The Making of Arguments Part 12

No great while after the adoption of the original Const.i.tution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now const.i.tuting the State-of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now const.i.tutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circ.u.mstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery in them. But they did interfere with it--take control of it----even there, to a certain extent. In 1798 Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This act pa.s.sed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" who framed the original Const.i.tution. They were John Langdon, George Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all probably voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from Federal authority, or anything in the Const.i.tution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory.

In the end this exact statement of names, for which he had prepared himself with such laborious care, enabled Lincoln to sum up with absolute conclusiveness:

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the "thirty-nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover.

To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 7804, and two in 1819-1820, there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the question which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way.

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers "who framed the government under which we live," who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now"; and twenty-one of them--a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"--so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Const.i.tution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions under such responsibility speak still louder.

When you come to evidence about a large and complex state of affairs, which is the kind of fact that so many of the arguments of practical life deal with, though you will still be dealing with a fact, yet the very nature of the fact changes the value and the character of your evidence. It is a comparatively simple matter to determine whether a certain woman faced forward or backward as she was getting off a street car, or whether the eggs of a sea urchin do or do not begin to germinate under the influence of a certain chemical substance; but it is far from simple to determine whether a free elective course has or has not inured to greater intelligence and cultivation in the graduates of a certain college, or whether the graduates of another college where the cla.s.sical course is maintained have keener and more flexible minds and more refined tastes as a result of their study of the cla.s.sics. In such cases as these the citing of direct evidence brings on you difficulties of a different kind from those you face when you are establishing a single, simple fact. Here you will usually depend on two main sources of evidence: statistics, and the evidence of recognized authorities on the subject.

30. Statistics. Statistics, which are collections of figures, are notoriously treacherous. On many important subjects, such, for example, as the practical effect of the elective system, it is impossible to get them; and on many other subjects, such as the effects of a protective tariff, they must be had in so enormous ma.s.ses, if they are to be trusted at all, that only profound students can handle them. Where the facts are complicated, and interests are tangled, moreover, many sets of figures may enter into the question, as notably in the case of a tariff; so clearly is this difficulty now recognized that Congress has authorized a tariff board made up of distinguished students of economics and men of long experience in dealing with tariff matters to collect and study the facts and make recommendations based on them. Similarly, with the investigation into the liquor question made fifteen years ago by the Committee of Fifty: the whole question had been so tangled by a.s.sertion and counter-a.s.sertion that it became desirable to have an investigation into the facts by men of recognized ability and impartiality.[20]

In general, to use statistics safely you need a wide acquaintance with a subject, especially where the question is in any way mixed up with men's feelings, whether through politics or not. All the statistics we have make dead against great armaments and preparation for war; yet while human nature is what it is, necessary prudence seems to require every nation of any size to have them. A very little human nature will upset a very great body of statistics. Furthermore, in most human affairs results are produced by a multiplicity of causes; and though statistics may throw light on three quarters of all the causes that are potent in any given case, yet the other quarter which are irreducible to definite statement may wholly alter the result. If you are using statistics in your argument, therefore, as evidence of some large and complex fact, you should usually justify them to some extent by showing that there are no counteracting forces which they do not cover.

With this precaution, however, statistics are the foundation of most arguments on large questions. If you were arguing in favor of the purchase of local waterworks, you would present figures showing the number of houses using the public water supply, the rates paid, the profits of the company, the exact points at which public control could work economies. If you were arguing for a rule that no man shall play on a university team until he has been registered a year at the university, you would need statistics to show how many men would be affected by the rule. If you were arguing for a single session at a school instead of two, you would show exactly how many students in the school live more than a mile away from the building. In every case where statistics can be presented in such a way as to make clear that they fairly cover the ground, they are most valuable evidence. They give the argument the effect of being founded on a rock. If it be obvious that the statistics have been freshly gathered, and are not merely casual and second-hand gleanings, they have still greater effect, for then they have a secondary force in testifying to the personal knowledge that the witness has of the subject. We shall see later the danger of the fallacy of generalizing on too narrow a basis: a generalization based on a good body of statistics runs no danger of this fallacy.

31. The Opinion of Recognized Authorities. The other chief source of evidence to establish a fact which consists of a large and complex state of affairs is the opinion of recognized authorities on the subject. The strength of such evidence depends on whether the audience will accept the person you cite as having authority on the matter. Most of us read some newspaper or periodical in the opinions of which we have confidence, because they seem to be based on investigation and competent knowledge. The annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury is excellent evidence on the state of the national finances. The reports of presidents of colleges are excellent evidence from authorities on such questions as the value of the elective system or the effect of raising the standard of admission. The report of a dean or of a schoolmaster on the value of organized athletics is effective if the audience knows that he likes out-of-door sports and takes time to see the games. Evidence drawn from an authority who is likely to be used by the other side is doubly effective, since your readers recognize that his competence is admitted.

