The Making of Arguments

by J. H. Gardiner

What is the purpose of a course in the writing of arguments? The arguments which it turns out cannot convince any one, since there is no one for them to convince; so that the immediate and tangible product of the course must be looked on as a by-product, and a by-product from which there can be no salvage.

What products, then, can teachers aim to produce? First, a vital respect for facts and for sound reasoning therefrom; second, the power so to analyze and marshal the facts in an obscure and complicated case as to bring order and light out of confusion; and third, the appreciation of other men's point of view and training in the tact which will influence them. Incidentally a good course in argumentation should leave with its students an acquaintance with certain effective and economical devices for going to work that should serve them well in later life.

I will take up each of these points in order, and speak of a few methods which I have found useful in practice.

In the first place, how can a teacher establish and strengthen the veneration for fact and the suspicion of all unsupported assertion and a priori reasoning? Partly by judicious exercises, partly by quiet guidance in the choice of subjects. Let a class cross-examine each other on their exact knowledge of the ultimate facts on some familiar subject. On the question of the value of Latin, for example, just how many of the class know no Latin? In a piece of their own writing, how many of the words are derived from the Latin? and what kind of words are they? Of the leaders in scholarship in the class how many know Latin? Of the best writers? Of the authors whose works they are studying in English literature, how many were trained in Latin? Of the authors of the textbooks in science how many? A few such questions as these will suggest others; and the members of the class should keep a record of how many such questions they can answer with precision. Very few people have any exact command of facts on subjects about which they talk freely and with authority; and a young man who has had this truth borne in on him by personal examination will come to writing an argument with more modesty and scrupulousness.

Then a class can be guided away from the large subjects where of necessity their knowledge of facts is second-hand, and in which their arguments, being of necessity short, can touch only the surface of the subject. Here, I think, is where much of the ineffectiveness of courses in argument is to be found. "Judges should be elected by direct vote of the people," "The right of suffrage should be limited by an educational test," "Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be required to take out a federal license," are samples of propositions recommended as subjects for arguments of two thousand words or less. No undergraduate has the practical knowledge of affairs to judge the value of facts adduced in support of such propositions, and except for the members of debating teams, who spend time on their contests comparable to that given by athletes to their sports, no undergraduate can make himself acquainted with the vast fields of economics and governmental theory covered by such subjects. To write an argument of twelve hundred words on such a subject will weaken rather than strengthen the respect for facts.

What sort of subjects, then, can be used? This is, I confess, a question not altogether easy to answer; but I have had a try at an answer in the list of Subjects which is given in Chapter I, which can be adapted to special conditions of time or place. In general a question which a student would discuss of his own accord and with some warmth is the best subject for him. There are many such subjects in athletics: at this date the rules of football seem not yet settled beyond amendment, and the material for hunting facts in the records of past games is large; Dean Briggs of Harvard is making an appeal to players to raise the level of manners and of ethics in baseball; do all your students agree with him? Should the universities be allowed to use men in their graduate schools as members of their teams? And what are the facts about the playing of such men in the universities in which your students would be interested?

Then there are various educational questions, on which the views of students have real value, especially if they are based on some examination of facts in the course of writing an argument. President Lowell of Harvard told a body of students whom he was consulting that it did not make much difference what they wanted, but that their views when set forth for the purpose of helping the authorities of the college were of great value. The views of your class on examinations for entrance would be based on knowledge which a member of the faculty cannot have at first-hand. What is the estimate of the relative difficulty of getting into various colleges, and on what figures from schools is the estimate based? For how many boys are languages easier or harder than history or mathematics or science? Does admission by certificate provide sufficient safeguard for the standards of the college? Does a rigid prescription of subjects for examination distort the course for the high school? How many boys, who can be named, had their education injured by such prescription? Should the standard for entrance or for graduation be raised, or lowered, at your college? Should honor students be excused from final examinations? Should they have special privileges? Should freshmen be required to be within college bounds at a fixed hour every night? Should class rushes be abolished? Here are only a few suggestions of subjects which can be adapted to the needs and the knowledge of special classes. They are of no value, however, unless the students are driven to gather facts, and to reason from these facts, not from general impressions. School catalogues, college catalogues, informal censuses, reports of presidents and of committees, and other printed or oral sources will help in the gathering of facts.

Then there are the innumerable local and state questions that touch the fathers of at least half of any class, and that the sons may be in the way of hearing discussed at home, or may be sent to hear discussed in legislatures and city councils. Every instructor who takes a daily newspaper will be provided with more of these subjects than his class can use. For their facts the students can go to the newspapers, to printed reports, to the persons who are concerned with the questions which they are going to argue. In some cases the students will get valuable interest and advice from the older men who have the active charge of the questions under discussion; and it is not inconceivable, that if some of the latter happen to be graduates of the college or school, they will even read the arguments and make helpful criticisms on them. The grateful interest of graduates is a source which has not been overdrawn for aid in the processes of instruction.

Many of the subjects which I have here offered as suggestions can be discussed in part, at any rate, within the space of an editorial article; and that I conceive to be about the length which most arguments written by students, except those in special courses, will run to. In so short a space, it is hardly necessary to point out, evidence cannot be presented and discussed with the detail, say, of Webster's "Speech in the White Murder Case." It would be a good separate exercise to call for such detailed presentation of evidence on some single point in the argument. With most classes, however, the instructor cannot do much more than rule out wholly unsupported assertion, and insist that the distinction between fact and inference from fact shall be kept in sight.

The second of the results which an instructor in a course in argumentation should aim for is the power to analyze complicated masses of facts and so arrange them and present them as to bring order out of confusion. President Taft has said that Justice Hughes "won his reputation at the bar by his gift of boring to the innermost core of a subject"; and that is what the drill on the introduction to the brief should to some degree impart to students. The orderly analysis of the question, step by step, according to the admirable scheme devised by Professor Baker, cannot help implanting some understanding of what it means to go to the heart of a question. Every man sooner or later, must face complicated and puzzling questions; and the ordinary man will give himself a long start if he will thus put down on paper the points that can be urged on the two sides of a question, and then study them until the real points at issue emerge. Then the drill in laying out the logical skeleton of an argument, so plainly that no false or broken connection can escape detection, will strengthen the conscience for clearness and coherence of thought; and the necessity for getting back to ultimate facts for every assertion, and putting down the source from which the facts are derived, will help to implant a wholesome respect for facts as something different from assertion.