As an example of a good point for opening a reply, take the following from my debate in the Garrick, October, 1907:
My opponent, Mr. Hardinge, said, “As an Individualist Mr. Spencer was an extremist in one direction, and the Socialist is an extremist in the other. I take a middle ground; you will always find the truth about half way.”
My note of this (in blue) was, “extremist, middle ground.” My note of answer (in red) was “revolving earth.”
This was the answer as I made it from these two notes:
“Mr. Hardinge said we should not be Socialists because we should then be as great extremists in one direction as was Mr. Spencer in the other. We should follow Mr. Hardinge’s example and take the middle ground for, says he, truth is always to be found half way. Therefore, if anyone should ask you, does the earth revolve from east to west, or from west to east, you should answer, ‘a little of both.’”
It would have been small consolation to Mr. Hardinge to know that this reply was taken from the individualist Spencer, who should have been his mainstay in the debate. But such things are common property and I had just as much right to take it from Spencer as he had to take it from George Eliot.
CHAPTER XVI
TRICKS OF DEBATE
There are a great number of tricks that may be practiced in debate. They should be avoided by the serious man who is debating to defend a great cause. It is well to know the best methods but anything like a trick should never be practiced.
Some debaters I have met actually consider it smart to fill an opening speech with empty words so as to handicap their opponent by giving him nothing to reply to. This is precisely what Mr. Mangasarian did in his debate with me, but although many disagree with me, I take the view that he did so, not as a trick, but because of his ignorance of the question and his want of experience in debate. To have done this deliberately as a clever trick, after allowing an audience of 3,000 to pay over $1,100 for their seats would have been criminal, and I refuse to believe that any public man of Mr. Mangasarian’s status would stoop to any such performance as a matter of deliberate strategy.