AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE IN ARGUMENTATION BY FRANCES M. PERRY INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN WELLESLEY COLLEGE NEW YORK : CINCINNATI : CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY FRANCES M. PERRY. ARGUMENTATION. w. P. 5 KATHERINE BATES PREFACE An Introductory Course in Argumentation has grown out of my need of a text-book presenting the subject of brief-drawing and argumentative composition in so elementary a manner as to- make it practical for a short composition course for college freshmen. My endeavor has been to simplify the subject to suit the understanding of students in the first years of college, or the last years of secondary school, with- out lessening its educative value. In the first place, the student is practiced in the processes of argumentation without the added diffi- culty of research. No teacher of narration begins his work by demanding that a student write a his- torical romance requiring serious preliminary study of the period in which it is placed he begins, rather, with simple pieces of work exercising the student's power of imagination on material that lies within his experience. The beginner in the study of argumenta- tion should, in like manner, be set to work to exer- cise his reasoning power on familiar material. This is not a loss, but a gain. Even advanced students, when allowed to write at the start on subjects upon s 6 PREFACE which they must " read up," develop little power to argue; they too often count their work done when they have gathered from a book and summarized the arguments of another. The student required to argue on material already at his command finds pleasure in turning it over, seeing it in new lights, in new rela- tions, with new significance, and argument seems to him serviceable and pleasant work. I do not, how- ever, advocate suiting endeavor to power, and at the close of the course the student is instructed in methods of research with the expectation that he will be ready to encounter added difficulties. The subject is further simplified by leaving persua- sion out of consideration until the student under- stands conviction. This, too, is a gain ; the student who begins by suiting his argument to the hearer too often comes to value sophistry above thoroughness and accuracy ; like a sharp bargainer he prides him- self more on a fraudulent victory than on an honest one. With him specious reasoning and " bluff " are at a premium, and to outwit and circumvent his antago- nist by fair means or foul, to "make a case," is his unscholarly ideal. The student whose interest is first enlisted in making a strong argument, can afterward be brought to see the importance of pre- senting it with tact and economy, without danger of confusing sound argument with mere tricks of oratory. The instructor will find that simplification has been PREFACE 7 effected without evasion of difficulties. While the course is intended to be as simple as possible, it is not intended to permit any otiose imitation of the form of argument without the substance. The diffi- culties are not slighted; they are taken by easy stages, and every point is clinched by drill in exer- cises hard enough to stimulate the average student to vigorous work. The two methods in use in teaching argumentation, the brief-drawing method and the syllogistic method, naturally assist and complement each other. My aim has been to combine these methods so that the one will help the student to understand the other. While the course calls for a sustained piece of work, its preparation and criticism by installments are provided for, so that there is no dearth of work during the course and no accumulation of work at its close. A good course in elementary argumentation should be introduced into every high school composition course. There is no form of discourse that will do so much to break a student of hand-to-mouth writing and thinking, that will so give him the habit of look- ing beyond his nose, of doing work in a purposeful way, with a sense of the relation of parts, of the structure of the whole composition. It facilitates development out of the acquisitive, transmitting stage into reflective, modifying, originating power. 8 PREFACE Acknowledgment is due Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company for permission to use certain copyrighted material ; also to the Century Company for the selec- tion from N. S. Shaler's American Highways ; to Charles Scribner's Sons for the selections from Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I have Known, and Richard Harding Davis's Gallegher and Other Stories ; and to Small, Maynard & Company for the selection from Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson's In this Our World. CONTENTS PAGE I. THE PURPOSE AND THE USES OF ARGUMENTATION . .11 II. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION A. Finding the Proposition . . . . . .15 1. Selecting the Question . . . . .17 2. Deciding on the Proposition .... 26 3. Stating the Proposition 41 B. Proving the Proposition 49 X. Organization of Material The Brief . . 51 a. The Importance of the Brief . . -51 b. The Introduction to the Brief ... 57 (1) Material and Immaterial Issues . 57 (2) The Test of a Good Introduction . 65 (3) Added Requirements for a Good Introduction .... 74 f. The Proof 84 (1) The Classification of Evidence . 84 (2) The Quantity of Evidence . . 107 (3) The Kind of Evidence . . .128 (4) Refutation 148 2. Presentation of Material The Forensic . .179 a. The Development of the Forensic . .179 b. The Articulation of the Parts . . .193 c. The Tone of the Forensic Persuasion . 201 C. Research . . . . . . . . 213 INDEX '.'>. .225 THE PURPOSE AND THE USES OF ARGUMENTATION THE purpose of argument is to make others believe as we believe. It is not enough, however, to strive to reach that end by assertions we argue only when we offer reason and evidence to sustain our assertions. To argue, then, is to seek to establish the truth or the falsity of a proposition or statement by means of evidence. This is for none of us an untried field of endeavor. Ever since we have had preferences we have tried to persuade others of their rationality. As children we were not content to announce to our mothers that we wished to go to a neighbor's house to play ; most of us were eloquent in adducing reasons for the wish; " because " is a word with whose use we have long been familir.r. The type of the trained arguer is the lawyer, who makes it his chief study and practice to bring others to think as he wishes them to think. But the leader in any walk of life, if he would control the thoughts and actions of others, needs to be, to some extent, master of the professional advocate's art. Daniel 12 PURPOSE OF ARGUMENTATION Boone, persuading his old neighbors to face the hardships of the frontier ; Morse, urging upon capi- talists the feasibility of the electric telegraph ; Lin- coln, proclaiming to voters that the Union could not exist half slave and half free; Charles W. Eliot, advocating the elective system in education, such men as these have had to convince and persuade. Even one who has no great cause to advocate and no aspiration to influence others must in the simplest social and business relations frequently employ argu- ment, pronounce an opinion and give reasons for it. Do you like your instructor's method of teaching German ? Do you prefer Monday or Saturday for a holiday ? Who is your candidate for class president ? Who is your favorite novelist ? Do you believe in co-education ? These are questions that can not be disposed of with monosyllables. We are expected to know our own minds, to have views on many sub- jects and to be able to account for them. " Because " is in disrepute not because of the mental process it implies, but because the word so often exists with little or none of the argument of which it is the sign to justify it. The need to argue is not confined to specialists, but the ability to do so in a clear, convincing way where the subject-matter is complex usually belongs only to those who have had special training in the process of argumentation. The tools demanded are PURPOSE OF ARGUMENTATION 13 familiar exposition, description, narration ; the use to which they are put is, as we have seen, familiar. But the purposeful selection of just what is needed to prove a proposition, and the effective organization of it into an argument, call for a breadth of view, a power of inference, and a sense of relationship that rarely exist without cultivation. Perhaps more important than the arguments we enter into with others, are those inner debates that arise over conflicting duties, policies, and pleasures, and must be settled before no audience outside of ourselves : Shall I tell the truth though it injures my friend ? Shall I go to the theatre when my mother disapproves ? Shall I give this beggar money ? Shall I do this work which I do not care for because it pays well ? Our own peace of mind and much besides may depend on our ability to gather and to weigh the evidence on both sides of questions such as these. The process of reasoning is useful to us not only in shaping our own course of action and in influenc- ing others, but it is quite essential to intelligent read- ing or listening, for it enables us to do justice to the arguments of others, to see their strength or to detect their fallacies. To read profitably we must form conclusions from the evidence furnished by the author, and test his theories and conclusions by the evidence we have gained from him or from others. 14 PURPOSE OF ARGUMENTATION Mere acquisitiveness is not a scholarly trait; the scholar accepts the contributions of others as the data upon which to base his own judgments. Not all of these reasoning processes would be, in. the strictest sense, called argumentation, for argu- ment proper postulates or assumes a proposition to be proved. Reaching the proposition or conclusion is, however, in many cases, the most vital part of the operation. Besides, all propositions are not equally suitable for argument, and we make sorry work of arguing if we start with a poor proposition. For these reasons we shall make it our business to find how a proposition for argument is obtained as well as how its truth or falsity is demonstrated. This preliminary work may be broadly classified under three heads, Selecting the Question, Deciding on the Proposition, and Stating the Proposition. FINDING THE PROPOSITION SELECTING THE QUESTION THE student who wishes to derive full benefit from the study of argumentation will do well to resist the temptation to consult published lists of questions for debate or to ask some friend to suggest an appro- priate subject. The best question is one that grows out of one's own experience. We are living to little purpose if circumstances and events do not make us think, do not stimulate in us questions, and give rise to problems to which we wish to find the answers. One who has this habit of incurious acceptance of whatever comes to one without inquiry can not be too soon rid of it. The man who is able to work out and test the solu- tion of problems proposed by others is a serviceable man for routine work. But the one who takes the initiative, who suggests the problem, who proposes the solution, is indispensable to progress. Many surgeons stand ready to perform the operation when the master surgeon has diagnosed the case and in- ferred the source of the trouble from the symptoms ; the schoolboy can test Newton's law of gravitation ; Columbus had followers in plenty ; steamboats, loco- motives, cotton gins, sewing machines, were manu- ARGUMENTATION 2 17 1 8 FINDING THE PROPOSITION factured by the thousand after the first was made ; a higher law than that of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth having been uttered, ordinary men can preach it. The inventor, pointing the way to improved methods ; the general, foreseeing the enemy's move ; the prophet, announcing the need of social reform, these rather than the mechanic at his bench, the man behind the gun, the faithful disciple, are the men we wish to emulate. The quality that makes them great is called for by the everyday affairs of life. In general, the head is more important than the hand ; the housekeeper, not the servants, the merchant not the clerks, the teacher not the students, is held responsible for the failure or suc- cess of the home, the shop, the school. Since, then, to project is important as well as to carry into effect, we must not let others do this valuable part of our work for us. It is not enough to prove a proposition derived by another; we should not be willing to surrender our right to the initiative to any one else. We must cultivate the habit of originating questions. Let us look into our own experience and see if questions for discussion do not suggest themselves. It is not supposable that they will be questions that have never been discussed. They may have been debated for hundreds of years and yet be original for us. If a personal experience has vitalized the question, has made it one that we SELECTING THE QUESTION 19 have an actual interest in seeing answered, or one that we have worked out to our own satisfaction, it is sufficiently our question. It is not imposed from without, but springs from within. Debatable questions may be argued, but a good question for argument is not necessarily debatable. If we sustain a proposition with evidence, we argue, whether or not there is anything to be said on the other side. That Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of Shakespeare's earlier plays is scarcely open to question, but to prove by evidence taken from the play itself the immaturity of the playwright would make an interesting argument. It adds to the zest for argument to take a question upon which there is difference of opinion. The student is at liberty to select questions upon which he has made up his mind and concerning which he wants to win others to adopt his views, or questions about whose solution he is in doubt and regarding which he wishes to reach a conclusion for his own satisfaction. But he should be careful to select questions that do not call for too much re- search, questions in a field where he has a back- ground of knowledge. A question may be genuine enough, the student may sincerely want to know the answer, but if the mystery is easily penetrated and due only to the peculiar ignorance of the questioner, the question is not a good one for argument. A child 20 FINDING THE PROPOSITION may honestly wonder what makes the clock strike; why his father prefers the pages of the Sunday paper that have no pictures; why moisture forms on the outside of a glass of water on a warm day ; where the sun goes when it sets; and get some good mental training from his efforts to solve these questions, but he does not advance much in his search for truth. So a student may take a speculative question, and by ingenious reasoning on false premises get beneficial mental gymnastics ; but except for the purpose of humor it is not satisfying to put effort and time on problems that a little investigation rightly directed would solve. A background of knowledge of the subject from which the question is chosen is important not only to prevent the student's deciding upon questions based on easily penetrated difficulties, but also to insure his deciding upon a question that can be discussed in a sensible way without too much study. One is ill at ease in an unfamiliar subject, aware that he may make absurd mistakes where he least expects to do so. The pressure of other work is usually too great to permit a student in a composition course to add to the labor of selecting, arranging, and present- ing his material the labor of finding it. The question, then, should be one that interests the writer, preferably one that is debatable, one that has to do with subject-matter that is familiar to the inquirer. SELECTING THE QUESTION 21 EXERCISES 1. Tell why each one of the following questions would or would not be a suitable question for you to debate : a. Was Jefferson a greater statesman than Washington ? b. Is English literature greater than German literature ? c. What is the best method of increasing our national revenue ? d. Should I try to win one of the Cecil Rhodes scholar- ships ? e. Will flying machines ever come into general use ? /. Should the lives of writers be studied in literature classes ? g. Is a doctor's life harder than a farmer's? h. Was Lady Macbeth more responsible than Macbeth for the murder of Duncan ? /. Should the book stacks in public libraries be open to the public? j. Should the department method of teaching be intro- duced into the grammar grades of the public schools? k. Is the earth spherical? 2. Read the facts and the opinions given below, and write a list of questions for discussion suggested by them : " The conscious use of the words or the ideas of another without giving credit to their author is called plagiarism. "Students should remember that (i) whenever they give another's words exactly, quote him, they should place the words within quotation marks, and in a footnote acknowl- edge their indebtedness, naming the source of the quotation, giving the chapter or page, and, if there is more than one volume or edition, the volume and the edition used; (2) they should not by mere paraphrasing seek to win credit 22 FINDING THE PROPOSITION for ideas that are really another's." G. P. BAKER : The Principles of Argumentation. "Thus Mirabeau plagiarized every good thought, every good word, that was spoken in France. Dumont relates that he sat in the gallery of the Convention and heard Mirabeau make a speech. It struck Dumont that he could fit it with a peroration, which he wrote in pencil immediately and showed to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. Lord Elgin ap- proved it, and Dumont, in the evening, showed it to Mira- beau. Mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, and declared he would incorporate it into his harangue, to-mor- row, to the Assembly. ' It is impossible,' said Dumont, 'as, unfortunately, I have shown it to Lord Elgin.' 'If you have shown it to Lord Elgin, and to fifty persons besides, I shall still speak it to-morrow ; ' and he did speak it, with much effect, at the next day's session. For Mirabeau, with his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which his presence inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said them, and that his adoption of them gave them their weight." EMERSON : Napoleon. "... The charge of plagiarism is hardly ever made but by plagiarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not believe in honesty but on evidence. ... I have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of Holman Hunt's picture of the ' Light of the World,' that I may as well, in this place, glance at the envious charge against it, of being plagiarized from a German print. "It is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject before ; and there were, of course, no paintings of the Na- tivity before Raphael's time, nor of the Last Supper before Leonardo's, else those masters could have laid no claim to SELECTING THE QUESTION 23 originality. But what was still more singular (the verse to be illustrated being, ' Behold, I stand at the door and knock'), the principal figure in the antecedent picture was knocking at a door, knocked with its right hand, and had its face turned to the spectator ! Nay, it was even robed in a long robe, down to its feet. All these circumstances were the same in Mr. Hunt's picture ; and as the chances evi- dently were a hundred to one that if he had not been helped to the ideas by the German artist, he would have repre- sented the figure as not knocking at any door, as turning its back to the spectator, and as dressed in a short robe, the plagiarism was considered as demonstrated. Of course no defense is possible in such a case. All I can say is that I shall be sincerely grateful to any unconscientious persons who will adapt a few more German prints in the same manner. " Finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remem- bered that all men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped : they are taught by every person whom they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided ; and if the attainments of all human minds could be traced to their real sources, it would be found that the world had been laid most under contribution by the men of most original power, and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to their race, while it enlarged their gifts to it. The labor devoted to trace the origin of any thought, or any invention, will usually issue in the blank conclusion that there is nothing new under the sun ; yet nothing that is truly great can be altogether borrowed ; and he is commonly the wisest, and is always the happiest, who receives simply, and without envious question, whatever good is offered him, with thanks to the immediate giver." RUSKIN : Modern Painters. 24 FINDING THE PROPOSITION In many of our best schools and colleges students found guilty of plagiarism are expelled. The purpose of a composition course in school or col- lege is not to secure literary masterpieces ; it is to train stu- dents to think and to express their thoughts correctly and effectively. Shakespeare consciously used the words and the ideas of others in writing his plays. " Facts are not copyrighted ; but unless a writer is ac- cepted as himself an authority, he is expected to tell where he found them. Form, that is order, grouping, is private property, copyrighted, not to be reproduced without paying royalty, not worth reproducing anyway, since the whole point of writing at all is thereby lost. Phrase is as strictly private as its maker's purse. It may, of course, be quoted, with citation as of fact ; but frequent quotation is tiresome and unprofitable. Use without quotation is theft." BALDWIN: A College Manual of Rhetoric. Concerning Washington's Farewell Address Norman Hapgood writes that though written by Hamilton, "The credit is properly given to Washington by the world for the experience was his, the solution his, Hamilton his." 3. Write an argumentative dialogue between two students on one of the questions you have suggested. 4. Come to class prepared to take part in a general in- formal debate in which each member of the class will be allowed to speak on either side of the question : Is a student in this class justified in using the words or the ideas of another without giving credit to the one who originated them ? In your speech you should state some reason for SELECTING THE QUESTION 25 thinking plagiarism justifiable or unjustifiable and give evi- dence that what you say is true. 5. If all the tickets to your Glee Club Concert had been sold and you were to see the following notice on the bulletin board, what questions should you feel inclined to ask? Students are warned not to resell their Glee Club Concert tickets at advanced price. A severe penalty will be inflicted on all offenders. BUSINESS MANAGER OF GLEE CLUB. 6. Look carefully through Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables to discover whether or no the author had a definite plan of the house in his mind. Draw a ground plan of the house, and cite passages from the book that make you think the rooms were arranged as you have represented them. 1 7. Suggest for discussion some change that would in your opinion benefit your school ; your town ; a text-book ; some story you have read. 1 This exercise was suggested to the writer by the discussion of the question in Mrs. H. A. Davidson's introduction to The House of the Seven Gables. DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION HAVING selected a question both interesting and familiar, we must next reach a conclusion regarding this question that can be stated in a proposition which shall form the basis for argument. It is possible to make others believe that a conclu- sion is true which you believe to be false. Lawyers doubtless often do this ; a student in a debate course necessarily sometimes takes what seems to him the weaker side of the question. It is good discipline for a student to be obliged to see so clearly the strong points ia the side of the case that does not enlist his sympathy that he is able successfully to advocate it. But in general argumentation it is not necessary, and for some reasons it seems unwise, to attempt to prove what one does not believe to be true. In the first place, faith in your case makes your work lighter. If you are sure you are in the right, it seems worth while to exert yourself to make others see as you see, and you are willing to encounter difficulties to prove your point. If you have no con- victions either way, or if you see the weakness of your own case, it is hard to work with ardor. Rufus 26 DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 2/ Choate said : " I care not how hard the case is. It may bristle with difficulties. If I feel that I am on the right side, that case I win." It was so distasteful to Abraham Lincoln to make the worse appear the better reason that he made it a rule to advocate only the side that he believed to be right. The moral force he consequently threw into his argument made " Honest Abe " an opponent that few could match. In the second place, argument for argument's sake leads to the habit of specious reasoning, of caring more to make an appearance of right, than to make right appear. If argument teaches us merely to confound our opponents with concealments, subter- fuges, ridicule, and tricks, it falls far short of its right purpose. As students we should be open minded and interested, not in " making a case " as they say, but in discovering and making plain the truth, and a course in argumentation should teach us to do that. Too often the young orator and debater takes as an example for emulation the demagogue, the man who plays upon the ignorance and weakness and prejudice of his hearers and relies upon his skill in doing so to make his point. The would-be debater should look for models rather among the philosophers, the scientists, the statesmen, men who assume on the part of their readers and hearers an intelligence equal to their own ; who would not stoop to trickery 2$ FINDING THE PROPOSITION and devices to gain adherents, but offer only such reasons as seem to them convincing, and depend on the strength of their cause for success. Since it is important to take the right side of an argument the student should not jump rashly to his conclusion. He should decide on his proposition only after careful reasoning. All reasoning is from the known to the unknown. From known particular instances we may infer an unknown general truth ; from a known general truth we may pronounce concerning an unknown particular case; we may reason from what is hap- pening to the unknown that will happen or that has happened in the past. When from particular cases that have come under our observation we infer general truths, we reason inductively. The inductive method of reasoning is the laboratory method ; the scientist performs the experiment, makes his observations, and so accumu- lates the data upon which to base a generalization. But this method of reasoning is not used by the scientist alone. Men, women, and children daily generalize from their experience. A woman on moving from the country into the city, finding that Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Flint, and Mrs. Steel manifest no interest in her affairs, and re- membering how Mrs. Hay, Mrs. Greene, and Mrs. Field listened with eagerness to her domestic ex- DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 29 periences, may make the generalization that city people are less sympathetic than country people. Her line of reasoning is a safe one : what is true of the several members of a class is true of the class. The scientist observes that each woodpecker he examines has a strong chisel-like bill, rigid and acuminate tail feathers, toes arranged in pairs, etc., and concludes that all woodpeckers have these charac- teristics. The countrywoman and the scientist both draw conclusions from the facts that have come within their observation. But the generalization reached by the biologist is more trustworthy than that reached by the countrywoman. The difference lies in the fact that he has observed an almost unlimited number of woodpeckers, while she has observed a limited number of country people and a limited number of city people. He has observed exactly and has counted as common only those at- tributes that are characteristic of all. She, on the other hand, has inaccurately attributed the broad term " sympathy " to her country friends because they have been ready to enter into her personal affairs; she has denied it to her city acquaintances because they treated it as a slight matter that her unexpected guest found the dinner table covered with a striped cloth rather than a spotted one, or that she had to wash her windows with unreasonable frequency, and so on. It is quite possible that she should find country 30 FINDING THE PROPOSITION people who could not share her interest in these matters, and city people who could. Moreover, her test is not a significant one. On closer acquaintance and tried by other measures Mrs. Steel might prove more truly sympathetic than Mrs. Field. In inductive reasoning one should be careful to study a large number of facts on which to base his conclusions and should make no claim that the facts do not justify. After reading The Snow Image, The Great Stone Face, Drowne's Wooden Image, Wake- field, one might draw the conclusion that Hawthorne's stories are light and pleasing; while a reader of The House of the Seven Gables, Ethan Brand, and The Scarlet Letter might pronounce the same author's works morbid. It is possible, too, that other readers pronouncing on the same books might find the sec- ond group not morbid and the first not light. Generalizations may be unreliable because they are supported by too few specific instances or because the supporting assertions are in themselves not true. I may assert that every person in the room has read David Copperfield, for Mary Smith has read it, James Moore has read it, Fred Harrison has read it, and Flora Mason has read it And Thomas Wilson may remind me that he is present and that he has not read the book. Or Fred Harrison may say, " You are mistaken; I could talk with you about Mr. Mi- cawber, Uriah Heep, Betsey Trotwood, and Peggotty DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 31 because my father often quotes them, but I have never read David Copperfield" In either case my generalization is disproved. There are various ways of becoming aware of an unknown specific truth. I may know an apple is sour because I have tasted it. I may know it through the experience of another ; or I may infer that it is sour from certain observed facts. I may infer that it is sour because I know from what tree it was picked, and past experience has led me to believe that the tree in question bears only sour apples. I may infer that the apple is sour because it is small and green and hard, and past experience has taught me that apples having that appearance are sour. Or I may infer that the apple is sour from the fact that the boy eating it is puckering up his face just as I have done when I have tasted sour apples. In making each of these inferences or deductions I have reached an unknown fact about a particular apple through familiarity with certain classes of apples and knowledge of the particular apple that enabled me to put it into the known class. I know concerning all apples that grow on a certain tree that they are sour. I know that this particular apple may be classed as the fruit of that tree. Then, since each member of a class must have the attributes of the class, this apple must have the attribute sourness that has been predicated of all the apples that grow on that tree. 32 FINDING THE PROPOSITION My reasoning simply expressed is, All apples that grow on that tree are sour. This apple grew on that tree. This apple is sour. If it is granted that all the eggs in the refrigerator are fresh, then those in the basket must be fresh, for the basket is in the refrigerator. If all the men on a ball team are known to be good players and I can show that any individual is a member of the team, I need no further argument to prove him a good player. This combination of assertions, the predication of an attribute to a class, the assertion that a particular object or objects belong to that class, and the assertion that the particular object has the attribute ascribed to the class, is called a syllogism. The three prop- ositions are called respectively the major premise, the minor premise, and the conclusion. Major premise. All members of the Symphony Orches- tra are skilled musicians. Minor premise. Mr. Forbes is a member of the Sym- phony Orchestra. Conclusion. Mr. Forbes is a skilled musician. In ordinary speech a syllogism is usually contracted into an enthymeme ; that is, only two of the three propositions are expressed, as Mr. Forbes is a skilled musician, for he is a member of the Symphony Orchestra ; or Mr. Forbes is a skilled musician, for all members of the Symphony Orchestra are skilled DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 33 musicians ; or Mr. Forbes is a member of the Sym- phony Orchestra, and all members of the Symphony Orchestra are skilled musicians. It will be noticed that the third proposition may be readily inferred from the other two. Only three terms are possible in a syllogism, and any two prop- ositions must contain all three of them, since the major premise has for its predicate the major term of the syllogism ; the minor premise has for its subject the minor term of the syllogism ; the conclusion has for its subject the minor term, for its predicate the major term ; and the middle term occurs as the subject of the major premise and the predicate of the minor premise. In the syllogism last considered the members of the Symphony Orchestra is the middle term ; skilled musi- cians is the major term, and Mr. Forbes is the minor term. The middle term is the known class; the minor term, the partly known individual member of that class ; the major term, the attribute that is known to belong to the class and hence to the individual member of the class. It is clear that in order that the truth of the con- clusion should inevitably follow from the premises the major premise must be universal; that is, every member of the class must be included. If there are any exceptions, if some members of the Orchestra are not skilled musicians, the fact that Mr. Forbes is a ARGUMENTATION 3 34 FINDING THE PROPOSITION member of the Orchestra will not prove him a skilled musician. All is the sign of the universal affirmative proposition. Other forms of syllogisms are possible, but confu- sion and difficulty will be avoided by following the form given. If the major premise is not an affirma- tive universal proposition, it should be made so. If we take the premises, No artist is indifferent to criti- cism, and Mr. Black is an artist, we can not take the predicate of the major premise unchanged as the predicate of the conclusion. But the major premise may be ob verted or changed to an affirmative statement without changing its meaning. No artist is indifferent to criticism, may be changed to, All artists are sensitive to criticism ; or it may be more accurately changed by using all where no was used in the subject and introducing the nega- tive into the major term, as, All artists are men who are not indifferent to criticism. With either of these affirmative, universal propositions for a major premise a normal syllogism may easily be constructed : All artists are sensitive to criticism. Mr. Black is an artist. Mr. Black is sensitive to criticism ; or, All artists are men who are not indifferent to criticism. Mr. Black is an artist. Mr. Black is a man who is not indifferent to criticism. DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 35 In an enthymeme the universal proposition is often disguised so that it is a little hard to recognize it. The statement, If Mr. Adams said it, it must be true, is easily expanded into a regular syllogism : All that Mr. Adams says is true. This is something that Mr. Adams said. This is true. Or, the statement that Mr. Davis is lucky, for a man must be either very clever or very lucky to play the game so successfully, implies the folio wing -syllogism : All men who play the game so successfully and are not clever are lucky. Mr. Davis is a man who plays the game successfully and is not clever. Mr. Davis is lucky. In syllogistic reasoning the premises must be true and the relation between them right or the conclusion is unreliable. The proposition you decide upon for an argument should be a conclusion that rests on a granted major proposition and a provable minor proposition. EXERCISES i. Come to class prepared to take part in an informal, general debate on the question : Should students be required to support in debate the side that they do not believe to be right? 1 1 The most excellent drill in argument is afforded by general in- formal class-room discussions of questions upon which all are fitted, 36 FINDING THE PROPOSITION 2. What was the fault in the reasoning of the peas in the fairy tale, that looked about them and concluded the world was green? 