The Making of Arguments Part 2

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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sed through two of these stages. He spoke of it as an argument, and for a few years it was a.s.sailed with fierce counterarguments; we now hold it to be a masterful explanation of an enormous body of facts. When it will pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sertions 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 a.s.sertions 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 mult.i.tude of ephemeral parties and cla.s.ses,--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 G.o.ds 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 cla.s.sification 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 pa.s.sionate 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ma.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysis."[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 const.i.tutional questions, which made our government what it is. The difference between "the strict construction" of the Const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution 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 cla.s.sic in its various forms, which now in turn seem on the point of slipping into the rococo cla.s.sical of the ecole 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 s.p.a.ces, where the neighbors and ab.u.t.ters 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-a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.ses and types; in the arguments of real life we mingle them naturally and unconsciously.

Yet the distinction between the two main cla.s.ses 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 un.o.bserved 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 ill.u.s.trate 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.