Nevertheless, the syllogism has great practical value for the reasoning and arguments of everyday life: in the first place it affords a means of expanding and scrutinizing the condensed forms of reasoning which are so common and so useful; and in the second place it can be used to sum up and state the results of a course of reasoning in incontrovertible form. I shall examine and illustrate both these uses of the syllogism; but first I shall give certain rules which govern all sound reasoning through syllogisms. They were invented by Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher.

42. The Rules of the Syllogism. (A term is said to be distributed, or taken universally, when the proposition of which it is a part makes a statement about all the objects included in the term. In the proposition All men are mortal, the term men is obviously distributed, but mortals is not; for no assertion is made about all mortals but only about those that are included under all men. In the proposition No hens are intelligent, both terms are distributed; for the assertion covers all hens, and also the whole class of intelligent beings, since it is asserted of the class as a whole that it contains no hens.)

I. A syllogism must contain three terms, and not more than three terms.

This rule is to be understood as guarding against ambiguity, especially in the middle term; if the middle term, or either of the others, can be understood in two ways, the syllogism will not hold water.

II. A syllogism must consist of three and only three propositions. The reasons for this rule are sufficiently obvious.

III. The middle term of the syllogism must be distributed at least once in the premises.

If it were not thus distributed or taken universally, the two premises might refer to separate parts of the middle term, and so there would be no meeting ground on which to form the conclusion. In the syllogism, All good athletes lend a clean life, These men lead a clean life, Therefore these men are good athletes, the fallacy lies in the fact that in neither premise is any assertion made about all men who lead a clean life. This fallacy, which is not uncommon in practice where the terms are complicated, is known as the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

IV. No term must be distributed in the conclusion unless it was distributed in at least one of the premises.

In other words, if you have premises which deal with part of a class only, you cannot reach a conclusion about the whole class. In the syllogism, All newspaper editors know how to write, All newspaper editors are paid, Therefore all men who know how to write are paid, the fallacy is obvious. But in the following, All bitter partisans are dangerous citizens, This man is not a bitter partisan, Therefore this man is not a dangerous citizen, one may have to scrutinize the reasoning a little to see that the fallacy lies in the fact that dangerous citizen is taken universally in the conclusion, since a proposition with a negative predicate makes an assertion about the whole of its predicate, but that it is not taken universally in the premise in which it occurs. A fallacy which thus arises from not noticing that a negative predicate distributes its term is apt to be insidious.

V. No conclusion can be drawn from two negative premises.

In other words, if both the major term and the minor term lie outside the middle term, the syllogism gives us no means of knowing what their relation is to each other. The following example will make the reason clear: No amateur athlete has a salary for playing, John Gorman is not an amateur athlete, Therefore John Gorman has a salary for playing.

VI. If one of the premises is negative, the conclusion must be negative.

If of the major and minor premise one is negative, then either the major or the minor term does not agree with the middle term, and the other does; therefore the major and minor term cannot agree with each other.

43. The Syllogism in Practical Use. The practical value of the syllogism and its rules comes in the first place, as I have said, when we expand a condensed form of reasoning into its full grounds in the form of a syllogism. Our reasoned judgments ordinarily take the shortened form, Socrates is mortal, because he is a man; The Corporation Tax Bill is constitutional, because it is a tax on a way of doing business. In each of these cases we are reasoning from a general principle, which is previously established, and from a particular way of conceiving the special fact before us, but we assume the general principle as understood. In the cases above the meaning is clear without declaring at length, All men are mortal, or All taxes on a way of doing business are constitutional.

At any time, however, when you find a piece of reasoning in this condensed form, whether your own or some one else's, which seems to you suspicious, if you expand it into a full syllogism you will have all its parts laid bare for scrutiny. Take, for example, the assertion, "Robinson Crusoe" must be a true story, for everything in it is so minutely described: if you expand it into the full syllogism, All books in which the description is minute are true, "Robinson Crusoe" is a book in which the description is minute, Therefore "Robinson Crusoe" is true, you would at once stick at the major premise. So where you suspect an ambiguity in the use of terms, you can bring it to the surface, if it is there, by the same sort of expansion. In the argument, Bachelors should be punished, because they break a law of nature, the ambiguity becomes obvious when you expand: All law breakers should be punished, Bachelors break a law of nature, Therefore bachelors should be punished; at once you see that law is used in two senses, one the law of the land, the other the statement of a uniformity in nature. In the argument, These men are good citizens, for they take an interest in politics, the expansion to All good citizens are interested in politics, These men are interested in politics, Therefore these men are good citizens,[41] shows that the reasoning contains a breach of the third rule of the syllogism (see p. 148) and is therefore a case of the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Whenever you make or find an assertion with a reason attached by such a word as "since," "for," or "because," or an assertion with a consequence attached by a word like "therefore," "hence," or "accordingly," you have a case of this condensed reasoning, which, theoretically at any rate, you can expand into a full syllogism, and so go over the reasoning link by link.

Sometimes, however, the expansion is far from easy, for in many of the practical exigencies of everyday life our judgments are intuitive, and not reasoned. In such judgments we jump to a conclusion by an inarticulate, unreasoned feeling of what is true or expedient, and the grounds of the feeling may be so shadowy and complex that they can never be adequately displayed.

"Over immense departments of our thought we are still, all of us, in the savage state. Similarity operates in us, but abstraction has not taken place. We know what the present case is like, we know what it reminds us of, we have an intuition of the right course to take, if it be a practical matter. But analytic thought has made no tracks, and we cannot justify ourselves to others. In ethical, psychological, and aesthetic matters, to give a clear reason for one's judgment is universally recognized as a mark of rare genius. The helplessness of uneducated people to account for their likes and dislikes is often ludicrous. Ask the first Irish girl why she likes this country better or worse than her home, and see how much she can tell you. But if you ask your most educated friend why he prefers Titian to Paul Veronese, you will hardly get more of a reply; and you will probably get absolutely none if you inquire why Beethoven reminds him of Michael Angelo, or how it comes that a bare figure with unduly flexed joints, by the latter, can so suggest the moral tragedy of life.... The well-known story of the old judge advising the new one never to give reasons for his decisions, 'the decisions will probably be right, the reasons will surely be wrong,' illustrates this. The doctor will feel that the patient is doomed, the dentist will have a premonition that the tooth will break, though neither can articulate a reason for his foreboding. The reason lies embedded, but not yet laid bare, in all the previous cases dimly suggested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion, which the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not how or why."[42]

The small boy who said that he could not keep step because he had a cold in his head was relying on a sound general truth, Colds in the head make one stupid, for his major premise, but his condition prevented his disentangling it; and all of us every day use minor premises for which we should be incapable of stating the major.

A second practical use of the syllogism is to set forth a chain of reasoning in incontrovertible form. If you have a general principle which is granted, and have established the fact that your case certainly falls under it, you can make an effective summing up by throwing the reasoning into the form of a syllogism.

Conversely, you can use a syllogism to bring out some essential part of the reasoning of an opponent which you know will not commend itself to the audience, as did Lincoln in his debate with Douglas at Galesburg. Douglas had defended the Dred Scott decision of the United States Supreme Court, which decided that the right of property in a slave is affirmed by the United States Constitution. Lincoln wished to make the consequences of this doctrine as glaringly evident as possible. He did so as follows:

I think it follows, and I submit to the consideration of men capable of arguing, whether as I state it, in syllogistic form, the argument has any fault in it.

Nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can destroy a right distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States.

The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution of the United States.

Therefore, nothing in the Constitution or laws of any State can destroy the right of property in a slave.

I believe that no fault can be pointed out in that argument; assuming the truth of the premises, the conclusion, so far as I have capacity at all to understand it, follows inevitably.[43]

Lincoln knew that this doctrine that no state could interfere with slavery would be intolerable to the people of Illinois, before whom he was carrying on his campaign; and this syllogism made clear to them the consequences of the decision of the Supreme Court.