3. Read the following fable ; express in the form of a syllogism the donkey's reasoning, and tell why his conclusion was wrong. A donkey laden with salt in crossing a stream stumbled and fell into the water. Before he regained his feet most of the salt had dissolved and his burden was much lighter. The next time he traveled that way he was carrying a load of sponge. Remembering his former experience he pur- posely fell and let his burden lie for some minutes in the water. 4. During the debate on the Mills Bill, a prominent Republican member of Congress replied to a speech made by Mr. Morse of Boston against the high tariff on wool and the consequent high price of clothing, by saying in sub- stance : It is the old story of the man who gets a dollar a day for his wages, and having worked ten days goes to buy his suit of clothes. He expects to buy the suit for ten dol- without special preparation, to express an opinion, and upon which there will naturally be some diversity of opinion. It is in such debates as these in real life, in the home, in the faculty meeting, in the com- mittee room, the directors' meeting, that vital debate is done rather than in prepared speeches. While it is advisable for every student to come to class with a definite point to be proved and the evidence with which to prove it in mind, spontaneity should be cultivated. The quick and timely support or overthrow of a classmate's argument should be a student's aim quite as much as the offering of independent argu- ments. The prearranged speech has little value in training boys and girls to speak in comparison with the speech suggested by the remarks of another and made with reference to what has been said on the sub- ject during the discussion. DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 37 lars. But the robber manufacturers have been to Congress and have got one hundred per cent put upon the goods in the shape of a tariff, and he must pay twenty dollars. So he must go back to ten days more of sweat, ten days more of toil, to earn the ten dollars needed to pay for the clothes. Here, said the congressman [unwrapping a parcel and holding up a suit of clothes], is the entire suit, tariff and all, for just ten dollars. Tell what syllogism is implied by the enthymeme : This suit of clothes disproves the theory that the tariff on wool causes a man to pay $20 for a $10 suit of clothes, for this suit, tariff and all, cost $10. Which premise has been proved ? Why, then, is the argument not convincing ? 5. Tell what is wrong in the reasoning of the blind men in the following : "The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl : ' God bless me ! but the Elephant Is very like a wall.' " The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, ' Ho ! what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear ! ' " The Third approached the animal, And, happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, 38 FINDING THE PROPOSITION Thus boldly up and spake : ' 1 see,' quoth he, ' the Elephant Is very like a snake : ' "The Fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee ; ' What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain,' quoth he ; ' Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree ! ' " The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said, ' E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most : Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan ! ' " The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, ' I see,' quoth he, ' the Elephant Is very like a rope ! ' " SAXE : The Blind Men and the Elephant. 6. Read the following newspaper clipping and give the untenable major premise and the unprovable minor premise that are necessary to the conclusion, " then we have an instance of telepathy between a dog and a human being." LONDON, July 25. " Much public attention has been attracted by a remark- able dream story sent to the press by H. Rider Haggard. DECIDING ON THE PROPOSITION 39 He says that on July 10 he suffered a painful nightmare, and while still half conscious dreamed that his favorite retriever was dying, that he himself was close to it and that the dog was endeavoring to tell him the facts. The body of the retriever was found in the river three days afterward, and an investigation seems to prove that it was killed on July 10 by a train about three hours before Haggard's dream. " The only doubt about the facts, as to most of which Haggard produces full corroborative evidence, is as to the time, for, if the dog was killed later, the incident is reduced to a dream which turned out true, an experience by no means unusual. Mr. Haggard, however, has satisfied him- self as to the manner and time of death and seems con- vinced that the dog did, either at the moment of death or after it, succeed in telling his master what happened. If the communication was made at the moment of death, then we have an instance of telepathy between a dog and a human being without precedent, while, if it was made after death, Mr. Haggard suggests that some non-bodily but surviving part of life or the spirit of the dog reproduced those things in his mind. " The incident has already induced a flood of correspond- ence on the subject." 7. From the following terms construct syllogisms : Major term Minor term Middle term brave Richard warriors good students Fred West members of the football team true That Caesar is what Brutus says ambitious interesting Praeterita autobiographies of great men 40 FINDING THE PROPOSITION Major term Minor term Middle term stores that sell Wilson and Smith's department stores shoes store 8. Express in the form of universal affirmative proposi- tions : No college work is easy. None but the brave deserve the fair. Only just acts are kind. He jests at scars who never felt a wound. A man must be stupid or unkind who habitually hurts the feelings of others. 9. From the following enthymemes construct syllo- gisms : This orange is seedless, for it is a navel orange. The tree you speak of is an apple tree, for all the trees in my father's orchard are apple trees. She must be a good student, for only good students are given scholarships. All men are fallible, and the king is a man. 10. From each of the syllogisms you have constructed derive the two enthymemes that have not been furnished. STATING THE PROPOSITION IN clubs, debating societies, courts, legislative bodies, wherever formal arguing is done, it is cus- tomary to reduce the question in controversy to a statement. This is necessary since we seek by argu- ment to prove the truth. As a word or phrase asserts nothing, it can not be true or false ; the idea to be proved must therefore be expressed as a proposition. Ordinarily a proposition to be debated is en- grossed in a resolution, as : Resolved, That immigra- tion should be further restricted. This statement may serve for an argument intended to prove either side of the question. The statement is affirmative, and the one arguing for further restriction of immigration would be taking the affirmative side of the argument. One arguing against further restriction would be taking the negative. Had the statement been nega- tive, Resolved, That immigration should not be fur- ther restricted, the one who argued against further restriction would have the affirmative, and the one who argued for the restriction the negative. The negative form of statement is sometimes preferable. This is the case when your argument is to be in the nature of a defense, for the privilege 41 42 FINDING THE PROPOSITION of opening the discussion lies with the affirmative. It would seem gratuitous to begin a defense of a man or a measure that had not been assailed. If it were your purpose to justify General Harrison's advance on Tippecanoe, you should not state the resolution, Resolved, That General Harrison's advance on Tippe- canoe was justified, and take the affirmative, but rather give the proposition the negative form, Re- solved, That General Harrison's advance on Tippe- canoe was not justified, and take the negative. This implies that General Harrison's action has been called into question and that there is some occasion for your championing his cause. The student should remember that the affirmative or negative proposition does not commit him to either side of the argument. One can not tell, by seeing the proposition alone, which side of the argument a writer or speaker intends to take. If a student in- tends to argue against a measure, the nature of the argument he intends to make will determine whether the proposition should be affirmative or negative. If his argument is to be positive in character, if he is going to advance reasons why immigration should not be further restricted, the proposition should be negative in form ; if, on the other hand, his argument is to be negative in character, devoted to showing that the reasons advanced for the restriction are not adequate or sound, he does not dare to assume the STATING THE PROPOSITION 43 burden of proof that falls on the affirmative, but must give the proposition the affirmative form and take the negative. It is a simpler matter to argue the negative of the proposition, immigration should be further restricted, than to take the affirmative of immigration should not be further restricted. Though both necessitate opposition to further restriction, the first task ends with proving further restriction not desirable, the second is completed only when further restriction has been proved actually undesirable. Carelessness in phrasing the proposition is sure to lead one into difficulty in one way or another. Great care must be taken to make the proposition commensurate with the argument. That is, the state- ment should cover the entire argument and no more ; it should include the ultimate point to be argued and yet claim nothing that one does not intend to attempt to prove. The student who stated his question thus, Resolved, That the United States government should build the Nicaragua Canal, when he wished not to argue that the undertaking should be assumed by the United States or that the Nicaragua route was preferable to the Panama, but simply that a transisthmian canal would be a great benefit to the world, signified too much in his proposition. His statement would de- mand for its proof the heaviest work on the points the student intended to ignore. 44 FINDING THE PROPOSITION On the other hand, exactness demands that the proposition definitely express the limits of the ques- tion to be argued. The proposition, The college course should be shortened to three years, is, for example, too vague. The statement leaves one at sea as to whether the argument is intended to prove that the work now done in four years could be done in three ; or that too much is attempted by the col- leges, that their standards are too high, and that one year's work should be eliminated from the course ; or that the entrance standards are too low ; that the first year of college work properly belongs in the preparatory schools. It is evident that the state- ment of the proposition does not make clear the ultimate issue. Carelessness as to the content of a proposition frequently results in a student's setting himself an absurdly easy or an absurdly difficult task. Prove any benefit, and you have proved that, The Salvation Army has done some good ; you could scarcely prove that, No other organization could have accomplished so .much good as the Salvation Army has accom- plished. Emphasis as well as content must be kept in mind in stating the proposition. A student whose main purpose was to prove that Mars must be inhabited by thinking creatures expressed his proposition thus, Resolved, That Mars is inhabited by beings superior STATING THE PROPOSITION 45 to human beings. As no word that is without signifi- cance is supposed to be admitted to the proposition, this statement placing the emphasis on the relative worth of the inhabitants of the two planets was mis- leading. Further, the proposition must be clear. There must be no uncertainty as to its meaning or the meaning of its terms. Words should be used in their accepted sense. A girl who wishes to argue that geometry should not be required in the secondary schools should not be satisfied with the phrasing, Students should not be required to study mathematics. The word " students " evidently needs modification. Students in the elementary schools, students in ad- vanced technical and scientific schools, she would not intend to include in her argument, but so loose a statement of the question necessitates their consider- ation. It is equally important that the relationship between terms should be clear. Consider the propo- sition : Emerson is the most typical New England writer. Does the student who presents this propo- sition wish to contend that Emerson is less eccentric and has more traits in common with all New England writers than has any other one New England writer, or does he mean to show that Emerson more than any other New England writer expresses the spirit and genius of New England? The wording of the question should be so impartial 46 FINDING THE PROPOSITION and unprejudiced that it could serve as a basis for a negative or affirmative argument. The student who submitted the proposition, Resolved, That the im- pregnable fortifications at Port Arthur can not be taken by the Japanese, violated this canon. If we admit that the fortifications are impregnable, what is the use of arguing that they can or can not be taken ? The word "impregnable" foredooms the argument to a single outcome. Care should be taken to phrase the proposition in such a way as to insure unity of argument if possible. A compound proposition necessitates two nearly inde- pendent arguments. Domestic service is more bene- ficial than factory work, and Mary Blank should accept a position to do Mrs. Ball's housework rather than a position in a cotton factory, is a compound proposition and implies two virtually independent arguments, one on the general question, one on the specific question. As the purpose of the argument is to show what is best for Mary Blank, it is better not to consider the phases of the general question that do not pertain to her case, and to make the proposition entirely specific : Mary Blank should accept a position at Mrs. Ball's home, for general housework, rather than a situation in the village fac- tory. The simple assertion permits a less divided structure than that suggested by the compound proposition. STATING THE PROPOSITION 47 EXERCISES 1. If you intended to prove that Thackeray was not a cynic, should you state the question in a negative or an affirmative proposition, and why ? 2. Criticise the following assertions as propositions for argument : a. Professor Wagner's method of teaching German is defensible. b. The carrying of freight by rural electric cars is an industrial benefit, and a charter to carry freight ought to be granted to the company controlling the electric lines in Morgan County. c. Slavish obedience to rules is not conducive to inde- pendence of character. d. Travel will benefit a boy more than college. e. The best way to uplift the Indian is to educate him. /. Sensational newspaper articles do injury both to those about whom they are written and to those who read them, and they should be suppressed by law. 3. Comment on the difficulty of proving the following propositions, giving reasons for your judgment. Which proposition would, in your estimation, make the most satis- factory subject for an argument? Why? a. American writers have been influenced by English writers. b. All the works of American authors show the influence of some English author. c. Washington Irving's works show the influence of cer- tain English writers. d. The influence of the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers on 48 FINDING THE PROPOSITION Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall is a good example of the influence of English writers on the early writers of the United States. e. Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall shows the influ- ence of the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 4. What are the requirements of a good proposition for argument? 5. Bring to class a proposition on which you think you could write an argument of twenty pages. PROVING THE PROPOSITION ARGUM ENTATION 4 49 ORGANIZATION OF MATERIAL THE BRIEF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BRIEF HAVING decided upon his proposition, the student's task is to prove it. If he has taken a familiar subject, his problem is to select and arrange the evidence at his command in the way best suited to prove his prop- osition. Whether he contemplates giving a written or an oral argument, a brief is indispensable at this stage of the work. A brief is an outline or skeleton of an argument. It must be comprehensive enough to include the gen- eral plan of the argument. By the experienced brief-drawer the details of the plan may be presented with more or less elaborateness, but, because of the great value the brief has in training the student to organize his ideas, the brief of the beginner should be a full one. Lincoln doubtless found the following brief ade- quate in a suit against an agent who had retained $200 out of $400 of pension money due the widow of a Revolutionary soldier: " No contract. Not professional services. Unreason- able charge. Money retained by Deft not given to Pl'ff. 5' 52 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Revolutionary War. Describe Valley Forge privations. Pl'ff 's husband. Soldier leaving home for army. Skin Deft. Close." BAKER: Principles of Argumenta- tion. This brief, while sufficiently comprehensive, is too little elaborated to be helpful to an inexperienced writer. The following brief is a specimen of the kind of brief most helpful to the student : Question : Resolved, That the termite or white ant is an important agricultural agency in tropical Africa. BRIEF FOR THE AFFIRMATIVE INTRODUCTION I. The extensive earth works of the termite, or white ant, suggest the question, May not this insect have an important agricultural function in tropical Africa ? II. It is granted that earth loses its productive power unless the layers of soil are in some way mixed so that the subsoil is brought to the surface. III. It is granted that any agency that is necessary to and largely instrumental in the bringing of the subsoil to the surface is an important agricultural influence. IV. The question then is, Is the termite necessary to the bringing up of the subsoil in tropical Africa, and is it largely instrumental in the process ? IMPORTANCE OF THE BRIEF 53 PROOF The termite, or white ant, is an important agricul- tural agency in tropical Africa, for I. It is necessary to the transference of the layers of soil, for A. Other agencies are wanting, for i . There are no frosts to disintegrate the soil. B. The work can not be done by the earth- worm, for 1. Although the earthworm is a "natural skewer," I 1 . Yet, it can not penetrate the sun-baked soil of the tropics in the dry season. 2. Worms of all sorts are rare in the tropics even in wet weather, for a. Henry Drummond reports in Tropical Africa, page 1 30, that he never saw a single worm in Central Africa. II. It is instrumental in bringing the subsoil to the surface, for A. Its habits of life demand it, for I. Its mode of building its house demands it, for a. It builds subterranean houses. b. It must bring up the excavated earth. c. It builds mounds. d. It must bring the material for them from under the earth, for 54 PROVING THE PROPOSITION (i) T The termite never appears above ground, for (a) It is blind. () It has many enemies. 2. Its mode of procuring its food demands it, for a. It builds long earthen tunnels while in quest of food, for (1) Its quest often leads it from the ground to the tree tops, for (a) Its food is dead wood. (2) It never comes above ground without shelter. B. The soil thus brought up is spread over the surface of the earth, for 1. The tunnels and mounds are in time disintegrated by the tropical winds and rains. 2. The streams help to distribute and de- posit their dust. III. It is largely instrumental in bringing up the subsoil, for A. It brings up great quantities of earth, for i. Its mounds are large, for a. The mounds of the white ant are often thirty or forty feet in diam- eter and from ten to fifteen feet in height. IMPORTANCE OF THE BRIEF 55 b. " The brick houses of the mission- aries near Lake Nyassa have all been built from a single ants' nest, and the quarry from which the ma- terial has been derived forms a pit beside the settlement some dozen feet in depth." DRUMMOND. c. The ant-hills protect the hunters. 2. Its mounds are numerous, for a. " They look like cemeteries from a distance." b. " The smaller hills occur in myriads along the shores of Lake Tan- ganyika." 3. Its mounds extend over a large territory, for a. They are said to abound over the whole interior of Africa. 4. Its tunnels often nearly cover the trunks and branches of trees. 5. There are whole forests of trees covered with earthen tubes. CONCLUSION Since, then, the white ant in building its home and sheltering tunnels brings to the surface an enormous amount of subsoil that would be brought up in no other way, and deposits it in such shape that it is 56 PROVING THE PROPOSITION eventually distributed by wind and rain and streams over the surface of a large part of Central Africa, it may be said to be an important agricultural agency in that region. 1 The untrained thinker finds it more difficult to make a brief or outline and use it than to write a paper without one. You remember that before David went out against Goliath he tried on the armor of Saul, but found that it cumbered him, and so went forth to slay the giant in his own way with his shep- herd's sling. To the beginner the brief is as Saul's armor was to the boy David, a hindrance ; he can do a better piece of work without it. But his object is not to do a specific piece of work well ; it is to gain power to do future work well; and just as David had to learn to wear the armor of Saul and exchange the shepherd's method for the warrior's in order to lead the hosts of Israel to repeated victories, so the student must learn to make the scholar's method help rather than hinder him, if he is to do strong, effective work in the future. By practice in brief-drawing one gains the power to plan work with certainty and facility ; one comes to see ideas in their various possible relations and quickly to adjust them rightly and effectively. Re- adjustment is easily possible in the brief. To change 1 The material for this brief is taken from Henry Drummond's Tropical Africa, Chapter VI. IMPORTANCE OF THE BRIEF 57 the amplified, completed work without evidence of patching is difficult. The student who writes without a brief frequently presents work in which he himself perceives flaws in the organization of material, be- cause the labor of alteration requires more time than he can give it. Whereas, had he by means of a brief carefully projected his work, he would have dis- covered the difficulty in time to remedy it with little effort or time. When he has the unamplified, bare framework before him, the student can better judge of the actual strength of his argument than he can when the idea is garnished with fair words and persuasively pre- sented in the finished work. He sees more justly where the evidence by which he would establish the truth of a proposition is strong and where it is weak. THE INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL ISSUES In argument we take for granted an audience. It is best to assume a hearer or reader who holds views opposed to those we advocate, as, if we work with the possibility of hostile criticism in mind, we shall be more careful to build up an irrefragable argument than if we work believing that whatever we say will find easy acceptance. Some initial agreements are necessary before there can be any intelligent dis- agreement. Opponents must agree on the interpre- 58 PROVING THE PROPOSITION tation of the question they must agree as to what point or points must be proved in order to prove the truth or the falsity of a proposition. This it is the business of the introduction to discover. Usually there are within the general issue under discussion many particular or special issues. It is necessary to find out whether or no there are among these particular issues any that do not need argu- ment, that both sides will admit as true. Any such are. immaterial to the discussion. It is the chief function of the introduction to eliminate from the discussion immaterial issues and to discover the ma- terial issues. , Just what the material issues in a controversy are will depend upon circumstances. Let us take a very simple example : The proposition is, Miss Blank should have a coat made in x style. This may be resolved into two particular or special issues, Should Miss Blank have a new coat, and, if so, should it be made in x style ? Before we begin to argue we should know whether or not there is any disagree- ment as to the first of these particular issues. If both sides agree that she should have a new coat, it would obviously be a waste of time to argue that she should. That particular issue should be eliminated from the discussion, and the argument should be directed to the establishment or the overthrow of the second issue, The coat should be made in x style. INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 59 That in turn may be resolved into particular issues ; as, Will a garment made in x style be aesthetically satisfactory ? Will it be economically satisfactory ? It is possible that both of these issues may call for debate. It is possible that either one may be elimi- nated as immaterial. Both sides might agree that x style was altogether satisfactory in so far as produc- ing a pleasing appearance was concerned ; or both sides might agree that the question of economy was not for Miss Blank a serious consideration. If the first issue were discarded, the only issue to be con- sidered would be, Would a coat made in x style be economical for Miss Blank ? if the second were re- jected as immaterial, the remaining special issue would be, Would a coat made in x style be aestheti- cally satisfactory ? On further analysis of either of these issues further agreement might be discovered. The question having been narrowed to the considera- tion of the aesthetic effect, that issue might disclose the two special issues, Would the garment in itself be beautiful, and would it be suitable for Miss Blank ? and both might agree that the style in itself was good ; that agreement would leave as the single ma- terial issue for discussion the question whether or not the style would be becoming to Miss Blank. Again, let us suppose that Dr. A brings the charge that Mr. B owes him $50 for professional services. Mr. B may deny the charge, admitting that he did 60 PROVING THE PROPOSITION not pay the money, but maintaining that the service was not rendered. The point of difference then is, Was the service rendered ? Or Mr. B may admit that the service was rendered and deny that the money was not paid, offering as evidence a canceled bank check for that amount paid to Dr. A on the date in question. The point in disagreement then becomes, Was the check in payment for this particular service ? Mr. B may admit the service, and admit that he has not paid the bill, but claim that there was a previous contract that there was to be no payment in case the operation was not successful. The material issues, then, are, Was there such a contract, and, if so, was the operation successful ? We are not ready for argument until the question has been analyzed to such an extent that we have reached the point of difference, that is, until all immaterial issues have been cast aside and the particular issue or issues upon which the difference of opinion rests, discovered. It must be remembered that many issues that are ruled out as immaterial to the discussion are immate- rial only because both sides agree upon them. This makes it important that one should not assume as immaterial issues, issues that would not be conceded as immaterial by one's opponents. The most elaborate argument that x style will be becoming to Miss Blank will count for nothing if your opponent attacks the INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 6l fundamental proposition, Miss Blank should have a new coat, and shows that she should not have one made in x style or any style. On the other hand, it is unwise to waste time and strength in proving what your opponent will grant. Your strength must be centered on the material issues. One who had served with Washington in the legis- lature of Virginia and with Franklin in Congress said : " I never heard either of them speak ten min- utes at a time nor to any point but the main point, which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulder to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves." It was Lincoln's habit in court to begin by " giving away his case," as it seemed to an unseasoned op- ponent, who with delight heard the older lawyer grant to him one point after another until they came to the material issues on which the question hinged. There Lincoln focused his strength. A case of this sort, now famous, was his defense of the son of a woman who had befriended him, against a charge of murder. He conceded to the opposing lawyers many points that seemed to the spectators hope- lessly to damage his client's case ; but the time when the murder was claimed to have been committed and in which it must have been committed if committed by his client, the place where the deed was done, and the position of the alleged eyewitness were points 62 PROVING THE PROPOSITION that he emphasized. Further, he emphasized the witness's claim that the moon was shining brightly and the fact that without moonlight he could not have seen the act The lawyer then took from his pocket an almanac and showed the judge and the jury that the moon was not shining at the time agreed upon for the murder. One of the most disconcerting things that can hap- pen to a debating team is to come before an audience prepared to make a strong argument for a particular issue, and find their opponents ready to grant them that issue and show that the question turns on an- other issue. The success of the argument must depend largely upon the success of the introduction, upon the estab- lishment of an acceptable basis of agreement as to just what must be proved to prove the proposition in question. EXERCISES i. In the following introductions to briefs what issues are eliminated from discussion as immaterial ? What issues are recognized as material issues ? a. Resolved, That prisons should be made places for the reform instead of the punishment of criminals. I. It is agreed, that A. The entire penal system exists for the protection of society. B. The state's duty to its law-abiding citizens is to be considered before its duty to lawbreakers. INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 63 II. The question then becomes, Can the state benefit the criminal without injury to society ? b. Resolved, That the continuance of the George Junior Republic is justifiable. 1. All agree, that A. The continuance of an institution may be justified by its aim, its methods, its results. B. The aim of the George Junior Republic is good. C. The results are not yet apparent. II. The question then becomes, Are the methods of the George Junior Republic calculated to accomplish its aims ? 2. Study the following resolutions and conditions, and from the material given construct introductions to briefs : a. Resolved, That Mary Jones shall go to college. Mary Jones is the only daughter of a widow. Mary is an unusually capable, clear-headed, energetic girl about nineteen years old. She has graduated from the village high school with distinction and is ambitious to have a college education and make a career for herself. She is not selfish, however, but is devoted to her mother, and wants to do what will make her happy. Mrs. Jones is about fifty-five years old. She has suffi- cient means to keep herself and her daughter comfortably. Mary is her pride and joy, and she thinks she would be supremely happy if Mary would stay at home and help her to enjoy the rest of her life, which she frequently says will not be long. What is the wish of both ? What is the point of difference ? b. Resolved, That it would be better for Sally Brown to do general housework in the home of Mrs. Morris than to accept a situation in a jewelry factory. 64 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Sally Brown is a sensible, intelligent girl ; she is an orphan, uneducated and without means of support. She has a good deal of self-respect and a strong desire for self- improvement. She has an opportunity to work in a large jewelry factory, where some four hundred young men and women are employed, for seven dollars a week. She can get a comfortable room and board for four dollars a week. She can also get a position to do general housework, at three dollars a week with good board and room, in the home of a college professor whose wife is a considerate, cultivated woman and has taken an interest in Sally. The girl has not had special training for either situation, but is confident that she could succeed in either. c. Resolved, That The Star and The Record should con- solidate. The Record is an old, conservative paper with good stand- ing, circulation, and advertising list, and an able editor. The Star is a new, progressive paper, without a reputation for reliability ; its editorials are light, its advertising rate low. The capital invested in The Record is $20,000. The capital invested in The Star is $10,000. For years The Record has paid an average dividend of seven per cent on the money invested. The Star has not averaged more than one per cent. They are the only Republican papers in town. Some families take both papers, others take The Star or The Record. It has been proposed that the companies consoli- date and publish but one paper. (Considering the question as one of finance, the propri- etors of one paper will favor the consolidation ; the pro- prietors of the other will have to be convinced that the combination will be to their interest. Figures are given showing that the combination must result in a profit large INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 65 enough to pay more than seven per cent on the combined capital of the two papers. Give the issue exactly.) THE TEST OF A GOOD INTRODUCTION TO A BRIEF As has been shown, we may consider the proposi- tion to be proved as the conclusion of a syllogism. The truth of the conclusion of a syllogism depends on the truth of the two premises that logically sup- port it. If they are both true, the conclusion must inevitably be true. Together the premises form a sufficient reason for the truth of the conclusion. Take the syllogism : All men who care more for the well-being of others than for their own comfort and pleasure are generous. Mr. Hale is a man who cares more for the well-being of others than for his own comfort and pleasure. Mr. Hale is generous. How do we know that Mr. Hale is a generous man ? What is the test of generosity ? Mr. Hale is generous because any one who cares more for the well-being of others than for his own comfort and pleasure is generous, and Mr. Hale is a man who cares more for the well-being of others than for his own comfort and pleasure. If the universal statement is admitted to be true, if caring more for the well- being of others than for one's own comfort and pleas- ure is the test of generosity, then, if Mr. Hale is proved to have this characteristic, he will be proved to be generous. ARGUMENTATION 5 66 PROVING THE PROPOSITION The introduction to a brief for an argument whose purpose was to prove the generosity of Mr. Hale might be something like this : I. Mr. Hale's refusal to contribute toward the building of the new library raises a question as to his generosity. II. All agree, that A. A man may be generous without giving money to every worthy enterprise. B. All men who care more for the well-being of others than for their own comfort and pleasure are generous. III. The question then resolves itself into this, Is Mr. Hale a man who cares more for the well-being of others than for his own comfort and pleasure? It will be noticed that the material issue furnishes the middle term. As soon as we have reached that in the introduction to a brief we have the three terms for a syllogism, since we start with the conclusion in which the minor and the major terms occur. In the normal syllogism, it will have been noticed, the terms are arranged as follows : Major premise : middle term, major term. Minor premise : minor term, middle term. Conclusion : minor term, major term. If the terms in the proposition or conclusion are not arranged in the right order, minor term, then major, it is necessary to put the conclusion into logi- INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 67 cal form before we can work back from it to the premises and complete the syllogism. If the proposi- tion is, The negro should be given social recognition according to his individual merit, it is conceivable that different problems might be suggested by this prop- osition. From it the following syllogism might be evolved : All persons who deserve opportunity for the highest development should receive social recognition according to individual merit. The negro is a person who deserves opportunity for the highest development. The negro should receive social recognition according to his individual merit. Or, Whatever is necessary to the negro's highest develop- ment is the negro's due. Social recognition of the individual according to his merit is necessary to the negro's highest development. Social recognition of the individual according to his merit is the negro's due. The minor and major terms in this proposition are rightly arranged for the conclusion of the first syllo- gism; their order must be changed if the second syllogism is the one desired. Study of these syllogisms will show that, in each, the major premise of the one syllogism contains the idea of the minor premise of the other. If, then, both premises must be proved in order to prove the conclusion, it would be immaterial 68 PROVING THE PROPOSITION which syllogism were taken to epitomize the argu- ment. But a comparison of the introduction and the syllogism given at the beginning of this chapter will show that the major premise expresses something agreed upon by both sides, and that the minor prop- osition expresses the point or points that must be proved by evidence. If, then, the first of the two syllogisms just given is taken, the argument will be limited to proving that the negro is a person deserv- ing opportunity for the highest development If the second is taken, the question for argument is simply, whether or not social recognition of the negro accord- ing to individual merit is essential to the highest development of the negro. If the writer wishes to consider both questions in his argument, he will reject both of. these limited syllogisms and take a more comprehensive one : Whatever is essential to the negro's highest develop- ment and whatever the white man owes the negro, should be given without consideration of the result to the white man. Social recognition according to individual merit is some- thing essential to the negro's highest development and something the white man owes the negro. Social recognition of the negro according to individual merit is something that should be given the negro without consideration of the result to the white man. The major premise thus often expresses a belief that may be regarded by some as debatable, but INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 69 always one that must be accepted as unquestionable by those arguing from it. If the major premise, which corresponds to the fundamental agreements determined upon by the introduction and eliminated from the contention, is successfully assailed, no mat- ter how firmly one establishes the minor premise, the conclusion is not proved. After finishing his introduction the student should formulate his argument as a syllogism. If the intro- duction has discovered the middle term for this syllogism, established the major premise, and ex- pressed the minor premise, it has prepared the way for the argument and is a good introduction. It is the business of the introduction to discover the mid- dle term and establish the major premise. It is the business of the argument proper to prove by evidence that the minor premise is true or false. EXERCISES 1. Write syllogisms using the material furnished by the introductions to briefs given in the first of the exercises beginning on page 62. 