If a man has given his life to the study of a subject and has published books that are of recognized authority, his evidence will be of especial weight. Mr. Bryce's opinion on all questions concerning a state of affairs in this country would be recognized at once as weighty, for he has given time and study to collecting the mult.i.tude of small facts which const.i.tute the large fact. His opinion that political honesty is increasing with us has brought comfort to many good citizens who had grown despondent over the accounts of recurrent rascality in the newspapers and magazines. This is a typical case for the citation of authorities; for the facts are enormous in number, very widely scattered, and often contradictory. Only a man who has taken the pains to keep himself constantly informed, whose judgment has been trained by long consideration and comparison of the facts, and who is born with the judicial temperament can attain the authority of Mr. Bryce.

There will be cases on which you will have the right to put yourself forward as an authority, for on many subjects which fall within the range of undergraduates their knowledge is first-hand. On all questions of athletics, especially, an undergraduate is apt to have freshly in mind a considerable ma.s.s of facts. In the same way, on the results of certain requirements for admission to college, you can speak from recent experience. In matters concerning your own city, too, you may have original knowledge.

If you are going to put yourself forward as an authority, however, you must round out your knowledge of the facts by extending it beyond your own personal experience. If it is a question of entrance requirements, you cannot stop with your own experience, or even with that of your own cla.s.s at school. You must go back to the records of a number of cla.s.ses before and perhaps after your own, and talk them over with the princ.i.p.al of the school, to see whether there are any special circ.u.mstances which affect any of them. If you are arguing for or against a change in the present rules of football, you would have to go beyond the games of your own college team, and beyond those of the present season. If, for example, it were a question of amending the rules concerning the forward pa.s.s, you could not speak with full authority unless you had looked up the accounts of the princ.i.p.al games for two or three years at any rate.

If you put yourself forward, then, as a witness on one of these cases of complicated facts, you must make it clear to your readers that you have a right to be considered such. If you have the right, it would be folly to hide your light under a bushel.

An example of the care which is taken by men who have made themselves authorities on their subjects is to be found in the following pa.s.sage from President Eliot's address, "A Wider Range of Electives in College Admission Requirements."[21] Notice how broad a basis he lays for his conclusions both in facts and in the opinions of other authorities.

What should be the grounds of a just valuation of all the subjects that can be presented at admission examinations which include numerous options?

That question introduces us to a difficult inquiry. It is, of course, not an intelligent method to attribute a value to each subject in accordance with the time devoted to the examination in that subject.

What clue have we toward a better mode of determining the value which ought to be attributed to each of the numerous electives, when the young men cannot present all the permitted subjects, and hardly three fifths of them, indeed, if the range is adequately widened? I believe that the best criterion for determining the value of each subject is the time devoted to that subject in schools which have an intelligent program of studies. The Committee of Ten[22]

examined the number of subjects used in about two hundred of the best secondary schools in this country, and the time-allotments for the several subjects. They found a great variety of practice as to both selection of subjects and time-allotments. You can hardly say that there is an accepted time-allotment in these secondary schools for any subject--not even for the old traditional subjects. The time-allotments differ widely in different parts of the country, and even in different schools in the same part of the country. If, then, we are to determine by school time-allotments the valuations of the different subjects, prescribed and elective, which may enter into admission examinations, we must have some sort of standard programs for secondary schools. At present (1896) I know no programs which can answer that purpose, except the provisional programs of the Committee of Ten.

They may fairly be said to be the best-studied programs now before the country, and to represent the largest amount of professional consent, simply because they are the result of the work, first, of ninety school and college teachers, divided into nine different conferences by subject, and secondly, of ten representative teachers combining and revising the work of the conferences, with careful reference to the present condition of American schools.

32. Indirect Evidence. The term "indirect evidence" may be used for all evidence as to fact in which reasoning consciously plays a part.

Without it we should be helpless in large regions of our intellectual life, notably in science and history, and constantly in everyday life.

Clearly the line between direct and indirect evidence is vague and uncertain; it is one of the first things learned in psychology that our perceptions and judgments of things about us are almost never based exclusively on the testimony of our senses, and that we are all the time jumping to conclusions from very partial observations.