Or you can use a syllogism to make obvious a flaw in the reasoning of your opponent, as in the following example:

In view of the history of commission government in this country so far as it has been made, the burden of proof rests with those who attempt to show that a government which has been so successful in cities of moderate size will not be successful in our largest cities. The syllogism they are required to prove runs briefly thus:

Commission government is acknowledged to have been successful in cities as large as one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, but

It has not been tried in cities containing more than one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants;

Therefore, it will not be successful in cities of four hundred thousand or larger, which is a reductio ad absurdum.

The folly of the attempt is shown by the very statement of the conclusion.[44]

44. The Dilemma. One special form of the syllogism is at times so strong an argument that it deserves special mention here, namely, the dilemma. This is a syllogism in which the major premise consists of two or more hypothetical propositions (that is, propositions with an "if" clause) and the minor of a disjunctive proposition (a proposition with two or more clauses connected by "or").

In the course of the Lincoln-Douglas debate a question was put by Lincoln to Douglas, as follows: "Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizens of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a state constitution?" The question may be viewed as the source of a dilemma, both in the practical and in the syllogistic sense of the term. In fact it involved a situation which, syllogistically, comprised more than one dilemma. They may be stated as follows:

I. If Douglas answers yes, he offends the South, and if he answers no, he offends the North;

But he must answer either yes or no;

Therefore he will offend either the South or the North.

II. If Douglas offends the South, he loses the nomination for the Presidency in the next convention; and if he offends the North, he loses the election to the United States Senatorship (and his chances for the Presidency);

But he must offend either the South or the North;

Therefore he loses either the Presidency or the Senatorship.

Or, III. If Douglas offends the South, he cannot become President; and if he offends the North, he cannot become President;

But he must offend either the South or the North;

Therefore he cannot become President.[45]

The dilemma, if it leaves no hole for the other side to creep through, is an extremely effective argument in politics and in competitive debate. If you can thus get your adversary between the devil and the deep sea on a point that in the eyes of your audience is interesting and critical, you have crippled his case. But if the point is not momentous, though your audience may find the dilemma amusing, you run the risk of the reproach of "smartness" if you crow very loudly over it.

On the other hand, a dilemma that is not exhaustive will hold no one. Many of the arguments against the imposition of a federal tax on corporations assumed that if the tax were imposed it would soon be made unreasonable in amount. Most arguments that the other side will abuse any power that is given to them may be regarded as falling into the class of incomplete dilemma. A speaker who uses a leaky dilemma must have great confidence in the unintelligence of his audience, but it is surprising to see how often such dilemmas occur in political debates.

45. Reasoning from Circumstantial Evidence. The third type of reasoning from similarity named on page 120 is reasoning from circumstantial evidence. The term is familiar to every one from murder trials and detective stories. Webster's argument in the White Murder Case, from which I print a short extract on page 157, is a famous example of an argument on circumstantial evidence; and in fiction Sir Conan Doyle has created for our delectation many notable and ingenious cases of it. But reasoning from circumstantial evidence is far from being confined to criminal cases and fiction; as Huxley points out (see p. 241), it is also the basis of some of the broadest and most illuminating generalizations of science; and the example below from Macaulay is only one of innumerable cases of its use in history.

Reasoning from circumstantial evidence differs from reasoning from analogy or generalization in that it rests on similarities reaching out in a number of separate directions, all of which, however, converge on the case in hand. This convergence is pointed out by Macaulay in the following admirable little argument on the authorship of the Junius Letters, which were a series of pseudonymous and malignant attacks on the British government about 1770:

Was he [Francis] the author of the Letters of Junius? Our own firm belief is that he was. The evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, nay, in a criminal proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the following are the most important facts which can be considered as clearly proved: first, that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the secretary of state's office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the business of the war office; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and look notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of deputy secretary-at-war; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the secretary of state's office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the war office. He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his notes. He resigned his clerkship at the war office from resentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks all of which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person whatever. If this agreement does not settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.[46]

Here the five points or marks of similarity between the writer of the letters and Philip Francis are of such diversity that it would be an extraordinary coincidence if there had happened to be two men whom they would fit: where so many lines converge so closely at a single point it would hardly be possible for them to meet on more than one person.

The following brief extract from Webster's argument in the White Murder Case shows the same sort of convergence of similarities: each circumstance in itself is hardly strong enough to furnish ground for an argument on analogy, but taken all together they point irresistibly in one direction, namely, to the fact of a conspiracy.

Let me ask your attention, then, in the first place, to those appearances, on the morning after the murder, which have a tendency to show that it was done in pursuance of a preconcerted plan of operation. What are they? A man was found murdered in his bed. No stranger had done the deed, no one unacquainted with the house had done it. It was apparent that somebody within had opened, and that somebody without had entered. There had obviously and certainly been concert and cooperation. The inmates of the house were not alarmed when the murder was perpetrated. The assassin had entered without any riot or any violence. He had found the way prepared before him. The house had been previously opened. The window was unbarred from within, and its fastening unscrewed. There was a lock on the door of the chamber in which Mr. White slept, but the key was gone. It had been taken away and secreted. The footsteps of the murderer were visible, outdoors, tending toward the window. The plank by which he entered the window still remained. The road he pursued had thus been prepared for him. The victim was slain, and the murderer had escaped. Everything indicated that somebody within had cooperated with somebody without. Everything proclaimed that some of the inmates, or somebody having access to the house, had had a hand in the murder. On the face of the circumstances, it was apparent, therefore, that this was a premeditated, concerted murder; that there had been a conspiracy to commit it.[47]

The strength of reasoning from circumstantial evidence lies in the number and the diversity of the points of similarity to the point in hand. If there are few of them, the possibility of coincidence increases, as it also does when the points of similarity come from the same source or are of the same nature. This possibility of coincidence is a good rough test of the value of reasoning from circumstantial evidence: where the theory of a coincidence would stretch all probabilities one may safely leave it out of account.

In practice the argument from circumstantial evidence is more frequent in the experience of lawyers than in that of other men; but sooner or later everybody has to pass on such reasoning, for wherever direct evidence is out of the question it may be necessary to piece the situation together by circumstantial evidence. There is some prejudice against such evidence, springing from reported cases of miscarriage of justice in convictions based on it. Such cases, however, are very rare in reality, and probably do not equal in number the cases in which mistaken or false direct testimony has caused injustice.

46. Some Pitfalls of Reasoning—Ambiguity. I have already spoken of some of the dangers to which reasoning is subject—false analogy, faulty generalization of various kinds, and various sins against the rules of the syllogism. There are still a few general dangers to speak about. It should be noted that the various kinds of fallacies run into each other, and not infrequently a given piece of bad reasoning can be described under more than one of them.

Of all the sources of faulty and misleading reasoning, ambiguity is the most fruitful and the most inclusive.

It springs from the facts that words, except those which are almost technically specific, are constantly used in more than one sense, and that a great many of the words which we use in everyday life are essentially vague in meaning. Such common words as "liberty," "right," "gentleman," "better," "classic," "honor," and innumerable others each need a treatise for any thorough definition; and then the definition, if complete, would be largely a tabulation of perfectly proper senses in which the words can be used, or a list of the ways in which different people have used them. Besides this notorious vagueness of many common words, a good many words, as I have already shown (p. 54), have two or more distinct and definable meanings.

Strictly speaking, the ambiguity does not inhere in the word itself, but rather in its use in an assertion, since ambiguity can arise only when we are making an assertion. It has been defined as "the neglect of distinctions in the meaning of terms, when these distinctions are important for the given occasion."[48] Suppose, for example, you are arguing against a certain improvement in a college dormitory, on the ground that it makes for luxury: clearly "luxury" is a word that may mean one thing to you, and another to half of your audience. By itself it is an indefinite word, except in its emotional implication; and its meaning varies with the people concerning whom it is used, since what would be luxury for a boy brought up on a farm would be bare comfort to the son of wealthy parents in the city. Indeed the advances of plumbing in the last generation have completely changed the relative meanings of the words "comfort" and "luxury" so far as they concern bathrooms and bathtubs. In the case of such a word, then, the weight of the definition above falls on the last clause, "when these distinctions are important for the given occasion"; here is a case where the occasion on which the word "luxury" is used determines nearly the whole of its meaning. In practice, if you have a suspicion that a word may be taken in another sense than that you intend, the first thing to do is to define it—to lay down as exactly as possible the cases which it is intended to cover on the present occasion, and the meaning it is to have in those cases. For good examples of this enlightened caution, see the definitions on pages 54-65, especially that from Bagchot.