2. Write syllogisms testing the introductions you wrote from the material for introductions furnished on pages 63 and 64. 3. Write syllogisms using the material furnished by the following introductions : a Resolved, That football is a brutal sport. I. All agree, that 70 PROVING THE PROPOSITION A. All games that depend for success on physical strength rather than on skill are brutal. II. The question is, Does success in football depend on physical force rather than skill? b. Resolved, That the present method of celebrating the Fourth of July should be changed. I. All agree, that A. The Fourth of July is celebrated in order to foster patriotism and loyalty to government. B. The purpose of government is to protect the personal and property rights of the individual. II. The question then becomes, Does the present method of celebrating the Fourth of July foster respect for the protection of the personal and property rights of the individual? 4. From the following propositions find the middle term for a possible syllogism and write out an introduction and a syllogism suggested by each. (For suggestions as to how to obtain a universal affirmative major premise see page 34.) Athletic contests between schools should be encouraged. Fraternities should not be permitted in x schools. Mr. N should locate his glass factory at (student may supply name of place) . Old Mr. and Mrs. Jackson should not sell their farm and move to the city. Sam Bright should not leave school to take a clerkship in his father's store. Public art galleries should be open on Sunday. Dr. Mason should sell his horses and buy an automobile. 5. Read carefully the following introductions to speeches and from them write introductions to briefs : INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 71 A. " Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tend- ing, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initi- ated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has con- stantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself can not stand.' I believe this govern- ment can not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike law- ful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? " LINCOLN : Springfield Address. B. " . . . In his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New York Times, Senator Douglas said : " ' Our fathers when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.' " I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this dis- course. I shall adopt it because it furnishes a precise and agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry : What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned? 72 PROVING THE PROPOSITION "What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be, ' The Constitution of the United States." That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789. " Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution ? I suppose the 'thirty-nine' who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly repre- sented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated. " I take these thirty-nine, for the present, as being ' our fathers who framed the government under which we live.' What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood 'just as well, and even better, than we do now' ? " It is this : Does the proper division of local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Terri- tories ? " Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue ; and this issue this question is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood 'better than we.' Let us now inquire whether the ' thirty-nine ' or any of them ever acted upon this question ; and if they did, how they acted upon it how they expressed that better under- standing." LINCOLN : Address at Cooper Institute. C. . . . " What I feared was, not the opposition of those who are averse to all reform, but the disunion of reformers. INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 73 I knew that, during three months, every reformer had been employed in conjecturing what the plan of the Government would be. I knew that every reformer had imagined in his own mind a scheme differing, doubtless, in some points from that which my noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, has developed. I felt, therefore, great apprehension that one person would be dissatisfied with one part of the bill, that another person would be dissatisfied with another part, and that thus our whole strength would be wasted in internal dissensions. That apprehension is now at an end. I have seen with delight the perfect concord which prevails among all who deserve the name of reformers in this House ; and I trust that I may consider it as an omen of the concord which will prevail among reformers throughout the country. I will not, sir, at present express any opinion as to the details of the bill; but, having during the last twenty- four hours given the most diligent consideration to its general principles, I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a wise, noble, and comprehensive measure, skillfully framed for the healing of great distempers, for the securing at once of the public liberties and of the public repose, and for the recon- ciling and knitting together of all the orders of the State. " The honorable baronet who has just sat down has told us that the ministers have attempted to unite two inconsistent principles in one abortive measure. Those were his very words. He thinks, if I understand him rightly, that we ought either to leave the representative system such as it is, or to make it perfectly symmetrical. I think, sir, that the ministers would have acted unwisely if they had taken either course. Their principle is plain, rational, and consistent. It is this, to admit the middle class to a large and direct share in the representation, without any violent shock to the institutions 74 PROVING THE PROPOSITION of our country. ... I praise the ministers for not attempt- ing, at the present time, to make the representation uniform. I praise them for not effacing the old distinction between the towns and the counties, and for not assigning members to districts, according to the American practice, by the Rule of Three. The Government has, in my opinion, done all that was necessary for the removal of a great practical evil and no more than was necessary." MACAULAY : On the Reform Bill; House of Commons, March 2, 1831. ADDED REQUIREMENTS FOR A GOOD INTRODUCTION Very often the nature of the question under discus- sion makes the narrowing of the question to the material issues a somewhat more complicated pro- ceeding than it has thus far appeared. Additional steps are found to be helpful. A clear statement of the occasion for the contention or the cause of the difference of opinion frequently helps to an understanding of just what the points at issue are. If the question is, Resolved, That I should subscribe for the Ladies' Home Journal instead of the Atlantic Monthly for Mary Blank next year, such an introductory sentence, as, " The fact that the leaves in Mary Blank's Atlantic are never cut makes me wonder whether it is worth while to renew her subscription next year," shows at once that the argument is not concerned with the absolute excel- lence of either periodical, but with the suitability of each to Mary Blank, INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 75 The following sentences in like manner indicate the trend of the argument to come : My income having been reduced one third by the failure of the People's Bank, I have been considering giving up my city home and taking a house in the suburbs. The devastating forest fires we have had recently, again bring up the question, Is reasonable effort made to enforce the laws protecting the forests of this state? The frequent assertion of college graduates that they learned more from their fellow-students while in college than from their professors does not seem to me so much to imply that they have learned little from their professors as that they have learned much from their classmates, and makes me wonder if the tutorial system is so desirable as the class method of instruction. It is sometimes the case that, in spite of the utmost care in stating the proposition, terms are used that demand explanation. Take, for example, the ques- tion, Resolved, That the continuance of The George Junior Republic is justifiable. For the average audience, the term The George Junior Republic would require a brief explanation which should include for such an introduction as that given on page 63 a specific statement of the aims of The George Junior Republic. The definition of the term "justifiable ".is directly involved in the narrowing of the question and ought by this time to be clearly understood. Still, it may be well to add a word of warning regarding a definition which must serve as a middle term in 76 PROVING THE PROPOSITION the syllogism, must furnish the criterion by which to judge. In such definitions synonyms must be avoided. Synonyms do help to make clear the mean- ing of unfamiliar words. But they do not help in the least to bring us nearer to argument. The student who says, "Justifiable will be used in this argument to mean defensible, warrantable," is no better off than before he said it. We are as much in need of a test of what is defensible, warrantable as we were of what was justifiable. If, however, he says, " An act may be said to be jiistifiable when its results show it to have benefited those affected by it," he has given us a gauge by which to measure the justifiability of an institution's continuance. While an introduction to a brief may with perfect propriety contain, in addition to the statement of what issues are immaterial and what issues are material to the discussion, the statement of the origin of the question and an explanation of terms, care must be taken not to burden the introduction with unneces- sary explanation. Such explanations as are essential should be given with as much brevity as is consonant with clearness. The definition of perfectly perspicuous terms is one form of unnecessary explanation. Akin to this fault of giving unneeded definitions is the one just considered, that of giving definitions that do not accomplish anything, the defining by synonyms. But the most serious danger of overloading the INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 77 introduction lies in the statement of the material and the immaterial issues. Most students wish to tell why each point agreed upon is granted, or, in other words, to give the line of argument by which the opponents reached the agreement from which they start to go back of the beginning. To do that is to fill the introduction with antecedent material no more relevant to the argument in hand than is the speed of the racers on their way to the race course to those who wait to see the race itself. There should be no argument in the introduction. What is given there is granted by both sides. It frequently happens that in great speeches there is just such argument in the introduction as students have been warned here not to use. This exists, however, as a conscious digres- sion from the argument in hand, made because the speaker realizes that his audience, through forgetful- ness or ignorance, is without the antecedent material necessary for intelligent acceptance of the basis of the argument. But all this is, for the person pre- pared to listen to the argument, as dispensable as would be a recital of the rules of the game at a foot- ball contest. Restrictions of this sort are made for the purpose of strengthening the argument, and if a case occurs where the argument would be weaker for observing the rule, the rule should be sacrificed, not the argument. If the student, after careful consideration, feels that a 78 PROVING THE PROPOSITION few words of explanation would make clear an agree- ment that would be otherwise questioned, he should, of course, give them. It is best in such cases to summarize the reasons briefly and then give the con- elusions, as : The inconvenience and delay to those who transact busi- ness there and the frequent accidents, make it plain that something must be done to relieve the congestion on Wash- ington Street. The impossibility of diverting traffic from Washington Street and the impracticability of widening the street con- vince all that relief must be sought by an overhead or under- ground railroad system, etc. 1 So succinct a re"sum6 of the grounds for agreement is not objectionable, if they are not perfectly obvious, but an elaborate presentation of evidence is out of place in the introduction. If the issues need argument, they are material issues and should be admitted to the argument proper. Full statements rather than phrases should always be given in the introduction to the brief as well as in the brief proper. The phrase is unsatisfactory; it does not tell enough. Compare the following intro- ductions : A I. The origin of the question : A. September entrance examinations. 1 Suggested by Brief V in Baker's Principles of Argumentation. INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 79 II. Definition of terms : A. Henry Mason. B. Mr. Linn's camp. III. Immaterial issues : A. Henry's object. B. Excellent tutors at his father's summer home. C. Standing of Mr. Linn's Camp. D. Henry's previous failures to remove con- ditions. E. Previous failures due to want of steady work. IV. Material issue : A. Place most conducive to steady work. B I. The origin of the question : A. The fact that Henry Mason has to take the college entrance examinations in Septem- ber, has brought up the question, Would it be advisable for him to spend his summer vacation in Mr. Linn's camp for boys ? II. Definition of terms : A. Henry Mason is already twenty years of age; he lives in Boston and has had good educational opportunities, but he is not inclined to be studious. 80 PROVING THE PROPOSITION B. Mr. Linn's camp for boys is a well-organized out-of-doors school in the White Moun- tains that has been established for the purpose of fitting boys to pass college entrance examinations. III. Immaterial issues : A. Henry Mason and his parents agree that Henry's summer should be spent in the way best suited to insure his passing the examinations. B. Good Harvard tutors can be had at Mr. Mason's summer home. C. Mr. Linn's camp has been highly successful, D. Henry has several times failed to pass off conditions in secondary school work which he has studied during the summer at his father's home. E. These failures were due not to stupidity, but to want of steady application to study. IV. Material issue : A. While Mr. Mason holds that a private tutor would be better for his son than a school made up of boys who probably care more for fun than books, Henry contends that the conditions at the camp are more favorable to steady work than those at his father's summer cottage. Until one has read B, A seems quite blind and INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 8 1 unintelligible. The student's brief must be intelli- gible to others as well as to himself. EXERCISES 1. Supply a suitable origin of the question for each of the introductions to briefs given in the Exercises on pages 62, 63, 69, 70. 2. Criticise the following introductions to briefs, and re- write : a. Resolved, That the regular school holiday should be changed from Saturday to Monday. I. Origin of the question : A. The pupils' habit of coming to class Monday with unprepared lessons has given rise to the question, Should the regular school holiday be changed from Saturday to Monday? II. Definition of terms : A. The regular school holiday is the day in each week on which, in addition to Sunday, children are excused from attending school. B. Saturday is the seventh day in the week. C. Monday is the second day in the week. III. Immaterial issues : It is agreed, that A. If the change were made there would not be, on the day after the weekly recess, so many students unprepared for class work, for i. The experiment has been made and has proved a success in this particular, for a. It was tried in x and the work of the stu- dents on Tuesday morning was much better than Monday morning work had been. ARGUMENTATION 6 82 PROVING THE PROPOSITION b. In y the work was said to be better pre- pared for Tuesday morning than for any morning in the week. f. In z high school the principal reported the change was almost equivalent to a day added to the schedule. 2. It is natural that it should be better, for a. Children frequently are not allowed to study on Sunday. b. Children forget before Monday what they have studied Friday evening or Saturday. c. Children are tempted to put off the prepa- ration of a lesson which they do not have to recite till the day after to-morrow. d. There is not so much going on on Monday to divert children from their study. B. The chief purpose of the weekly holiday is recrea- tion, for 1. Rest and pleasure have been found essential to the right development of children. 2. Work suffers unless a child has sufficient recrea- tion. IV. Material issue : The question, then, is, A. Would the proposed change seriously interfere with the recreation of the pupils? b. Resolved, That Ernest Thompson Seton's animal stories cultivate in boys the right attitude towards ani- mals. I. Origin of the question : A. My nephews' interest in the animal stories of Ernest Thompson Seton. II. Definition of terms : INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIEF 83 A. Boys between nine and fifteen. B. Right attitude based on right understanding of animals. III. Admitted facts : A. Purpose of author to rouse reader's interest in animals and sympathy for them. B. Reader's interest in story aroused. C. Reader's sympathy for hero of story aroused. IV. Debatable issues : A. Writer's method conducive to cultivation of right understanding of actual animals? f. Resolved, That modern illustrative methods have not contributed largely to real education. I. Origin of the question : A. The saying that our modern cheap illustrative process has provided a "royal road" to learning has raised the question, Has the omnipresent picture contributed to real edu- cation ? II. Definition of terras : A. By real education is meant genuine cultivation. III. Immaterial issues : A. The question is not, Are pictures better and more numerous ? B. The question is not, Have not pictures made it possible to see and understand much that we could not now understand without great effort without them? IV. Material issues : A. The question is, Has not the omnipresent picture educated the eye at the expense of the other senses? 84 PROVING THE PROPOSITION B. Has it not made the mind too dependent upon the eye for its images? C. Does it not stultify rather than stimulate intellec- tual activity ? 3. Look over the addresses of distinguished orators till you find an introduction that seems to you strong and com- plete. Make a brief of it and bring it to class. 4. Bring to class an introduction for a brief on the ques- tion already submitted to instructor. (See page 48.) THE PROOF THE CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE The business of the brief proper is to build up an irrefragable argument, to prove all that remains to be proved after the introduction is completed. The introduction is important to the argument, since it establishes the major premise on which the truth of the conclusion partly rests. But that premise is estab- lished by consent and not by argument. The intro- duction finished, the making apparent the truth of the proposition depends entirely on the proof of the minor premise, which must be proved by argument. If the question is in a field in which the writer is not thoroughly informed, research for the purpose of amassing evidence is a necessary preliminary to draw- ing up a brief ; but if the student is working, as at this stage he should be, with familiar material and has at hand most of the evidence he will need, he THE PROOF 85 may proceed, without reference to the chapter on research, to organize his evidence into a brief. One may have at command a mass of evidence, direct and indirect, by which to prove a proposition, and yet not succeed in making a convincing argu- ment. The evidence must be sifted and organized into a unified, coherent structure before it becomes effective. As a mob in which there is excellent ma- terial for an army, is comparatively ineffective be- cause in it the potential brigadier is not distinguished from the major, the major from the captain, the cap- tain from the private ; just so an amorphous mass of evidence has little force because what ought to be leading propositions and what ought to be subordi- nate propositions are confused as equals. The first task of organization is to sort the evi- dence and arrange it according to its rank or depend- ence. The introduction has given us a start here. The general proposition derived from the resolution under discussion is, as it were, commander in chief ; those issues designated in the introduction as material issues give the propositions that are its immediate subordinates ; they in turn are supported by other propositions, which must often themselves be sup- ported; and so on. One of the most frequent and serious faults of those inexperienced in drawing briefs is the failure to distinguish between coordinate and subordinate 86 PROVING THE PROPOSITION propositions. The beginner jots down as coordi- nate propositions, all the reasons, near and remote, for believing a proposition to be true that occur to him, and does not see that some of these are de- pendent on others. Take, for example, the proposition, Corporal pun- ishment is an objectionable mode of punishing children. Reasons for the truth of this proposi- tion may present themselves to the mind helter- skelter : A. Corporal punishment causes physical injury and unnecessary suffering. B. Whipping rouses resentment. C. Severe corporal punishment is often followed by hours or days of languor and sickness. D. Blows received from angry disciplinarians often result in permanent injuries. E. Children's conduct is often worse after whip- ping than before. F. Children taken from a disciplinarian who whips and placed under one whose methods are different have shown marked improvement G. Whipping does not help the child to distinguish between right and wrong. H. Corporal punishment does not accomplish its purpose. /. It does not develop character. J. Corporal punishment makes the culprit keep THE PROOF 8; from wrongdoing for fear of pain rather than from a desire to do what is right. K. Children have been made lame by corporal punishment. L. Children have been made deaf by corporal punishment. M. Corporal punishment makes children cowardly. N. Corporal punishment makes children tell false- hoods to avoid pain. The introduction to the brief will help to bring order out of this chaos. It might be as follows : I. Definition of terms : A. Corporal punishment as used here includes slapping, whipping, or striking. II. Immaterial issues : All agree, that A. The purpose of punishing children is to make them better. B. Punishment should not be of such a nature as to injure the child physically or give unnecessary pain. C. Any form of punishment that inflicts physical pain and injury and is morally ineffective is an objectionable form of punishment. III. Material issues : The question is, A. Is corporal punishment, as here defined,phys- ically injurious and morally ineffective? The two propositions that include all ideas that come under the chief proposition are evidently : 88 PROVING THE PROPOSITION I. Corporal punishment is physically injurious. II. Corporal punishment is morally ineffective. If we look over the propositions we have made, we find that I means about the same as A and that it includes under it C, D, K, and L. We find that II expresses the idea expressed by propositions H and /, and that the remaining propositions are all in some way subordinate to it. Returning to I and examining C, D, K, and L, we find that they are not coordinate. C seems more coordinate with K and L than with D, but does not belong under D. It is easy to supply a proposition that is coordinate with D of which C will be proof. The first section of the brief will then be as follows : Corporal punishment is an objectionable mode of punishment for children, for I. It is physically injurious, for A. Its temporary effects are often evil, for i. Children have been made sick and disabled by severe whipping and consequent cry- ing. B. Its permanent effects are often evil, for 1. Children have been made lame by corporal punishment. 1 2. Children have been made deaf by corporal punishment. 1 1 In a complete brief, specific cases should be cited to support this proposition. THE PROOF 89 There are more propositions to be grouped under II, and their arrangement will be more difficult. We find, however, after a little thought that three general propositions will cover all the propositions given : II. Corporal punishment is morally ineffective, for A. It does not help the child to know the right. B. It does not help the child to desire to do rightly. C. It does not help the child to do rightly. By a process similar to that already suggested, the propositions belonging under A, B, and C may be selected and supplied. II. It is morally ineffective, for A. It does not help the child to know what is right, for 1. It does not make evident the relation between the offence and the punish- ment. 2. It gives the child the idea that the physically weak must submit to the physically strong. B. It does not help the child to desire to do rightly, for I. It does not lead him to repent of his wrongdoing, for a. It makes him more conscious of being wronged than of having done wrong. 90 PROVING THE PROPOSITION b. It leads him to wish to avoid pain rather than to wish to do what is right. 2. It leads him to wish to do wrong, for a. It destroys his love and respect for those in authority over him. b. It makes many children sullen and resentful. C. It does not help the child to do rightly, for 1. It does not prevent the repetition of the same offence, for a. Children often repeat in defiance the offence for which they have been punished. b. Children become brutalized and de- liberately commit an offence for which they know the penalty will be a whip- ping. 2. It does not prevent the child's offending in other ways, for a. It leads him to lie to avoid pain. b. It leads him to concealment. c. It leads him to acts of vengeance. Only complete simple propositions are used in the brief. All propositions in the brief are directly or indirectly related to the leading proposition ; the relationship is one that can be signified by the con- junction "for." The order throughout is, conclusion, THE PROOF 91 then evidence. To get this firmly fixed in mind at the start will save the student much perplexity. It is really the order to which we are all accustomed. The teacher in the class room calls for your con- clusion, then your evidence : you must tell what case a Latin noun is in and then give the reason that has led to your conclusion ; you must name the chemical compound and then tell the signs ; give the answer to the problem, then explain your process. If you find yourself using in your brief such con- junctions as "as," "since," "hence," " therefore," "con- sequently," you may know immediately that your order is wrong, that you are giving the conclusion after the evidence rather than before it. " For " is a safe con- junction to use. The requirement, conclusion before evidence, is one made not merely for uniformity, but because this order is more convincing. If you furnish your hearer or reader with the conclusion at the start, he knows just what is demanded of the evidence presented to him, and can as he receives it judge its adequacy. Whereas, if the evidence is presented first, the reader or hearer is not aware of what it is expected to prove and flounders blindly about in the dark, trying to find out for himself its purpose. When he reaches the conclusion, its statement either seems superfluous be- cause he has already discovered it for himself, or, if he has not been able to infer it from the evidence, it 92 PROVING THE PROPOSITION seems questionable and he must review the points made to see if the conclusion is fully sustained. For the economy of mental effort, the order, conclusion before evidence, should be uniformly followed through- out the entire argument. But, one might ask, is not the end the place for the conclusion. It is. It would be unfortunate to close a long argument with a bit of evidence for the truth of a conclusion almost lost sight of. It is, therefore, customary to append to the argument proper what is technically called the "conclusion." This is a short paragraph summing up the main lines of argument and stating the conclusion. In this final paragraph the order is reversed and the evidence is given first. The conjunctions used are, accordingly, those not used in the argument proper, "since," "as," " therefore." The paragraph ends with the statement of the proposition that has been proved. For the convenience of the instructor in marking the papers there should be uniformity as to the sym- bols used to designate the rank and number of a proposition. Various methods are in use but the fol- lowing is recommended : The main proposition, standing alone at the head of the argument without the possibility of a coordi- nate proposition, should not be numbered. The propositions that immediately support this propo- sition should be marked by Roman numerals. The THE PROOF 93 propositions sustaining these propositions should be marked by capital letters ; their subalterns by Arabic numerals, and so on : I. A. i. 2. a. CO (2) (3) w B. i. a. b. etc. 2. Each proposition after the main proposition should have before it one number or letter and only one. If a student finds himself writing B i before a proposition he may know that he has failed to insert a general proposition coordinate with the proposition marked A. Only propositions bearing the relationship of reason or evidence to the proposition controlling thsm, should be lettered as subordinate to it. The relationship between proposition I and A, between A and i, between i and a, etc., must be such that it can be expressed by the conjunction " for." 94 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Coordinate propositions, all those designated by Roman numerals, all lettered by capitals, etc., must bear such a relationship to each other as could be expressed by " and " or " yet." The student should be sure that II and III, as well as I, are directly related to the main proposition as proof ; C, D t E, as well as A and B, must be directly related as proof to I, II, or III. Every proposition in the brief proper must bear the re- lation of evidence to the one next above it in rank. A large number of coordinate propositions is usually a sign that the student has not examined his evidence closely enough to discover the existing relations of dependence. In looking over a brief it is always well to glance at all the coordinate propositions of one rank before looking at the elaboration of any one. You should look at all propositions designated by Roman nu- merals before looking at A, B, and C, under any one of them. You should glance at A, B, and C under I before you look at i, 2, 3, under A, and so on. Grasp the idea extensively ; get the purpose and compass of the argument before you test a part of it intensively. This does not mean that you must partly work out the development of the argument under II and III before you complete the argument under I. After you have discovered II, III, IV, etc., you may leave them entirely until you have completed your analysis of I. After you have discovered A, B, C, D, etc., under I, you may leave B, C, and D, and focus your THE PROOF 95 attention on A. When you have discovered i, 2, 3, 4, etc., you may leave 2, 3, and 4, and give your attention to the proof of i . The point is that you must recognize 2, 3, and 4 before you proceed to the development of i . This is important not only in reading briefs ; it is important also in drawing briefs, whether you are reducing a written argument to a brief, or are writing a brief to be developed into a forensic. The regular working order for analysis is : General proposition. I. II. Ill, etc. I. A. B. C. etc. I. A. i. 2. 