The best guides here are two: that homely, domestic angel of the mind which we call common sense, and the sincere desire to arrive at and to establish the truth, as distinguished from eagerness to win in argument. If a writer can divest himself of a wish to prevail even if wrongfully, he has increased tenfold his chance of winning rightly. If he can bring his mind to the attitude of simple, unsophisticated truth-seeking, without affectation and without vanity, he is in the best possible condition for arguing successfully. Enthusiasm tells in this as in any other form of composition; but Argument is primarily an appeal to the intellect, and since the reason of the reader is aroused to meet the logic advanced, the writer has need of all his coolness and self-control in devising and arranging his arguments.
The choice of the line of proof which is to be employed is one of the most delicate matters connected with this form of composition. If one undertakes to convince, it is evident that no means which may secure conviction should be slighted; and it is of importance to select the train of reasoning along which the mind of the reader will move with the least opposition. Here advice cannot avail much. The student must depend upon care, good judgment, and practice, with the study and analysis of the masterpieces of reasoning. The choice of methods in arguing is the selection of the order of battle; on it depends much of the success alike of attack and of defense.
The sense of the proposition, the meaning of the terms, and the line of argument having been determined, they must be held to firmly to the end. No defect in disputation is more common than that of shifting ground. Sometimes, especially in debate, this is deliberate. A clever dialectician, one who is able deftly to twist words to varied uses and to turn phrases about, has little difficulty, if he finds himself cornered, in altering his position completely. He easily confuses the terms so that the point at issue is changed. He raises a cloud of phrases under cover of which his attack is shifted to another quarter, as a line of battle is sometimes altered behind a cloud of smoke. This is less often possible in written conflict than in oral, yet there it may sometimes be done. It is at best, however, merely a temporization. What is set down in “the cold permanence of print” may be examined until its inaccuracies are brought to light. The swiftness of speech and the glamour of personal persuasiveness will cover fallacies which could avail nothing if put upon paper. Any change of position, moreover, is a confession of weakness; and once it is observed, the effect of the entire chain of reasoning is weakened, if not destroyed altogether.
A change of base in argument is the result of deliberate intention less often than of mental confusion. Few of us realize how seldom we think clearly; how much more rarely we think clearly and consecutively; and how most rare it is that we think clearly, consecutively, and logically. Much training is required to bring the mind to the power of holding fast to a single issue in discussion, of persisting in a single line of proof, of resisting all temptations to turn to side issues.
Nor is this solely from a lack of intellectual power; it is in part due to an instinctive desire to escape unwelcome results. One of the surest indications of a firm and well-disciplined mind is that it does not shrink from its own conclusions. The natural, human tendency is to escape from a distasteful result of investigation or reasoning by assuming that the process must be wrong because the decision arrived at is unpleasant. Yet to dislike a proposition is not to disprove it. To protest against the fact established by sound logic no more destroys it than the wail of a child brings down from heaven the round yellow moon for which he cries. All intellectual growth and all character stand upon the willingness of the mind to accept and to act upon the conclusions at which it arrives by the exercise of its best reasoning powers. It is much to be able to think; it is more to dare to think; but it is most of all to be able to accept without shrinking or evasion the results of thought, whether one’s own or others’.
[XIII]
ARGUMENTATIVE FORM
It is proper and perhaps even important that the student shall learn the distinction which is made by logicians between reasoning which is inductive and that which is deductive. As a matter of practical work in the writing of arguments, the distinction is of less importance than might seem from the formality with which these terms are treated; but as Induction and Deduction are words which the true logician cannot mention without at least a seeming impulse to cross himself, it is well to know what the difference is.