The Making of Arguments Part 1

The Making of Arguments.

by J. H. Gardiner.

PREFACE

The object of this book is to lay out a course in the writing of arguments which shall be simple enough for cla.s.ses which give only a part of the year to the work, and yet comprehensive enough for special cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 att.i.tude toward the subject in hand: when we are explaining we tacitly a.s.sume 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 pa.s.s 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 compet.i.tive 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 seash.o.r.e 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.ses: (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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 subst.i.tuted 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.