3. etc. I. A. i. a. c. etc. This, however, is not the order in which work is to be presented when finished. PROVING THE PROPOSITION EXERCISES i. Supply a main proposition and subproposition for a brief in which the five propositions given in the following introduction shall be the five chief divisions of the argu- ment : "A German who has seen the world and tries to make his thinking free from the chance influences of his surroundings may easily ask himself whether it would not be most desir- able that all nations should become republican democracies after the American model. If he does not ask the question himself, he is sure to be asked it by an American friend who happens not to agree with the last speech of the German emperor, and who, therefore, takes for granted that an educated German, outside of the reach of the German state attorney, will frankly confess that monarchy is a mediaeval relic and that democracy alone is life. When one of my friends approached me the other day with such an inquiry, I was in a hurry, and my answers had to be short. I told him, first, that the achievements of democratic America are not the achievements of American democracy ; secondly, that democracy in itself has as many bad tendencies as good ones, and is thus not better than aristocracy ; thirdly, that the question whether democracy or aristocracy is better does not exist to-day; fourthly, that Germany daily be- comes more democratic, while America steadily grows aris- tocratic ; fifthly, that there is no difference between the two nations anyway. My friend insisted that my argument stood on the same level with the oath of the woman who was accused before the court of breaking a pot which she had borrowed from her neighbor, and she swore, first, that the THE PROOF 97 pot was not broken when she returned it ; secondly, that the pot was broken when she borrowed it ; and thirdly, that she had not borrowed the pot. Well, that may be ; but my haste alone was to blame, as I could not explain in the few words I had time for that democracy can cover very differ- ent tendencies. Thus I promised, when I had leisure, to dis- entangle my twisted argument, and to illustrate, perhaps even to establish it. The following remarks are, as far as possible, a fulfillment of my promise, and they follow exactly the order of the argument." MUNSTERBERG : American Traits, 2. Organize the following propositions into a brief to prove the negative of the question, Would such saloons as the Subway Tavern promote the cause of temperance in New York City ? They would not diminish the habit of drinking. They would degrade moral standards. They would not attract the hard drinkers. They would not benefit those who drink moderately. They would lure many who do not drink to form the habit. A hard drinker does not care for artistic furnishings. A hard drinker is not fastidious about the quality of the liquor he drinks if it is strong enough. A hard drinker could find cheaper drink elsewhere. The Christopher Slys do not know how to act in respect- able surroundings. They prefer what they are accustomed to. A hard drinker wants quantity. A hard drinker goes where he can get the most liquor for his money. He goes where there are no restrictions on the amount he may drink. ARGUMENTATION 7 98 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Saloons operated on the plan of the Subway Tavern would have to charge good prices to make a profit. They would sell pure liquor only. They would offer no inducements for their patrons to buy more than one drink. They would have high running expenses. They would need a good building. They would have to provide amusement. They would have to employ trustworthy and capable attendants. If a moderate drinker develops a taste for drink, he will leave the restricted saloon and go where he can get what he wants. If a moderate drinker does not form a taste for drink, he has no need of such a saloon. A moderate drinker will prefer other saloons. There are many respectable saloons where the purchaser of one or two glasses of beer is welcome to sit throughout the evening. There are many saloons with furnishings more pleasing to the ordinary drinking man's taste. The moderate drinker resents the idea of supervision. What is gaudy to the man of refined taste seems cheerful to the man whose taste is not cultivated. What is harmonious to the man of refined taste seems dull and dreary to the uncultivated man. The average poor drinking man does not want a saloon to which he can take his family. He wants to get away from obligations. He wants to escape claims on his sociability and his pocketbook. He wants to escape criticism. THE PROOF 99 Such saloons would appeal to young men who had not the habit of drinking in public. Such saloons would appeal to women. Such saloons would prove an open door to degradation. Such places are considered respectable. Their club features are attractive. They offer comfort and sociability and entertainment for a small fee. The purchase of a cup of coffee or a mug of beer entitles a guest to an evening's entertainment. The newcomer would soon fall into the habit of drinking. He would be associated with drinking men. He would feel it unpleasant to be different from others. They make people think there is no wrong in the prac- tice of drinking. They make people think there is no wrong in selling intoxicating liquor for gain. They make the beginner think that all men have self- control in drink. They make the habitual drinker think that self-control is expected of no man. They are founded on the assumption that men may drink whiskey in moderation. They afford opportunity for a man to see his wife, his children, and his neighbors drinking spirituous liquors. They afford opportunity for a man to see educated men and women drinking. Educated people visit and patronize such places out of curiosity. Habit brings him to excuse his friends and neighbors when they indulge to excess. He soon comes to excuse over indulgence in himself. 100 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Reform is not the sole motive of the " Tavern." A large profit on the original investment is possible. Dividends of five per cent are permitted. The surplus is to be invested in similar profit paying " Taverns." Men of high social standing accept these profits. 3. What is the leading proposition in the following para- graph ? Organize the proof in brief form. " But that the main function of coloring is protection may be decided from the simplest observation of animal life in any part of the world. Even among the larger ani- mals, which one might suppose independent of subterfuge and whose appearance anywhere but in their native haunts suggests a very opposite theory, the harmony of color with environment is always more or less striking. When we look, for instance, at the coat of a zebra, with its thunder- and-lightning pattern of black and white stripes, we should think such a conspicuous object designed to court rather than to elude attention. But the effect in nature is just the opposite. The black and white somehow take away the sense of a solid body altogether ; the two colors seem to blend into the most inconspicuous gray, and at close quar- ters the effect is as of bars of light seen through the branches of shrubs. I have found myself in the forest gazing at what I supposed to be a solitary zebra, its presence betrayed by some motion due to my approach, and suddenly realized that I was surrounded by an entire herd which were all invisible until they moved. The motionlessness of wild game in the field when danger is near is well known ; and every hunter is aware of the difficulty of seeing even the largest animals, though they are standing just in front of him. THE PROOF 101 The tiger, whose stripes are obviously meant to imitate the reeds of the jungle in which it lurks, is nowhere found in Africa ; but its beautiful cousin, the leopard, abounds in these forests, and its spotted pelt probably conveys the same sense of indistinctness as in the case of the zebra. The hippopotamus seems to find the deep water of the rivers where it spends the greater portion of its time a sufficient protection ; but the crocodile is marvelously concealed by its knotted, mud-colored hide, and it is often quite impos- sible to tell at a distance whether the objects lying along the river banks are alligators or fallen logs." HENRY DRUMMOND : Tropical Africa. 4. Reduce to brief form, giving the main proposition, the three propositions that support it, and the several prop- ositions supporting them ; supply reasons for the assertion, That the requirement that a member of Congress be a resi- dent of the district that elects him, is due to the To-the- victor-belong-the-spoils system of civil service : " Our first aim should be, as it has been, the reform of our civil service, for that is the fruitful mother of all our ills. It is the most aristocratic system in the world, for it depends on personal favor and is the reward of personal service, and the power of the political boss is built up and maintained, like that of the mediaeval robber baron, by his free hand ed- ness in distributing the property of other people. From it is derived the notion that the public treasure is a fund to a share of which every one is entitled who by fraud or favor can get it, and from this again the absurd doctrine of rota- tion in office so that each may secure his proportion ; and that the business of the nation may be carried on by a succession of apprentices who are dismissed, just as they are IO2 PROVING THE PROPOSITION getting an inkling of their trade, to make room for others, who are in due time to be turned loose on the world, passed masters in nothing but in incompetence for any useful career. From this, too, has sprung the theory of the geo- graphical allotment of patronage, as if ability were depend- ent, like wheat, upon the soil ; and the more mischievous one, that members of Congress must be residents of the district that elects them, a custom which has sometimes excluded men of proved ability, in the full vigor of their faculties and the ripeness of their experience, from the councils of the nation." JAMES R. LOWELL : The Inde- pendent in Politics. 5. Find the main proposition in the following argument; find the two chief supporting propositions, and organize the sustaining facts in brief form : " Sir, ... as far as I am capable of discerning, there are but three ways of proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your colonies, and disturbs your govern- ment. These are : to change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes ; to prosecute it as criminal ; or to comply with it as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imperfect enumeration ; I can think of but these three. Another has indeed been started, that of giving up the colonies ; but it met so slight a reception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a great while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like the frowardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they would have, are resolved to take nothing. " The first of these plans, to change the spirit, as incon- venient, by removing the causes, I think is the most like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its principle j but it THE PROOF 103 is attended with great difficulties, some of them little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This will appear by ex- amining into the plans which have been proposed. " As the growing population in the colonies is evidently one cause of their resistance, it was last session mentioned in both Houses, by men of weight, and received not without applause, that in order to check this evil, it would be proper for the crown to make no further grants of land. But to this scheme there are two objections. The first, that there is already so much unsettled land in private hands as to afford room for an immense future population, although the crown not only withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case, then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands of the great private monopolists, without any adequate check to the growing and alarming mischief of population. " But if you stopped your grants, what would be the conse- quence? The people would occupy without grants. They have already so occupied in many places. You cannot station garrisons in every part of these deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will carry on their annual tillage and remove with their flocks and herds to another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the Appalachian Mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow, a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint ; they would change their manners with the habits of their life ; would soon forget a government by which they were disowned ; would become hordes of English Tartars, and pouring 104 PROVING THE PROPOSITION down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and your coun- sellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and in no long time must, be the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing of provi- dence, ' Increase and multiply.' Such would be the happy result of the endeavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by an express charter, has given to the children of men. Far different and surely much wiser has been our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husbandman to look to authority for his title. We have taught him piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each tract of land, as it was peopled, into districts, that the ruling power should never be wholly out of sight. We have settled all we could, and we have carefully attended every settlement with government. " Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the reasons I have just given, I think this new project of hedg- ing-in population to be neither prudent nor practicable. "To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this kind, a disposition even to continue the restraint after the offense, looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things is often more than sufficient for this. I do not look on the dkect and immediate power of the colonies to resist our THE PROOF 105 violence as very formidable. In this, however, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor understanding a little preposterous to make them unservice- able in order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than the old and, as I thought, exploded problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its subjects into submis- sion. But remember, when you have completed your sys- tem of impoverishment, that Nature still proceeds in her ordinary course ; that discontent will increase with misery ; and that there are critical moments in the fortune of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may be strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis arma supersunt. " The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people and per- suade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition ; your speech would betray you. An English- man is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Eng- lishman into slavery. " I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their republican religion as their free descent, or to substitute the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the Church of England as an improvement. The mode of inquisition and dragoon- ing is going out of fashion in the Old World, and I should not confide much to their efficacy in the New. The educa- tion of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You cannot persuade them to burn their books of curious science, to banish their lawyers from 106 PROVING THE PROPOSITION their courts of laws, or to quench the lights of their assem- blies by refusing to choose those persons who are best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in their place, would be far more chargeable to us ; not quite so effectual; and perhaps in the end full as difficult to be kept in obedience. "With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it by declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. This project has had its advocates and panegyrists ; yet I never could argue myself into any opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to their masters. A general wild offer of liberty would not always be accepted. History fur- nishes few instances of it. It is sometimes as hard to per- suade slaves to be free, as it is to compel freemen to be slaves ; and in this auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the Ameri- can master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in defense of freedom? a measure to which other people have had recourse more than once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of their affairs. " Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very nation which has sold them to their present masters? from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of free- dom from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry into the THE PROOF 107 ports of Virginia or Carolina with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish his proc- lamation of liberty, and to advertise his sale of slaves. " But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance will continue. ' Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy ! ' was a pious and passionate prayer ; but just as reasonable as many of the serious wishes of grave and solemn politi- cians. " If then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alterative course for changing the moral causes (and not quite easy to remove the natural) which produce prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority, but that the spirit infallibly will continue ; and continuing, will produce such effects as now embarrass us, the second mode under consideration is to prosecute that spirit in its overt acts as criminal" BURKE : Conciliation with the Colonies. THE QUANTITY OF EVIDENCE All parts of a brief must be correctly related, but a brief that is absolutely coherent, and correct in form, may fail totally as an argument. The failure may be due to insufficient evidence. Evidence is insufficient when there are not enough lines of argument worked out to sustain the main prop- 108 PROVING THE PROPOSITION osition, or when a line of argument is not carried far enough. There must be enough supporting proposi- tions, and each of them must be firmly established. Each pier of the bridge of argument must rest on bed rock, and there must be piers enough. The error of not having enough supporting propo- sitions should be carefully guarded against. Each proposition, with the proposition or propositions sup- porting it, forms a contracted syllogism or enthymeme. From the conclusion and premise given the other premise is easily inferred, and the syllogism completed. Where the reasons are insufficient the middle term is inexact, and the major premise is accordingly not admissible. When we assert that Whittier's poems show him to have been an Abolitionist, for I. His poems show him to have been deeply inter- ested in the antislavery movement; and proceed to establish the truth of the proposition, His poems show him to have been deeply interested in the antislavery movement, without offering other coordinate reasons to prove that he was an Aboli- tionist, we imply the following syllogism : All men who were deeply interested in the antislavery movement were Abolitionists. Whittier was deeply interested in the antislavery move- ment. Whittier was an Abolitionist. THE PROOF 109 The major premise of this proposition is, however, not tenable, since the slaveholders themselves must have felt a keen interest in a movement so important to them. If, then, we add a second reason, Whittier' s poems show him to have believed that slavery was wrong, what of the major premise ? The middle term will then be, All men who were deeply interested in the antislavery movement and believed slavery to be wrong. The resulting major premise is still un- satisfactory, for not all men who were deeply interested in the antislavery movement and believed slavery to be wrong were Abolitionists. Lincoln was such a man and he was not an Abolitionist as distinguished from a Republican. If we add a third reason, For he gave the move- ment his support, we shall have the following syllogism : All men who were deeply interested in the antislavery move- ment, who believed slavery to be wrong, and who gave their support to the abolition movement were Abolitionists. Whittier was a man who was deeply interested in the antislavery movement, believed slavery to be wrong, and gave his support to the abolition movement. Whittier was an Abolitionist. At last we have a satisfactory middle term and consequently an admissible major premise. One reasons, The Indians were not driven from Florida against their wish, for a treaty agreeing to 1 10 PROVING THE PROPOSITION their removal had been signed by leading Seminoles. Evidence that such a treaty had been made is, of course, wanted ; but that fact, however firmly estab- lished, is insufficient to prove that the Indians were not driven from Florida against their will. An added fact must be proved ; the treaty must be shown to have been signed by an adequate representation of the Seminoles, acting understandingly and without bribery or coercion. At every step through the argument the test of whether or not there is enough collateral evidence is the implied major premise. Do the coordinate propositions taken together imply a tenable major premise ? Have we enough reasons for maintaining that Whittier was deeply interested in the anti- slavery movement ? Take for reasons, A. He gave much attention to the question. B. His was an enduring interest. C. His was a heartfelt interest. The major premise suggested by these propositions is, All men who give much attention to a question, who have an enduring interest in it, and a heartfelt interest in it, are men who are deeply interested in a question. This seems a proposition that would be granted by both sides. The base for the argument is broad enough. On the other hand, the error of allowing the prop- osition to rest at last on nothing substantial, on un- THE PROOF III proved assertion, is frequent. We are amused at the nal'vete" of people who accounted for the support of the earth by saying it rested on the back of an elephant, and that the elephant stood on a tortoise, and were content without inquiring what supported the tortoise. We laugh when the child complacently answers the question, What makes the automobile go ? " The wheels." Yet in the informal and the formal discourse of more sophisticated people we frequently discover as great simplicity ; the removal of the mystery one step is taken as its solution. The assertion that Whittier's poetry shows him to have been an Abolitionist, for I. His poems show that he was deeply interested in the antislavery movement. II. His poems show that he believed that slavery was wrong in theory. III. His poems show that he supported the antislavery movement as a practical measure ; does not prove that the main proposition is true. It rests merely upon generalizations that themselves need proof. It is necessary to prove each of these. While the propositions, that A. The question received much of his attention, B. The question received his enduring interest, C. The question received his heart-felt interest, offer a sufficiently broad base for proof that Whittier was deeply interested, they do not penetrate deeply 112 PROVING THE PROPOSITION enough. Each in turn will have to be sustained by evidence. This process must be carried on till the proposition rests on facts or on accepted principles. Until such a foundation is reached we have not proof, but mere assertion. The evidence we offer needs evidence. We must not stop before we have dis- covered the support of the tortoise. There must, then, be enough piers to the bridge of argument, and they must be grounded on the bed rock of facts. Further, these piers must be of suffi- cient height and strength. The proposition that is the subject of discussion may not rest immediately on the ultimate evidence. The intermediate steps must be taken. One may not argue that Whittier's poems show him to have been an Abolitionist, for he wrote in his poems : and proceed to quote antislavery sentiments from Whittier's poetry. The work of arguing includes the sifting of evidence and its inter- pretation. It is the business of the arguer to show the significance and the bearing of the facts he cites, to build up a high enough pile of consecutive argu- ment between the facts and the proposition, without any flaw, or break, or twist. Often when confronted with the facts that ultimately prove a proposition, we are as blind to their import as was Legrand's friend in the following instance : " Upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible at the corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in THE PROOF 113 which the death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid. " ' Ha ! ha ! ' said I, ' to be sure I have no right to laugh at you, a million and a half of money is too serious a mat- ter for mirth, but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain : you will not find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat ; pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats ; they appertain to the farming interest.' " ' But I have just said that the figure was not that of a goat.' " ' Well, a kid, then pretty much the same thing.' " ' Pretty much, but not altogether,' said Legrand. ' You may have heard of one Captain Kidd.' I at once looked on the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyph- ical signature. I say signature ; because its position upon the vellum suggested the idea." POE: The Gold Bug. Be sure in drawing a brief to have enough lines of argument, to establish each firmly, and to see that there is no missing link in the chain of reasoning. This teaching, if closely followed without discrimi- nation, may lead the student into error. Those who are anxious to meet the requirements of argument rather than to prove a point, often assiduously strive merely to cover the ground, to leave nothing without giving acceptable evidence of it. The result is sure to be ineffective. All parts of the argument should not, as a rule, be developed with uniform elaborate- ness. What is obvious or unessential does not have ARGUMENTATION 8 114 PROVING THE PROPOSITION to be proved with the care that must be given to the less apparent and the more important points. In the example already cited, one could not prove Whittier to have been an Abolitionist without prov- ing him to have supported abolition as a practical measure. But elaborately to prove propositions I and II, that he was interested in and sympathized with the antislavery movement, would be folly, since propo- sition III implies I and II. A man's interest and sympathy in a measure he supports will usually be granted without much argument. His support to the movement is the main point, and there the stress of the argument should rest. Emphasis and proportion are as important to the success of an argument as thoroughness. EXERCISES i. Tell why the following enthymemes are not con- vincing : a. Enoch Arden is a beautiful poem, for Tennyson wrote it. b. Dickens was a greater novelist than Thackeray, for his novels are more interesting. c. He is an educated man, because he is well informed. d. Death in the Desert is a more profound poem than Saul, for Death in the Desert was written when Browning was older. e. He is a Democrat, for he spoke with admiration of Grover Cleveland. /. Washington was not so great a benefactor to his coun- try as Jefferson, for he was not a statesman. THE PROOF 115 g. It must have been about ten o'clock, for the sun was just beginning to shine into the west windows. h. If the war is a long one, the Russians will win, for they have more endurance than the Japanese. /. As one of the most severe critics in town is pleased with the statue, every one will like it. _/'. The Salvation Army is more deserving of support than the churches, for it does more good. k. The book can have no merit, for its author was an immoral man. 2. What is the proposition to be proved in the following speech ? Is it proved ? If not, why not ? "If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Csesar, this is my answer : Not that I loved Cssar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him ; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it ; as he was valiant, I honor him : but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love ; joy for his fortune ; honor for his valor; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak ; for him have I offended." SHAKESPEARE : Julius Casar. 3. Consider the following as material for an argument on the thesis, Russia should not pay the indemnity asked by Il6 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Japan. Put the argument into brief form. What is its weakness ? What is the proposition it proves ? WHY THE CZAR REFUSES TO PAY PORTSMOUTH, N. H., August 18. " Mr. de Martens, one of the Russian delegates and rec- ognized as one of the great authorities on international law, not only in Russia, but throughout the world, in speaking about the principle of the war indemnity, said that there was no precedent in history where a country whose territory was not occupied in whole or in part by the enemy, had paid war tribute upon the conclusion of peace. " Russia, Mr. de Martens said, was not crushed. She was not on her knees begging for peace. She wanted peace, but she could go on fighting for years. Japan had not even approached the true Russian frontier. " ' Should Russia consent to pay tribute to Japan in any form,' continued the eminent jurist, 'it would be her politi- cal death. The powers would understand that she accepted the proposition of President Roosevelt, not because she was desirous of an honorable peace, but because her power had been annihilated and she recognized that it was impossible for her to continue the war. It would mean a public con- fession that Russia is at Portsmouth helplessly kneeling before Japan, imploring peace and ready to accept any terms im- posed. No one will seriously contend that the Muscovite empire is in any such position.' "With many interesting historical examples Mr. de Martens proceeded to elaborate his thesis that no country ever had paid indemnity except when powerless to confront the enemy on the field of battle and with a large portion of her territory in the enemy's possession as a hostage. THE PROOF 117 "In 1807, he pointed out, when Napoleon imposed the peace of Tilsit, French troops occupied practically all of Prussia and the Prussian royal family had fled to Russian soil. France could dictate terms. She exacted a war indemnity of $300,000,000 and garrisoned several Prussian towns with French troops at the expense of Prussia as a guarantee of payment. She required that the Prussian army should be reduced to 40,000 men. " In 1 815, when Napoleon was annihilated at Waterloo after the famous ' 100 days,' and the second treaty of Paris was concluded, the allied powers, occupying Paris as the Prus- sians did later in 1870, imposed in addition to other condi- tions a war indemnity of $500,000,000 to be paid in five years, during which time the allied troops were to hold a portion of French territory. That sum, however, was con- siderably reduced by Lord Wellington at Aix-la-Chapelle, and France completed the payment of the indemnity in three years. "The largest war indemnity ever exacted was imposed by Prince Bismarck upon France in 1870. It amounted to $1,000,000,000. But Napoleon III had fallen. Gambetta was powerless. Prussia was at Paris. The third republic suc- ceeded in liquidating the indemnity in two years, while, ac- cording to the treaty, she had five years' time in which to pay. " In other cases, even where a portion of the territory of the fated country was occupied, no indemnity was exacted, or even asked. For instance, Russia, in 1856, although the Crimean peninsula was occupied by the Anglo-Franco- Piedmontese troops, was not asked to pay tribute. Neither was Austria, in 1859, after having lost Lombardy, nor in 1866, after having been beaten by Prussia. Denmark, in 1864, lost Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia, but paid nothing. Il8 PROVING THE PROPOSITION " ' A new precedent was made by America,' added Mr. de Martens, ' in her war with Spain. Although victorious and in a position to claim indemnity, she ended the war on prin- ciple, and actually paid $20,000,000 to the Madrid govern- ment for the Philippine Islands. " ' But that,' he remarked, ' was, as the French say, to dorer la pilule? " Independent of all these considerations, Mr. de Martens said, Russia's objection to the payment of an indemnity, no matter under what form, comes from the fact that in all her history she never paid a cent tribute to a foreign power, not even during the time of her worst defeats under Peter the Great, when a large portion of the country was in the hands of the invader. In conclusion, he called attention to the fact that to pay an indemnity to Japan would be for Russia to create a precedent new in the world's history." 4. Classify the evidence in the following and indicate clearly, .step by step, how apparently inconsistent facts are related to the proposition, Horace Roberts should have a college education : His father is a mechanic. His father earns only $2 a day. Horace's back is weak. He has an invalid sister. He has acted as his sister's tutor. His uncle has influence. His uncle is rich. His uncle is stingy. His mother was a successful school-teacher before she married. His father has no education. THE PROOF 119 His father never keeps a position long. Horace led his class in high school. He was considered the best writer in his class. Though repeatedly asked to write for school papers, he refused. He refused to enter the interclass debate. He refused to run for class president. Horace often worked at his lessons till after midnight. He fainted after taking his last examination. 5. What proposition is proved by the following para- graph ? What broader proposition does the writer assume that he is establishing? What is wanting for its proof? Why does the writer content himself with giving evidence to prove only one of the two propositions whose truth is essential to the truth of the proposition he advocates ? " There was no sort of selection of these boys, or any others who were brought up by us to one or other branch of Mr. Morris's business. John Smith, who is now the dyer at Merton, was taken into the dyeshop because it was just being set up at the time he was getting too old to remain errand boy. Dearie was put to the tapestry because that business then wanted an apprentice ; and so of the other two. They were put to the loom because at the time we were starting this we were asked to do something for them. We took Sleath on that ground first of all, and he introduced Knight. The same rule applied to all others, and its work- ing justified Mr. Morris's contention that the universal modern system, which he called that of Devil take the hind- most, is frightfully wasteful of human intelligence. A few years later, when we were able to set up a third tapestry loom, we found a lad with equal facility, without selection of any kind the nephew of the housekeeper at Merton. 120 PROVING THE PROPOSITION She happened to tell me, at the time we were getting the new loom ready, that her nephew had left school and was looking for something to do." J. W. MACKAIL : Life of William Morris. 