A similar difficulty arises with the words which, in the somewhat slipshod use of everyday life, have come to have as it were a sliding value.

We may raise no difficulty about understanding the assertions that Brown, and Jones, and Robinson are "honest," but when we come to the case of Smith we discover a difficulty in placing him clearly on either side of the line. That difficulty is nothing less than the difficulty of knowing the meaning given to the word in this particular assertion. We might, for instance, agree to mean by Smith's "honesty" that no shady transactions could be legally proved against him, or that he is "honest according to his lights," or again that he is about as honest as the majority of his neighbors or the average of his trade or profession.[49]

That this is not a fanciful case can be shown by noticing how often we speak of "transparent" honesty, or of "absolute" honesty: this is notably one of the words for which we have a sliding scale of values, which vary considerably with the age and the community. "Political honesty" has a very different meaning in the England of to-day from that which it had in the eighteenth century. To get at the exact meaning of honesty, then, either for Mr. Sidgwick's Brown, Jones, Robinson, and Smith, or for Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour as compared with Walpole or Pitt, we need a good deal more than a dictionary definition. What has already been said (p. 65) on the use of the history of the case to get a preliminary understanding of the question which is to be argued, and the terms to be used in it, applies all through the reasoning involved in the argument. Scrutinize all the terms you use yourself, as well as those used in arguments on the other side. I have already pointed out the ambiguity there is in the emotional implications of words; but the danger from it is so subtle and so besetting that it will be worth while to dwell on it again. There are many cases in which there is no doubt as to the denotation of the word,—the cases which it is intended to name,—but in which the two sides to a controversy use the word with a totally different effect on their own and other people's feelings. Before the Civil War pretty much the whole South had come to use the word "slavery" as implying one of the settled institutions of the country, more or less sanctified by divine ordinance; at the same time a large portion of the North had come to look on it as an abomination to the Lord.

Here there was no doubt as to the denotation of the word; but in a highly important respect it was ambiguous, because it implied a totally different reaction among the people who used it. In a case where the contrast is so glaring there is little danger of confusion; but there are a good many cases where a word may have very different effects on the feelings of an audience without the fact coming very clearly to the surface. "Liberal" is to most Americans a term implying praise, so far as it goes; to Cardinal Newman it implied what were to him the irreverent and dangerous heresies of free thought, and therefore in his mouth it was a word of condemnation.[50] "Aesthetic" to many good people has an implication of effeminacy and of trifling which is far from praiseworthy; to artists and critics it may sum up what is most admirable in civilization. If in an argument on abolishing football as an intercollegiate sport you describe a certain game as played "with spirit and fierceness," football players would think of it as a good game, but opponents of football would hold that such a description justified them in classing the game with prize fighting. When one of the terms you use may thus stir one part of your audience in one way, and the other part in just the opposite way, you are dealing with an uncomfortable kind of ambiguity.

It is easy to get into the way of thinking that the denotation of a word—the things which it names—is the only part of its meaning that counts; but with many words the connotation—I use the word in the rhetorical rather than in the logical sense, to include its implications, associations, and general emotional coloring—has more effect on human nature. There is a good deal of difference between telling a man that his assertion is "incorrect," "untrue," or "false"; if you use the last and he is at all choleric you may bring on an explosion. In argument, where you are aiming to persuade as well as to convince, the question of the feelings of your audience and how they will be affected by the terms you use is obviously of great importance. And if you are using such terms as "gentleman," "political honesty," "socialist," "coeducation," you must not forget that such words have a definite emotional connotation, which will vary largely with the reader.

47. Begging the Question. The fallacy of "begging the question" consists of assuming as true something that the other side would not admit. It is especially insidious in the condensed arguments of which I spoke a few pages back. A common form of the fallacy consists of slipping in an epithet which quietly takes for granted one's own view of the question, or of using some expression that assumes one's own view as correct. For example, in an argument for a change in a city government, to declare that all intelligent citizens favor it would be begging the question. In an argument for the protection of crows, to begin, "Few people know how many of these useful birds are killed each year," would be to beg the question, since the argument turns on whether crows are useful or not. A gross and uncivil form of this fallacy is to use opprobrious epithets in describing persons who take the other view, as in the following sentence from an article in a magazine on the question of examinations for entrance to college:

As for interest and variety, what could destroy and taboo both more effectually than the rigid and rigorous demands of a formal set of examinations prepared, as a rule, by pedantic specialists who know practically nothing of the fundamental problems and needs of the high school.

Begging the question is often committed in the course of defining terms, as in the following passage from Cardinal Newman's "Idea of a University":

It is the fashion just now, as you very well know, to erect so-called Universities, without making any provision in them at all for Theological chairs. Institutions of this kind exist both here [Ireland] and in England. Such a procedure, though defended by writers of the generation just passed with much plausible argument and not a little wit, seems to me an intellectual absurdity; and my reason For saying so runs, with whatever abruptness, into the form of a syllogism:—A University, I should lay down, by its very name professes to teach universal knowledge; Theology is surely a branch of knowledge; how then is it possible for it to profess all branches of knowledge, and yet to exclude from the subjects of its teaching one which, to say the least, is as important and as large as any of them? I do not see that either premise of this argument is open to exception.[51]

The obvious answer is that "university" is a vague term and that there may be many kinds of universities, as indeed there are in this country; moreover, the importance of theology is an arguable matter even among church members.

A well-recognized, but often subtle, form of begging the question is what is known as "arguing in a circle." Usually the fallacy is so wrapped up in verbiage that it is hard to pick out. Here is a clear and well-put detection of a case of it:

There is an argument in favor of child labor so un-American and so inhuman that I am almost ashamed to quote it, and yet it has been used, and I fear it is secretly in the minds of some who would not openly stand for it. A manufacturer standing near the furnace of a glasshouse and pointing to a procession of young Slav boys who were carrying the glass on trays, remarked, "Look at their faces, and you will see that it is idle to take them from the glasshouse in order to give them an education: they are what they are, and will always remain what they are." He meant that there are some human beings—and these Slavs of the number—who are mentally irredeemable, so fast asleep intellectually that they cannot be awakened; designed by nature, therefore, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. This cruel and wicked thing was said of Slavs; it is the same thing which has been said from time immemorial by the slave owners of their slaves. First they degrade human beings by denying them the opportunity to develop their better nature: no schools, no teaching, no freedom, no outlook; and then, as if in mockery, they point to the degraded condition of their victims as a reason why they should never be allowed to escape from it.[52]

In a diffuse and disorderly argument there is always a chance to find some begging of the question which may consist either of getting back to an assumption of the original proposition and so arguing in a circle, or of simply assuming that what has been asserted has been proved. The fallacy of the invented example, in which a fictitious case is described as an illustration, and presently assumed as a real case, is a not uncommon form of begging the question.

48. Ignoring the Question. This is a closely allied error in reasoning that is apt to be due to the same kind of confused and woolly thinking. It consists in slipping away from the question in debate and arguing vigorously at something else. A famous exposure of the fallacy is Macaulay's denunciation of the arguments in favor of Charles I:

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony as to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defense is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation.[53]

In an argument for woman suffrage on the ground that suffrage is a right which ought not to be denied, it would be ignoring the question merely to enumerate the various ways in which the responsibility of a vote might help to better the condition of women.

To ignore the question by trying to lead the public off on a false scent is a constant device of officials who are accused of misconduct. A United States senator whose election had been questioned gave in his defense a full and harrowing account of the struggles of his boyhood. A board of assessors who had been charged with incompetence ended their defense, in which they had taken no notice of the charges, as follows:

Criticism of the Board of Assessors comes with poor grace from those whose endeavors for the common good are confined to academic essays on good government. It savors too much of the adroit pickpocket, who, finding himself hard pressed, joins in the chase, shouting as lustily as any of the unthinking rabble, "Stop, thief!"

The curious thing is that this trick of crossing the scent does lead so many people off the trail.