Professor Munsterberg gives the following example from his own experience of this unintentional subst.i.tution of indirect evidence for direct:

Last summer I had to face a jury as witness in a trial. While I was with my family at the seash.o.r.e my city house had been burglarized and I was called upon to give an account of my findings against the culprit whom they caught with part of the booty. I reported under oath that the burglars had entered through a cellar window, and then described what rooms they had visited. To prove, in answer to a direct question, that they had been there at night, I told that I had found drops of candle wax on the second floor. To show that they intended, to return, I reported that they had left a large mantel clock, packed in wrapping paper, on the dining-room table. Finally, as to the amount of clothes which they had taken, I a.s.serted that the burglars did not get more than a specified list which I had given the police.

Only a few days later I found that every one of these statements was wrong. They had not entered through the window, but had broken the lock of the cellar door; the clock was not packed by them in wrapping paper, but in a tablecloth; the candle droppings were not on the second floor, but in the attic; the list of lost garments was to be increased by seven more pieces; and while my story under oath spoke always of two burglars, I do not know that there was more than one.[23]

Constantly in everyday life we make offhand a.s.sertions in the full belief that we are giving direct evidence, when as a matter of fact we are announcing inferences. The distinction is of importance in many ways, and not least as a means of avoiding heat in argument; for to question a man's inference is much less likely to make him angry than to deny his statement of fact.

For the practical purposes of argument we may let the distinction between observation and inference, and consequently that between direct and indirect evidence, turn on whether the inference is a conscious and readily distinguishable part of the judgment or not. Though bringing to light an unconscious inference is often an essential part of the detection of false reasoning, where there is no such practical consequence, we need not be too curious here about the line between direct observation and inference from observation. For the rough and ready purposes of everyday arguments it is exact enough to say that where you recognize that you are basing your conclusion as to a fact on some process of reasoning, then you are resting on indirect evidence; where you do not recognize the inference without reflection, you are resting on direct evidence.

In the following discussion of reasoning I shall sometimes be dealing with proving a fact, sometimes with arguing forward to a policy. In many cases the two processes are practically identical, for if the fact is established the policy follows as a matter of course: in these cases, therefore, for the sake of convenience I shall use the terms interchangeably, and keep them separate only where there is danger of confusion.

33. Reasoning. Though the various forms of reasoning and the principles which they follow are the concern rather of psychology and logic than of a practical work on the writing of arguments, yet these sciences help us to understand the processes of the mind by which we convince first ourselves, and then other people, of the existence of facts, when for one reason or another direct testimony is wanting.

Psychology describes the processes of reasoning as part of the activity of the mind, a.n.a.lyzes them into their parts, and shows their working.

Logic is concerned rather with the forms of reasoning: its aim is to establish principles and rules the application of which will insure correct reasoning.

I shall first briefly and very simply sketch the underlying nature of the reasoning process as it is described by psychologists; then I shall pa.s.s on to a practical application of the principles thereby attained; next I shall set forth a few of the simplest and clearest of the processes of reasoning which have been worked out by logic; and, finally, I shall discuss each few of the best-recognized forms of false reasoning. From both the psychological description and the rules of logic we shall derive practical suggestions for establishing facts which may be needed in an argument.

The essential feature of the process of reasoning is that it proceeds from like to like, by breaking up whole facts and phenomena, and following out the implications or consequences of one or more of the parts.[24] For example, if I infer, when my dog comes out of a barnyard with an apologetic air, and with blood and feathers on his mouth, that he has been killing a hen, I am breaking up the whole phenomenon of the dog's appearance, and paying attention only to the blood and feathers on his head; and these lead me directly to similar appearances when I have caught him in the act. If I reason, Every student who can concentrate his attention can learn quickly, George Marston has a notable power of concentration, Therefore George Marston can learn quickly, I again break up the abstraction _student_, and the concrete fact _George Marston_, and pay attention in each to the single characteristic, _concentration of attention_. Thus by means of these similar parts of different wholes I pa.s.s from the a.s.sertion concerning the cla.s.s as a whole to the a.s.sertion concerning the concrete case.

This process first of a.n.a.lysis and then of abstraction of similars is the essential part of every act of reasoning.

In intuitive or unreasoned judgment, on the other hand, we jump to the conclusion without a.n.a.lyzing the intermediate steps.