6. The following propositions are in the working order recommended on page 95. Rearrange in brief form : Whittier's poems show him to have been an Abolitionist. Whittier's poems show him to have been deeply interested in the antislavery movement. Whittier's poems show him to have believed that slavery was wrong and that emancipation was right in theory. Whittier's poems show that he favored abolition as a practical measure. They show that the question of slavery claimed a large share of his attention. They show that with him the antislavery question was an enduring interest. They show that it was a heartfelt interest. There are more than ninety poems among the so-called Antislai'ery Poems. These do not include many poems that sprang from his interest in the question of slavery. Many of his poems on other subjects contain allusions to slavery. They do not include Brown of Ossawatomie, Ichabod, etc. All are familiar with the reference to slavery in Snow- Sound in the characterization of the schoolmaster. In The Mayflowers we find : "The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day Its shadow round us draws ; The Mayflower of his stormy bay, Our Freedom's struggling cause," etc. THE PROOF 121 In The Last Walk in Autumn Whittier declares his preference for " The painted, shingly town-house where The freeman's vote for Freedom falls ! " and says : " I have not seen, I may not see, My hopes for man take form in fact, But God will give the victory In due time ; in that faith I act." In The Prisoners of Naples he says : " I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize Of name or place," etc. In What the Voice Said we find : " With the brute the man is sold," etc. In Astraa, After Election, Our Country, The Ship- builders, The Reformer, and many other poems there are references made to slavery in America. They show that in the early days of the antislavery move- ment he took an interest in the question. They show that when troubled times came his interest did not abate. They show that after emancipation was accomplished he retained his interest. In 1832 he addressed a poem to Garrison declaring his admiration for him and interest in his work. Some of his most notable antislavery poetry was written before the Mexican War. Toussaint L'Ouverture, Moral Warfare, The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, Massachusetts to Virginia, To 122 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Faneuil Hall, Texas : Voice of New England, and others, belong to this period. The significant episodes during the stormy times of the antislavery struggle called forth verses from Whittier. Calhoun's opposition to the acquisition of Oregon was marked by To a Southern Statesman. Randolph's death furnished occasion for pointing a moral in Randolph of Roanoke. The significance of the treaty with Mexico was emphasized by The Crisis. The attempts to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law and their results gave occasion for such poems as A Sabbath Scene, Moloch in State Street, The Rendition, Arisen at Last. The squatter sovereignty struggles gave opportunity for The Kansas Emigrants, The Burial of Barber, Le Marat's du Cygne. The apostasy of Webster stirred Whittier to write Ichabod. The execution of John Brown called forth the poem, Brown of Ossawatomie. " Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott," The Battb Autumn of 1862, Barbara Frietchie, etc., are familiar war poems. He celebrated the emancipation proclamation with The Proclamation. He celebrated the passage of the emancipation amend- ment with Laus Deo ! After the war he wrote The Peace Autumn, The Thirty- Ninth Congress, To the Emancipation Group, Garrison. Most of the antislavery poems are serious. Many of the antislavery poems show strong emotion. Such poems as A Letter, Letter from a Missionary, The Hunters of Men, etc., are the exception. THE PROOF 123 Even these have a certain grimness in their humor. The sarcasm of The Hunters of Men is not mirth-provoking. Such poems as Expostulation, Clerical Oppressors, The Sentence of John L. Brown, To Faneuil Hall, Ichabod, express righteous indignation. The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother shows sympathy and tenderness. " Ein Feste Burg " expresses firm patience in suffering. Laus Deo ! expresses solemn joy. Whittier's antislavery poems are frequently in the form of hymns or invocations. Whittier's antislavery poems are full of appeals to patri- otic and religious sentiment. Hymn : O Thou, whose ^resence went Before, Clerical Oppressors, Hymn : O Holy Father ! just and true, Lines from a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend, Thy Will be Done, etc., etc., are altogether addressed to Deity. Almost every one of the antislavery poems contains some reference to Deity. Allusions to the delivery of the children of Israel are frequent. We find : "The storm . . . which wasted Egypt's earth." Stanzas. " The songs of grateful millions rise Like that of Israel's ransomed band." The New Year. "... the mystic rod, Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian wave. Which opened in the strength of God, A pathway for the slave." The Relic. " Sing with Miriam by the sea, He has cast the mighty down ; Horse and rider sink and drown ; He hath triumphed gloriously ! " Laus Deof 124 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Whittier's antislavery poems show that he disapproved of slavery in the abstract. They show that he had personal sympathy for the negro slaves. They show that he looked upon negro slavery as injurious to the slaveholder. He looked upon slavery as morally wrong. He opposed slavery in all ages and places. He regarded the negro as " brother- man, and fellow- countryman." He was sensible to the horrors of slavery to the slave. Such passages as the following are common in his anti- slavery poetry : " What, ho ! our countrymen in chains ! The whip on woman's shrinking flesh ! Our soil yet reddening with the stains Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh ! What ! mothers from their children riven ! What ! God's own image bought and sold ! Americans to market driven, And bartered as the brute for gold." Stanzas. In The Peace of Europe Whittier denounces tyranny and slavery, however disguised. In To Pius IX he denounces tyranny in the church. In The New Exodus he rejoices over the report of the abolition of slavery in Egypt. In Freedom in Brazil he rejoices over the liberation of slaves. The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, The Song of Slaves in the Desert, and other poems mentioning the suffering of the slave, show that sympathy and imagination, as well as reason, were responsible for Whittier's opposition to slavery. THE PROOF 125 He put himself in their place. He said to the Virginia slaveholders : " Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame." Again, to the slaveholder he says : " And the curse of unpaid toil, Downward through your generous soil Like a fire shall burn and spoil," etc. He saw that it brutalized the southern women. He saw that it made the churchmen traitors to their trust. Whittier's poems show that he approved the abolitionist leaders and their measures. They show him to have been identified with the movement. They show that he thought abolition should be gained at any price. Whittier shows his admiration for the friends of freedom in Garrison, To the Memory of Thomas Shipley, Ritner, The Branded Hand, Daniel Ne all, The Lost Statesman, To John C. Fremont, etc., etc. Many of Whittier's occasional poems, together with the occasion that called them forth, have been already named. The publication of poems of this nature committed their author to the cause he advocated. Some of the poems show Whittier to have taken part in specific abolition measures. Many of the poems were intended to excite sympathy and rouse to action. Pennsylvania Hall was written for the dedication of the hall of that name to the cause of freedom. They show that, patriot though he was, he thought disunion not too great a price to pay for deliverance from a share in the responsibility of slaveholding. 126 PROVING THE PROPOSITION They show that, Quaker though he was, he thought war was not too great a price to pay for freedom. They show that he thought that existing evils could be stopped through abolition. In Texas: Voice of New England he wrote : " Take your slavery-blackened vales ; Leave us but our own free gales, Blowing on our thousand sails. Boldly, or with treacherous art, Strike the blood-wrought chain apart ; Break the Union's mighty heart." In A Word for the Hour he wrote : "They break the links of Union : ****** Draw we not even now a freer breath, As from our shoulders falls a load of death. ****** Why take we up the accursed thing again? Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press The golden cluster on our brave old flag In closer union, and, if numbering less, Brighter shall shine the stars that still remain." In To Faneuil Hall he wrote : " Have they wronged us ? Let us then Render back nor threats nor prayers ; Have they chained our free-born men? Let us unchain theirs ! THE PROOF 127 Up, your banner leads the van, Blazoned, Liberty for all 1 ' Finish what your sires began ! Up, to Faneuil Hall ! " While war was in progress, in 1862, he wrote : " Not as we hoped ; but what are we ? Above our broken dreams and plans God lays, with wiser hand than man's The corner-stones of liberty. I cavil not with Him : the voice That freedom's blessed gospel tells Is sweet to me as silver bells, Rejoicing ! yea, I will rejoice ! " Astrcea at the Capitol In Em Feste Burg ist unser Gott he wrote : "What gives the wheat-field blades of steel? What points the rebel cannon? What sets the roaring rabble's heel On the old star-spangled pennon? What breaks the oath Of the men o' the South? What whets the knife For the Union's life ? Hark to the answer : Slavery ! ****** In vain the bells of war shall ring Of triumphs and revenges, While still is spared the evil thing That severs and estranges." 7. Point out the virtues and the defects in the brief into which you have organized the proposition given above. 128 PROVING THE PROPOSITION THE KIND OF EVIDENCE Where it is important to impress the reader with the truth of a proposition, it is well not to depend on one line of argument, however strong that may seem. Give the proposition manifold proof. Let one argu- ment reenforce another. Make assurance doubly sure. Not to weary the reader with repetition, have recourse to arguments of various kinds. We may offer as evidence facts gained from our own experience or observation, or from the observation of others ; or we may offer opinions or inferences, our own opinions grounded on our own observations or on the observations or the opinions of others, or the opinions of others grounded on their own observations or on the observations or the opinions of others. We usually trust the evidence of our own senses, but even that is not absolutely reliable : the eye or the ear reports the appearance rather than the fact ; if you whirl a burning stick, you see what appears to be an unbroken ring of fire ; the white cow may look purple in a certain light; the skiff seems repeated in the clear water; the answering call is but an echo ; appearances often deceive. And again we see not what really appears but what we expect to see fevered fancy converts the white-trunked sycamore into a ghost for Ichabod Crane yet on the whole we trust our senses. THE PROOF 129 Furthermore, we are constantly making inferences and acting upon them with confidence ; yet they are by no means infallible. We hourly make use of the a priori argument; that is, the argument that some- thing will happen because something has happened, that it will rain because the clouds have gathered, that it will thunder because it has lightened, that there will be a good harvest because the blossoms are abundant, that I shall find Romola interesting because I have found The Mill on the Floss inter- esting. We as frequently use the a posteriori argument, that something must have happened because some- thing else has happened since, that it was cold last night because the lake is frozen, that the soil is rich because the corn flourishes, that there is a fire be- cause there is smoke ; Crusoe's argument that a man had been on his island because there was a man's footprint in the sand, was of this kind. We also put our faith in argument by analogy or likeness ; we see a silent, ponderous man and we say, " Still waters run deep," and expect great things of him ; when a friend consults us about making an- other change in business, we look dubious and say, " A rolling stone gathers no moss." The student says, "a brief only hinders me in writing," and the instructor replies, " David learned to wear the armor of Saul." ARGUMENTATION 9 130 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Inferences are nevertheless not sure ; all signs fail in dry weather ; the bloom may be blighted ; the light that promises the wanderer welcome may prove a will-o'-the-wisp ; a man may smile and smile and be a villain. Various inferences are frequently drawn from the same facts. An amusing instance of this recently occurred in a western town : In the stone work over the door of an apartment house that was being erected on a prominent street appeared the word Coredjo. Immediately a citizen wrote a letter to the public through an evening paper, calling attention to the name of the house and commenting that it was strange that a man of sufficient culture to care for the art of Correggio should be so ignorant as to blunder so conspicuously in the spelling of his name. This man's reasoning was, All men who spell Correggio, Coredjo, are ignorant of how it should be spelled. This man spelled Correggio, Coredjo. This man is ignorant of how it should be spelled. The next night a second letter was published, referring to the first letter and asserting that this was evidently not a case of ignorance, but a virulent case of spelling reform mania, and regretting that a man who had sufficient sentiment to wish to pay tribute to an artist by naming a house for him should have so little right reverence for him as to take such vulgar liberties with his name. This writer made it clear that the major premise of the first reasoner was not reliable by showing that all men who misspelled Correggio were not necessarily ignorant of the conventional spelling. He would substitute as the major premise of his syllogism, All men who deliberately spell Correggio, Coredjo, are spelling re- THE PROOF 131 form maniacs. At last a letter from the builder of the house appeared, showing that it was the minor premise that was at fault ; he was not a man who spelled Correggio, Coredjo ; he did not know of the existence of Correggio ; the name of his house was a word made up of the first sylla- bles of the names of his three children. The two letter writers had made the same blunder : they had generalized that all men who employ a combination of letters that gives the pronunciation of Correggio's name intend his name a blunder that most of us would have made. The evidence of our own senses, and our own in- ferences from our own observations, are usually the most convincing proof to us. But, however much we trust our own senses and power to make correct in- ferences, we often rightly yield to the judgment of another. The child accepts its father's assurance that the trees and the fences are not rushing past the train windows ; the man crossing the desert trusts the guide's wisdom when the latter tells him the inviting palms he so plainly sees are but a mirage ; we give up our own theories and yield to the doctor's verdict. Where one is by nature or training a more trustworthy observer or reasoner than his fellows, we often accept his opinion without question, even when it conflicts with our own. But even where the authority is recognized and admitted to be most com- petent, the active mind demands grounds for the conclusion suggested ; it refuses to hold an opinion merely because some one else holds it. 132 PROVING THE PROPOSITION The argument by authority is not so convincing and conclusive as most young writers seem to think. Many seem to hold the conviction that whatever ap- pears in print is, ipso facto, true, and such students offer quoted opinions as sufficient evidence of a proposition that needs proof. Quotation marks alone do not give weight to an assertion. The reader must know whose opinion is offered that he may decide whether or not he is entitled to speak with authority. We are not always able to take at its full value the testimony of one to whose personal advantage it would be to have the belief he advocates prevail. We find it necessary to discount the opinion of the prejudiced. The woolen manufacturer's assurance that the prices on woolen goods are reasonably low is not going to be accepted by the farmer without supporting statistics. The mine operator's opinion that immigration should not be restricted, the capital- ist's conviction that the closed shop is a social evil, are supposed a little to savor of the logic of the wolf who complained that the lamb was muddling the water. The authority cited must not only be disinterested, it must be competent to pronounce upon the subject under discussion. Certain authorities are conceded by some to be almost incontestable, as the Century Dictionary is to many in matters of pronunciation, the Constitution of the United States in matters of THE PROOF 133 legislation, the Bible in matters religious. The opin- ion of a distinguished specialist has weight as evi- dence. While, then, the conclusion without the name of the person holding it avails little or nothing as evi- dence, the reminder that several eminent authorities sustain you in your opinion has weight. It is, however, more effective for the sake of con- vincing the reader not merely to give the conclusion, but to tell the facts or the reasons upon which the conclusion is based. Macaulay might have planned his paragraph on the bad roads of England thus : I. The roads in England were at this time in bad condi- tion, for A. They are so reported by Thoresby in his Diary. B. They are so reported by Pepys in his Diary. But he chose to fill out A and B with a recital of the specific instances upon which the conclusion was based, as follows : " Those highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civiliza- tion which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possi- ble to distinguish, in the dusk, from the uninclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thoresby, the anti- quary, was in danger of losing his way on the great North road, between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York. 1 Pepys and his wife, 1 Thoresby's Diary, Oct. 21, 1680, Aug. 3, 1712. 134 PROVING THE PROPOSITION traveling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain. 1 It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left ; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quag- mire. 2 At such times obstructions and quarrels were fre- quent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighboring farm, to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveler had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of traveling be- tween Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara. On one occa- sion he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross. In conse- quence of these tidings he turned out of the highroad, and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for him to ride to the saddle skirts in water. 3 In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford four days on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen mem- bers of the House of Commons, who were going up in a 1 Pepys's Diary, June 12 and 1 6, 1 668. 2 Ibid., Feb. 28, 1660. 3 Thoresby's Diary, May 17, 1695. THE PROOF 135 body to Parliament with guides and numerous attendants, took him into their company. 1 " MACAULAY : History of England. Had Miss Puffer, in The Psychology of Beauty, told us that Bernard of Clairvaux, Eckhart, St. Teresa, Keats, and Schopenhauer testified to " the fading of consciousness of self as feeling nears the white heat," the reader familiar with the utterances of those named would have demanded nothing more, but even he is glad to have his memory further aided by such a pas- sage as: "... in all the stages of religious ecstasy, aesthetic pleas- ure, and creative inspiration, is to be traced what we know as the loss of the feeling of self. Bernard of Clairvaux dwells on ' that ecstasy of deification in which the individual dis- appears in the eternal essence as the drop of water in a cask of wine.' Says Meister Eckhart, 'Thou shalt sink away from thy selfhood, thou shalt flow into his self-posses- sion, the very thought of Thine shall melt into His Mine ' ; and St. Teresa, ' The soul, in thus searching for its God, feels with a very lively and very sweet pleasure that it is fainting al- most quite away,' " etc. PUFFER : The Psychology of Beauty. If the witness cited is not widely known, it is well to give his full name and in addition to give some reason why he should be regarded as reliable. To be sure, in using the argument of authority it is not always necessary or wise, besides naming the authorities, to give their grounds for belief and the 1 Thoresby's Diary, Dec. 27, 1708. 136 PROVING THE PROPOSITION grounds for accepting their judgment; if the argu- ment of authority is used merely to reenforce strong evidence of other sorts, it is enough to name distin- guished specialists who support the view you advocate. As yet we have comparatively little use for the argument of authority ; but even later, when we are depending less on our own experience, the argument of authority should ordinarily not be the sole support of an important proposition. Not only is it sometimes well to add to the argu- ment of probable cause or reason, the argument of analogy, and to that the argument of example, and to that the argument of authority, it is also effective to multiply each of these arguments to give sev- eral reasons, more than one comparison, a convinc- ing number of examples, an imposing array of authorities. Let us consider the development of a possible sub- proposition III under the proposition, The pleasures of moderate poverty are greater than the pleasures of wealth. III. Treats give the moderately poor more pleas- ure than the rich, for A. It is natural that this should be so, for I. The treats of the poor are in themselves better suited to give pleasure, for a. They are chosen with greater care (evidence ?). THE PROOF 137 b. They are chosen with greater sincer- ity (evidence ?). 2. The moderately poor are themselves in better condition to derive pleasure from a treat, for (evidence ?). 3. It is in accord with a universal human tendency, for a. The cobbler's children go without shoes. b. The hunter cares not for easy game. c. The candy maker does not relish sweets. B. Experience shows that they do, for 1. When my means were more limited I took greater pleasure in a play. 2. I took greater pleasure in a trip. 3. I took greater pleasure in a gift. 4. I took greater pleasure in a purchase, etc. C. Others testify that it is so, for 1. Mrs. A, who was poor in her girlhood and is now rich, says that it is so. 2. Mrs. B, who was rich in her girlhood and is now poor, says it is true, etc. In thus piling up evidence to prove a proposition the student should bear in mind that his object is emphasis, and he should take care not to use this device to such excess as to defeat his end. It is 138 PROVING THE PROPOSITION advisable to omit questionable or weak evidence ; it is often advisable to omit even evidence that is strong. In selecting evidence with a view to emphasis, the value of suggestiveness should not be lost sight of. One or two illustrations or examples that appeal to the reader's experience and set him to calling up evi- dence on your side out of his own past will do more to convince him than a large number of most con- scientiously elaborated instances presented by you. The more varied the evidence the more certain may you be of gaining the interested collaboration of many of your readers. EXERCISES i. Give the proposition to be proved in each of the following selections ; classify the argument and tell in what respect it is weak or strong : a. " Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be mis- understood." EMERSON : Self-reliance. b. " If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, accord- ing to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now, but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events ; it depends upon the THE PROOF 139 tides of the mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards recovery. Sorrow for one cause was intolerable yesterday, and will be intolerable to-morrow ; to-day it is easy to bear, but the cause has not passed. Even the burden of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a temporary peace : and re- morse itself does not remain it returns. Gayety takes us by a dear surprise." ALICE MEYNELL: The Rhythm of Life. c. " I believe that natural history has lost much by the vague general treatment that is so common what satisfac- tion would be derived from a ten-page sketch of the habits and customs of man? How much more profitable it would be to devote that space to the life of some one great man. This is the principle I have endeavored to apply to my animals. The real personality of the individual and his view of life are my theme, rather than the ways of the race in general, as viewed by a casual and hostile human eye." ERNEST THOMPSON SETON : Wild Animals I Have Known. d. " Besides Grotius and Lauterbach, and Puffendorff, and Titius, and many wise men beside, who have considered the matter properly, have determined, that the property of a country can not be acquired by hunting, cutting wood, or drawing water in it nothing but precise demarcation of limits, and the intention of cultivation, can establish the possession. Now as the savages [Indians] (probably from never having read the authors above quoted) had never com- plied with any of these necessary forms, it plainly follows that they had no right to the soil." IRVING : Knicker- bocker History of New York. e. " The Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence 140 PROVING THE PROPOSITION which few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted everywhere as the standard of all law and all practice ; the thing to be gone upon in speculation and life : the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this Earth has to conform to, and walk by, the thing to be read. Their Judges decide by it ; all Moslems are bound to study it, seek in it for the light of their life. They have mosques where it is all read daily ; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each day. There, for twelve hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men." CARLYLE : Heroes and Hero-worship. f. " ' But it is so charming to swim on the water ! ' said the Duckling, ' so refreshing to let it close above one's head, and to dive down to the bottom.' " ' Yes, that must be a mighty pleasure, truly,' quoth the Hen. ' I fancy you must have gone crazy. Ask the Cat about it he's the cleverest animal I know ask him if he likes to swim on the water, or to dive down. I won't speak about myself. Ask our mistress, the old woman ; no one in the world is cleverer than she. Do you think she has any desire to swim, and to let the water close above her head? ' " ANDERSEN : The Ugly Duckling. g. " Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III may profit by their example." PATRICK HENRY. h. "The candles sputtered, and the hot fat fell on the shavings below. ' Dangerous way of lighting a room full of shavings,' said some one. The landlord looked up at the swinging candelabra and laughed. ' Tried it pretty often,' he said. ' Never burned a house down yet.' " H. H. JACKSON. i. "The murderers did escape from one of these win- THE PROOF 141 dows. This being so, they could not have refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened. . . . Yet the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power of fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts as I had antici- pated. A concealed spring must, I now knew, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that my prem- ises, at least, were correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances attending the nails. A careful search soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and, satis- fied with the discovery, forbore to upraise the sash. " I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person passing out through the window might have reclosed it, and the spring would have caught ; but the nail could not have been replaced. The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the field of my investigations. The assassins must have escaped through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs upon each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of their fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over the head-board minutely at the second casement. Passing my hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with its neighbor. I now looked at the nail. It was as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner, driven in nearly up to the head. ... It had, I say, in every respect the appearance of its fellow in the other window ; but this fact was an absolute nullity, conclu- sive as it might seem to be, when compared with the consid- 142 PROVING THE PROPOSITION eration that here, at this point, terminated the clue. ' There must be something wrong,' I said, 'about the nail.' I touched it, and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of the shank was in the gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off. The fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and had apparently been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom sash, the head portion of the nail. I now care- fully replaced this head portion in the indentation whence I had taken it, and the resemblance to a perfect nail was com- plete the fissure was invisible. Pressing the spring, I gently raised the sash for a few inches ; the head went up with it, remaining firm in its bed. I closed the window, and the semblance of the whole nail was again perfect. " The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had escaped through the window which looked upon the bed. Dropping of its own accord upon his exit (or perhaps pur- posely closed), it had become fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of this spring which had been mistaken by the police for that of the nail, further inquiry being thus considered unnecessary." POE : The Murders in the Rue Morgue. /. " There was once a little animal, No bigger than a fox, And on five toes he scampered Over Tertiary rocks. They called him Eohippus, And they called him very small, And they thought him of no value When they thought of him at all ; THE PROOF 143 " Said the little Eohippus, ' I am going to be a horse ! And on my middle finger nails To run my earthly course ! I'm going to have a flowing tail ! I'm going to have a mane ! I'm going to stand fourteen hands high On the psychozoic plain ! ' " The Coryphodon was horrified, The Dinoceras was shocked ; And they chased young Eohippus, But he skipped away and mocked. Then they laughed enormous laughter, And they groaned enormous groans, And they bade young Eohippus Go view his father's bones. Said they, ' You always were as small And mean as now we see, And that's conclusive evidence That you're always going to be. What ! be a great, tall, handsome beast With hoofs to gallop on ? Why ! you'd have to change your nature / ' Said the Loxolophodon. They considered him disposed of, And retired with gait serene ; That was the way they argued In 'the early Eocene.' " C. P. STETSON : In This Our World. k. " ' But we shall live to see the day, I trust,' went on the artist, ' when no man shall build his house for posterity. Why 144 PROVING THE PROPOSITION should he? He might just as reasonably order a dura- ble suit of clothes, leather, or gutta-percha, or what- ever else lasts longest, so that his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of them, and cut precisely the same figure in the world that he himself does.' " HAWTHORNE : The House of the Seven Gables. /. " Fal. What is the gross sum that I owe thee ? "Host. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt gob- let, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it ? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar ; telling us she had a good dish of prawns ; whereby thou didst desire to eat some ; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone downstairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people; saying that ere long they should call me madam ? And didst thou not kiss me and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings ? I put thee now to thy book-oath : deny it, if thou canst." SHAKESPEARE : 2 King Henry IV. 2. In the following passage, what kinds of evidence are in conflict and which seems to you the more convincing? " ' I'm a very poor man, sir.' " ' I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.' " * A very poor man, indeed I am,' said Mr. Barkis. " Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes, and with a purposeless, uncertain grasp took THE PROOF 145 hold of a stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became composed. " ' Old clothes,' said Mr. Barkis. " ' Oh ! ' said I. " ' I wish it was money, sir,' said Mr. Barkis. " ' I wish it was, indeed,' said I. " ' But it airitj said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he possibly could." DICKENS : David Copperfield. 3. What is the proposition to be proved in the following excerpt and what kinds of evidence are used to prove it ? Put material in form of a brief. "Where, as is often the case on the sea- board or in the glaciated districts of the interior of this country, the trench of the roadway is bottomed in soft sand, some hard- ening of the surface is necessary, else the roller will churn the sand and broken stone together, until the mixture, which has no value whatever in the road structure, has absorbed, it may be, half of the materials reckoned on for the hardened way. To hold the stone and the sand apart it has been the usual practice to cover the sand with a layer of pebbles of conveniently large size before the bottom layer of broken stone was laid down. This is an expedient which is often costly and sometimes impracticable from lack of fit materials. An experimental inquiry into the conditions of the movement of sand under pressure led to the conclusion that an arrangement which would prevent the sand from mingling with the stones, for the brief time required for the ARGUMENTATION IO 146 PROVING THE PROPOSITION passage of the roller in its first traverses over the road, would attain the desired end. It is not at all needful that the partition should be enduring, for as soon as the lower layer of stones has been forced into contact, and has become bound together, there is no further danger of the mingling of the bits with the sand ; thus the speedy decay of the fabric is a matter of no consequence. As the result oi careful tests made by Mr. Charles Mills, the chief engineer of the Massachusetts Highway Commission, and with the assistance of Mr. W. P. McClintock, the engineer member of the board, it appeared that ordinary cotton cloth of the cheapest quality, such as goes under the name of cheese- cloth, if spread upon the sand after the road is shaped to receive the broken stone, will serve to keep the stone and sand from churning together. This method was carefully tried in macadamizing the state road between Cottage City and Edgartown, Massachusetts. The cloth was spread in strips lengthwise of the way ; the stone for the bottom layer was shoveled from the sides upon it with no unusual care. When the roller came to be used it was found that the stone acted essentially as if it was on an ordinary firm foundation ; it at once united with the usual number of passages of the roller over it. At the present price of cotton, cheese-cloth can be had in large quantities at a cost of about three cents per square yard on the road. This for a hardened way fif- teen feet in width amounts to about seven hundred and fifty dollars per mile, which is often much less than the cost of any other effective means of attaining the object, and may be less than one third that due to the loss of the broken stone which would occur if it were allowed to come directly in contact with the sand. A section through such a " petti- coat road," as it has been termed, shows that the stones do THE PROOF 147 not tear through the cloth. It is indeed probable that material of even slighter texture and of much less cost would serve. Various kinds of strong paper were tried but found worthless." N. S. SHALER: American Highways. 4. Bring to class a good example from literature of a priori reasoning, a posteriori reasoning, the argument of analogy, the argument of authority. 5. Reduce to brief form the following argument and ex- pand the derived brief : " Here, on the other hand, the women are the real support- ers of the ideal endeavors : in not a few fields, their influence is the decisive one ; in all fields, this influence is felt, and the whole system tends ever more and more to push the men out and the women in. Theatre managers claim that eighty-five per cent of their patrons are women. No one can doubt that the same percentage would hold for those who attend art exhibitions, and even for those who read maga- zines and literary works in general. And we might as well continue with the same arbitrary figure : can we deny that there are about eighty-five per cent of women among those who attend public lectures, or who go to concerts, among those who look after public charities and the work of the churches ? I do not remember ever to have been in a Ger- man art exhibition where at least half of those present were not men, but I do remember art exhibitions in Boston, New York, and Chicago where, according to my actual count, the men in the hall were less than five per cent of those present. As a matter of course, the patron determines the direction which the development will take. As the political reader is more responsible for the yellow press than is the editor, so all the non-political functions of public life must slowly take, 148 PROVING THE PROPOSITION under these conditions, the stamp of the feminine taste and type, which must have again the further effect of repelling man from it more and more. The result is an effemination of the higher culture." MUNSTERBERG : American Traits. REFUTATION So far we have considered only the building up of an argument, but when one argues, one must take account of objections that have been expressed or that are likely to arise in the reader's or hearer's mind, and tear down such counter arguments. The overthrow of opposing arguments is called refutation. It is not always necessary to overthrow all oppos- ing arguments. It is conceivable that, conceding some contentions against your view to have weight, the argument you can make to support a theory, though not perfect, is still strong enough to convince you. Your audience is probably as open to convic- tion as you are. Certainly the frank admission of a doubt would count less against your cause with any intelligent hearer than a specious argument or a "bluff." Indeed it must often be the case that a true searcher after truth will communicate to others his hypothesis for the very reason that it has a flaw in it. He will wish to make clear his reasoning so far as he has gone in order to make others interested in working out the unsolved point. The flaw he makes the THE PROOF 149 raison d'etre for the argument. It is said that it was through explaining to Mrs. Greene the imperfection of his cotton gin that Whitney got the suggestion for the brushes that made it effective. We should not ignore nor pretend to overthrow objections that we can not refute. Not only should we attempt to refute only what we can honestly refute; it is not necessary always to refute all that we can refute. The strong debater will not be betrayed into a vain display of cleverness in uncovering the fallacies of his opponent if they are unimportant ; he will resist the temptation to hold his opponent up to scorn by riddling his argument un- necessarily. If he is actuated by an impersonal desire to prove his proposition, he will select for refutation only those points which he can honestly refute, and of those only the ones that, unrefuted, will seriously impair the validity of his argument. In studying how to build up an argument we make the best possible preparation for refutation. If we understand the difficulties and pitfalls in the process of constructing an argument, we know where to look for the weak points in an antagonist's argument ; on the other hand, all that we learn about detecting fallacies in the arguments of our opponents should help us guard against their occurrence in our own reasoning. We have learned in previous chapters that we must 150 PROVING THE PROPOSITION have a care to make the basis of evidence broad enough, that the argument must be based on prin- ciples or facts, that there must be sequence in the argument, and that the argument of authority is sub- ject to certain restrictions. It is neglect to conform with these requirements that gives rise to fallacies. In the first place, see that the argument rests on a broad enough base. Is the implied middle term accurate, and the implied major premise in conse- quence tenable ? Is there no illicit assumption ? This is one of the most common errors. The youth who came to my door and urged, " You should sub- scribe for this paper, for I am trying to earn my way through college and your subscription will help me along," made this error. Vainly he proved that he was a college student and intended to use the money for his education ; vainly he proved that my sub- scription would help him pay his expenses ; vainly he proved the laudability of his aim, so long as he took for granted my approval of his method. In testing an argument discover the implied major premise and see if it is tenable. This error often results from the use in the brief of compound or complex propositions and the proof of the last member only. The following is a case in point : We should have an endowed theatre, for It would abolish the " long run," which is one of the ob- jectionable features of the present system, for THE PROOF 151 The long run tends to produce mechanical acting, for, etc. The writer in such a case proceeds to establish beyond question the fact that the " long run " is objectionable and counts his work done, forgetting that he has not proved the main point, that the new system will obviate the difficulty. This is a frequent blunder. It is often more glaring, as : It would abolish the long run which is fatal to good acting and which now prevails, for The long run is now customary when a company is mak- ing a long stay in one city, for (evidence) The long run is now the custom when a company is tour- ing the country, for, etc. Here the writer ignores both the proposition that the endowment will work a change, and the proposi- tion that the long run is objectionable. In the second place, one should see that the proof rests on facts. Facts offered to prove a point are sometimes in themselves contradictory. A student asserted in a brief that 54 per cent of the voters in Massachusetts were native born and 84 per cent of the voters in Massachusetts were foreign born. As 100 per cent represents all the voters in Massachu- setts, it was not necessary to consult statistics to prove these figures erroneous. The student who stated that of 59,250 prisoners one in every 938 was native born and one in every 518 was foreign born, 152 PROVING THE PROPOSITION provoked the spontaneous inquiry, "Pray, what are the rest ? " Common sense applied is often all that is needed to show that a statement can not be true. The claim of a student arguing about orphan asylums, that two hundred and fifty out of every thousand persons in New York State were homeless children, would not be credited by any one who stopped to think that that would mean about a third of the juvenile population of the state, if we allow one fourth of the inhabitants of the state to be adults, and that to house so many children, orphan asylums must be as numerous as schoolhouses. It is sometimes possible to point out that the evi- dence offered to support one proposition disproves another, as in the following case : " Towns. Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Alban's shrine, Within this half-hour, hath received his sight ; A man that ne'er saw in his life before. ******* Glou. Let me see thine eyes : wink now : now open them : In my opinion yet thou see'st not well. Simpcox. Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and Saint Alban. Glou. Say'st thou me so ? What color is this cloak of ? Simp. Red, master ; red as blood. Glou. Why, that's well said. What color is my gown of? Simp. Black, forsooth : coal-black as jet. King. Why, then, thou know'st what color jet is of? THE PROOF 153 Suff. And yet, I think, jet did he never see. Glou. But cloaks and gowns, before this day, a many. Wife. Never, before this day, in all his life. Glou. Tell me, sirrah, what's my name ? Simp. Alas, master, I know not. Glou. What's his name? Simp. I know not. Glou. Nor his? Simp. No, indeed, master. Glou. What's thine own name? Simp. Saunder Simpcox, an if it please you, master. Glou. Then, Saunder, sit there, the lyingest knave in Christendom. If thou hadst been born blind, thou mightst as well have known all our names as thus to name the several colors we do wear. Sight may distinguish of colors ; but suddenly to nominate them all, it is impossible." SHAKESPEARE : 2 King Henry VI. Facts in themselves true may be shown to be mis- leading by the revelation of suppressed facts. The man who proved his excellent marksmanship by show- ing a bullet hole in the center of a small target chalked on a barn door, and proved that he shot from an old fowling piece one hundred yards away to make the center hole, had a good case till some one ex- plained that the target was chalked after the bullet was fired. This is more strictly speaking, however, a fallacy of the first class, where the unwarranted assumption is made that the target was there when the bullet hole was made. If either premise is overthrown, the conclusion is 154 PROVING THE PROPOSITION invalidated. The following is a good illustration of refutation by overthrowing both the major and the minor premises in the implied syllogism : All reformatory measures that would change this govern- ment to a democracy are measures which should not be enacted. This is a reformatory measure that would change this government to a democracy. This is a measure that should not be enacted. " My honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford, tells us, that if we pass this law, England will soon be a republic. The reformed House of Commons will, ac- cording to him, before it has sat ten years, depose the king and expel the Lords from their House. Sir, if my honorable friend could prove this, he would have succeeded in bring- ing an argument for democracy infinitely stronger than any that is to be found in the works of Paine. My honorable friend's proposition is in fact this : that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions have no hold on the public mind of England ; that these institutions are regarded with aver- sion by a decided majority of the middle class. This, Sir, I say, is plainly deducible from his proposition ; for he tells us that the representatives of the middle class will inevitably abolish royalty and nobility within ten years ; and there is surely no reason to think that the representatives of the mid- dle class will be more inclined to a democratic revolution than their constituents. Now, Sir, if I were convinced that the great body of the middle class in England look with aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that mo- narchical and aristocratical institutions are unsuited to my THE PROOF 155 country. Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful as means and not as ends. The end of government is the happiness of the people ; and I do not conceive that, in a country like this, the happiness of the people can be promoted by a form of government in which the middle classes place no confidence, and which exists only because the middle classes have no organ by which to make their sentiments known. But, Sir, I am fully convinced that the middle classes sincerely wish to uphold the royal prerogatives and the constitutional rights of the peers. What facts does my honorable friend produce in support of his opinion? One fact only, and that a fact which has absolutely nothing to do with the question. The effect of this reform, he tells us, would be to make the House of Commons all powerful. It was all powerful once before, in the beginning of 1649. Then it cut off the head of the king, and abolished the House of Peers. Therefore, if it again has the supreme power, it will act in the same manner. Now, Sir, it was not the House of Commons that cut off the head of Charles the First ; nor was the House of Commons then all powerful. It had been greatly reduced in numbers by successive expulsions. It was under the absolute domin- ion of the army. A majority of the House was willing to take the terms offered by the king. The soldiers turned out the majority ; and the minority, not a sixth part of the whole House, passed those votes of which my honorable friend speaks, votes of which the middle classes disapproved then, and of which they disapprove still." MACAULAY : On the Reform Bill, March 2, 1831. Where the truth of a proposition is upheld by the argument of authority it may be overthrown in various 156 PROVING THE PROPOSITION ways : the citation of the authority's views may be shown to be wrong ; the passage or utterance itself may be shown to be misquoted or quoted out of con- text in such a way as to make it liable to misinterpre- tation. This is done by citing this expression of opinion correctly, or by citing other contradictory expressions of opinion. The authority himself may be attacked as incompetent or prejudiced. Or opposed authorities of greater weight may be cited. To the demand for evidence the arguer may an- swer, " Here are facts enough I offer you indispu- table facts." If what he says is true and still the proposition is not proved, it rests with you to show that through some wrench or twist in the reasoning the facts do not support the proposition ; it does not rest upon them. This may happen when a word is used in a double sense. The following extract from a brief is an example : Labor unions do not protect their members from arbi- trary dismissals, for i. Orders come without warning from the officers of the union to stop work, for a. This was the case in the x strike, etc. However strong the proof that strikes have been called without warning, the statement that the union does not protect the laborer from arbitrary "dis- THE PROOF 157 missal," in the sense in which it pretends to protect him, is not proved. The treacherous complex proposition may be re- sponsible for a departure from the main line of argument. The student mistakes what is accidental for what is essential. Suppose the student arguing on the pleasures of poverty had said instead of " Mrs. B, who was rich and is now poor, testifies to this, for She says," etc., " This is the testimony of Mrs. B, who was rich and is now poor, for," and had gone on to give evidence of her former wealth and her present poverty : he would have given facts, but they would not be facts to sustain the main line of argument ; they would rather be a dangling incumbrance. The untrained disputant is easily lured from the main argument to account for a general tendency that he has cited as evidence. Thus, instead of giv- ing facts to prove the " long run " prevalent, the stu- dent theorizes : The long run is prevalent, for 1. It is easier for the actor, for a. There is less labor in learning parts. 2. The actor wants what is easy, for (an argument to prove that man is lazy). 3. It is cheaper for the manager, for, etc. 4. And the manager wants what is cheap, for (an argument to prove that man is eager for gain). The irrelevancy of such reasoning is easily appre- 158 PROVING THE PROPOSITION ciated when attention is called to it, but a surprising amount of it can pass muster. The listener is aware that something is being proved and he blames himself that he can not follow. Less common but more awkward even than this arguing aside from the issue is the reasoning in a circle. This happens where the proposition to be proved is used as evidence to support itself : Nicho- las Nicklcby is a better story than Oliver Twist, for they were written at the same time, and Dickens was more interested in the former, as is shown by its greater strength. The justice of Christ's teachings has been called into question because of the Parable of the Vineyard, but the teaching of this parable must be just, since it was spoken by one who taught only what was just and right. One who gives a general statement to prove a spe- cific case and then tries to prove the general statement by specific cases, whether or not he gives the particular case he started to prove, is virtually committing this fallacy. Instead of arguing actors are lazy, for all men are lazy, for lawyers are lazy, and merchants are lazy, and ditch diggers are lazy, and proving each of these classes to be lazy, it is obvious that it would be more convincing and more possible to prove the class in question lazy by the process to be applied to the several classes. THE PROOF 159 The practice of massing the refutation at the begin- ning or the end of the brief is ordinarily ineffective. In general it seems better to scatter the refutation through the brief, considering the objections that may be raised against a proposition in close connection with the positive proof of that proposition. The objection should be stated in the brief, and its statement should be followed by the refutation introduced by " yet." " Yet," it should be noticed, is a coordinate conjunction, and the refutation must never be numbered as if it were inferior in rank to the point it refutes. The accepted form is as fol- lows : II. He is not truthful, for A. Although he told the truth in the case referred to, A 1 . Yet, that does not prove him honest, for i . It was to his advantage to tell the truth, for a. He was sure the truth would be dis- covered, etc. If the objections are strong ones and are known to preoccupy the hearer's mind, it is best, as a rule, to demolish them before presenting your positive argu- ment. This is, however, not an absolute rule. If you have a convincing and captivating argument for a point, you may address it at once even to the preju- diced hearer, trusting it to make him the more will- ing to surrender his own views when you come to 160 PROVING THE PROPOSITION assail them. If the objections are of such a nature that the audience has to be helped to them by the speaker, that is, if the speaker is guarding against possible antagonistic after-thoughts, rather than bat- tering down firmly intrenched views, it is not best to begin with the statement of objections and the refuta- tion of them. This holds true for great or small sec- tions of the brief. EXERCISES i. How does the artist refute Nello's objection? What is the major premise of each ? " ' Young man, I am painting a picture of Sinon deceiving old Priam, and I should be glad of your face for my Sinon, if you'd give me a sitting.' "Tito Melema started and looked round with a pale astonishment in his face, as if at a sudden accusation ; but Nello left him no time to feel at a loss for an answer : ' Piero,' said the barber, ' thou art the most extraordinary compound of humors and fancies ever packed into a human skin. What trick wilt thou play with the fine visage of this young scholar to make it suit thy traitor? Ask him rather to turn his eyes upward, and thou mayst make a Saint Sebastian of him that will draw troops of devout women ; or, if thou art in a classical vein, put myrtle about his curls and make him a young Bacchus, or say rather a Phoebus Apollo, for his face is as warm and as bright as a summer morning ; it made me his friend in the space of a credo. 1 " ' Aye, Nello,' said the painter, speaking with abrupt pauses, 'and if thy tongue can leave off its everlasting chirping long enough for thy understanding to consider the THE PROOF l6l matter, thou mayst see that them hast just shown the reason why the face of Messer will suit my traitor. A perfect traitor should have a face which vice can write no marks on lips that will lie with a dimpled smile eyes of such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard. I say not this young man is a traitor ; I mean, he has the face that would make him the more perfect traitor, if he had the heart of one, which is saying neither more nor less than that he has a beautiful face, informed with rich young blood, that will be nourished enough by food, and keep its color without much help of virtue.' " GEORGE ELIOT : Romola. Would Tito's discomfiture at the artist's request indicate that he is the " ideal traitor "? 2. In the following passage one hypothesis is offered to undermine another. Which is more convincing? What is the major premise of the city editor? Of Gallegher? " ' I shouldn't be surprised to meet him out walking, right here in Philadelphia,' said one of the staff. ' He'll be dis- guised, of course, but you could always tell him by the ab- sence of the trigger finger on his right hand. It's missing, you know ; shot off when he was a boy.' " ' You want to look for a man dressed like a tough,' said the city editor; ' for as this fellow is to all appearances a gen- tleman, he will try to look as little like a gentleman as possible.' " ' No, he won't,' said Gallegher, with that calm imperti- nence that made him dear to us. ' He'll dress just like a gentleman. Toughs don't wear gloves, and you see he's got to wear 'em. The first thing he thought of after doing for Burrbank was of that gone finger, and how he was to hide it. He stuffed the finger of that glove with cotton so's to ARGUMENTATION 1 1 1 62 PROVING THE PROPOSITION make it look like a whole finger, and the first time he takes off that glove they've got him see, and he knows it.' " RICHARD HARDING DAVIS : Galleglier and Other Stories. 3. In the following fable does the Ant admit the Fly's facts? Why does she question her conclusion? " An Ant and a Fly one day disputed as to their respective merits. ' Vile creeping insect ! ' said the Fly to the Ant, ' can you for a moment compare yourself with me ? I soar on the wing like a bird. I enter the palaces of kings, and alight on the heads of princes, nay of emperors, and only quit them to adorn the yet more attractive brow of beauty. Besides, I visit the altars of the gods. Not a sacrifice is offered but is first tasted by me. Every feast, too, is open to me. I sit and drink of the best, instead of living for days on two or three grains of corn as you do.' 'All that's very fine,' replied the Ant; 'but listen to me. You boast of your feasting, but you know that your diet is not always so choice, and you are sometimes forced to eat what nothing would induce me to touch. As for alighting on the heads of kings and emperors, you know very well that whether you pitch on the head of an emperor or an ass (and it is as often on the one as the other), you are shaken off from both with impatience. And, then, the " altars of the gods," indeed ! There and everywhere else you are looked upon as nothing but a nuisance. In the winter, too, while I feed at my ease on the fruit of my toil, what more common than to see your friends dying with cold, hunger, and fatigue ? ' " 4. Write a paragraph of refutation of real or fancied perversion of facts. 5. The following excerpts are from a discussion in Ran- dall's Life of Jefferson, concerning the drafting of the Dec- THE PROOF 163 laration of Independence. The discussion is based on the conflicting evidence of eminent authorities. The passages cited refer directly to the particular statements of the two men on the sjubject in question. Does there seem to be misquotation of any kind on the part of either disputant? Where? Suggest broader lines of argument for establishing the weight of probability on one side or the other : John Adams to Timothy Pickering 1822. "The Committee met, discussed the subject, and then ap- pointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draft, I suppose because we were the two first on the list. The sub-com- mittee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft. I said, ' I will not.' You should do it.' ' Oh ! no.' ' Why will you not ? You ought to do it.' ' I will not.' * Why ? ' ' Reasons enough.' ' What can be your reasons ? ' ' Reason first you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second I am obnox- ious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much other- wise. Reason third you can write ten times better than I can.' * Well,' said Jefferson, ' if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.' ' Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.' A meeting we accordingly had, and conned the paper over. ... I consented to report it, and do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration. We reported it to the Committee of five. It was read, and / do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticised anything. We were all in haste. Congress was impatient, and the instrument was reported, as I believe, in Jefferson's handwriting, as he first drew //." Jefferson to Madison August 30, 1823. " Mr. Adams's memory has led him into an unquestionable 164 PROVING THE PROPOSITION error. At the age of eighty-eight, and forty-seven years after the transactions of Independence, this is not wonderful. Nor should I, at the age of eighty, on the small advantage of that difference only, venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes, taken by myself at the moment and on the spot. [After giving the substance of Mr. Adams's statement, he continues :] Now these details are quite incorrect. The Committee of five met ; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they unani- mously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draft. I consented ; I drew it ; but before I reported it to the Com- mittee, I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting their corrections, because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting it to the Committee : and you have seen the original paper now in my hands, with the corrections of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams interlined in their own handwritings. Their altera- tions were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the Committee, and from them, unaltered, to Congress. This personal communication and consultation with Mr. Adams he has misremembered into the actings of a sub-committee." H. S. RANDALL : Life of Jefferson. " After mentioning that Mr. Jefferson attributed his grand- father's error, in the matter just considered, to the ' failing memory of eighty-eight, the assumed age of Mr. Adams at the time' (a lamentable 'assumption,' as we believe Mr. Adams lacked two or three months of that age !), Mr. Charles F. Adams continues : ' Perceiving also the awkward nature of the charge made by one himself having, at the mo- ment, nearly attained fourscore, Mr. Jefferson disclaims all THE PROOF 165 reliance upon his recollection, and appeals to the unequivo- cal authority of his notes, made at the time. This seemed conclusive testimony, sufficient to set the matter at rest for- ever. But if by those notes is to be understood no more than what has since been published under that name in the first volume of his Correspondence, it is clear, on examina- tion, that they present no evidence, excepting that which may be implied by their affirming nothing in corroboration? " Life and Works of John Adams, quoted by H. S. RANDALL. Mr. Randall refers to the above as follows : " This is a most extraordinary commentary ! Does Mr. Jefferson, in the Madison letter, bring or imply any ' charge ' against Mr. Adams on the score of age, or any other score ? Does he treat him otherwise than kindly and respectfully / Does he so far base a claim to superior accuracy on his own juniority, that it makes a reference to Mr. Adams's age ' awkward' ? Does he (in exact conflict with the preceding hypothesis !) ' disclaim all reliance on his recollection ' ? And, lastly, is it true that Mr. Jefferson's contemporaneous ' notes ' ' affirm nothing in corroboration ' of his statements in the premises?" Mr. Randall has previously quoted Jefferson as saying in his notes : " The Committee desired me to do it it was accordingly done." 6. Read the argument given below and make a brief of it, carefully stating objections and their refutation as in the example furnished : 1 A. Although he has gained convenient contrivances, for 1 Note that this is lettered as if it were the first objection ; when the previous paragraph is taken into consideration this proposition will no longer be A. 166 PROVING THE PROPOSITION 1. He has a coach and crutches. 2. He has a Geneva watch and a Greenwich nautical almanac. 3. He has notebooks. 4. He has libraries. 5. He has insurance societies. A 1 . Yet for each material gain he has suffered a corre- sponding loss, for i 1 . He has lost the use of his feet and his muscles. 2 1 . He has lost knowledge of the sun and the stars. 3 1 . He has lost his memory in some degree. 4 1 . His wit is overloaded. 5 1 . Accidents are more frequent. B. Although his theory of life is higher, for 1. The highest philosophy was stoicism. 2. Christianity is now established. J3 1 . Yet his life does not so well comport with his theory, for i 1 . All Stoics were Stoics. 2 1 . In Christendom where is there a Christian ? "Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes ; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific ; but this change is not amelioration. For every- thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under ! But compare the health of the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the THE PROOF 167 traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad ax, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch ; and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. " The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the informa- tion when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe ; the equinox he knows as little ; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks im- pair his memory ; his libraries overload his wit ; the insur- ance office increases the number of accidents ; and it may be a question whether machinery does not incumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in establishments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic ; but in Christendom where is the Christian? " There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed be- tween the great men of the first and of the last ages ; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nine- teenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxago- ras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and in his turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only 168 PROVING THE PROPOSITION its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenom- ena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries be- fore. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the tri- umphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor and disincumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it im- possible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, * without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his handmill, and bake his bread himself.' "Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them." EMERSON : Self-Reliance. 7. Explain the order of the refutation in Decius' speech : " Casar. The cause is in my will : I will not come ; That is enough to satisfy the senate, But for your private satisfaction, Because I love you, I will let you know : Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home : THE PROOF 169 She dreamt to-night she saw my statua, Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts, Did run pure blood ; and many lusty Romans Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it : And these does she apply for warnings, and portents, And evils imminent ; and on her knee Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day. Decius. This dream is all amiss interpreted : It was a vision fair and fortunate : Your statue spouting blood in many pipes, In which so many smiling Romans bathed, Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck Reviving blood, and that great men shall press For tinctures, stains, relics and cognizance. This by Calpurnia's dream is signified. Ccesar. And this way have you well expounded it. Decius. I have, when you have heard what I can say : And know it now : the senate have concluded To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar. If you shall send them word you will not come, Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock, Apt to be render'd, for some one to say, ' Break up the senate till another time, When Caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams.' If Caesar hide himself, shall they not whisper, ' Lo, Caesar is afraid ' ? " SHAKESPEARE : Julius Ccesar. 8. Write a brief, using the material on plagiarism given on pages 21-25. Give ample refutation of points against your side of the question. 9. Read carefully, then analyze and make a brief of the following excerpt : PROVING THE PROPOSITION THE PROOF I/I " On the opposite page, Plate I, I have put, beside each other, a piece of true grotesque, from the Lombard-Gothic, and of false grotesque from classical (Roman) architecture. They are both griffins ; the one on the left carries on his back one of the main pillars of the porch in the cathedral of Verona ; the one on the right is on the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina at Rome, much celebrated by Renaissance and bad modern architects. " In some respects, however, this classical griffin deserves its reputation. It is exceedingly fine in lines of composition, and, I believe (I have not examined the original closely), very exquisite in execution. For these reasons, it is all the better for our purpose. I do not want to compare the worst false grotesque with the best true, but rather, on the con- trary, the best false with the simplest true, in order to see how the delicately wrought lie fails in the presence of the rough truth ; for rough truth in the present case it is, the Lombard sculpture being altogether untoward and imperfect in execution. <; ' Well, but,' the reader says, ' what do you mean by calling either of them true ? There never were such beasts in the world as either of these ? ' " No, never : but the difference is, that the Lombard work- man did really see a griffin in his imagination, and carved it from the life, meaning to declare to all ages that he had verily seen with his immortal eyes such a griffin as that ; but the classical workman never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else ; but put the whole thing together by line and rule. " ' How do you know that? ' " " Very easily. Look at the two, and think over them. You know a griffin is a beast composed of lion and eagle. 1/2 PROVING THE PROPOSITION The classical workman set himself to fit these together in the most ornamental way possible. He accordingly carves a sufficiently satisfactory lion's body, then attaches very grace- fully cut wings to the sides : then, because he cannot get the eagle's head on the broad lion's shoulders, fits the two together by something like a horse's neck (some griffins being wholly composed of a horse and eagle), then, finding the horse's neck look weak and unformidable, he strengthens it by a series of bosses like vertebrae, in front, and by a series of spiny cusps, instead of a mane, on the ridge ; next, not to lose the whole leonine character about the neck, he gives a remnant of the lion's beard, turned into a sort of griffin's whisker, and nicely curled and pointed ; then an eye, probably meant to look grand and abstracted, and therefore neither lion's nor eagle's; and finally, an eagle's beak, very sufficiently studied from a real one. The whole head being, it seems to him, still somewhat wanting in weight and power, he brings forward the right wing behind it, so as to inclose it with a broad line. . . . The whole griffin, thus gracefully composed, being, nevertheless, when all is done, a very composed griffin, is set to very quiet work, and raising his left foot, to balance his right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order to reach it, his left leg is made half as long again as his right. " We maybe pretty sure, if the carver had ever seen a griffin, he would have reported of him as doing something else than that with his feet. Let us see what the Lombardic workman saw him doing. " Remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and part eagle, has the united power of both. He is not merely a bit of lion and a bit of eagle, but whole lion, incorporate with THE PROOF 173 whole eagle. So when we really see one, we may be quite sure we shall not find him wanting in anything necessary to the might either of beast or bird. " Well, among things essential to the might of a lion, perhaps, on the whole, the most essential are his teeth. He could get on pretty well even without his claws, usually strik- ing his prey down with a blow, woundless; but he could by no means get on without his teeth. Accordingly, we see that the real or Lombardic griffin has the carnivorous teeth bare to the root, and the peculiar hanging of the jaw at the back, which marks the flexible and gaping mouth of the devouring tribes. " Again : among things essential to the might of an eagle, next to his wings (which are of course prominent in both examples) are his claws. It is no use his being able to tear anything with his beak, if he can not first hold it in his claws ; he has comparatively no leonine power of striking with his feet, but a magnificent power of grip with them. Accordingly, we see that the real griffin, while his feet are heavy enough to strike like a lion's, has them also extended far enough to give them the eagle's grip with the back claw ; and has, moreover, some of the bird- like wrinkled skin over the whole foot, marking this binding power the more ; and that he has besides verily got some- thing to hold with his feet, other than a flower, of which more presently. " Now observe, the Lombardic workman did not do all this because he had thought it out, as you and I are doing to- gether ; he never thought a bit about it. He simply saw the beast ; saw it as plainly as you see the writing on this page, and of course could not be wrong in anything he told us of it. 1/4 PROVING THE PROPOSITION " Well what more does he tell us? Another thing, remera ber, essential to an eagle is that it should fly fast. It is no use its having wings at all if it is to be impeded in the use of them. Now it would be difficult to impede him more thoroughly than by giving him two cocked ears to catch the wind. " Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin has them so set, and, consequently, as he flew, there would be a continual humming of the wind on each side of his head, and he would have an infallible earache when he got home. But the real griffin has his ears flat to his head, and all the hair of them blown back, even to a point, by his fast flying, and the aperture is downwards, that he may hear any- thing going on upon the earth, where his prey is. In the false griffin the aperture is upwards. " Well, what more ? As he is made up of the natures of lion and eagle, we may be very certain that a real griffin is, on the whole, fond of eating, and that his throat will look as if he occasionally took rather large pieces, besides being flexible enough to let him bend and stretch his head in every direction as he flies. " Look, again, at the two beasts, you see the false one has got those bosses upon his neck like vertebrae ; which must be infinitely in his way when he is swallowing, and which are evidently inseparable, so that he can not stretch his neck any more than a horse. But the real griffin is all loose about the neck, evidently being able to make it almost as much longer as he likes ; to stretch and bend it anywhere, and swallow anything, besides having some of the grand strength of the bull's dewlap in it when at rest. " What more ? Having both lion and eagle in him, it is probable that the real griffin will have an infinite look of THE PROOF 175 repose as well as power of activity. One of the notablest things about a lion is his magnificent indolence, his look of utter disdain of trouble when there is no occasion for it; as, also, one of the notablest things about an eagle is his look of inevitable vigilance, even when quietest. Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin is quite sleepy and dead in the eye, thus contradicting his eagle's nature, but is putting himself to a great deal of unneces- sary trouble with his paws, holding one in a most painful position merely to touch a flower, and bearing the whole weight of his body on the other, thus contradicting his lion's nature. " But the real griffin is primarily, with his eagle's nature, wide awake ; evidently quite ready for whatever may hap- pen ; and with his lion's nature, laid all his length on his belly, prone and ponderous ; his two paws as simply put out before him as a drowsy puppy's on a drawing-room hearth- rug ; not but that he has got something to do with them, worthy of such paws; but he takes not one whit more trouble about it than is absolutely necessary. He has merely got a poisonous winged dragon to hold, and for such a little matter as that, he may as well do it lying down and at his ease, looking out at the same time for any other piece of work in his way. He takes the dragon by the middle, one paw under the wing, another above, gathers him up into a knot, puts two or three of his claws well into his back, crashing through the scales of it and wrinkling all the flesh up from the wound, flattens him down against the ground, and so lets him do what he likes. The dragon tries to bite him, but can only bring his head round far enough to get hold of his own wing, which he bites in agony instead; flapping the griffin's dewlap with it, and 1/6 PROVING THE PROPOSITION wriggling his tail up against the griffin's throat ; the griffin being, as to these minor proceedings, entirely indifferent, sure that the dragon's body cannot drag itself one hair's- breadth off those ghastly claws, and that its head can do no harm but to itself. " Now observe how in all this, through every separate part and action of the creature, the imagination is alway* right. It evidently can not err ; it meets every one of our require- ments respecting the griffin as simply as if it were gathering up the bones of the real creature out of some ancient rock. It does not itself know or care, any more than the peasant laboring with his spade and axe, what is wanted to meet our theories or fancies. It knows simply what is there, and brings out the positive creature, errorless, unquestionable. So it is throughout art, and in all that the imagination does ; if anything be wrong it is not the imagination's fault, but some inferior faculty's, which would have its foolish say in the matter, and meddled with the imagination, and said, the bones ought to be put together tail first, or upside down. " This however we need not be amazed at, because the very essence of the imagination is already defined to be the seeing to the heart ; and it is not therefore wonderful that it should never err ; but it is wonderful, on the other hand, how the composing legalism does nothing else than err. One would have thought that, by mere chance, in this or the other ele- ment of griffin, the griffin-composer might have struck out a truth ; that he might have had the luck to set the ears back, or to give some grasp to the claw. But, no ; from beginning to end it is evidently impossible for him to be anything but wrong ; his whole soul is instinct with lies ; no veracity can come within hail of him ; to him all regions of right and life are forever closed. THE PROOF 177 "And another notable point is, that while the imagination receives truth in this simple way, it is all the while receiving statutes of composition also, far more noble than those for the sake of which the truth was lost by the legalist. The ornamental lines in the classical griffin appear at first finer than in the other ; but they only appear so because they are more commonplace and more palpable. The subtlety of the sweeping and rolling curves in the real griffin, the way they waver and change and fold, down the neck, and along the wing, and in and out among the serpent's coils, is incompa- rably grander, merely as grouping of ornamental line, than anything in the other ; nor is it fine as ornamental only, but as massively useful, giving weight of stone enough to answer the entire purpose of pedestal sculpture. Note, especially, the insertion of the three plumes of the dragon's broken wing in the outer angle, just under the large coil of his body ; this filling of the gap being one of the necessities, not of the pedestal block merely, but a means of getting mass and breadth, which all com- posers desire more or less, but which they seldom so perfectly accomplish. "So that taking the truth first, the honest imagination gains everything ; it has its griffinism, and grace, and usefulness, all at once : but the false composer, caring for nothing but himself and his rules, loses everything, griffinism, grace, and all. " I believe the reader will now sufficiently see how the terms ' true ' and ' false ' are in the most accurate sense attach- able to the opposite branches of what might appear at first, in both cases, the merest wildness of inconsistent reverie. But they are even to be attached, in a deeper sense than that in which we have hitherto used them, to these two compositions. ARGUMENTATION 12 178 PROVING THE PROPOSITION For the imagination hardly ever worhs in this intense way, unincumbered by the inferior faculties, unless it be under the influence of some solemn purpose or sentiment. And to all the falseness and all the verity of these two ideal crea- tures this farther falsehood and verity have yet to be added, that the classical griffin has, at least in this place, no other intent than that of covering a level surface with entertaining form ; but the Lombardic griffin is a profound expression of the most passionate symbolism. Under its eagle's wings are two wheels, which mark it as connected, in the mind of him who wrought it, with the living crea- tures in the vision of Ezekiel : ' When they went, the wheels went by them, and whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, and the wheels were lifted up over against them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.' Thus signed, the winged shape becomes at once one of the acknowledged symbols of the Divine power ; and, in its unity of lion and eagle, the workman of the Middle Ages always means to set forth the unity of the human and divine natures. In this unity it bears up the pillars of the Church, set forever as the corner-stone. And the faithful and true imagination beholds it, in this unity, with everlasting vigilance and calm omnipo- tence, restrain the seed of the serpent crushed upon the earth ; leaving the head of it free, only for a time, that it may inflict in its fury profounder destruction upon itself, in this also full of deep meaning. The Divine power does not slay the evil creature. It wounds and restrains it only. Its final and deadly wound is inflicted by itself." RUSK IN : Modern Painters. 10. Write a complete brief for a long original forensic on the question on which you prepared an introduction to a brief at the close of the work on the introduction. PRESENTATION OF MATERIAL THE FORENSIC THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC WHEN the brief is completed the problem of gen- eral structure is solved. The solution is not neces- sarily unalterable. If the student in the heat of writing strikes a truer relationship of parts than he discovered in making the brief, he should not spare himself the trouble of readjusting the parts of the brief, even though his instructor has pronounced the brief acceptable. Revision resulting from such after- thoughts will not infrequently be necessary until the student has gained real proficiency in brief drawing. The student should not, however, begin to write with the expectation of making changes in structure. He should have worked over his brief till he feels that he has reached a unified, coherent, and emphatic arrangement of material. He is then able to concentrate his attention upon the problem of presenting what he has to say with as much force and charm of style as he can command. There is no peculiar law for argumentation of the highest order, that is, argumentation addressed to an audience whose intelligence is assumed to be 179 ISO PROVING THE PROPOSITION equal to the writer's, no pattern to which all must conform. There is as much room for individuality here as in any field of literature. Given the same brief, we may have as many different developments of it as there are individuals to experiment with it, if only each writes naturally. But very often, at first, the writer feels all his pleasure and power in composi- tion slipping away as he sits down to expand his unyield- ing brief into a forensic. A statement of propositions and supporting evidence almost repellent in its for- mality and rigidness is apt to be the result when the student writes for the first time under the dominance of a brief. If he is not pleased with his accomplish- ment, he should not blame the brief. He should rather bear in mind Phillips Brooks's advice to young preachers. " The true way to get rid of the boniness of a sermon," he told them, " is not by leaving out the skeleton, but by clothing it with flesh." One who conceives of argumentation as an arid form of discourse in which natural ability to write is at a discount, will scarcely succeed here. It is true that in argumentation a pleasing style without a solid, logical foundation can not make a successful piece of work. It is also true that a good brief developed with fidelity so that the finished forensic shall have the apprentice virtues, thoroughness, unity, coher- ence, etc., even though it has no touch of the true amateur's pleasure in writing, in finding the fit DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC l8l expression for his idea, may make an acceptable fo- rensic. But if the brief is a good one, its right devel- opment will tax all the skill the writer has. The briefs being equally good, the best forensic will be his who has the most distinguished ability as a writer. All other forms of discourse narration, description, and exposition are used in the development of an argument. That it must here serve a purpose ought to give point to the story, lucidity to the explanation, vividness to the description. You may feel when your brief is finished that all has been said, and that may be the case In the paragraph on society analyzed on page 166 there is comparatively little development. But this is not always the case. Your brief may say: My experience leads me to think treats give the moder- ately poor more pleasure than the rich, for When I was poor I took greater joy in the purchase of a luxury. When I was poor I took greater joy in the theatre. See how Charles Lamb makes " Bridget " in her ar- gument on this question develop these propositions : " ' Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare and all because of that folio Beau- mont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it 182 PROVING THE PROPOSITION was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome and when you presented it to me and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating, you called it) and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit your old corbeau for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen or sixteen shil- lings was it? a great affair we thought it then which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. * * * * # * * " ' You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood when we squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me and the pleasure was the better for a little shame and when the curtain drew up, what cared we DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC 183 for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria ? You used to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such re- flections we consoled our pride then, and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, but there was still a law of civility to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other pas- sages and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play, afterwards ! ' " CHARLES LAMB : Old China. The first proposition is made convincing to the reader by the detailed narration of a signal instance the purchase of the folio ; the second, by an ex- planation of the compensations that attend a gallery seat in the theatre. You will notice in the selection from Emerson, already referred to, the tendency to repeat an idea several times: " Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes 1 84 PROVING THE PROPOSITION but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. Society is a wave," etc. Fox is said to have declared that to the multitude one argument stated in five different forms is equal to five new arguments. The single statement in the brief should show that the student does not make this error. But in his forensic he may often with profit resort to repetition, either to emphasize or to make clear an idea. It was a habit that Burke did not lose by. Take for example his iteration and reiteration of the idea that it was not what England could, but what she ought to do with reference to the American colonies that was the question of importance : " The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your in- terest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a gener- ous one? Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them? What signify all those titles, and all those arms? Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons? " Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC 185 keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that if I were sure the colonists had at their leaving this country sealed a regular compact of servitude, that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens, that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all genera- tions ; yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of law ; I am restoring tranquillity ; and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of gov- ernment is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or ought to determine." BURKE : Conciliation with the Colonies. There is, of course, always the danger of excess. You must be sure your idea is worth repeating ; that it needs explanation and enforcement ; and that you repeat it in such wise as to illumine, not darken ; to strengthen, not enfeeble. EXERCISES i. Use analogy to show that the following assertions may be true : a. If a student has little ability for mathematics, it is the more important that he should study the subject. b. It is fortunate for a strong character like Lincoln to have to contend against hardships. c. Fair faces are sometimes deceiving. d. You can put no reliance on a man without principle. e. That man's exuberance of spirit is too uniform to be genuine. 186 PROVING THE PROPOSITION /. We are often unaware of those influences that have most deeply affected us. g. Russia needed a good defeat. h. Some penalty must be paid for every great social reform. 2. Sustain the following propositions by authority : a. The sentence, " She looked beautifully," is incorrect. (Cite the usage of good authors, the opinions of gramma- rians and lexicographers.) b. Washington's army suffered great hardships while at Valley Forge. 3. Prove the truth of the two propositions just given by presenting reasons. 4. Choose one of the following generalizations and develop it by presenting numerous examples briefly but in a varied and suggestive way. Choose another generalization and give one excellent, well- developed example in proof of it: a. Honesty is the best policy. b. The gods bring thread for a web begun. c. The deepest natures develop slowly. d. Familiarity breeds contempt. e. College education is not necessary to business success. /. Animal stories have recently been very popular. g. Most people have some pet economy. h. The evil that men do lives after them. /. A little learning is a dangerous thing. / A spice of danger attracts. k. Forbidden fruits are sweetest. /. Where there's a will there's a way. m. Dame Fortune is fickle. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC 187 5. Tell by what method or methods each of the following bits of argument is developed : a. " The most polite age is in danger of being the most vicious. " It happened at Athens, during a public representation of some play exhibited in honor of the commonwealth, that an old gentleman came too late for a place suitable to his age and quality. Many of the young gentlemen who observed the difficulty and confusion he was in, made signs to him that they would accommodate him if he came where they sat. The good man bustled through the crowd accordingly ; but when he came to the seats to which he was invited, the jest was to sit close and expose him, as he stood out of countenance, to the whole audience. The frolic went round all the Athenian benches. But on those occasions there were also particular places assigned for foreigners. When the good man skulked towards the boxes appointed for the Lacedemonians, that honest people, more virtuous than polite, rose up all, to a man, and with the greatest respect re- ceived him among them. The Athenians, being suddenly touched with a sense of the Spartan virtue and their own degeneracy, gave a thunder of applause ; and the old man cried out, ' The Athenians understand what is good, but the Lacedemonians practice it ! ' " STEELE : The Spectator. b. " I shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me in questioning an opinion of his [M. Michelet's] upon this martyr's firm- ness. The reader ought to be reminded that Joanna d'Arc was subjected to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of per- sonal rancor. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy 188 PROVING THE PROPOSITION of Caesar; at times, also, where any knowledge of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be, therefore, anti-national ; and still less was individually hate- ful. What was hated (if anything) belonged to his class, not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would be a certainty of calumny arising against her, such as would not affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it would follow of necessity that some people would impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence could escape that. Now, had she really testified this willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking from the instant approach of torment. And those will often pity that weak- ness most, who, in their own persons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testi- mony to stem. And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, is the one sole writer amongst her friends who lends some countenance to this odious slander. His words are that, if she did not utter this word recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. ' Whether she said the word is uncertain ; but I affirm that she thought it.' " Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense of the word ' thought ' applicable to the case. Here is France calumniating La Pucelle : here is England defending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on a priori principles, every woman must be liable to such a weakness : that Joanna was a DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC 189 woman ; ergo, that she was liable to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes her to have uttered the word by an argu- ment which presumes it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argu- ment not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by mul- titudes. What else, I demand, than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed against her ? What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won from the enemies, that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? 'Ten thousand men,' says M. Michelet himself, 'ten thousand men wept;' and of these ten thousand the majority we re political enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. What else was it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic English soldier who had sworn to throw a faggot on her scaffold, as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood ? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And if all this were in- sufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life, as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The exe- cutioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that mo- ment did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bid- IQO PROVING THE PROPOSITION ding him with her last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest breath as- cended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart. No ; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to swear it." DE QUINCEY : _/## of Arc. c. " But now, furthermore, give me leave to ask, whether the way of doing it [stopping the trade in slaves] is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the Continent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along that extremely extensive and unwholesome coast ? The enterprise is very gigantic ; and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprise has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall ; but they could not manage it ! Watch the coast of Africa? That is a very long Coast ; good part of the Coast of the terra- queous Globe ! And the living centers of this slave mischief, the live coals that produce all this world-wide smoke, it appears lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, which are perfectly accessible and manageable. ******* "Most thinking people, if hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent, will you station police-officers at every hen-roost ; and keep them watching and cruising incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enor- mous expense, with almost no effect ? Or will you not try rather to discover where the fox's den is, and kill the fox ! Which of those two things will you do? Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den : there he is, kill him and dis- charge your cruisers and police-watchers." CARLYLE : The Nigger Question. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORENSIC 191 d. " It is an undeniable fact that we cannot know anything whatever except as contrasted with something else. The contrast may be bold and sharp, or it may dwindle into a slight discrimination, but it must be there. If the figures on your canvas are indistinguishable from the background, there is surely no picture to be seen. Some element of unlikeness, some germ of antagonism, some chance for discrimination, is essential to every act of knowing. ... It is not a super- ficial but a fundamental truth, that if there were no color but red it would be exactly the same thing as if there were no color at all. In a world of unqualified redness, our state of mind with regard to color would be precisely like our state of mind in the present world with regard to the pres- sure of the atmosphere if we were always to stay in one place. We are always bearing up against the burden of this deep aerial ocean, nearly fifteen pounds upon every square inch of our bodies ; but until we get a chance to discrim- inate, as by climbing a mountain, we are quite unconscious of this heavy pressure. In the same way, if we knew but one color we should know no color. If our ears were to be filled with one monotonous roar of Niagara, unbroken by alien sounds, the effect upon consciousness would be absolute silence. If our palates had never come in contact with any tasteful thing save sugar, we should know no more of sweet- ness than of bitterness. If we had never felt physical pain, we could not recognize physical pleasure. For want of the contrasted background its pleasurableness would be non- existent. And in just the same way it follows that without knowing that which is morally evil we could not possibly recognize that which is morally good. Of these antago- nist correlatives, the one is unthinkable in the absence of the other. In a sinless and painless world, human conduct IQ2 PROVING THE PROPOSITION might possess more outward marks of perfection than any saint ever dreamed of; but the moral element would be lacking ; the goodness would have no more significance in our conscious life than that load of atmosphere which we are always carrying about with us. "We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness of which cannot be gainsaid. In a happy world there must be sorrow and pain, and in a moral world the knowledge of evil is indispensable." FISKE : The Mystery of Evil. e. " It seems that a really great author must admit of trans- lation, and that we have a test of his excellence when he reads to advantage in a foreign language as well as in his own. Then Shakespeare is a genius because he can be translated into German, and not a genius because he can not be trans- lated into French. Then the multiplication- table is the most gifted of all conceivable compositions, because it loses noth- ing by translation, and can hardly be said to belong to any one language whatever. Whereas I should rather have con- ceived that, in proportion as ideas are novel and recondite, they would be difficult to put into words, and that the very fact of their having insinuated themselves into one language would diminish the chance of that happy accident being re- peated in another. In the language of savages you can hardly express any idea or act of the intellect at all : is the tongue of the Hottentot or Esquimaux to be made the meas- ure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes ? " Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the Fine Arts. I suppose you can express ideas in painting which you can not express in sculpture ; and the more an artist is of a painter, the less he is likely to be of a sculptor. The more he commits ARTICULATION OF THE PARTS 193 his genius to the methods and conditions of his own art, the less he will be able to throw himself into the circumstances of another. Is the genius of Fra Angelico, of Francia, or Raffaelle disparaged by the fact that he was able to do that in colors which no man that ever lived, which no angel, could achieve in wood ? Each of the Fine Arts has its own subject-matter ; from the nature of the case you can do in one what you can not do in another ; you can do in painting what you can not do in carving ; you can do in oils what you can not do in fresco ; you can do in marble what you can not do in ivory ; you can do in wax what you can not do in bronze. Then I repeat, applying this to the case of languages, why should not genius be able to do in Greek what it can not do in Latin ? and why are its Greek and Latin works defec- tive because they will not turn into English ? That genius, of which we are speaking, did not make English ; it did not make all languages, present, past, and future ; it did not make the laws of any language : why is it to be judged of by that in which it had no part, over which it has no control?" NEWMAN: Literature. THE ARTICULATION OF THE PARTS In a long forensic that falls naturally into several sections related to the main subject, but more or less independent of each other, it is sometimes difficult to give the effect of unity. The reader is apt to have a fragmentary notion ; parts he remembers, but he has only a dim notion of their connection and bearing, no sense of the force of the entire argument. The most important means of making a paper seem unified is, of course, to make it unified, to keep the ARGUMENTATION 13 194 PROVING THE PROPOSITION central idea dominant and develop I, II, III, etc., strictly for the purpose of proving the main proposi- tion, allowing no digressions or surplusage. That is the work of the brief ; but even where the relation- ship exists and is so baldly evident as in the brief, we are glad to have the numbers and letters to point it out. In the forensic, where the argument is not so directly and concisely stated, and where the letters and numbers are not used, some help is needed to make the average reader aware whither the most orderly argument is tending. These aids are the introduction, transitions, and the conclusion. The introduction may do much toward making clear what was obscure, toward winning a hostile reader to take the writer's point of view, and so on, but its most important function, perhaps, is to give the reader a comprehensive view of the question as a whole, and the bearing of the discussion of the several particular issues in reference to it. This may be done with more or less explicitness and formality. Cardinal Newman closes the introduction to his lectures on the purpose of the university thus : "I have then to investigate in the Discourses which follow, those qualities and characteristics of the intellect in which its cultivation issues or rather consists ; and with a view of assisting myself in this undertaking, I shall recur to certain questions which have already been touched upon. These questions are three : viz. the relation of intellectual ARTICULATION OF THE PARTS 195 culture, first, to mere knowledge ; secondly, to professional knowledge ; and thirdly, to religious knowledge. In other words, are acquirements and attainments the scope of a University Education ? or expertness in particular arts and pursuits? or moral and religious proficiency ? or something besides these three? These questions I shall examine in succession, with the purpose I have mentioned." With much less formality Stevenson suggests the divisions for his discussion of the difference between the Scotch and the English in The Foreigner at Home : " England and Scotland differ, indeed, in law, in history, in religion, in education, and in the very look of nature and men's faces, not always widely, but always trenchantly." The less obvious, more incidental method of point- ing the way is better suited to the lighter subject. Another opportunity to give an impression of to- tality, to present the parts in relation to the whole, comes at the close of the forensic. The conclusion is often used for the purpose of summing up what the writer has sought to accomplish by the entire paper : "And now I consider I have said enough in proof of the first point, which I undertook to maintain, viz., the claim of Theology to be represented among the Chairs of a University. I have shown, I think, that exclusive- ness really attaches, not to those who support that claim but to those who dispute it. I have argued in its behalf, first, from the consideration that, whereas it is the very 196 PROVING THE PROPOSITION profession of a University to teach all sciences, on this ac- count it can not exclude Theology without being untrue to its profession. Next, I have said that, all sciences being con- nected together, and having bearings one on another, it is im- possible to teach them all thoroughly, unless they all are taken into account, and Theology among them. Moreover, I have insisted on the important influence "which Theology in matter of fact does and must exercise over a great variety of sciences, completing and correcting them : so that, granting it to be a real science occupied upon truth, it cannot be omitted without great prejudice to the teaching of the rest. And lastly, I have urged that, supposing Theology be not taught, its province will not simply be neglected, but will be actually usurped by other sciences, which will teach, without warrant, conclusions of their own in a subject-matter which needs its own proper principles for its due formation and disposition." NEWMAN : The Idea of a University. So clear and direct a summary is very welcome at the close of a long, intricate discourse that one has followed eagerly without stopping to take one's bearings. Usually a writer chooses a more subtle but not less sure method of utilizing the conclusion as a unifying element. Instead of reiterating what he has said he gives his argument some fresh application that brings out effectively its force and significance. Such a conclusion is that at the close of Burke's Bristol speech. After discussing the several charges he said : " And now, gentlemen, on this serious day, when I come, as it were, to make up my account with you, let me take ARTICULATION OF THE PARTS 197 to myself some degree of honest pride on the nature of the charges that are against me. I do not here stand' before you accused of venality, or of neglect of duty. It is not said that, in the long period of my service, I have in a single instance sacrificed the slightest of your interests to my ambition, or to my fortune. It is not alleged that, to gratify any anger or revenge of my own or of my party, I have had a share in wronging or oppressing any description of men, or any one man in any description. No ! the charges against me are all of one kind : that I have pushed the principles of general justice and benevolence too far, further than a cautious policy would warrant, and further than the opinions of many would go along with me. In every acci- dent which may happen through life in pain, in sorrow, in depression and distress I will call to mind this accusa- tion and be comforted." But it is not only at the beginning and at the end of the argument that it is desirable to have its course indicated. After proving x,y, z, under I, how shall the writer take up II, without an apparent break? By summing up what has been said and relating it to the main idea, the thought is brought back to the right starting point for the second chain of argument. A transitional sentence or paragraph, summing up what has been said and hinting at what is to come, must frequently be introduced as a con- necting link between sections of the argument. Such transitions are frequent in the most informal papers ; in The Foreigner at Home, already referred to, are such transitions as : 198 PROVING THE PROPOSITION "But it is not alone in scenery and architecture that we count England foreign. The constitution of society, the very pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us." In more pretentious and formal discussions such transitions as the following ones taken from Burke's Speech on Conciliation are necessary : " These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is still behind a third consideration concerning this object, which serves to deter- mine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its population and its commerce: I mean its temper and character? Or, " If then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of Ameri- can liberty be for the greater part, or rather entirely, imprac- ticable ; if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, or, if applicable, are in the highest degree inexpedient ; what way yet remains? No way is open but the third and last, to comply with the American spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it as a necessary evil." Introductions, transitions, and conclusions should be in a style suited to the style of the paper as a whole. Every student should know how to write the clear, direct introduction, transitions, and conclusion, that belong to the formal paper ; but they would be out of keeping with the style of the rest of his foren- sic and should be translated into passages that point ARTICULATION OF THE PARTS 199 the way more casually, more incidentally, without drawing so much attention to themselves. Often these aids to coherence are so obvious and rigid that they remind one forcibly of the brief. One is aware of the brief not as an informing bony structure, but as an external visible coat of mail. Not only in the style but in the phraseology of the introduction, transitions, and conclusions should the student guard against stilted reminders of the brief. He should avoid such phrases as, " the material is- sues," "the proposition," "refutation"; he should vary the expression for the relationship between proposition and proof, and not eternally use " for " ; he should not announce that he " has proved " or is " going to prove." Less excusable than these faults, and even more serious, is that of introducing into the forensic the jargon of the academic debate. Some students seem to think that such expressions as " we of the affirma- tive," "the negative," "our contention is," "it is admitted by both sides," etc., are essential to argu- mentation, and when they sit down to write a forensic it is as if they represented a debating team with an organized opposed force. The style here should be free from affectation, simple, and natural. The brief should be felt throughout as giving strength and symmetry to the forensic, but it should never declare itself. 200 PROVING THE PROPOSITION EXERCISES 1. What are the strong points of the following passage considered as an introduction : " As I sit at my work at home, which is at Hammersmith, close to the river, I often hear some of that ruffianism go past the window, of which a good deal has been said in the papers of late, and has been said before at recurring periods. As I hear the yells and shrieks and all the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shakespeare and Milton, as I see the brutal reckless faces and figures go past me, it rouses the recklessness and brutality in me also, and fierce wrath takes possession of me, till I remember, as I hope I mostly do, that it was my good luck only of being born respectable and rich, that has put me on this side of the window among delightful books and lovely works of art, and not on the other side, in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor- shops, the foul and degraded lodgings. I know by my own feelings and desires what these men want, what would have saved them from this lowest depth of savagery : employment which would foster their self-respect and win the praise and sympathy of their fellows, and dwellings which they could come to with pleasure, surroundings which would soothe and elevate them, reasonable labor, reasonable rest. There is only one thing that can give them this art." WILLIAM MORRIS. 2. Write a formal conclusion to a forensic for which the foregoing excerpt might serve as an introduction. 3. Organize in the form of a brief the material furnished by the following summary : PERSUASION 201 " The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for con- fusion. Culture looks beyond machinery; culture hates hatred ; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweet- ness and light. It has one even yet greater ! the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light." MAT- THEW ARNOLD : Sweetness and Light. 4. Select from literature a good formal introduction, an informal, persuasive introduction, several good formal transi- tions, a good formal conclusion, a good informal conclusion. 5. Write a formal introduction and conclusion to the forensic for which you have prepared the brief. 6. Write transitions to connect the various sections of the argument. 