The so-called argumentum ad hominem and the argumentum ad populum are special cases of ignoring the question: they consist of appeals to the feelings or special interests of the reader or the audience which run away from the question at issue. They are not uncommon in stump speeches, and in other arguments whose chief purpose is to arouse enthusiasm.

An argument on the tariff, for example, sometimes runs off into appeals to save this grand country from ruin or from the trusts or from some other fate which the speaker pictures as hanging over an innocent and plain people. An argument for the restoration of the classical system of education which should run off into eulogies of the good old times might easily become an argumentum ad populum; an argument in favor of a new park which should dwell on selfish advantages which might be gained by the abutters without regard to larger municipal policy would probably be an argumentum ad hominem.

Obviously these two forms of shifting the issue trench closely on the element of persuasion in an argument, and in making the distinction you must apply common sense. Your adversary may reprove you for an argumentum ad hominem or ad populum, when you believe that you are keeping well within the bounds of legitimate persuasion; but in general it is safe to guard your self-respect by drawing a broad line between dodging and unworthy appeals to prejudice and justifiable appeals to feeling and personal interest.

EXERCISES

1. Name a question of policy which would be settled by the establishment of some controverted fact.

2. Find in the daily papers an account of a trial in which evidence was declared inadmissible under the rules of law which would have been taken into account by the average man outside the court in making up his own mind.

3. Name three questions in which the evidence would be affected by temperamental and other prepossessions of the witness.

4. Name a scientific question in which some important fact is established by reasoning from other facts.

5. Cite a case, either from real life or from fiction, in which a fact was established by circumstantial evidence; analyze the evidence and show how it rests on reasoning from similarity.

6. Give a case in which what you believed to be direct observation of a fact deceived you.

7. Give an example from your own experience within a week where vague authorities have been cited as direct evidence.

8. What would you think of the writer of the following sentences as a witness to the numbers and importance of the participants in the woman suffrage procession he is reporting?

Fifth Avenue has seldom, if ever, been more crowded than on Saturday afternoon, and never anywhere have I seen so many women among the spectators of a passing pageant. Throngs, many tiers deep, flanked the line of march, and these throngs were overwhelmingly composed of women. As I passed from block to block I could not get away from the thought that the vastest number of these were sick of heart and ashamed that they, too, were not in line behind the kilted band that headed the procession, the historic symbolic floats, and the inscribed banners, along with their three thousand or more sisters. Here were women, fighting a good fight for the cause of women—for the underpaid factory workers and the overfed lady of fortune who is deprived the right of voice in the government over her inherited property. (Report in a daily paper, May 8, 1911)

9. Find an example of historical evidence in a case where there are no direct witnesses to the fact; discuss it according to S. R. Gardiner's tests (p. 103).

10. Find two examples from the daily papers where statistics are used to establish a complex fact.

11. Name two subjects on which you could gather statistics, and the sources from which you would draw them.

12. Bring to class the testimony of a recognized authority on some complex fact, and explain why his testimony carries weight.

13. Name a subject on which you can speak with authority, and explain why your testimony on that subject should carry weight.

14. Give an example from your own experience of a case in which it is hard to distinguish between direct and indirect evidence.

15. Find in the daily papers or current magazines an argument based on reasoning by analogy; one based on reasoning by generalization; one based on circumstantial evidence; explain the character of each.

16. Find an example of an argument based on reasoning from a causal relation.

17. Find an example of an argument from enumeration of like cases which might be easily upset.

18. In the proposition, "A gentleman ought not to become a professional baseball player," what meaning could be given to the word "gentleman"?

19. Distinguish between the meanings of law in the phrases "moral law," "natural law," and "law of the land."

20. What different meanings would the word "comfort" have had in the days of your grandfather, as compared with the present day?

21. Give, two examples of words with "sliding meanings."

22. Give two examples of words whose denotation is fixed, but whose connotation or emotional implications would be different with different people.

23. Find an example of false analogy.

24. Criticize the reasoning in the following extract from a letter to a newspaper urging Republican and Democratic tickets at the municipal election in a small city in the country.

It is an acknowledged fact that competition in the business life of our city is beneficial to the consumer. If that be so, why will not competition in city affairs bring equally good results to the taxpayer?

25. Give an example you have recently heard of hasty generalization; explain its weakness.

26. Give an example of your own of the post hoc fallacy.

27. Give an example of false reasoning based on assuming a complex fact to be simple.

28. Criticize the reasoning in the following extracts:

a. [Dispatch to a daily paper.] Haverhill, March 30, 1911. Opponents of commission form of government are deriving no little satisfaction from the development of testimony borne out by figures taken from the auditing department of the city of Haverhill that this method of administering municipal affairs has proved thus far to be a costly experiment there.... The total amount of bonds issued during the past twenty-seven months, covering the period of operation of commission form of government, was $576,000; the present borrowing capacity of the city is only approximately $35,000; that the city's bonded debt has increased from $441,264 to $1,181,314 in the past five years; the net bonded debt has more than doubled within three years; that the assessed valuation has increased $5,000,000; and the tax rate has been raised from $17.40 to $19 in five years. The borrowing capacity of $341,696 on January 1, 1906, has decreased to $95,000 on January 1, 1911.... Commission form of government went into effect in Haverhill on the first Monday in January, 1909.

b. From an article in a magazine, opposing the plan of the postmaster-general to increase the postage on the advertising sections of magazines: consider especially the word "censorship":

We see two grave objections to the postmaster-general's plan. First, it requires a censorship to determine what periodicals are "magazines" whose advertising pages are to be taxed, and what are the educational and religious periodicals which are to continue to enjoy what the President calls a "subsidy." Such a censorship would be a new feature in postal administration, and it would seem to be a thing very difficult to work out on any fair basis.

29. In a newspaper report of an inquiry made by the director of the Columbia University gymnasium into the effects of smoking, the following sentences occur:

In scholarship the nonsmokers had the distinct advantage. The smokers averaged eighty per cent in their studies at entrance, sixty-two per cent during the first two years, and seven per cent of failure. The nonsmokers got ninety-one per cent in their entrance examinations and sixty-nine per cent in their first two years in college, while only four per cent were failures. In this respect Dr. Meylan thinks there is a distinct relation between smoking and scholarship.

Of the same set of students forty-seven per cent of the smokers won places on varsity athletic teams, while only thirty-seven per cent of the nonsmokers could get places.

If the next to the last sentence had read, "Smoking therefore seems to be a cause of low scholarship," what should you think of the reasoning?

30. Criticize the reasoning in the following portion of an argument for prohibition:

Dr. Williams says, "We find no evidence that the prohibition laws have in the past been effective in diminishing the consumption of alcoholic beverages." ... The absence of logic in Dr. Williams's conclusion will be readily seen by substituting the homicide evil and the greed evil for the liquor evil in his argument.

Since its establishment the United States has sought to remedy with prohibition the homicide evil. Every state has laws with severe penalties prohibiting murder. And yet the number of homicides in the United States has steadily increased until the number in 1910 was eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five. Since, then, homicides have steadily increased during the past hundred years under a law with severe penalties prohibiting them, a prohibitory law has not been and cannot be a remedy for homicide.

31. Criticize the reasoning in the following extract from an argument for the electrification of the terminal part of a railroad:

It is true that locomotive smoke and gas do not kill people outright; but that their influence though not immediately measurable is to shorten life cannot, I submit, be successfully combated.... A few years ago I made some calculations based on the records of ten years' operation of the railroads in this state, and found that if a man should spend his whole time day and night riding in railroad trains at an average rate of thirty miles an hour, and if he had average good luck, he would not be killed by accident, without his fault, oftener than once in fifteen hundred years, and that he would not receive any injury of sufficient importance to be reported oftener than once in five hundred years. I ask you to estimate how long a man would, in your opinion, live if he were obliged continuously day and night to breathe the air of our stations without any opportunity to relieve his lungs by a breath of purer and better air.

32. Give an example in which you yourself have used the method of agreement in arriving at a conclusion in the last week.

