During the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, when both men were seeking the United States senatorship from Illinois, Lincoln, wishing either to kill Douglas's senatorial prospects or to head him off from the presidency two years later, asked him a question which put him in a dilemma. Ida M. Tarbell describes the question as follows:—
"Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?" Lincoln had seen the irreconcilableness of Douglas's own measure of popular sovereignty, which declared that the people of a territory should be left to regulate their domestic concerns in their own way subject only to the Constitution, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case that slaves, being property, could not under the Constitution be excluded from a territory. He knew that if Douglas said no to this question, his Illinois constituents would never return him to the Senate. He believed that if he said yes, the people of the South would never vote for him for President of the United States.
In the last example, Lincoln, by forcing Douglas to answer this question, sought to destroy, and, as history shows, did destroy, the popular conception of Douglas's fitness for public office.
Before one can safely use the dilemma he must carefully investigate every phase of the statement that he wishes to refute. If he is to use the dilemma directly, he must consider every possibility—commonly called the horns of the dilemma—upon which the truth of the statement may rest. If there is a single possibility which he is not ready to meet and overthrow, his whole effort is fruitless. For instance, a debater, in attempting to rebut the statement that college fraternities are harmful, said that his opponent must show that fraternities are either morally, socially, financially or intellectually detrimental to their members; he then proved as best he could that in these respects fraternities are beneficial rather than harmful, and sat down thinking that he had gone a long way toward winning the debate. His opponent then arose and admitting nearly everything that had been said, based his argument on the idea that fraternities were harmful to the college as a whole. The first speaker had not considered every alternative. If an arguer is to approach a dilemma through the medium of a question, he must be sure that he knows every reasonable answer that his opponent can make. When one has satisfied these conditions, he can use the dilemma with great effect.
By way of summary it may be said that the successful arguer must both build up his own proof and destroy his opponent's. To accomplish the latter one has to know what to refute and what to leave alone; he must distinguish between the important and the unessential, and he must take care not to "refute himself." Since proof consists of evidence and reasoning, the first step for him to take in refuting an argument is to apply the tests for each, and if possible show where his opponent has erred. In the next place, he should see whether he can discover and point out any of the more important fallacies; the ones mentioned here are begging the question, ambiguous terms, false cause, composition and division, and ignoring the question. Should the arguer find any of these fundamental weaknesses, it is ordinarily sufficient merely to call attention to them; for the sake of emphasis, however, one may make use of two especially effective methods of refutation, reductio ad absurdum and the dilemma.
EXERCISES.
A. Criticize the following arguments and point out the fallacies they contain:—
1. Four thousand men have taken examinations at Princeton under the honor system, and only six of these were found guilty of "cribbing." This record shows conclusively that the honor system restrains dishonest work in examinations.
2. Athletics do not injure a man's scholarship; one of the best players on last year's football team attained such a high grade that he was awarded a fellowship.
3. During the decade from 1870 to 1880, illiteracy among the negroes decreased ten per cent., but the race grew more criminal by twenty- five per cent.; from 1880 to 1890, illiteracy decreased eighteen per cent., but criminality increased thirty-three and one-third per cent. Who can now say that education does not injure the negro?