"Oft when the wise
Appears not wise, he works the greater good."
"Never allow yourself," said Goethe, "to be betrayed into a dispute. Wise men fall into ignorance if they dispute with ignorant men." Persuasion is the finest artillery. It is the unseen guns that do execution without smoke or tumult. If one cannot win by force of wit, without cannonade of abuse, flourish of trumpet, he is out of place in parlors, ventures where he can neither forward nor grace fellowship. The great themes are feminine, and to be dealt with delicately. Debate is masculine; conversation is feminine.
Here is a piece of excellent counsel from Plotinus:—
"And this may everywhere be considered, that he who pursues our form of philosophy, will, besides all other graces, genuinely exhibit simple and venerable manners, in conjunction with the possession of wisdom, and will endeavor not to become insolent or proud, but will possess confidence, accompanied with reason, with sincerity and candor, and great circumspection."
[4.] "Dialectics treat of pure thought and of the method of arriving at it. A current misapprehension on the subject of dialectics here presents itself. Most people understand it to mean argument, and they believe that truths may be arrived at and held by such argument placed in due logical form. They demand the proof of an assertion, and imply something of weakness in the reasoning power in those who fail to give this. It is well to understand what proof means. Kant has shown us in his Critique of Pure Reason, that the course of all such ratiocination is a movement in a circle. One assumes in his premises what he wishes to prove, and then unfolds it as the result. The assumptions are in all cases mere sides of antinomies or opposite theses, each of which has validity and may be demonstrated against the other. Thus the debater moves round and round and presupposes one-sided premises which must be annulled before he can be in a state to perceive the truth. Argument of this kind the accomplished dialectician never engages in; it is simply egotism when reduced to its lowest terms. The question assumed premises that were utterly inadmissible.
"The process of true proof does not proceed in the manner of argumentation; it does not assume its whole result in its premises, which are propositions of reflection, and then draw them out syllogistically. Speculative truth is never contained analytically in any one or in all of such propositions of reflection. It is rather the negative of them, and hence is transcendent in its entire procedure. It rises step by step, synthetically, through the negation of the principle assumed at the beginning, until, finally, the presupposition of all is reached. It is essentially a going from the part to the whole. Whatever is seized by the dialectic is turned on its varied sides, and careful note is made of its defects, i. e. what it lacks within itself to make it possible. That which it implies is added to it, as belonging to its totality, and thus onward progress is made until the entire comprehension of its various phases is attained. The ordinary analytic proof is seen to be shallow after more or less experience in it. The man of insight sees that it is a 'child's play,—a mere placing of the inevitable dogmatism a step or two back—that is all. Real speculation proceeds synthetically beyond what it finds inadequate, until it reaches the adequate.'"
Wm. T. Harris.