7. Rewrite your introduction, your transitions, and your conclusion, making them less stiff and formal and giving them literary quality. PERSUASION We have supposed ourselves arguing always to convince an ideal audience, one that is impartial, well informed, critical. With such an audience the strong- est argument is most persuasive, and the writer or speaker may lose himself in his argument without thought of those addressed. Since, however, there 202 PROVING THE PROPOSITION are few ideal hearers, and since sound argument will not always bring others to accept your views, per- suasion, or the suiting the argument to the hearer, is an important element in popular argument When the orator takes advantage of the ignorance of his hearers to move them with specious reasoning, with a mere show of logic, he is doing an unworthy thing ; when, however, he presents a truly logical and con- vincing discourse in such a way as to overcome preju- dice, his achievement is praiseworthy. At this stage of our work it is best to make a brief with conviction alone in mind, but at the same time we should recognize that persuasion is not less a mat- ter of selection and arrangement than of expression. In the following passage, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris gives a bit of primitive persuasion that accomplishes its end because " Brer Rabbit " knows the one idea that will appeal to " Brer Fox " : " ' I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer Fox,' sezee, ' so you don't fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox,' sezee, ' but don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. " ' Hit's so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'dat I speck I'll hatter hang you,' sezee. " * Hang me des ez high as you please, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ' but do fer de Lord's sake don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. " ' I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, ' en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee. " ' Drown me des ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,' sez PERSUASION 203 Brer Rabbit, sezee, ' but do-don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. " ' Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, ' en now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee. "'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, ' but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee. " Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier- patch. ******* " Brer Rabbit was bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out : "'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox bred en bawn in a brier-patch ! ' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers." JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS : Uncle Remus. The order of presentation has much to do with the acceptability of an idea. An audience may by de- grees be won to receive with favor ideas that, given at the start, would have roused resistance. Mark Antony's speech over the body of Caesar furnishes us with an example of this ; his excited hearers would scarcely have permitted him to speak had he begun " Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us." or, "... but were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue 204 PROVING THE PROPOSITION In every wound of Caesar that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny." SHAKESPEARE : Julius Casar. When we speak of a persuasive style we usually mean a style that wins gently and pleasantly ; in a broader sense, however, a persuasive style is one that effects the speaker's wish. Whether it be suave or brusque, gracious or austere, will depend upon the audience to be influenced. There are some with whom a bluff, rough-and-ready style works wonders, while a suggestion of the unctuous repels irretriev- ably. Whether one depends upon selection, arrangement, or style, or on all three, to accomplish his purpose, his art, to succeed, must conceal itself. We must, like Antony, give the impression that, " I am no orator, as Brutus is ; but ... a plain, blunt man." Men re- sent the suggestion of insincerity in a speaker, the suggestion that they are being led blindfold, to some goal that they have no desire to reach wise men, however, often feel justified in using art to induce men to listen to what they otherwise might reject. Ruskin's address called Work is an excellent ex- ample of this. The address was prepared to be de- livered before workingmen. Ruskin begins as if he were not in the least a reformer with concern for the conduct of his hearers, but as if they were all students of economics interested in social classes, bent on dis- PERSUASION 205 covering the distinctions that exist among industrious men, " who whether they work or whether they play put their strength into the work and their strength into the game." These he says are mainly four : I. Between those who work and those who play. II. Between those who produce the means of life and those who consume them. III. Between those who work with the head and those who work with the hand. IV. Between those who work wisely and those who work foolishly. The first distinction proves to be mainly a device to bring his hearers to his idea of the distinction be- tween producer and consumer. By his novel nomen- clature he rouses curiosity and puts his audience into a receptive state of mind. Had he begun at once with the time-honored " consumer " and " producer," each man would have called up his own long-enter- tained, possibly half or wholly wrong idea to fit the word, and Ruskin's labor to modify and correct their ideas would have been futile. We find on reading that the only inevitable dis- tinction is between head workers and hand workers ; that the other distinctions are wrong and must pass away, but that there must always be head work and hand work, and that there must always be " rough " men to do the hand work and " gentlemen " to do the gentle work. If all the other distinctions are wrong 206 PROVING THE PROPOSITION and transient, why are they not treated together ? Why is this fundamental distinction slipped in be tween them ? If we think of Ruskin as trying to carry his audience rather than as trying to give a coherent and emphatic exegesis of his subject, the question is easily answered. It was more persuasive to begin with a distinction between the classes, that he would denounce, that he could speak of as one sure to pass away. Having shown his hearers his under- standing and sympathy, he now dares to tell them plainly of a distinction that he believes must endure, taking pains to admit, in order not to lose ground, that under the present system the head work and the hand work are not always assigned to those best fitted for them and that the hand work is not properly rewarded, but he remains firm on the point that it is not their business, but the business of the head workers, to rec- tify the evils. He has granted that one distinction is unjust and forced them to admit one to be just to recognize their limitations, he now presents a distinc- tion that should not endure, that makes for unhappi- ness, one that they can help overcome, and proceeds to give a sermon that each man may take home to his bosom and business, a sermon which, if given at the outset, few would have received willingly. The power to win an audience to care for that to which they were indifferent, to accept what they have willed not to accept, is not to be lightly esteemed. PERSUASION 207 Many covet it ; most of us like to watch the process of persuasion, to note the maneuvers by which the speaker brings about desired results, to detect the transparent devices of the teacher who holds the chil- dren as in a spell while she " talks down " to them, the adroitness of the demagogue haranguing a ward meeting, the subtilities of the employer or the union leader pacifying a mob of strikers. But let any of these things be done clumsily, so that the art is patent to those who should not be aware of it, and what derision is roused. The effect must be that of sincerity. It is usually safest really to be sincere. There are ways of gaining the end without trickery, without playing upon vanity or weakness. Garfield's " God reigns, and the government at Washington still survives " sent the would-be avengers of Lincoln's death to their homes. The union men assembled in Faneuil Hall did listen to President Eliot of Harvard while he told them with unqualified directness what he thought of the system of " picketing " and the "closed shop." Any false emotion in a forensic weakens it. A forensic may be challenging, belligerent, scornful, what not? if the occasion justifies the emotion and the writer really has it. But even where there is ample justification for strong feeling, it may be doubted whether an emotional appeal makes the deep and lasting impression that does the utterance 208 PROVING THE PROPOSITION of one, not swept off his feet by sudden feeling, but calmly pronouncing a deep-rooted, dispassionate view. The highest sort of persuasion is that of the man who has a genuine conviction and speaks more from himself than to an audience. Such a speaker com- pels attention and does not exasperate where he strikes most relentlessly. Cardinal Newman appreciated the weight added to an orator's words by the sense that he spoke not as an employed advocate, not as the mouthpiece of an institution, but from his life's experience. He said in the introduction to his discourses on The Idea of a University : " There are several reasons why I should open the discus- sion with a reference to the lessons with which past years have supplied me. One reason is this : It would concern me, Gentlemen, were I supposed to have got up my opinions for the occasion. This, indeed, would have been no reflection on me personally, supposing I were persuaded of their truth, when at length addressing myself to the inquiry ; but it would have destroyed, of course, the force of my testimony, and deprived such arguments, as I might ad- duce, of that moral persuasiveness which attends on tried and sustained conviction. It would have made me seem the ad- vocate, rather than the cordial and deliberate maintainer and witness, of the doctrines which I was to support ; and though it might be said to evidence the faith I reposed in the prac- tical judgment of the Church, and the intimate concurrence of my own reason with the course she had authoritatively sanctioned, and the devotion with which I could promptly PERSUASION 209 put myself at her disposal, it would have cast suspicion on the validity of reasonings and conclusions which rested on no independent inquiry, and appealed to no past experi- ence. In that case it might have been plausibly objected by opponents that I was the serviceable expedient of an emergency, and never, after all, could be more than ingen- ious and adroit in the management of an argument which was not my own, and which I was sure to forget again as readily as I had mastered it. But this is not so. The views to which I have referred have grown into my whole system of thought, and are, as it were, part of myself. Many changes has my mind gone through : here it has known no variation or vacillation of opinion, and though this by itself is no proof of the truth of my principles, it puts a seal upon conviction and is a justification of earnestness and zeal." NEWMAN : The Idea of a University. EXERCISES i. Imagine yourself in the place of Major Rogers at the close of the French and Indian War, and translate the follow- ing paragraph into such an address as he might have made to the Indian chief Pontiac when the latter, unaware that the war was ended, tried to impede his progress on the way to Detroit : The war is over. The English have conquered the French, and I have come with my men to take possession of Detroit according to the terms of the treaty. If you will transfer your allegiance to the king of England, he will hold the French responsible for your previous enmity and grant you liberal terms of peace ; or, Suppose yourself in Thomas Jefferson's place when, dur- ing his ministry to France, he received a letter from his ARGUMENTATION 14 210 PROVING THE PROPOSITION fifteen -year-old daughter Martha declaring her intention to become a nun. Tell what you think he must have said to her to induce her cheerfully to leave the convent school and go home with him to a life in which much of her father's comradeship, private tutors, and social gayety were the main features. 2. From what point of view is Becky's letter persuasive? Why does it fail? " ' You will now, if you please, my dear, sit down at the writing-table and pen me a pretty little letter to Miss Crawley, in which you'll say that you are a good boy, and that sort of thing.' So Rawdon sate down, and wrote off, 'Brighton, Thursday,' and 'My dear aunt,' with great rapidity; but there the gallant officer's imagination failed him. He mumbled the end of his pen, and looked up in his wife's face. She could not help laughing at his rueful countenance, and marching up and down the room, with her hands behind her, the little woman began to dictate a letter, which he took down. " ' Before quitting the country and commencing a cam- paign, which very possibly may be fatal ' "'What?' said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the humour of the phrase, and presently wrote it down with a grin. "'Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come hither .... to say farewell to my dearest and earliest friend. I beseech you before I go, not perhaps to return, once more to let me press the hand from which I have received nothing but kindness all my life.' " ' Kindness all my life,' echoed Rawdon, scratching down the words, and quite amazed at his own facility of composition. PERSUASION 211 " ' I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in anger. I have the pride of my family on some points, though not on all. I married a painter's daughter, and am not ashamed of the union.' " ' No, run me through the body if I am ! ' Rawdon ejaculated. " ' You old booby,' Rebecca said, pinching his ear and looking over to see that he made no mistakes in spelling 'beseech is not spelt with an a, and earliest is.' So he altered these words, bowing to the superior knowledge of his little missis. "' I thought that you were aware of the progress of my attachment,' Rebecca continued ; ' I knew that Mrs. Bute Crawley confirmed and encouraged it. But I make no reproaches. I married a poor woman, and am content to abide by what I have done. Leave your property, dear aunt, as you will. / shall never complain of the way in which you dispose of it. I would have you believe that I love you for yourself, and not for money's sake I want to be reconciled to you ere I leave England. Let me, let me see you before I go. A few weeks or months hence it may be too late, and I cannot bear the notion of quitting the country without a kind word of farewell from you.' " ' She won't recognize my style in that,' said Becky. ' I made the sentences short and brisk on purpose.' ******* " Old Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great mys- tery, handed her over this candid and simple statement. ' We may read it now Mrs. Bute is away,' she said. ' Read it to me, Briggs.' "When Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness laughed more. ' Don't you see, you goose,' she said to 212 PROVING THE PROPOSITION Briggs, who professed to be much touched by the honest affection which pervaded the composition, ' don't you see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it? He never wrote to me without asking for money in his life, and all his letters are full of bad spelling, and dashes, and bad grammar. It is that little serpent of a governess who rules him.' " THACKERAY: Vanity Fair. 3. Select from literature good examples of persuasion. 4. Tell what you think Macaulay meant by each of the supporting propositions in the following bit of argument to prove Hume an " accomplished advocate." Charged against a forensic writer, should you think the practices here enumer- ated praiseworthy or damaging, and why? " Hume is an accomplished advocate ; without positively asserting much more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances which support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavorable to it ; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged ; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are controverted ; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away ; and a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given ; everything that is offered on the other side is scruti- nized with the utmost severity; every suspicious circum- stance is ground for comment and invective ; what can not be denied is passed by without notice ; concessions are some- times made, but this insidious candor only increases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry." T. B. MACAULAY : History. 5. Complete and pass in the forensic upon which you have been working. RESEARCH 213 RESEARCH A FORENSIC that is the result of " cramming " on one phase of a subject with which the writer is un- familiar is apt to be ridiculous. A subject that re- quires research may, however, be treated with great profit to the student, and with a high degree of suc- cess, if the student makes intelligent and thorough preparation for his work. The preparation for such a paper is the most difficult and time-consuming part of the work, and for that reason a student in an Eng- lish composition class can rarely afford to write papers that call for research. An intelligent system will greatly help a student to economize effort. Attention should first be di- rected to getting into the atmosphere of the subject, so to speak, to acquiring such information as will make the student sympathetically at home in the subject ; the second essential is to get a general back- ground of information, so that he can regard the question not as isolated, but in its relation to other questions ; the third and last step is to get thoroughly acquainted with and to collect evidence bearing on the specific question to be argued. Where the question concerns measures or persons, 215 216 RESEARCH or events or places, or anything outside of the writer's range of experience, in order to escape giving it a wooden, dead treatment he must himself comprehend the question as a real and vital one. To talk with those whose experience has touched upon or included the period, the place, the men, con- cerned, is an excellent way to attain this object. Half an hour's talk with such a man as Prince Kropotkin will give one more realization of the civil injustices existing in Russia than hours of diligent reading. If I had chosen a question pertaining to our own civil war, I should wish to talk with those who had actually felt the battle, with those whose dooryards had been battlefields, with the daughter of an Abolitionist who still thrills at the memory of five years spent in sustained elation of earnest devotion to a high prin- ciple ; I should wish to talk with the man south of the Ohio who was burned in effigy and driven from town for voting for Lincoln, to the Copperhead on the northern shore who knew something of the dark plans of the Knights of the Golden Circle ; I should like to turn over the old files of Horace Greeley's news- paper, to look over the war numbers of Harpers' Weekly, and read its editorials and war bulletins, look at its cartoons and caricatures of characters we suppose always to have been canonized. '- : Personal journals and letters contribute much towards making the past seem present, the remote RESEARCH 2 IJ seem near. The novelist or the dramatist often ef- fectively transports one to strange scenes and untried conditions. If one would gain the point of view of those concerned in the industrial conflict of to-day, Charles Reade's Put Yourself in his Place and F. Hopkinson Smith's Tom Grogan present the " scab " as the victim of the " union " ; Robert Herrick's Web of Life shows the " union " men as victims of the labor agitators ; Henry James's Princess Casamassima and E. L. Voynich's Olive Latham show the agitators as victims of mistaken ideals. The danger at this stage of the work is lest one should get prejudice rather than sympathy. If one would determine whether the private home was better than the large asylum for orphan children, it is not enough to see in Sudermann's drama, The Fires of St. John, the kindly-cared-for " calamity child's " craving for a bit of the true devotion she has discovered to exist and ready to gain it at any cost of her own honor or the happiness of others ; it is not enough to read of the " private home " , boy who considers himself handicapped for life, because he has missed the training that the institutional child can not escape one should see as well the asylum children with their placid, dully content little faces. The second step is to read around one's subject to get a background of knowledge for it ; to see it not as an isolated unrelated unit; but to comprehend it 2l8 RESEARCH in its right relation to other subjects. For example, it would be folly to try to treat the question of the Sub- way Tavern's prospect of success as a temperance measure without knowing about saloons in general, without knowledge of coffee-room and neighborhood- house experiments, without knowing the effect of stringent liquor laws, and attempts at total abstinence, without knowing the Bowery, and the statutes govern- ing the sale of alcoholic liquors in New York. Of course, much of the knowledge gained on these kin- dred subjects will be of direct use in the argument. When at last the student reaches the field that his question covers he still has important work to do. A hasty review of a few good magazine articles support- ing the side he has decided to take will not suffice. He must read thoroughly on both sides of the ques- tion. It is always desirable to get at the source of information, to get back to the document from which most recent writers have drawn the evidence on which they have founded their conclusions. This is some- times a very simple and valuable piece of work. Thus, nearly all the historic accounts of the work of Daniel Boone, nearly all the elaborate biographical treatises concerning him, have as their entire basis the brief and quaintly worded Narrative written by the old pioneer himself. But the original source, however valuable, is not enough. Men of old time were no more impeccable than men to-day ; and men RESEARCH 219 of to-day of entire integrity of purpose often make serious mistakes in reporting occurrences. It is therefore indispensable that one should have also the benefit of the latest word on the subject, the benefit of the work of the wary and critical scholar who has discovered inconsistencies and mistakes. Cross lights are also important. An historical sub- ject has not been thoroughly investigated till the biog- raphies of the history makers of the period have been studied; the literature, the art, the monuments, the maps of an epoch should be searched as witnesses. As a rule it is bad economy to waste labor in do- ing over what has been done for one, but that is what we are most of the time doing in schools and colleges. Most large libraries have excellent card catalogues from which it is easy to make up a bibliography on almost any subject. Still, there are always times when such a catalogue is not available, and every stu- dent should know how to make a bibliography for him- self. If one knows how to go about it, he may often serve himself better than the trained specialist will. A college debating team employed a specialist to make for them a list of references on the subject of their debate ; but it was so long in coming that they set to work and made one for themselves that proved to be more complete and valuable than the one for which they paid ten dollars. Pooles Index is, of course, the standard index for 220 RESEARCH periodic publications. In making a bibliography, first consult Poolers Index, looking up the various heads under which an article on the question might be cata- logued. As soon as an article on your subject is found, make a note not only of it but of its author. Then look again through Pooles Index for articles by these authors this time looking by authors instead of sub- jects. It is probable that if they are working on the subject and have published at all, they have published several articles, some of them under obscure titles that escaped your search by subjects. Having com- pleted your search through all the volumes of Poolers Index both by subjects and authors and carefully noted all articles found, with authors, the student should next go to the American Catalog or to the index for the Publishers' Trade List Annual, which contains a list of the books published during recent years by nearly every publishing house in the country. Look up your subject by topics as before and take note of authors. Then look through the index for the authors you entered on your list, either from the index of the Publishers' Trade List Annual or from Poolers Index the difference is that first you were looking for magazine articles, now you are look- ing for books. In the third place, you should, in like manner, look through the Peabody Institute Catalogue for books and pamphlets on the subject, that may now be out of print. You may further supplement your RESEARCH 221 search by reference to The A. L. A. Index to General Literattire, which is a guide to essays, reports, etc., published in collections and so not indexed in ordinary catalogues. The A. L. A. Index to General Litera- ture, Poolers Index, the American Catalog, a Pub- lishers' 7^rade List Annual Index, and a Peabody Institute Catalogue belong to the equipment of even the most limited college or public library. At the start one should exert some ingenuity to think of possible cross reference. If one were discuss- ing the removal of the Seminole Indians from Florida to land west of the Mississippi, one should look for Seminoles, Creeks, History of Alabama, History of Florida, Seminole War, Florida War, General Clinch, General Jackson, Osceola, and other Indian leaders, the maroons, runaway slaves, etc., for facts ; Cooper, Helen Hunt Jackson, Jefferson, Irving, Parkman, etc., for atmosphere. To read an important work on a subject (such as Sprague's Florida War on the subject just considered) and make note of persons, events, other works on the subject, that seem to the author to be of importance, is a good way to get a nucleus from which to start a bibliography. Libraries, publishing houses, and old-book shops will furnish many of the books needed. In Mr. Harry Thurston Peck's Life of Prescott the following comparison occurs : 222 RESEARCH " Irving resembled Livy in his use of authorities. Such sources as were ready to his hand and easy to consult he used with conscientious care : but those that were further afield, and for the mastery of which both time and labor were demanded, he let alone. . . . Compare these easy- going methods with the scientific thoroughness of Prescott, his ransacking, by agents, of every important library in Europe, his great collection of original documents, the many years which he gave to the study of them, and the conscientious judgment with which he weighed and balanced them. . . ." The practical difficulties that prevent a student's getting at many of the valuable sources on his sub- ject make it necessary that he should for the present content himself with the method of Irving, but it should always be with inner protest and with Pres- cott's method in mind as his ideal for his own future study. It would be as undesirable as it would be impossi- ble for the student to read all the articles and books he can obtain. He must early begin to cultivate a sense for an important document Sometimes the reputation of a book or its author will enable him to rank it as reliable or worth while. But not all popu- lar works are sound, and many works that are unknown to the student may be of the highest importance. He must, therefore, ultimately depend on his own judg- ment ; he must reac critically, cross-examining his witnesses as he goes, seeing that they sustain their RESEARCH 223 assertions, that they take an impartial view, sup- pressing no damaging evidence and making no false charges ; that they are sensible, exact, thorough, cau- tious, sure, genuine. Even reliable works should not always be thor- oughly read. The ability to " skip " intelligently, to pounce on the heart of a paragraph or chapter and take possession of it, is indispensable in research. The student must read with a sense of proportion, not lavishing time and strength on the beginning at such a rate that the end must be slighted. An en- thusiastic beginning is always admirable, but to carry a thing through adequately is not less admirable. While reading, the student should take such notes as he may wish to use in his argument. These should be concise and exact, with accurate references to author, title of book or article, page, volume, and publisher. This is important, as in a brief for an argument that requires research it is necessary defi- nitely to note in the margin the source of whatever you cite as evidence. INDEX ADAMS, C. F., Life and Works of J. Adams, 164. ADAMS, J., letter from, 163. A. L, A., Index to General Litera- ture, 220. American Catalog, 220. ANDERSEN, H. C., The Ugly Duck- ling, 140. Argument, A posteriori, \ 29. A priori, 129. By analogy, 1 29. From authority, 132. In the introduction to brief, 77, 78. Argumentation, chapter on the purposes and the uses of, n- 14. Definition of, II. Student's aim in, 27. ARNOLD, M., Sweetness and Light, Arrangement of propositions for brief, 94, 95. Art in oratory, 204, 207. Assertion, not proof, III. Audience, for brief, 57. For forensic, 179. Ideal, 201. ARGUMENTATION 15 225 Authorities, use of, 221. Authority, argument from, 132. Disinterested, 132. Refutation of, 156. B Background of knowledge, 215- 218. BAKER, G. P., Principles of Argu- mentation, 21. BALDWIN, C. S., A College Man- #/ of Rhetoric, 21. Bibliographies, 219. Reference books for, 220. Brief, content of : evidence, kinds of, 128-148. Quantity of collateral, 108-110. Quantity of subordinate, IIO- 114. Refutation, 148-160. Brief, form of: arrangement of propositions in brief, 94, 95. Conclusion of, 92. Connectives in, 90, 91. Improper coordination in, 86. Introduction to, see Introduc- tion. Model, 52-56. Numbering parts of, 92-95. 226 INDEX Propositions simple and com- plete in, 90. Brief, how to read a, 94, 95. Importance of, 51-57. Manifest in forensic, 199. Purpose of, 56. Relation to forensic, 179. Briefs given : Lincoln's brief in suit against pension agent, 51. On, Corporal punishment is an objectionable mode of punish- ing children, 86-90. On, The termite is an important agricultural agent in tropical Africa, 52-56. Briefs, material for : on, Horace Roberts should have a college education, 118. On, Such saloons as the subway tavern would promote the cause of temperance in New York City, 97-100. On, Whittier's poems show him to have been an abolitionist, 120-127. BURKE, E., Bristol Speech, 196. Conciliation with the American Colonies, 102-107, 184, 198. CARLYLE, T., Heroes and Hero Worship, 139. The Nigger Question, 190. Circle, reasoning in, 158. Classification of evidence, 85. Compound propositions, 150, 151. Conclusion, connectives in, 92. Of brief, 92. Of forensic, 195. To enforce principal idea, 196. To summarize, 195. Style of, 198. Connectives, in brief, 90, 91. In conclusion, 92. Coordination, improper, 86. Cross references, 219, 221. DAVIS, R. H., Gallegher and Other Stories, 161. Debate, jargon of, in forensic, 199. Deductive reasoning, 31. Definition of terms, 75, 76. By synonym, 76. DE QUINCEY, 1.,Joan of Arc, 187- 190. DICKENS, C, David Copperfield, 144. DRUMMOND, H., Tropical Africa, 52-56, 101. ELIOT, GEORGE, Romola, 160. EMERSON, R. W., Napoleon, 22. Self-Reliance, 138, 166. Emphasis, 113, 114, 136, 137. Enthymeme explained, 32. Evidence, classification of, 84-107. Kinds of, 128-148. Not enough collateral, 108-110. Of senses, 128. Quantity of, 107-1 14. Related to proposition, 91. INDEX 227 Fable, The Ant and the Fly, 162 The Donkey and the Load o; Salt, 36. Fallacies, their cause, 150. Fallacy, of illicit assumption, 150. 151. Of irrelevant argument, 157. Of reasoning in a circle, 158. False premise, 150, 151, 154. FISKE, J., The Mystery of Evil, 191. For, connective in brief, 90, 91. Forensic, articulation of parts of, 193-201. Brief manifest in, 199. Development of, 179-201. Conclusion of, to enforce princi- pal idea, 195, 196. Connection of parts in, 197. Emotion in, 207. Introduction to, 194. Relation to brief, 1 79. Reminders of brief, 199. Repetition in, 184. Style of, 199. Transitions in, 197. Use of other forms of discourse in, 181. Generalization, errors in, 29, 30. Griffins, true and false, 170-178. H HAGGARD, H. R., Incident con- cerning Dog of, 39. HAPGOOD, N., Washington, 24. HARRIS, J. C, Uncle Remus, 202. HAWTHORNE, N., The House of the Seven Gables, 143. Illicit assumption, 150, 151. Indexes for references in research, 220. Inductive reasoning denned, 28. Initiative, value of, 17, 18. Introduction to brief, 57-84. Argument in, 76, 77, 78. Definition of terms in, 75, 76. Origin of question stated in, 74. Overloading, 76, 77. Propositions only in, 78-81. Purpose of, 58, 60, 62, 69. Syllogism as a test of, 65-74. Introductions to briefs, given for criticism and suggestion : Ernest Thompson Seton's ani- mal stories cultivate in boys the right attitude toward ani- mals, 82. Football is a brutal sport, 69. George Junior Republic's con- tinuance justified, 63. General house work better for Sally Brown than factory work, 63- Mary Jones should go to col- lege, 63. Modern illustrative methods have not contributed largely to real education, 83. Prisons should be made places of reform rather than punish- ment, 62. 228 INDEX The present method of celebrat- ing the Fourth of July should be changed, 70. The regular school holiday should be Monday, 81. The Star and The Record should consolidate, 64. Introduction to forensic, 194. Introductions for analysis : Lin- coln's Cooper Institute Ad- dress, 71. Lincoln's Springfield Address, 7 1 . Macaulay on the Reform Bill, 72. IRVING, W., Knickerbocker History cf New York, 139. Issues, material and immaterial, 56-65. Exercises on, 62-65. Specific and general, 58. J JEFFERSON, T., letter from, 163. LAMB, C., Old China, 183. LINCOLN, A., brief for suit against pension agent, 51. Introduction to Address at Cooper Institute, 71. Introduction to Springfield Ad- dress, 71. LOWELL, J. R., The Independent in Politics, 102. M MACAULAY, T. B., History, 212. History of England, 133. On the Reform Bill, 72, 154. MACKAIL, J. \V., Life of William Morris, 120. Material, finding, 215-223. MEYNELL, ALICE, The Rhythm of Life, 138. Middle term, furnished by material issues, 66. Inexact, 108, 109. MORRIS, W., quoted, 200. MUNSTERBERG, H., American Traits, 96, 147. N Negative premise, changed to affirmative, 34. Negative statement of question, 41-43- NEWMAN, J. H., CARDINAL, The Idea of a University, 192, 194, 195, 208. Notes from reading, 223. Numbering parts of brief, 92950 Oratory, art of, 204, 207. Order of evidence after conclusion explained, 91. Organization of material, 51- 179. Origin of question, 74. Originality of question, 18. Peabody Institute Catalogue, use of, 220. PECK, H. T., Life of Prescott, 222. INDEX 229 Persuasion, chapter on, 201-212. Due to order of presentation, 203. Due to selection of material, 202. Due to style, 204. Plagiarism, exercises on, 21-24. POE, E. A., The Cold Bug, 112. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 140. Poolers Index, use of, 220. Premise, change from negative to affirmative, 34. Presentation of material, 179-214. Pioof, 84-178. Proposition for argument, chapter on deciding on, 2644. Chapter on stating, 41-48. Clearness of, 45. Commensurate with argument, 43>44- Not compound, 46. When negative, 41-43. Propositions in brief, preferable to phrases, 78-81. Simple, 90. Publisher? Trade List Annual, index of, 220. PUFFER, E., The Psychology of Beauty, 135. Question, 17-23. Debatable or not, 19. Familiar, 19, 20. Original, 16-19. Origin of, 74. Right attitude toward, 27. RANDALL, H. S., Life of Jefferson, 162-165. Reading, for background of knowl- edge, 215, 2 1 6. Reasoning, deductive, 31. Exercises in syllogistic, 35, 40. Inductive, 28. References, cross, 219, 221. Refutation, 148-160. Amount of, 148, 149. Arrangement of, 159. Of argument from authority, 156. Research, 215-223. Use of authorities in, 222. Resolution, form of, 41. Revision of brief, 1 79. RUSKIN, J., Modern Painters, 22, 23, 170-178. Work, an example of persua- sion, 204-206. S SAXE, J. G., The Blind Men and the Elephant, 37. Senses, reliability of, 128, 131. SETON, E. T., Wild Animals I Have Known, 139. SHAKESPEARE, King Henry IV, 144. King Henry VI, 153. Julius Casar, 115, 168, 204. SHALER, N. S., American High- ways, 145-147. Sources of information, 218. STEELE, R., SIR, The Spectator, 187. 230 INDEX STETSON, C. P., In this our World, 142. STEVENSON, R. L., The Foreigner at Home, 195, 198. Style, persuasive, 204. Syllogism, as a test of introduction, 65-69. Explanation of, 32. Synonyms, denning by, 76. Test of introduction, 65-69. THACKERAY, W. M., Vanity Fair, 210. Transitions, purpose of, 197. Style of, 198. Unity of argument, 193. Use of catalogues and indexes, 220. W WHITTIER, J. G., propositions given for brief on, 120127. AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE IN ARGUMENTATION .... $1.00 By FRANCES M. 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