If I say, _I have a feeling in my bones that it will rain to-morrow,_ or, _it is borne in on me that our team will win_, the sensations and ideas that I thus lump together are too subtle and too complex for a.n.a.lysis, and the conclusion, though it may prove sound, is not arrived at by reasoning. The difference between such intuitive and unreasoned judgments, and reasoning properly so called, lies in the absence or the presence of the intermediate step by which we consciously recognize and choose out some single attribute or characteristic of the fact or facts we are considering, and pa.s.s from that to other cases in which it occurs.

The skill of the reasoner therefore consists of two parts: first, the sagacity to pick out of the complex fact before him, the attribute or characteristic which is significant for his present purpose; and second, the large knowledge of the subject which will enable him to follow it into other cases in which it occurs with different circ.u.mstances, or, in other words, to follow a similarity through diverse cases. Darwin's great achievement in establishing the principle of evolution lay first in the scientific sagacity which flashed home on him, after years of patient study, that the one common fact in all the mult.i.tude of plants and animals is that in the struggle for existence by which all living beings persist, those who are best fitted to their circ.u.mstances survive; and second, in his rich knowledge of the world of nature, which made it possible for him to follow out this characteristic in all kinds of plants and animals, and so to reach the general law. But whether it be so world-sweeping a conclusion as his, or my conclusion that my dog has killed a hen, the process is the same: a.n.a.lysis or breaking up of the complex fact, and following out the consequences or implications of some selected part of it into other cases.

All reasoning thus reduces itself in the end to a process of pa.s.sing from like to like: we notice that the present case is like other cases which we already know: then, since these cases have always in the past been accompanied by certain circ.u.mstances or consequences, we believe that the present case will also show these same circ.u.mstances or consequences. Whenever my dog has killed when the cases have been similar in the blood and feathers on his mouth; in this case he has blood and feathers on his mouth; therefore he must have killed a hen.

Individual plants and animals survive which are fitted to their environment by special characteristics, and those which are not so fitted die; species of plants and animals, as well as individuals, show special adaptation to their environment; therefore species have survived through the same process of natural selection.

It follows that reasoning, whether it results in a general law or in concrete judgment, depends on the a.s.sumption that nature--and in nature we mean here the whole universe as we know it is uniform; that there are ties between facts which make it possible for us to be certain that if a given fact occurs, then another fact always occurs with it as an effect, or as a cause, or connected with it in some other manner. Without this certainty of the uniformity of things there would be no reasoning, and therefore no argument from indirect evidence. Huxley sets forth this fundamental truth clearly and impressively at the beginning of the first of his "Lectures on Evolution" (see p. 234).

For practical purposes the various types of this inference from similarity can be conveniently thrown into three groups. As will be obvious, there is no fixed and impa.s.sable line between them.

"If an inference relies upon a resemblance that is newly seen, rare, or doubtful, it is called an inference from a.n.a.logy; if it is made upon the basis of an established cla.s.sification, it is called a generalization; if it involves a variety of resemblances so combined as to bear upon a single point, it is usually or frequently called an inference from circ.u.mstantial evidence."[25]

I will take up each of these types and show how we use them in the practical work of argument. It will be seen that they vary greatly in certainty of results.

34. Reasoning from a.n.a.logy. a.n.a.logy in its most tenuous form is weak as a basis for an actual inference, though it is often effective as a means of expressing an intuitive judgment where the reasons are too subtle and diffused for formal explanation. When Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War said that men do not swap horses while they are crossing a stream, the a.n.a.log, though subtle, was felt to be real.

Popular adages and proverbs are common modes of expressing such deep-lying a.n.a.logies: for example, "Where there is smoke there is fire"; "The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way." Poetry too is full of these subtle, pregnant similarities which link things in some one aspect, but fail for all others.

To die; to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die; to sleep;-- To sleep? Perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffl'd off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.

But, as in this case of Hamlet's, poetical a.n.a.logies will not bear much strain; the aspect in which the similarity holds is usually the only aspect the two cases have in common, and to take poetry as a precise formulation of fact is to sin against both humor and sound reasoning.

In daily life we are constantly reasoning by a.n.a.logy. If you argue that a certain man who has been successful at the head of a railroad will therefore make a good president for a college because that also is a complex inst.i.tution, or that because self-government has worked well in a certain school it will probably work well in a college, or that because a friend has been cured of sleeplessness by taking a walk just before going to bed therefore everybody who sleeps badly can be cured in the same way,--in all these cases you are reasoning by a.n.a.logy. In each case it will be noticed you would pa.s.s from a similarity which exists in a single case or in a small number of cases to the conclusion. The reasoning is sound, however, only in so far as the similarity bears on the actual purpose in hand: in the first example, if the success of the railroad president arises from the power of understanding men and of philosophic insight into large problems, the reasoning will probably be valid; in the last example, if applied to insomnia due to overwork, it might be bad.

