example of an argument and an audience where it
would be necessary to put the refutation first; of one
in which it would be necessary to stir up the interest
of readers at the start.
4. Suggest methods for gaining the interest of the readers
in the last case.
SPECIMEN BRIEF
Wytown should adopt a commission government like that of Des Moines,
Iowa.
General references: C.R. Woodruff, City Government by Commission. New
York, 1911; J.J. Hamilton, The Dethronement of the City Boss, New York,
1910; City newspapers of various dates; draft of proposed charter,
published by the Citizens' Association.
(The successive steps of the introduction will be found on pp. 43, 53,
70, 74-75, 76-77, 79-80.)
I. The admitted inefficiency of the city government at present is due to
the system of government; for
A. Partisan politics determine nominations to office; since
1. The organization of the national parties is permanent, and
that of any citizens' movement temporary.
2. There has been bargaining between the parties to reward
political services by city offices. Daily papers, March 12-20,
1909; March 3-15, 1910.
B. Advantageous contracts cannot be made; for
1. Contracts must be passed on separately by aldermen, common
councilmen, and the mayor. Present city charter, sections 19-21.
2. Bargains are made between the aldermen representing different
wards. Daily papers, October 3, 1908; January 25, 1910.
C. The responsibility for expenditures is scattered; for
1. Heads of departments are responsible to the two boards and
not to the mayor. Present city charter, section 15.
2. Accounts are submitted to separate committees of the two
boards in which no members have special responsibility. Present
city charter, sections 22-23.
II. The adoption of the plan will result in important economies; for
A. The administration of city affairs will be made simpler; since
1. The councilmen will both lay out the work and be responsible
for the execution of it. Draft or charter, sections 5 and 13.
2. Plans for work in all departments will be considered together.
3. A small body with full powers can make better bargains than
two larger ones acting independently.
B. The plan has resulted in economies where it has been tried; for
1. In Des Moines, Iowa, the first year under the new charter showed
a relative saving of $182,949.65 as compared with the year
before. C. R. Woodruff, as cited, p. 250.
2. In Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the first year of commission
government a deficit of $79,452 was turned into a surplus of
$36,511, after paying off indebtedness to the extent of
$133,000. C. R. Woodruff, as cited, p. 278.
1'.Though a despatch in a daily paper (April 3, 1911) declares
that the city of Haverhill has been forced to borrow, yet the
report is untrustworthy without further evidence; for
a'. In itself it is contradictory and confused; and b'. It is
known that professional politicians and other enemies
of the plan have often spread false reports about it.
McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, p. 107.
III. The adoption of the plan will result in more efficient service to
the city; for
A. A better class of citizens will be drawn into office;
for
1. City officials can plan and carry out their policies
without petty interference;
2. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the commission, employed a civic-service
expert, and carried out his recommendations. J. J. Hamilton,
as cited, p. 180.
3. In Galveston, Texas, citizens of a better grade have taken
office, and the tone of the city administration has been
raised. W. B. Munro, in The Chautauquan, Vol. LI, p. 110.
B. Commission government has resulted in better administration where
it has been tried; for
1. Galveston and Houston, Texas, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
have all reported better police administration, improvements in
streets and parks, more advantageous dealings with
public-service corporations. C. J. Woodruff, as cited,
pp. 242-287.
2. No city which has tried the plan has yet given it up. C. J.
Woodruff, as cited, p. 310.
1'.Although Chelsea, Massachusetts, is cited as having given up a
commission government, yet the case is not parallel, since
a'. The commission under which the city had lived was appointed
by the governor after a disastrous conflagration; and
b'. The form of government substituted has most of the essential
features of the: commission government except the size of
the council, which has four members elected at large, and
five by district.
IV'. Although it is urged that the corrupt element in politics would
have unlimited power if they should capture the commission, yet the
direct responsibility to the citizens will be a safeguard for the
enlarged power, for
A'. Every act of the city government will be known; since under the
charter--sections 24, 25, 29, 33--
1'. The meetings of the council will be public.
2'. All resolutions are to be in writing and recorded.
3'. All votes are to be recorded.
