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][!--Note--]
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][!--Note--]
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][!--Note--]
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][!--Note--] 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][!--Note--] 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][!--Note--]
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][!--Note--] 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][!--Note--] 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.
The chief difficulty with making an appeal to moral principles is to set them forth in other than abstract terms, since they are the product of a set of feelings which lie too deep for easy phrasing in definite words. In most cases we know what is right long before we can explain why it is right; and a man who can put into clear words the moral forces that move his fellows is a prophet and leader of men. Moreover, it must be remembered when one is appealing to moral principles that upright men are not agreed about all of them, and there is even more doubt and disagreement when one comes to the practical application of the principles. We have seen in Chapter I what bitter division arose in our fathers' time over the right and the righteousness of slavery; and how in many states to-day good and God-fearing people are divided on the question of prohibition.
But even where the two sides to a question agree on the moral principle which is involved, it by no means follows that they will agree on its application in a particular case. Church members accept the principle that one must forgive sinners and help them to reform; but it is another thing when it comes to getting work for a man who has been in prison, or help for a woman who has left her husband. How far is the condoning of offenses consistent with maintaining the standards of society? And in what cases shall we apply the principle of forgiveness? In a business transaction how far can one push the Golden Rule? Life would be a simpler matter if moral principles were always easy to apply to concrete cases.
One must use the appeal to moral principles, therefore, soberly and with discretion. The good sense of readers will rebel if their moral sense is called on unnecessarily; and even when they cannot explain why they believe such an appeal unsound, yet their instincts will tell them that it is so. The creator whose right hand is always rising to heaven to call God to witness disgusts the right feeling of his audience. On the other hand, where moral principles are really concerned there should be no compromise. If in a political campaign the issue is between honesty and graft in the public service, or between an open discussion of all dealings which touch the public good, and private bargaining with party managers, the moral principles cannot be kept hidden. If a real moral principle is seriously involved in any question, the debate must rise to the level of that principle and let practical considerations go. And every citizen who has the advantage of having had more education than his fellows is thereby placed under obligation to hold the debate to this higher level.
58. The Appeal of Style. Finally, we have to consider the appeal to the emotions, which is the distinguishing essence of eloquence, and the attempts at it. In part this appeal is through the appeal to principles and associations which are close to the heart of the audience, in part through concrete and figurative language, in part through the indefinable thrill and music of style which lies beyond definition and instruction.
The appeal to venerated principle we have considered already, looked at from the side of morals rather than of emotions. But morality, so far as it is a coercive force in human conduct, is emotional; our moral standards lie beyond and above reason in that larger part of our nature that knows through feeling and intuition. All men have certain standards and principles whose names arouse strong and reverent emotions. Such standards are not all religious or moral in the stricter sense; some of them have their roots in systems of government. In a case at law, argued purely on a question of law, there does not seem much chance for the appeal to feeling; but Mr. Joseph H. Choate, in his argument on the constitutionality of the Income Tax of 1894, before the Supreme Court of the United States, made the following appeal to the principle of the sanctity of private property, and the words he used could not have failed to stir deep and strong feelings in the court.
No longer ago, if the Court please, than the day of the funeral procession of General Sherman in New York, it was my fortune to spend many hours with one of the ex-Presidents of the United States, who has since followed that great warrior to the bourne to which we were then bearing him. President Hayes expressed great solicitude as to the future fortunes of this people. In his retirement he had been watching the tendency of political and social purposes and events. He had observed how in recent years the possessors of political power had been learning to use it for the first time for the promotion of social and personal ends. He said to me, "You will probably live to see the day when in the case of the death of any man of large wealth the State will take for itself all above a certain prescribed limit of his fortune and divide it, or apply it to the equal use of all the people, so as to punish the rich man for his wealth, and to divide it among those who, whatever may have been their sins, at least have not committed that." I looked upon it as the wanderings of a dreaming man; and yet if I had known that within less than five short years afterwards I should be standing before this tribunal to contest the validity of an alleged act of Congress, of a so-called law, which was defended here by the authorized legal representatives of the Federal Government upon the plea that it was a tax levied only upon classes and extremely rich men, I should have given altogether a different heed and ear to the warnings of that distinguished statesman.[62][!--Note--]
Our emotions do not rise, however, anymore surely in the case of our veneration for the basal principles of religion and government than in that of more personal emotions. The appeal to the Constitution is worn somewhat threadbare by the politicians who call on it at every election, small or great, as is the appeal to the principles of the Pilgrim Fathers. It takes eloquence now to rouse our feelings about these principles. If you have a case important enough to justify appeal to such great principles and the skill in language to give your appeal vitality, you may really arouse your readers. But, on the whole, it is sound advice to say, Wait a few years before you call on them.