33. Give an example, from one of your studies, of the use of the method of agreement.

34. Give an example, which has recently come to your notice, of the use of the method of difference.

36. Criticize the following syllogisms, giving your reasons for thinking them sound or not:

a. All rich men should be charitable with their wealth; Charitable men forgive their enemies; Therefore all rich men should forgive their enemies.

b. Every man who plays baseball well has a good eye and quick judgment; Every good tennis player has a good eye and a quick judgment; Therefore every good tennis player is a good baseball player.

c. Whenever you find a man who drinks hard you find, a man who is unreliable; Our coachman does not drink hard; Therefore he is reliable.

d. All the steamships which cross the ocean in the quickest time are comfortable; This steamship is slow; Therefore she is not comfortable.

e. All dogs who bark constantly are not bad-tempered; This dog does not bark constantly; Therefore he is not bad-tempered.

f. All cold can be expelled by heat; John's illness is a cold; Therefore it can be expelled by heat. (From Minto)

g. The use of ardent spirits should be prohibited by law, seeing that it causes misery and crime, which it is one of the chief ends of law to prevent. (From Bode)

h. Rational beings are accountable for their actions; brutes not being rational, are therefore exempt from responsibility. (From Jevons)

36. Expand the following arguments into syllogisms and criticize their soundness:

a. The snow will turn to rain, because it is getting warmer.

b. The boy has done well in his examination, for he came out looking cheerful.

c. We had an economical government last year, therefore the tax rate will be reduced.

d. Lee will be a good mayor, for men who have energy and good judgment can do incalculable good to their fellow citizens.

e. There is unshaken evidence that every member of the board of aldermen received a bribe, and George O. Carter was a member of that board.

f. The candidate for stroke on the freshman crew came from Santos School, therefore he must be a good oarsman.

37. Criticize the reasoning in the following arguments, pointing out whether they are sound or unsound, and why:

a. It costs a Nebraska farmer twenty cents to raise a bushel of corn. When corn gets down to twenty cents he cannot buy anything, and he cannot pay more than twelve or fifteen dollars a month for help. When it gets up to thirty-five cents the farmer gives his children the best education possible, and buys an automobile. Therefore the farmer will be ruined if the tariff on corn is not raised.

b. For many years the Democratic platforms have declared explicitly or implicitly against the duties on sugar; if the Democrats should come into power and reduce the duties, they would lose their strength in the states producing cane sugar and beet sugar; if they do not reduce the duty, they admit that their platforms have been insincere. (Condensed from an editorial in a newspaper. March, 1911)

c. I hardly need say that I am opposed to any such system as that of Galveston, or to call it by its broader name, the commission system. It is but another name for despotism. Louis XIV was a commissioner for executing the duties of governing France. Philip II was the same in Spain. The Decemvirs and Triumvirs of Rome were but the same sort of thing, as was also the Directory in France. They all came to the same end. Says Madison, in No. XLVII of The Federalist: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Mr. justice Story said, "Whenever these departments are all vested in one person or body of men, the government is in fact a despotism, by whatever name it be called, whether a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy."

d. The procedure of Berlin has in it an element of fairness worthy of our consideration; those representing large property interests have a surety of being at least represented. Some such system must be devised if the holding of properly at all be regarded as moral and necessary to our civilization. Remember that you are, in a large sense, but a chartered joint-stock corporation. Can you imagine the control of any other joint-stock corporation delivered over to those who have no stock or the least stock in it? Can you imagine the New York & New Haven Railroad, for example, controlled by the passengers, to the exclusion of the stock holders? Now this, to a very great degree, is what has happened in many of our cities. We have deprived the true stockholders, in some cases, of any representation whatever. I thus hold that to give property some voice in the control of a municipal corporation is but sense and justice.

e. We have tried commissions in Buffalo in branches of our city government. They have tried them in nearly every city in this country. We have governed our police by commissions, our parks by commissions, our public works by commissions. Commission government was for many years a fad in this country, and it has become discredited, so that of late we have been doing away with commissions and coming to single heads for departments having executive functions and some minor legislative functions, such as park boards, and police boards, and have been trying to concentrate responsibility in that way. In Erie County and throughout New York a commission elected by the people governs our counties. The board of supervisors is a commission government. It has never been creditable—always bad, even as compared with our city governments. To be sure, it is not just that kind of commission government. It is a larger commission; it is not elected at large, but by districts, but it is an attempt at the same thing. So I say there is nothing new about this idea of government by a commission.



CHAPTER IV

THE ARGUMENT WRITTEN OUT

49. The Brief and the Argument. If your brief is thoroughly worked out, and based on a careful canvass of the evidence, the work on your argument ought to be at least two thirds over. The last third, however, is not to be slighted, for on it will largely depend your practical results in moving your readers. Even a legal argument rarely goes to the court on a written brief alone; and the average reader will never put himself to the effort of reading through and grasping such a brief as we have been planning here. Furthermore, if your complete argument is merely a copying out of the brief into consecutive sentences and paragraphs, you will get few readers. The making of the brief merely completes what may be called the architectural part of your labors; the writing of an argument will use all the skill you have in the choice of words and putting them together.

We saw in Chapter I that argument has two kinds of appeal to its reader: on the one hand, through its power of convincing it appeals to his reason; on the other, through its persuasive power it appeals to his feelings and his moral and practical interests. Of these two kinds of appeal the convincing power is largely determined by the thoroughness of the analysis and the efficiency of the arrangement, and therefore in large part hangs on the work done in making the brief; the persuasive power, on the other hand, though in part dependent on the line of attack laid out in the brief and the choice of points to argue, is far more dependent on the filling in of the argument in the finished form. Even the severest scientific argument, however, is much more than the bare summary of the line of thought which would be found in a brief; and in an argument like the speeches in most political campaigns a brief of the thought would leave out most of the argument. Wherever you have to stir men up to do things you have only begun when you have convinced their reason.

50. The Introduction of the Argument. Much depends on the first part of your argument, the introduction. Its length varies greatly, and it may differ largely in other ways from the introduction to your brief. If the people you are trying to convince are familiar with the subject, you will need little introduction; a brief but clear statement of fundamentals will serve the purpose. For such an audience it is chiefly important to make the issues stand out, so that they shall see perfectly distinctly the exact points on which the question turns. Then the sooner you are at work on the business of convincing them, the better. In such arguments the introduction will perhaps not differ greatly in substance from the introduction to the brief, though it must be reduced to consecutive and agreeable form. At the other extreme is such an argument as that of Huxley's (p. 233), where he had to prepare the way very carefully lest the prejudice against a revolutionary and unfamiliar view of the animate world should close the minds of his hearers against him before he was really started. Accordingly, before getting through with his introduction he expounded not only the three hypotheses between which the choice must be made, but also the law of the uniformity of nature and the principles and nature of circumstantial evidence. Where one shall stop between these two extremes is a question to be decided in the individual argument.

One thing, however, it is almost always wise to do; indeed, one would not go far wrong in prescribing it as a general rule: that is, to state with almost bald explicitness just how many main issues there are, and what they are. In writing an argument it is always safe to assume that most of your readers will be careless readers. Few people have the gift of reading closely and accurately, and of carrying what they have read with any distinctness. Therefore make it easy for your readers to pick up and to carry your points. If you tell them that you are going to make three points or five, they are much more likely to remember those three or five points than if they have to pick them out for themselves as they go along. Huxley, perhaps the ablest writer of scientific argument in the language, constantly practiced this device. In his great argument on evolution, he says (see p. 235): "So far as I know, there are only three hypotheses which ever have been entertained, or which well can be entertained, respecting the past history of nature"; and then, as will be seen, he takes up each in turn, with the numbering "first," "second," and "third." In the same way in his essay "The Physical Basis of Life" he says, not far from the beginning, "I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the whole living world." Burke, in his great speech "On Conciliation with America," said, "The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are two: first, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought to be."

It is hardly too much to say that those writers whose sense of style is most developed are most likely to state the issues with the baldest and most direct precision.

The statement of the issues will bring out the importance of closely limiting the number of main issues. There are few subjects of argument which do not conceivably touch the interests and beliefs of their audiences in many directions; but out of these aspects some obviously count far more than others. If in your introduction you try to state all these issues, small and great, you will surely leave confusion behind you. Very few people are capable of carrying more than three or four issues distinctly enough to affect their judgment of the whole case; and even of these some will not take the trouble to do so. If you can simmer down the case to one or two or three critical points, you are making a good start toward winning over the minds of your readers.