4'. An itemized statement of receipts and expenditures must
be printed and distributed every month.
5'. Ordinances making contracts or granting franchises must be
published one week before final passage, and on petition may
be referred to the people.
6'. In Des Moines under the new charter the newspapers give much
space to the doings of the city government. _McClure's
Magazine_, Vol. XXXV, p. 101.
B'. The provisions for a recall will be a check on corrupt officials;
for
1'. In Des Moines a chief of police was retired on the suggestion
of a recall for the commissioner who was responsible for his
appointment. _McClure's Magazine_, Vol. XXXV, p. 101.
2'. In Seattle a mayor who made terms with the vicious element,
and was in league with public service corporations, was
recalled. Daily papers, March, 1911.
CONCLUSION.
Wytown should adopt a commission government like that of Des
Moines; since
A. The admitted inefficiency of the city government at present is
due to the system of government;
B. The adoption of the plan will result in important economies;
C. The adoption of the plan will result in more efficient service to
the city; and
D. The direct responsibility of the mayor and councilmen to the
citizens will be a safeguard for the increased power given to them.
CHAPTER III
EVIDENCE AND REASONING
27. Evidence and Reasoning. We have seen in the last chapter that
the chief value of making a brief is that in the first place it lays out
your reasoning so that you can scrutinize it in detail; and that in the
second place it displays the foundations of your reasoning on facts
which cannot be contested. In this chapter we shall consider what
grounds give validity to evidence and to reasoning.
Where the facts which you bring forward come from persons with
first-hand knowledge of them, they are direct evidence; where you must
establish them by reasoning from other facts they are indirect evidence,
and in the latter case reasoning is an essential part of establishing
the facts. In this chapter, therefore, I shall speak first of direct
evidence, then of indirect, and then pass on to consider a few of the
simpler principles which govern reasoning.
In ordinary usage the word "evidence" is pretty vague, and means
anything that will help to establish one side or another of any
question, whether of fact or of policy. The word, however, comes
ultimately from the law, where it is used for the testimony, either oral
or written or material, which is brought in to establish the truth of
assertions about fact: evidence is set before the jury, which under the
common law decides questions of fact. In almost any argument of policy,
however, we use facts as reasons for or against the policy which is in
question, and therefore inmost cases we must use evidence to establish
these facts; in many cases, when the facts are established there is no
further disagreement about the policy. For example, in arguments for and
against state prohibition of the liquor trade, it is an essential fact
to determine whether in status where prohibition has been tried it has
failed or succeeded, and another essential fact whether under similar
conditions a combination of high license and local option has or has not
produced less drunkenness. Both are extremely complicated and difficult
facts to decide; but if clear evidence can be brought forward to
establish them, reasonable-minded people would generally hold as settled
the question of the policy which should be adopted. Similarly, an
argument for the popular election of senators would undoubtedly make
large use of the alleged fact that, in elections by the legislatures,
there has been much undue interference by special interests and rich
corporations; and the assertion of this fact would have to be supported
by evidence. If this fact were thus clearly established, it would be
recognized as a strong reason for a change in our present policy. In the
interest of clearness of thought it is worth while to remember this
distinction; for, as we shall see, it is only by so doing that we can
determine when the ordinary rules of logic do and when they do not apply
to the processes of reasoning on which argument is based. I shall speak
here, therefore, of the evidence for facts, and of the reasons for or
against a policy.
It may be said in passing that the highly complicated rules of evidence
at the common law have practically nothing to do with our present
subject, for they spring from very special conditions, and have been
molded by very special purposes. Their object is to establish, so far as
is possible, principles which will apply to all cases of a like nature;
and they therefore rule out many facts and much evidence which outside
the court we all use without hesitation in making up our minds. The jury
system has had a curious and interesting history: and judges have built
up hedges around juries which seem to the layman merely technical, and
unnecessary for the ends of justice.[14] Yet though the sweeping away of
many of these rules from time to time shows that there has been and
perhaps still is justice in this view, one must remember that the whole
common law is based on the application of principles already established
by earlier cases to new cases of like character; and that great care
must therefore be used not to establish principles which may interfere
with the even distribution of justice in the long run (see on this point
S.R. Gardiner, p. 103). Even if in single cases the rule of evidence
that forbids hearsay evidence works an injustice, yet in the long run it
is obvious both that, if hearsay were allowed, litigants would take less
trouble to get original evidence, and that much hearsay is thoroughly
untrustworthy.