The second mode of appeal to the feelings of your audience, that through concrete and figurative language, is more within the reach of advocates who are still of college age. This is particularly true of the use of concrete language. It is a matter of common knowledge that men do not rouse themselves over abstract principles; they will grant their assent, often without really knowing what is implied by the general principle, and go away yawning. On the other hand, the man who talks about the real and actual things which you know is likely to keep your attention. This goes back to the truth that our emotions and feelings are primarily the reaction to the concrete things that happen to us. The spontaneous whistling and humming of tunes that indicate a cheerful heart rise naturally as a response to the sunlight in spring; the fear at the terror that flies in a nightmare is the instinctive and physical reaction to indigestion; we sorrow over the loss of our own friends, but not over the loss of some one else's. The stories that stir us are the stories that deal with actual, tangible realities in such terms that they make us feel that we are living the story ourselves. Stevenson has some wise words on this subject in his essay, "A Gossip on Romance." The doctrine holds true for the making of arguments.
Even where as in Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America," abstractness is not vagueness, the style would be more effective for the richer feeling that hangs over and around a concrete vocabulary. The great vividness of Macaulay's style, and its bold over so many readers, is largely due to his unfailing use of the specific word. If you will take the trouble to notice what arguments in the last few months have seemed to you especially persuasive, you will be surprised to find how definite and concrete the terms are that they use.
Accordingly, if you wish to keep the readers of your argument awake and attentive, use terms that touch their everyday experience. If you are arguing for the establishment of a commission form of government, give in dollars and cents the sum that it cost under the old system to pave the three hundred yards of A Street, between 12th and 13th streets. The late Mr. Godkin of the New York Evening Post, in his lifelong campaign against corrupt government, to bring home to his readers the actual state of their city government and the character of the men who ran it, used their nicknames; "Long John" Corrigan, for example (if there had been such a personage); and "Bath-house John Somebody" has been a feature of campaigns in Chicago. The value of such names when skillfully used is that by their associations and connotation they do stir feeling. Likewise if you are arguing before an audience of graduates for a change from a group system to a free elective system in your college, you would use the names of courses with which they would be familiar and the names of professors under whom they had studied. If you were arguing for the introduction of manual training into a school, you would make taxpayers take an interest in the matter if you gave them the exact numbers of pupils from that school who have gone directly into mills or other work of the kind, and if you describe vividly just what is meant by manual training. If your description is in general terms they may grant you your principle, and then out of mere inertia and a vague feeling against change vote the other way.
A rough test for concreteness is your vocabulary: if your words are mostly Anglo-Saxon you will usually be talking about concrete things; if it is Latinate and polysyllabic it is probably abstract and general. Most of the things and actions of everyday life, the individual things like "walls" and "puppies," "summer" and "boys," "buying" and "selling," "praying" and "singing," have names belonging to the Anglo-Saxon part of the language; and though there are many exceptions, like "tables," and "telephones," and "professors," yet the more your vocabulary consists of the non-Latinate words, the more likely it is to be concrete, and therefore to keep your readers' attention and feelings alive. Use the simple terms of everyday life, therefore, rather than the learned words which would serve you if you were generalizing from many cases. Stick to the single case before you and to the interests of the particular people you are trying to win over. To touch their feelings remember that you must talk about the things they have feelings about.
The use of similes and metaphors and other figurative language raises a difficult question. On the whole, perhaps the best advice about using them is, Don't unless you have to. In other words, where a figure of speech is a necessity of expression, where you cannot make your thought clear and impart to it the warmth of feeling with which it is clothed in your own mind except by a touch of imaginative color, then use a figure of speech, if one flashes itself on your mind. If you add it deliberately as adornment of your speech, it will strike a false note; if you laboriously invent it the effort will show. Unless your thought and your eagerness for your subject flow naturally and inevitably into an image, it is better to stick to plain speech, for any suggestion of insincerity is fatal to the persuasiveness of an argument.
