The Making of Arguments

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