Another reason why the rules of evidence at the common law have little
bearing on the arguments of everyday life is like that which makes it
unwise to dwell much on the burden of proof: there is no one either
competent or interested to enforce the exclusion. Assertion and rumor
must be more than palpably vague before the ordinary man will of his own
initiative take the trouble to scrutinize it; and even in refuting such
material you must make its untrustworthiness very patent if you expect
to make ordinary readers distrust it seriously.
28. Direct and Indirect Evidence. When we come now to consider how we
establish facts, whether single or complex, we find that, both to aid
our own judgment and to convince other people, we rely on evidence. We
have seen that evidence falls roughly into two classes: either it comes
from persons who testify out of their own observation and experience, or
it comes indirectly through reasoning from facts and principles already
established or granted. The two kinds of evidence run into each other,
and the terms commonly used to describe them vary: "direct evidence" is
not infrequently, as in Huxley's argument (see p. 240), called
"testimonial," and "indirect evidence," as in the same argument and in
the opinion of Chief Justice Shaw, quoted below, is called
"circumstantial." On the whole, however, the opposition between the two
classes, so far as it is of practical importance, may best be indicated
by the terms "direct evidence" and "indirect evidence." The distinction
between the two classes is made clear in the following extract from the
opinion of Chief Justice Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. It
will be noticed that it is the same doctrine as that laid down by Huxley
(see p. 240).
The distinction, then, between direct and circumstantial evidence is
this. Direct or positive evidence is when a witness can be called to
testify to the precise; fact which is the subject of the issue in trial;
that is, in a case of homicide, that the party accused did cause the
death of the deceased. Whatever may be the kind or force of the
evidence, this is the fact to be proved. But suppose no person was
present on the occasion of the death,--and of course no one can be
called to testify to it,--is it wholly unsusceptible of legal proof?
Experience has shown that circumstantial evidence may be offered in such
a case; that is, that a body of facts may be proved of so conclusive a
character, as to warrant a firm belief of the fact, quite as strong and
certain as that on which discreet men are accustomed to act in relation
to their most important concerns....
Each of these modes of proof has its advantages and disadvantages; it is
not easy to compare their relative value. The advantage of positive
evidence is, that you have the direct testimony of a witness to the fact
to be proved, who, if he speaks the truth, saw it done; and the only
question is, whether he is entitled to belief. The disadvantage is, that
the witness may be false and corrupt, and the case may not afford the
means of detecting his falsehood.
But in a case of circumstantial evidence where no witness can testify
directly to the fact to be proved, you arrive at it by a series of other
facts, which by experience we have found so associated with the fact in
question, as in the relation of cause and effect, that they lead to a
satisfactory and certain conclusion; as when footprints are discovered
after a recent snow, it is certain that some animated being has passed
over the snow since it fell; and, from the form and number of the
footprints, it can be determined with equal certainty, whether it was a
man, a bird, or a quadruped. Circumstantial evidence, therefore, is
founded on experience and observed facts and coincidences, establishing
a connection between the known and proved facts and the fact sought to
be proved.[15]
Under the head of direct evidence, as I shall use the term, would fall
the evidence of material objects: in an accident case, for example, the
scar of a wound may be shown to the jury; or where the making of a park
is urged on a city government, the city council may be taken out to see
the land which it is proposed to take. Though such evidence is not
testimony, it is direct evidence, for it is not based on reasoning and
inference.
29. Direct Evidence. Direct evidence is the testimony of persons
who know about the fact from their own observation: such is the
testimony of the witnesses to a will that they saw the testator sign it,
the testimony of an explorer that there are tribes of pygmies in Africa,
the testimony of a chemist to the constituents of a given alloy, or of a
doctor to the success of a new treatment. Every day of our lives we are
giving and receiving direct evidence; and of this evidence there is
great variety in value.