The value of the figure of speech is chiefly in giving expression to feelings which cannot be set forth in abstract words, the whole of whose meaning can be defined: in the connotation of words—that indefinable part of their meaning which consists in their associations, implications, and general emotional coloring—lies their power to clothe thought with the rich color of feeling which is the life. At the same time, they serve as a fillip to the attention. There are not very many people who can long keep the mind fixed on a purely abstract line of thought, and none can do it without some effort. Professor William James is a notable example of a writer whose thought flowed spontaneously into necessary figures of speech:
When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness,—then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths, and pretending to decide things out of his private dream[63][!--Note--]
One cannot go to sleep over a style like that, for besides the obvious sincerity and rush of warm feeling, the vividness of the figures is like that of poetry. On the either hand, one must remember that it is given to few men to attain the unstudied eloquence of Professor James.
Fables and anecdotes serve much the same purpose, but more especially throw into memorable form the principle which they are intended to set forth. There are a good many truths which are either so complex or so subtle that they defy phrasing in compact form, yet their truth we all know by intuition. If for such a truth you can find a compact illustration, you can leave it much more firmly fixed in your readers' minds than by any amount of systematic exposition. Lincoln in his Springfield speech, for example, threw into striking form the feeling which was so common in the North, that each step forward in the advance of slavery so fitted into all earlier ones that something like a concerted plan must be assumed:
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are, the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten cut at different times and places and by different workmen,—Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,—and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding,—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in,—in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
On the other hand, there is the danger of being florid or of playing the clown if you tell too many stories. Whether your style will seem florid or not depends a good deal on the part of the country you are writing for. There is no doubt that the taste of the South and of a good deal of the West is for a style more varied and highly colored than suits the soberer taste of the East. But whatever part of the country you are writing for, just so soon as your style seems to those special readers overloaded with ornament it will seem insincere. In the same way, if you stop too often to tell a story or to make your readers laugh, you will produce the impression of trifling with your subject. In both these respects be careful not to draw the attention of your readers away from the subject to your style.
The ultimate and least analyzable appeal of style is through that thrill of the voice which in written style appears as rhythm and harmony. Certain men are gifted with the capacity of so modulating their voices and throwing virtue into their tones that whoever hears them feels an indefinable thrill. So in writing: where sounds follow sounds in harmonious sequence, and the beat of the accent approaches regularity without falling into it, language takes on the expressiveness of music. It is well known that music expresses a range of feeling that lies beyond the powers of words: who can explain, for example, the thrill roused in him by a good brass band, or the indefinable melancholy and gloom created by the minor harmonies of one of the great funeral marches, or, in another direction, the impulse that sets him to whistling or singing on a bright morning in summer? There are many such kinds of feeling, real and potent parts of our consciousness; and if we can bring them to expression at all, we must do so through the rhythm and other sensuous qualities of the style which are pure sensation.
How is that to be done? The answer is difficult, and like that concerning the use of figurative language: do not try for it too deliberately. If without your thinking of it you find yourself becoming more earnest in speech, and more impressed with the seriousness of the issue you are arguing, your voice will show it naturally. So when you are writing: your earnestness will show, if you have had the training and have the natural gift for expression in words, in a lengthening and more strongly marked rhythm, in an intangibly richer coloring of sound. In speech the rhythm is apt to be shown in what is called parallel structure, the repetition of the same form of sentence, and in rhetorical questions. In writing, these forms more easily tend to seem either excited or artificial. Sustained periodic structure, too, can be carried by the speaking voice, when it would lag if written. Every one recognizes this incommunicable thrill of eloquence in great speakers and writers, but it is so much a gift of nature that it is not wise consciously to cultivate it.
59. Fairness and Sincerity. In the long run, however, nothing makes an argument appeal more to readers than an air of fairness and sincerity. If it is evident in an argument of fact that you are seeking to establish the truth, or in an argument of policy that your single aim is the greatest good of all concerned, your audience will listen to you with favorable ears. If on the other hand you seem to be chiefly concerned with the vanity of a personal victory, or to be thinking of selfish advantages, they will listen to you coolly and with jealous scrutiny of your points.
Accordingly, in making your preliminary survey to prepare the statement of the facts that are agreed on by both sides, go as far as you can in yielding points. If the question is worth arguing at all you will still have your hands full to get through it within your space. In particular waive all trivial points: nothing is more wearisome to readers than to plow through detailed arguments over points that no one cares about in the end. And meet the other side at least halfway in agreeing on the facts that do not need to be argued out. You will prejudice your audience if you make concessions in a grudging spirit. Likewise, wherever you have, to meet arguments put forward by the other side, state them with scrupulous fairness; if your audience has any reason to suppose that you are twisting the assertions of the other side to your own advantage, you have shaken their confidence in you, and thereby weakened the persuasive force of your argument. Use sarcasm with caution, and beware of any seeming of triumph. Sarcasm easily becomes cheap, and an air of triumph may look like petty smartness.
