Half an hour later I passed the silk counter of one of the large dry-goods stores. There a couple of nuns were selecting a sumptuous white brocade, examining it with an air serious and absorbed, and yet subtilely suggestive of feminine delight in the beauty of the stuff. What to them were the pomps and vanities of this world that their taste should be concerned in a purchase so incongruous? Did they buy a new robe wherein the image of some Madonna is to shine forth in splendor at the coming Christmastide, or the garment which some young novice shall wear at her mystic spousals with the church, thenceforth to know no raiment but the strait livery of the sisterhood?
I grant you that one does not chance upon three things so suggestive as these in every trip down town; but there is always something. Learn to see and to hear. Seeing and hearing are more matters of the brain than of eye and ear. Train the mind to observe, and no less train it to phrase; then the whole question of material is settled. Exposition demands, of course, the exercise of reason as well as of observation, but the two are closely bound together; and the mind which is trained to see is as sure to reason about what it sees as the plant which thrusts its rootlets into rich soil is to grow.
[XII]
ARGUMENT
It is one of the most trying conditions of human life that conviction is not proof. It is hard to be brought face to face with the fact that the most ardent belief does not make a thing true. We have most of us known moments when it seemed that there could be no justice in the universe because some hope or some faith which we have cherished with the whole soul was found after all to be but a delusion. Truth in this world must be tried not by desire but by reason; and we can hardly be too careful in studying the processes by which reason attempts its proofs.
Argument has been defined as the endeavor to establish the truth or the falsity of an idea or a proposition. Naturally a written argument is supposed to be addressed to others, but the methods used in constructing it are those which we employ in examining a theory or a proposition in our own minds. It is necessary to study these for the sake of using them in composition; yet it is of no less importance that we apply their principles to our thinking. It may seem to you that I have a tendency to treat English Composition as if it involved the whole duty of man, but it is certainly true that the advantages of familiarity with legal processes may be very great, not only intellectually, but ethically. Since conviction is not proof, either in things emotional or things ethical any more than in things intellectual, it follows that it is essential to be provided with the means of testing the many propositions and ideas which life puts before us. It is not my intention to discuss Argument as a means of spiritual advancement, yet it is not amiss to call attention to its great value, even for one who never intends to write at all.
Looking at Argument simply as a division of composition, we need not have difficulty in perceiving its importance. No intellectual necessity is more common than that of endeavoring to make others think or believe as we think or believe. The effort to establish truth by argument is one which from the dawn of civilization has occupied the best powers of mankind. Openly, in avowed reasoning, or covertly, in cunningly disguised forms, those who write are constantly arguing for one theory or another, for some idea, for some conviction. The writer who is trained to the craft of logic has the same advantage in discussion with one who has not that a trained boxer has in an encounter with a green hand.
It must be evident to any one that Argument is closely allied to Exposition. Much discussion may be resolved into a dispute over definitions, and when thinkers disagree it is more often about terms than about principles. It has happened before now that men have gone to the stake upon a question whether a thing in regard to which everybody was in substantial accord should be called by one name or by another; and it is evident that Exposition may sometimes be more effectively convincing than formal Argument, since if a truth is clearly set forth it is likely to carry conviction with it.