A good statement of the history of the case is apt to be a useful and valuable part of an introduction, especially for arguments dealing with public policies. If you remind readers of what the facts have been, you can more easily make clear to them the present situation from which you make your start. An argument for raising or lowering the tariff on some article would be apt to recount the history of the tariff so far as it concerned that article, and the progress in importing it and manufacturing it within the country. In writing out the argument from the brief on page 90 one would almost inevitably include the recent history of the city government.

In general it is best to make this preliminary statement of the history of the case scrupulously and explicitly impartial. An audience is likely to resent any appearance of twisting the facts to suit the case; and if on their face they bear against your contentions, it is wiser to prepare for your argument in some other way. There are more ways of beginning an argument than by a statement of facts; and resource in the presentation of a case goes a long way toward winning it.

It is often wise to state your definitions with care, especially of terms which are at the bottom of your whole case. The definition from Bagchot on page 58 is a good example. Here is the beginning of an address by President Eliot, in 1896, on "A Wider Range of Electives in College Admission Requirements":

As usual, it is necessary to define the subject a little. "A wider range of electives in college admission requirements." What field are we thinking of when we state this subject? If we mean the United States, the range of electives is already very large. Take, for example, the requirements for admission to the Leland Stanford University. Twenty subjects are named, of very different character and extent, and the candidate may present any ten out of the twenty. Botany counts just as much as Latin. There is a wide range of options at admission to the University of Michigan, with its numerous courses leading to numerous degrees; that is, there is a wide range of subjects permissible to a candidate who is thinking of presenting himself for some one of its many degrees. If we look nearer home, we find in so conservative an institution as Dartmouth College that there are three different degrees offered, with three different assortments of admission requirements, and three different courses within the college. I noticed that at the last commencement there were forty-one degrees of the old-fashioned sort and twenty-seven degrees of the newer sorts given by Dartmouth College. Here in Harvard we have had for many years a considerable range of electives in the admission examinations, particularly in what we call the advanced requirements. We therefore need to limit our subject a little by saying that we are thinking of a wider range of admission electives in the Eastern and Middle State colleges, the range of electives farther west being already large in many cases.[54]

Professor William James, in his essay "The Will to Believe," in which he argues that it is both right and unavoidable that our feelings shall take part in the making of our faiths, begins with a careful definition and illustration of certain terms he is going to use constantly.

Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be (1) living or dead; (2) forced or avoidable; (3) momentous or trivial; and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind.

1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you, "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say, "Be an agnostic or be a Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

2. Next, if I say to you, "Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say: "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put you on a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind.

3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done.

It will facilitate our discussion if we keep all these distinctions well in mind.[55]

In some arguments the working out of the definitions of a few principal terms may occupy much space. Matthew Arnold, a famous critic of the last generation, wrote as an introduction to a volume of selections from Wordsworth's poems an essay with the thesis that Wordsworth is, after Shakespeare and Milton, the greatest poet who has written in English; and to establish his point he laid down the definition that "poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life—to the question, How to live." To the development of this definition he gave several pages, for the success of his main argument lay in inducing his readers to accept it.

Many legal arguments are wholly concerned with establishing definitions, especially in those cases which deal with statute law. The recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Corporation Tax cases and the Standard Oil Case are examples: in each of these what was at issue was the exact meaning of the words used in certain statutes passed by Congress. In the common law, too, there are many phrases which have come down from past centuries, the meanings of which have been defined again and again as new cases came up. We have seen (p. 63) how careful definition the word "murder" may need. "Malice aforethought" is another familiar instance: it sounds simple, but when one begins to fix the limits at which sudden anger passes over into cool and deliberate enmity, or how far gone a man must be in drink before he loses the consciousness of his purposes, even a layman can see that it has difficulties.

In such cases as these a dictionary definition would be merely a starting point. It may be a very useful starting point, however, as in the following extract from an article by Mr. E.P. Ripley, president of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company, on "The Railroads and the People":

There is one point regarding this matter that many forget: this is that in all affairs there are two kinds of discrimination. There is the kind, which, as the dictionary expresses it, "sets apart as being different," which "distinguishes accurately," and there is the widely different kind which "treats unequally." in all ordinary affairs of life we condemn as "undiscriminating" those who have so little judgment or fairness as not to "distinguish accurately" or "set apart things that are different"—who either treat equally things that are unequal, or treat unequally things that are equal. Now, when the railway traffic manager "sets apart things that are different," and treats them differently, he simply does what it is the duty of every one to do.[56]

Then he goes on to develop this definition by showing the facts on which it has to bear.

On the other hand do not bore your readers with dictionary definitions of words whose meaning no one doubts; that is a waste of good paper for you, and of good time for them; and we have seen in Chapter II the futility of the dictionary for cases in which there is real disagreement over the meaning of a word.

It will be seen, then, that the analysis you have made in preparation for the brief may spread out large or small in the argument itself. It is wise, therefore, to look on the work done for the introduction to the brief as work done largely to clear up your own thought on the subject; when you come to writing out the argument itself, you can go back to the introduction to the brief, and see how much space you are now going to give it.

In a college or school argument you will usually follow it rather closely; and you do well to do so, for you will thus fix in your mind a useful model. But when you get out into the world, you will have to consider in each case the needs and prepossessions of the particular audience. Here as everywhere in the argument you must exercise judgment; there is no formula which will fit all cases. The scheme of analysis of the case which has been expounded in Chapter II has stood the test as the best means yet found of exploring a subject and insuring clarity of thought and certainty of attack;[57] but I know of no single fixed scheme for the argument itself which will not be racked apart by the first half dozen practical arguments you apply it to.

51. The Body of the Argument. In the main body of the argument the difference from the brief will be largely a matter of expansion: the brief indicates the evidence, the argument states it at length. Here again you cut your argument to fit your audience and the space at your command. In an argument in the editorial of a newspaper, which is rarely longer than a long college theme, there is little space for the statement of evidence. In Webster's argument in the White Murder Case, which has some thirteen thousand words and which must have taken two hours or more to deliver, the facts are studied in minute detail. Most people are surprised to see the way in which a full statement of evidence eats up space; if the facts are at all complicated, they must be analyzed and expounded one by one and their bearing on the case laid out in full. This necessity of using space in order to make facts clear is the reason why it is so hard to find adequate and convincing arguments which will print in less than fifteen or twenty pages. The trouble with a swift and compact argument like that of Macaulay's on the authorship of the Junius Letters (see p. 155) is that unless you have gone into the question for yourself, you do not know whether to accept the stated facts or not. If you do accept them, the conclusion is inevitable; but if you happen to know that scholars have long held the decision doubtful, you want to know more about the facts in detail before surrendering to Macaulay's conclusion. For an average reader to-day, who knows little of the facts, this argument would have to be greatly expanded.

In this expansion comes the chance for all the skill in exposition that you can muster, and for that subtle appeal to your readers' feelings which lies in vividness and precision of phrasing, considerations with which I will deal separately further on. Questions of proportion of space we may consider here.

The only rule that can be laid down for the distribution of your space is to use your sagacity, and all your knowledge of your subject and of your audience. In a written argument you have the advantage that you can let your pen run on your first draft, and then go back and weigh the comparative force of the different parts of the argument, and cut out and cut down until your best points for the purpose have the most space. In a debate the same end is gained by rehearsals of the main speeches; in the rebuttal, which is best when it is spontaneous, you have to trust to the judgment gained by practice.

Other things being equal, however, brevity carries an audience. If you can sum up your case in half the time that it takes the other side to state theirs, the chances are that your audience will think you have the right of it. Above all, beware of boring your readers by too exhaustive explanation of details or of aspects of the case which they care nothing about. I suppose there is no one of us who has not a worthy friend or two who will talk through a whole evening on whether a lawn should be watered in the evening or the early morning, or whether the eighth hole on the golf course should not be fifty yards longer. One must not be like the man who in the discussion of bimetallism a few years ago used to keep his wife awake at night expounding to her the iniquities and inequalities of a single standard. It is safer to underestimate than to overestimate the endurance and patience of your audience.