In the first place, no one should place too much reliance on his own
casual observations. It is notorious that we see what we expect to see;
and no one who has not deliberately set himself to observe the fact can
realize how much of what he thinks is observation is really inference
from a small part of the facts before him. I feel a slight tremor run
through the house with a little rattling of the windows, and assume that
a train has gone by on the railroad below the hill a hundred yards away:
as a matter of fact it may have been one of the slight earthquake shocks
which come every few years in most parts of the world. The mistakes that
most of its make in recognizing people are of the same sort: from some
single feature we reason to an identity that does not exist.
Of recent years psychologists have set themselves to getting some
accurate facts as to this inaccuracy of human observation, and various
experiments have been tried. Here is an account of one:
There was, for instance, two years ago in Göttingen a meeting of a
scientific association, made up of jurists, psychologists, and
physicians, all, therefore, men trained in careful observation.
Somewhere in the same street there was that evening a public festivity
of the carnival. Suddenly, in the midst of the scholarly meeting, the
doors open, a clown in highly colored costume rushes in in mad
excitement, and a negro with a revolver in hand follows him. In the
middle of the hall first the one, then the other, shouts wild phrases;
then the one falls to the ground, the other jumps on him; then a shot,
and suddenly both are out of the room. The whole affair took less than
twenty seconds. All were completely taken by surprise, and no one, with
the exception of the president, had the slightest idea that every word
and action had been rehearsed beforehand, or that, photographs had been
taken of the scene. It seemed most natural that the president should beg
the members to write down individually an exact report, inasmuch as he
felt sure that the matter would come before the courts. Of the forty
reports handed in, there was only one whose omissions were calculated as
amounting to less than twenty per cent of the characteristic acts;
fourteen had twenty to forty per cent of the facts omitted; twelve
omitted forty to fifty per cent, and thirteen still more than fifty per
cent. But besides the omissions there were only six among the forty
which did not contain positively wrong statements; in twenty-four
papers up to ten per cent of the statements were free inventions, and in
ten answers--that is, in one fourth of the papers--more than ten per
cent of the statements were absolutely false, in spite of the fact that
they all came from scientifically trained observers. Only four persons,
for instance, among forty noticed that the negro had nothing on his
head; the others gave him a derby, or a high hat, and so on. In addition
to this, a red suit, a brown one, a striped one, a coffee-colored
jacket, shirt sleeves, and similar costume were invented for him. He
wore in reality white trousers and a black jacket with a large red
neck-tie. The scientific commission which reported the details of the
inquiry came to the general statement that the majority of the observers
omitted or falsified about half of the processes which occurred
completely in their field of vision. As was to be expected, the judgment
as to the time duration of the act varied between a few seconds and
several minutes.[16]
Another type of cases in which our direct testimony would be valueless
is legerdemain: we think that we actually see rabbits taken out of our
neighbor's hat, or his watch pounded in a mortar and presently shaken
whole and sound out of an empty silk handkerchief; and it is only by
reasoning that we know our eyes have been deceived.
It is obvious, therefore, that to question a man's evidence is not
always to call him a liar; in most cases it is rather to question the
accuracy of his inferences from such part of the facts as he actually
grasped. In science no important observation is accepted until the
experiments have been repeated and checked by other observers. Indeed,
most of the progress of science is due to the repetition of experiments
by observers who notice some critical phenomena which their predecessors
have missed.
With this qualification, that human observation is always fallible,
good direct evidence is on the whole the most convincing evidence that
you can use. If you can establish a fact by the mouths of trustworthy
witnesses, making your readers recognize that these witnesses had good
opportunities of observation and a competent knowledge of the subject,
you will generally establish your point. In case of an accident in a
street car it is the custom of many companies to require their
conductors to take down immediately the names of a few of the most
respectable-looking of the passengers, who may be called as witnesses in
case of a lawsuit. All the observations of science, and most of the
facts brought before juries in courts of law, as well as the multitude
of lesser and greater facts which we accept in everyday life, get their
authority from this principle.