In short, in writing your argument, assume throughout the attitude of one who is seeking earnestly to bring the disagreement between the two sides to an end. If you are dealing with a question of fact, your sole duty is to establish the truth. If you are dealing with a question of policy, you know when you begin that whichever way the decision goes, one side will suffer some disadvantage; but aim to lessen that disadvantage, and to discover a way that will bring the greatest gain to the greatest number. An obvious spirit of conciliation is a large asset in persuasion.
With the conciliation make clear your sincerity. A chief difficulty with making arguments written in school and college persuasive is that they so often deal with subjects in which it is obvious that the writer's own feelings are not greatly concerned. This difficulty will disappear when you get out into the world, and make arguments in earnest. A great part of Lincoln's success as an advocate is said to have been due to the fact that he always tried to compose his cases and to make peace between the litigants, and that he never took a case in which he did not believe. If you leave on your audience the impression that you are sincere and in earnest, you have taken a long step towards winning over their feelings.
On the whole, then, when one is considering the question of persuasion, the figure of speech of a battle is not very apt. It is all very well when you are laying out your brief to speak, of deploying your various points, of directing an attack on your opponent's weakest point, of bringing up reserve material in rebuttal; but if the figure gets you into the way of thinking that you must always demolish your opponent, and treat him as an enemy, it is doing harm. If you will take the trouble to follow the controversies which are going on in your own city and state over public affairs, you will soon see that in most of them the two sides break even, so far as intelligence and public-spiritedness go. In every transaction there are two sides; and the president of a street railroad may be as honest and as disinterested in seeking to get the best of the bargain for his road as the representatives of the city are in trying to get the best of it for the public. There is no use going into a question of this sort with the assumption that you are on a higher moral plane than the other side. In some cases where a moral issue is involved there is only one view of what is right; if honesty is in the balance, there can be no other side. But, as we have seen, there are moral questions in which one must use his utmost strength for the right as he sees the right, and yet know all the time that equally honest men are fighting just as hard on the other side. No American who remembers the case of General Robert E. Lee can forget this puzzling truth. Therefore, unless there can be no doubt of the dishonesty of your opponent, turn your energies against his cause and not against him; and hold that the proper end of argument is not so much to win victories as to bring as many people as possible to agreement.
EXERCISES
1. Compare the length of the introductory part of the argument of the specimens at the end of this book; point out reasons for the difference in length, if you find any.
2. Find two arguments, not in this book, in which the main points at issue are numbered.
3. Find an argument, not in this book, in which a history of the case is part of the introduction.
4. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the definitions of terms occupy some space.
5. In the argument on which you are working, what terms need definition? How much space should the definitions occupy in the completed argument? Why?
6. In the argument on which you are working, how much of the material in the introduction to the brief shall you use in the argument itself? Does the audience you have in mind affect the decision?
7. How do you intend to distribute your space between the main issues you will argue out?
8. How much will explanation enter into your argument?
9. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the explanation chiefly makes the convincing power.
10. In which of the arguments in this book does explanation play the smallest part?
11. Examine five consecutive paragraphs in Huxley's argument on evolution, or The Outlook argument on the Workman's Compensation Act, from the point of view of good explanation.
12. Find two examples of arguments, not in this book, whose chief appeal is to the feelings.
13. Find an argument, not in this book, which is a good illustration of the power of tact.
14. Name an argument which you have read within a few months which made a special impression on you by its clearness.
15. Find an argument in the daily papers, on local or academic affairs, which makes effective appeal to the practical interests of its audience. Analyze this appeal.
16. Name three subjects of local and immediate interest on which you could write an argument in which you would appeal chiefly to the practical interests of your readers.
17. Name two current political questions which turn on the practical interests of the country at large.
18. Name two public questions now under discussion into which moral issues enter. Do both sides on these questions accept the same view of the bearing of the moral issues?
19. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the eloquence of the style is a distinct part of the persuasive power.
20. What do you think of the persuasive power of Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America"? of its convincing power?
21. Find an argument, not in this book, in which the concreteness of the language adds to the persuasive power.
22. Find two examples, not in this book, of apt and effective figures of speech in an argument.
23. Find an example of an apt anecdote or fable used in an argument.
24. In Lincoln's address at Cooper Institute, what do you think of his attitude towards the South as respects fairness?
25. In the argument on which you are at work, what chance would there be of inducing agreement between the two sides?