In practical affairs it is easy to find examples of reasoning from a.n.a.logy, especially in arguments of policy. The first trial of city government by commission depended on such reasoning: when Galveston, Texas, was devastated by a storm it was reasoned that in business matters a small body of picked men with absolute powers are most efficient in an emergency, and that since the reconstruction of the city was essentially a matter of business, such a body would best meet the emergency. So the extension of commission government in other states at first followed reasoning by a.n.a.logy: government by commission worked well in Galveston; it would probably work well in Des Moines. In the same way with the arguments for a parcels post: they proceed from the a.n.a.logy of the present postal service, which has been successful so far as it goes, and from the success of the parcels post in almost all the countries of Europe. If you were arguing that "a.s.sociation" (or "soccer") football should be made one of the major sports at your college, you would reason from the a.n.a.logy of its great popularity with Englishmen all over the world that it would also probably be popular in America.

When you use the argument from a.n.a.logy, however, you must make sure that the similarity between the two cases runs to the point you wish to establish. In the following extract from an argument in favor of commission government for all cities, the author explicitly limits his reasoning from the a.n.a.logy of Washington to the point of the extension of the system to large cities.

If we look for successful governments by commission in this country, it is not difficult to find them in our largest cities. The city of Washington is governed by a small commission, and is acknowledged to be one of our best-governed cities. While this commission originated in an entirely different way from that of the commission form of government, successful administration under its rule is a valid answer to the argument that small commissions are suited only to the administration of small cities.[26]

Whenever you use this type of reasoning, it is wise thus to limit its bearing. If in an argument in favor of allowing secret societies in a high school you rely on the a.n.a.logy of college life, take pains to show that the resemblance covers the social life of a school. If you were arguing that your city should establish a munic.i.p.al gymnasium, and relied on the reasoning from the a.n.a.logy of a family, in which all the members have a direct interest in the health of the others, show that this interest has practical grounds of welfare, and does not rest wholly on affection. In every case, unless the limits of the a.n.a.logy are obvious, specify them in order to carry your readers safely with you.

35. False a.n.a.logy. A peculiar danger of the argument from a.n.a.logy is the fallacy which is known as false a.n.a.logy, or reasoning to a conclusion which the similarity does not support. Arguments in which there are many figures of speech, especially when the style is at all florid, are apt to slop over into this fallacy. To liken education to the unfolding of a flower is all very well, if you do not go on to argue that because the lily of the field neither toils nor spins, therefore a child should do no work in school. It is said that M. Stolypin, the late premier of Russia, once half apologized In the Duma for the slowness of his reforms, saying that he Was like a man shooting with a flintlock musket; to which one of the Liberal members replied that it was not a question of weapons, but of aim, and that if his Excellency was to go on shooting at the people, it would be better if he went on using flintlocks. Under the auspices of the Carnegie Inst.i.tution an expert in business administration made an inquiry into the methods of teaching and research in physics at various American universities, and made recommendations based on the conduct of business establishments. A professor of physics in answer showed in how many ways the a.n.a.logy between a business concern, whose end is profit, and a physical laboratory, whose end is the advancement of knowledge, is false and misleading. The expert had suggested a general research board to correlate researches; the professor cited the cases of Airy, the astronomer royal of England, who by his dominating position held back astronomical research in England for a generation, and of Sir Humphry Davy, who discouraged the work of Faraday, when the latter was his a.s.sistant.

The expert suggested that apparatus could be pa.s.sed on from one investigator to another: the professor replied that few men can use apparatus designed for some one else's purpose, and that the cost of reconstruction would exceed the cost of new machines. In short, he completely riddled the argument from a.n.a.logy set up by the expert.[27]

A notable example of conclusive refutation of an argument based on a false a.n.a.logy is to be found in William James's Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality. He took up the ordinary argument against the immortality of the soul, which, starting from the accepted physiological and psychological formula, "Thought is a function of the brain," reasons that therefore when the brain dies and decays, thought and consciousness die, too.

This, then, is the objection to immortality; and the next thing in order for me is to try to make plain to you why I believe that it has in strict logic no deterrent power. I must show you that the fatal consequence is not coercive, as is commonly imagined; and that, even though our soul's life (as here below it is revealed to us) may be in literal strictness the function of a brain that perishes, yet it is not at all impossible, but on the contrary quite possible, that the life may still continue when the brain itself is dead.