52. The Refutation. The place of the refutation will, as we have seen in the chapter on planning (see p. 82), vary greatly with the argument and with the audience. Its purpose is to put out of the way as effectively as possible the main points urged by the other side. In an argument of fact this is done both by exposing weak places in the reasoning and by throwing doubt on the facts cited, either through proof that they are contradicted by better evidence, or that the evidence brought forward to establish them is shaky or inconclusive. In an argument of policy the points on the other side are met either by throwing doubt on the facts on which they rest, or by showing that the points themselves have not coercive force.

Where there are really strong points on the other side, in either kind of argument, it is often sound policy to admit their strength. This is especially true in arguments of policy where the advantages are closely balanced. If you are trying to convince a boy that he should go to your college rather than to another, you do not gain anything by telling him that the other college is no good; if he is worth gaining over he will know better than that. And in general if you have given a man to understand that there is nothing to be said for the other side, and he afterwards finds that there are strong grounds for it, your argument will have a fall in his estimation.

In the manner of your refutation lean towards the side of soberness and courtesy. It has been said that the poorest use you can put a man to is to refute him; and it is certain that in the give and take of argument in active life the personal victories and defeats are what are soonest forgotten. If after a while you have to establish a fact in history or in biology, or to get a verdict from a jury or a favorable report from the committee of a legislature, you will think a good deal more about the arguments of your opponents than about them personally. There are few arguments in which you can afford to take no notice of the strong points of the other side; and where the burden of proof is strongly with you, your own argument may be almost wholly refutation; but it is always worth bearing in mind that if it is worth while for you to be arguing at all, there is something, and something of serious weight, to be said on the other side.

53. The Conclusion. The conclusion of your argument should be short and pointed. Gather the main issues together, and restate them in terms that will be easy to remember. Mere repetition of the points as you made them in your introduction may sound too much like lack of resource; on the other hand, it helps to make your points familiar, and to drive them home. In any event make your contentions easy to remember. Most of us go a long way towards settling our own minds on a puzzling question when we repeat to some one else arguments that we have read or heard. If you can so sum up your argument that your readers will go off and unconsciously retail your points to their neighbors, you probably have them. On the other hand, when you have finished your argument, if you start in to hedge and modify and go back to points that have not had enough emphasis before, you throw away all you have gained. In arguing nothing succeeds like decision and certainty of utterance. Even dogmatism is better than an appearance of wabbling. It is the men like Macaulay, who see everything black and white with no shades between, who are the leaders of the world's opinion. Sum up, then, wherever it is decent to do so, as if there were only one side of the case, and that could be stated in three lines.

54. The Power of Convincing. The convincing power of an argument depends on its appeal to the reason of its readers. To put the same fact in another way, an argument has convincing power when it can fit the facts which it deals with smoothly and intelligently into the rest of the reader's experience. If an argument on a complicated mass of facts, such as the evidence in a long murder case, makes the reader say, "Yes, now I see how it all happened," or an argument for the direct election of United States senators makes him say, "Yes, that is a plain working out of the fundamental principles of popular government," then he is convinced. In this aspect argument merges into exposition. It is significant that, as has already been noted, Matthew Arnold's argument that Wordsworth is the greatest English poet after Shakespeare and Milton, and Huxley's argument that the physical basis of animal and plant life is the same, are both used in a book of examples of exposition.[58] The essential difference between argument and exposition from this point of view lies in the emphasis: normally an explanation covers the whole case evenly; an argument throws certain parts and aspects of the case into relief.

If, therefore, to be convincing, your argument must provide a reasonable explanation of the whole state of affairs to which the case belongs, you can use all the devices there are for clear and effective explanation. I will therefore briefly review a few of these.

Of the value of an introduction which lays out the ground to be covered I have already spoken. The more distinct an idea you can implant in your readers' minds of the course you are going to follow in your argument, the more likely they will be to follow it. Since the success of your argument hangs on carrying them with you on the main issues, let them know beforehand just what those issues are, and in such a way that they can hold them with a minimum of effort. The value of a clear and, as it were, maplike introduction is even greater in an argument than in an exposition.

In the second place, use your paragraphing for all that it is worth, and that is a great deal. The success of any explanation or argument springs from the way in which it takes a mass of facts apart, and rearranges them simply and perspicuously; and there is no device of composition which helps so much towards clearness as good paragraphing. Accordingly when you come to make your final draft, make certain that each paragraph has unity. If you have any doubts see if you can sum up the paragraph into a single simple sentence. Then look at the beginnings of the paragraphs to see whether you have made it easy for your readers to know what each one is about. Macaulay's style is on the whole clearer and more effective for a general audience than that of any other writer in English; and his habit of beginning each paragraph with a very definite announcement of its subject is almost a mannerism. Incidentally there is no better rough test of the unity of your paragraphs than thus to give them something of the nature of a title in the first sentence. Often, too, at the end of an important paragraph it is worth while to sum up its essence in pithy form. Mankind in general is lazy about thinking, and more than ready to accept an argument which is easy to remember and repeat. The end of a paragraph is the place for a catchword.

In the third place, bind the sentences in your paragraphs together. When one is building up a first draft, and picking facts from a variety of sources, it is inevitable that the result shall be somewhat disjointed. In working over the first draft, really work it over, and work it together. Make all the sentences point the same way. Pronouns are the most effective connectives that we have; therefore recast your sentences so that there will be as little change of subject as possible. Then use the explicit connectives in as much variety as you can. It is not likely that you will make your paragraphs too closely knit for the average reader.

In the fourth place, bind your argument together as a whole by connectives at the beginnings of the paragraphs and by brief summarizing paragraphs. In the present generation of schoolboys a good many have groaned over Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America"; but if the first time that one of these sufferers must make an argument in real earnest, he will go back to Burke for some of the devices used to bind that argument together, he will be surprised to see how practically e efficient those devices are. And none of them counts more for clarity and thoroughness than the conscientious way in which Burke took his hearers by the hand at the beginning of each paragraph, and at each turn in his argument, to make sure that they knew just how they were passing from one point to another.

From the doctrine of clear explanation, then, we may carry over to the making of clear arguments the habit of laying out the ground at the beginning, of making the paragraphs do their full work by attending to unity, to emphasis, and to coherence, and of binding the paragraphs together into a closely knit whole.

55. The Power of Persuading. Finally, we have to consider the question of how an argument can be made persuasive—probably the most difficult subject in the range of rhetoric on which to give practical advice. The key to the whole matter lies in remembering that we are here dealing with feelings, and that feelings are irrational and are the product of personal experience. The experience may be bitter or sweet, and to some degree its effects are modified by education; but in substance your feelings and emotions make you what you are, and your capacities in these directions were born with you. If the citizens of a town have no feeling about political dishonesty, reformers may talk their throats out without producing any result; it is only when taxes get intolerable or the sewers smell to heaven that anything will be done. Many people die for whose deaths each of us ought to feel grief, but if these people have never happened to touch our feelings, we can reason with ourselves in vain that we should feel deeply grieved. Feeling and emotion are the deepest, most primitive part of human nature; and very little of its field has been reduced to the generalizations of reason.[59]

When you come, therefore, in the making of your argument to the point of stirring up the feelings of your readers on the subject, do not waste any time in considering what they ought to feel: the only pertinent question is what they do feel. On your shrewdness in estimating what these feelings are, and how strong they are, will hang your success as an advocate. Tact is the faculty you need now—the faculty of judging men, of knowing when they will rise to an appeal, and when they will lie back inert and uninterested. This is a matter you cannot reason about; if you have the faculty it will be borne in on you how other men will feel on your subject. The skill of politicians, where it does not confine itself to estimating how much the people will stand before rebelling, consists in this intuition of the movement of public opinion; and the great leaders are the men who have so sure a sense of these large waves of popular feeling that they can utter at the right moment the word that will gather together this diffused and uncrystallized feeling into a living force. Lincoln's declaration, "A house divided against itself cannot stand, I believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," brought to a head a conflict that had been smoldering ever since the adoption of the Constitution, and made him the inevitable leader who was to bring it to a close. It will be noticed, however, that the time had to come before the inspired word could make its appeal. The abolitionists and antislavery men had long been preaching the same doctrine that Lincoln uttered, and the folly and wickedness of slavery had been proved by philosophers and preachers for generations. Until the time grows ripe the most reasonable doctrine does not touch the hearts of men; when the time has ripened, the leader knows it and speaks the word that sets the world on fire for righteousness.