In the arguments of school and college you may not make much use of
direct evidence, for they do not often turn on single, simple facts.
Even here, however, cases arise where you must call in the direct
testimony of witnesses. If you were arguing that secret societies should
be abolished in a certain school, and wished to show that such societies
had led to late hours, playing cards for money, and drinking, you would
need direct evidence. If you were arguing that the street railroad
company of your city should be obliged to double track a certain part of
its line, you would need direct evidence of the delays and crowding of
cars with a single track.
When you are using direct evidence you should make it clear that the
person from whom it comes is a competent witness, that he has been in a
position to know the facts at first hand, and that, if necessary, he has
had the proper training to understand their meaning. In the case of an
automobile accident a man who had never run a car would not be the best
sort of witness as to the actions of the chauffeur, nor a man who had
never sailed a boat as to what happened in a collision between two
sailboats. In a scientific matter the observations of a beginner would
not carry weight as against those of a man who had used a microscope for
many years.
The witness, too, must be shown to be free from bias, whether practical
or theoretical. It is a well-known fact that men differ greatly in the
clearness of their eyesight in observing the stars, and that men who are
gifted with exceptional eyesight may make valuable discoveries with
inferior instruments; but if such a man has espoused a theory, say, as
to the nature of the rings of Saturn, and is known to defend it
passionately, his evidence concerning what he had seen is bound to be
somewhat discounted.
Even official reports cannot be trusted without scrutiny.
The fact is that many things conspire to make an official report
constrained and formal. There is the natural desire of every man to put
the best face on things for himself as he sets his case before the
government and the world; subordinates must be let off leniently; you
must live with them, and it impairs comfort to have them sullen. To make
a statement unpleasant to a superior might be construed as
insubordination. The public welfare makes it imperative to tell a
flattering tale. The temptation is constant to tell not quite the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth. There are important suppressions of
fact in the official records, none more so, perhaps, than as regards
Chancellorsville.[17]
If you happen to be dealing with a historical matter, where the
testimony comes from a more or less remote past, and the evidence is
scrappy and defective, you must be still more careful.
The great English historian, the late S.R. Gardiner, in his
examination of the evidence on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, wrote as
follows about the difficulties of dealing with historical evidence:
It seems strange to find a writer so regardless of what is, in these
days, considered the first canon of historical inquiry, that evidence
worth having must be almost entirely the evidence of contemporaries who
are in a position to know something about that which they assert. It is
true that this canon must not be received pedantically. Tradition is
worth something, at all events when it is not too far removed from its
source. If a man whose character for truthfulness stands high, tells me
that his father, also believed to be truthful, seriously informed him
that he had seen a certain thing happen, I should be much more likely to
believe that it was so than if a person, whom I knew to be untruthful,
informed me that he had himself witnessed something at the present day.
The historian is not bound, as the lawyer is, to reject hearsay
evidence, because it is his business to ascertain the truth of
individual assertions, whilst the lawyer has to think of the bearing of
the evidence not merely on the case of the prisoner in the dock, but on
an unrestricted number of possible prisoners, many of whom would be
unjustly condemned if hearsay evidence were admitted. The historian is,
however, bound to remember that evidence grows weaker with each link of
the chain. The injunction, "Always leave a story better than you found
it," is in accordance with the facts of human nature. Each reporter
inevitably accentuates the side of the narrative which strikes his
fancy, and drops some other part which interests him less. The rule laid
down by the late Mr. Spedding, "When a thing is asserted as a fact,
always ask who first reported it, and what means he had of knowing the
truth," is an admirable corrective of loose traditional stories.
A further test has to be applied by each investigator for himself. When
we have ascertained, as far as possible, on what evidence our knowledge
of an alleged fact rests, we have to consider the inherent probability
of the allegation. Is the statement about it in accordance with the
general workings of human nature, or with the particular working of the
nature of the persons to whom the action in question is ascribed? Father
Gerard,[18] for instance, lavishly employs this test. Again and again he
tells us that such and such a statement is incredible, because, amongst
other reasons, the people about whom it was made could not possibly have
acted in the way ascribed to them
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