The same faculty, on a smaller scale, is needed by every one of us who is trying to make other people do anything. The actual use of the faculty will vary greatly, however, with different kinds of arguments. In certain kinds of scientific argument any attempt at persuasion as such would be an impertinence: whether heat is a mode of motion, whether there are such infinitesimal bodies as the ions which physicists of to-day assume to explain certain new phenomena, whether matter consists of infinitesimal whirls of force—in all such questions an argument appeals solely to the reason; and in such Bacon's favorite apophthegm has full sway, Dry light is ever the best. In Huxley's arguments for the theory of evolution feeling had some share, for when the theory was first announced by Darwin some religious people thought that it cut at the foundations of their faith, and Huxley had to show that loyalty to truth is a feeling of equal sanctity to scientific men: hence there is some tinge of feeling, though repressed, in his argument, and a definite consciousness of the feelings of his audience.

At the other extreme are the arguments where the appeal to feelings is everything, since it is clear that the audience is already of the speaker's way of thinking. Examples of such arguments are most apt to be found in speeches in political campaigns and in appeals for money to help forward charities of all kinds. It is probable that most of the conversions in political matters are through reading; consequently the purpose of the speeches is to stir up excitement and feeling to such a heat that the maximum of the party voters will take the trouble to go out to the polls. Arguments directed to this class, accordingly, are almost wholly appeals to feeling. The famous debate between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 was of this character; of the thousands of people who heard them in one or another of the seven debates most had taken sides already. In such a case as this, however, where a change in general political opinion was impending, the reasoning of the debates had more force than in ordinary times, and probably helped many voters to a clearer view of a very distressing and harassing situation. Between times, however, in politics, where there are no great moral or practical differences between parties, the purpose of speeches is almost wholly persuasive. Success one way or another is a question of getting out the voters who more or less passively and as a matter of habit hold to the party. Party speakers, accordingly, use every device to wake up their voters, and to make them believe that there is a real crisis at hand. Every attempt is made to attach moral issues to the party platforms, and to show how the material prosperity of the voters will fail if the other party wins.

Roughly, therefore, we may say that persuasion tends to play a small part in arguments of facts, and a larger part in questions of policy. This is a rough generalization only, for every one knows what eloquence and efforts at eloquence go into the arguments before juries in capital cases, and how dry and abstract are the arguments before the judges on points of law, or on questions of public policy in books of political economy. But in the long run, the less feeling enters into decisions of questions of fact, the better.

Of the factors which make for the persuasiveness of an argument I will speak here of three—clearness of statement, appeal to the practical interests of the audience, and direct appeal to their feelings.

There can be no doubt that clearness of statement is a powerful element in making an argument persuasive, though the appeal that it makes to the feelings of the readers is slight and subtle. In practice we mostly read arguments either to help make up our minds on a subject or to get aid in defending views for which we have no ready support. In the latter case we do not need to be persuaded; but in the former there can be no question that an argument which clears up the subject, and makes it intelligible where before it was confusing, does have an effect on us over and above its aid to our thought.

56. The Practical Interests of the Audience. Of directly persuasive power, however, are the other two factors—the appeal to the practical interests of readers, and the appeal to their emotions. Of these the appeal to practical interests has no proper place in arguments on questions of fact, but a large and entirely proper share in most arguments of policy. Henry Ward Beecher's speech on the slavery issue in the Civil War, before the cotton operatives of Liverpool,[60] is a classic example of the direct appeal to the practical interests of an audience. They were bitterly hostile to the North, because the supplies of cotton had been cut off by the blockade; and after he had got a hearing from them by appealing to the English sense of fair play, he drove home the doctrine that a slave population made few customers for the products of English mills. Then he passed on to the moral side of the question.

Arguments on almost all public questions—direct election of senators, direct primaries, commission form of government, tariff, currency, control of corporations, or, in local matters, the size of a school committee, the granting of franchises to street railroads or water companies, the laying out of streets, the rules governing parks—are all questions of policy in which the greatest practical advantage to the greatest proportion of those who are interested is the controlling force in the decision. At particular times and places moral questions may enter into some of these questions, but ordinarily we come to them to settle questions of practical advantage.

In arguments on all such questions, therefore, the direct appeal to the practical interests of the people you are addressing is the chief factor that makes for persuasiveness. Will a change to a commission form of government make towards a reduction of taxes and towards giving greater and more equitably distributed returns for those that are levied? Will the direct primary for state officers make it easier and surer for the average citizen of the state to elect to office the kind of men he wants to have in office? Will a central bank of issue, or some institution like it, establish the business of the country on a basis less likely to be disturbed by panics? Will a competing street-car line make for better and cheaper transportation in the city? In all such questions the only grounds for decision are practical, and founded in the prosperity and the convenience of the people who have the decision.

To make arguments in such cases persuasive you must show how the question affects the practical interests of your readers, and then that the plan which you support will bring them the greatest advantage. Generalities and large political truths may help you to convince them; but to persuade them to active interest and action you must get down to the realities which touch them personally. If you are arguing for a commission government in your city on the ground of economy, show in dollars and cents what portion of his income the owner of a house and lot worth five or ten thousand dollars pays each year because of the present extravagance and wastefulness. If you can make a voter see that the change is likely to save him ten or twenty-five or a hundred dollars a year, you have made an argument that is persuasive. The arguments for the reformation of our currency system are aimed directly at the material interests of the business men of the country and their employees; and the pleas for one or another system attempt to show how each will conduce to the greater security and profit of the greatest number of people.

To make such arguments count, however, you must deal in concrete terms. A recent argument[61] for the establishment of a general parcels post in this country presents figures to show that for the transportation of a parcel by express at a rate of forty-five cents, the railroad gets twenty-two and one-half cents for service which it could do at a handsome profit for five cents. Of the validity of these figures I have no means of judging; but the effectiveness of the argument lies in its making plain to each of its readers a fact which touches his pocket every time he sends a parcel by express. It is this kind of argument that has persuasiveness, for the way we spend our money and what we get for it come close home to most of us. Of all practical interests those of the purse are of necessity the most moving for all but the very rich.

Money interests, however, are far from being the only practical interests which concern us: there are many matters of convenience and comfort where an individual or a community is not thinking of the cost. Such questions as what kind of furnace to set up, whether to build a house of brick or of cement, which railroad to take between, two cities, are questions that draw arguments from other people than advertising agents. Of another sort are questions that concern education. What college shall a boy go to; shall he be prepared in a public school, or a private day school, or a boarding school? Shall a given college admit on certificate, or demand an examination of its own? Shall a certain public school drop Greek from its list of studies; shall it set up a course in manual training? All these are examples of another set of questions that touch practical interests very closely. In arguments on such questions, therefore, if you are to have the power of persuading and so of influencing action, you must get home to the interests of the people you are trying to move. The question of schools is very different for a boy in a small country village and for one in New York City; the question of admission is different for a state university and for an endowed college; the question of Greek is different for a school which sends few pupils on to college and for one which sends many: and in each case if you want to influence action, you must set forth facts which bear on the problem as it faces that particular audience. Except perhaps for the highest eloquence, there is no such thing as universal persuasiveness. The questions which actively affect the average man usually concern small groups of people, and each group must be stirred to action by incentives adapted to its special interests.

57. The Appeal to Moral Interests. Still further from the interests that touch the pocket, and constantly in healthy and elevating action against them, are the moral interests. The appeal to moral motives is sometimes laughed at by men who call themselves practical, but in America it is in the long run the strongest appeal that can be made. We are still near enough to the men who fought through the Civil War, in which each, side held passionately to what it believed to be the moral right, for us to believe without too much complacency that moral forces are the forces that rule us as a nation. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt have both been called preachers, and the hold they have had on great, though differing, parts of the American people is incontestable. If any question on which you have to argue has a moral side, it is not only your duty, but it is also the path of expediency, to make appeal through the moral principle involved.