The Making of Arguments

by J. H. Gardiner

But even where the two sides to a question agree on the moral principle which is involved, it by no means follows that they will agree on its application in a particular case. Church members accept the principle that one must forgive sinners and help them to reform; but it is another thing when it comes to getting work for a man who has been in prison, or help for a woman who has left her husband. How far is the condoning of offenses consistent with maintaining the standards of society? And in what cases shall we apply the principle of forgiveness? In a business transaction how far can one push the Golden Rule? Life would be a simpler matter if moral principles were always easy to apply to concrete cases.

One must use the appeal to moral principles, therefore, soberly and with discretion. The good sense of readers will rebel if their moral sense is called on unnecessarily; and even when they cannot explain why they believe such an appeal unsound, yet their instincts will tell them that it is so. The creator whose right hand is always rising to heaven to call God to witness disgusts the right feeling of his audience. On the other hand, where moral principles are really concerned there should be no compromise. If in a political campaign the issue is between honesty and graft in the public service, or between an open discussion of all dealings which touch the public good, and private bargaining with party managers, the moral principles cannot be kept hidden. If a real moral principle is seriously involved in any question, the debate must rise to the level of that principle and let practical considerations go. And every citizen who has the advantage of having had more education than his fellows is thereby placed under obligation to hold the debate to this higher level.

58. The Appeal of Style. Finally, we have to consider the appeal to the emotions, which is the distinguishing essence of eloquence, and the attempts at it. In part this appeal is through the appeal to principles and associations which are close to the heart of the audience, in part through concrete and figurative language, in part through the indefinable thrill and music of style which lies beyond definition and instruction.

The appeal to venerated principle we have considered already, looked at from the side of morals rather than of emotions. But morality, so far as it is a coercive force in human conduct, is emotional; our moral standards lie beyond and above reason in that larger part of our nature that knows through feeling and intuition. All men have certain standards and principles whose names arouse strong and reverent emotions. Such standards are not all religious or moral in the stricter sense; some of them have their roots in systems of government. In a case at law, argued purely on a question of law, there does not seem much chance for the appeal to feeling; but Mr. Joseph H. Choate, in his argument on the constitutionality of the Income Tax of 1894, before the Supreme Court of the United States, made the following appeal to the principle of the sanctity of private property, and the words he used could not have failed to stir deep and strong feelings in the court.

No longer ago, if the Court please, than the day of the funeral procession of General Sherman in New York, it was my fortune to spend many hours with one of the ex-Presidents of the United States, who has since followed that great warrior to the bourne to which we were then bearing him. President Hayes expressed great solicitude as to the future fortunes of this people. In his retirement he had been watching the tendency of political and social purposes and events. He had observed how in recent years the possessors of political power had been learning to use it for the first time for the promotion of social and personal ends. He said to me, "You will probably live to see the day when in the case of the death of any man of large wealth the State will take for itself all above a certain prescribed limit of his fortune and divide it, or apply it to the equal use of all the people, so as to punish the rich man for his wealth, and to divide it among those who, whatever may have been their sins, at least have not committed that." I looked upon it as the wanderings of a dreaming man; and yet if I had known that within less than five short years afterwards I should be standing before this tribunal to contest the validity of an alleged act of Congress, of a so-called law, which was defended here by the authorized legal representatives of the Federal Government upon the plea that it was a tax levied only upon classes and extremely rich men, I should have given altogether a different heed and ear to the warnings of that distinguished statesman.[⁶²][!--Note--]

Our emotions do not rise, however, anymore surely in the case of our veneration for the basal principles of religion and government than in that of more personal emotions. The appeal to the Constitution is worn somewhat threadbare by the politicians who call on it at every election, small or great, as is the appeal to the principles of the Pilgrim Fathers. It takes eloquence now to rouse our feelings about these principles. If you have a case important enough to justify appeal to such great principles and the skill in language to give your appeal vitality, you may really arouse your readers. But, on the whole, it is sound advice to say, Wait a few years before you call on them.

The second mode of appeal to the feelings of your audience, that through concrete and figurative language, is more within the reach of advocates who are still of college age. This is particularly true of the use of concrete language. It is a matter of common knowledge that men do not rouse themselves over abstract principles; they will grant their assent, often without really knowing what is implied by the general principle, and go away yawning. On the other hand, the man who talks about the real and actual things which you know is likely to keep your attention. This goes back to the truth that our emotions and feelings are primarily the reaction to the concrete things that happen to us. The spontaneous whistling and humming of tunes that indicate a cheerful heart rise naturally as a response to the sunlight in spring; the fear at the terror that flies in a nightmare is the instinctive and physical reaction to indigestion; we sorrow over the loss of our own friends, but not over the loss of some one else's. The stories that stir us are the stories that deal with actual, tangible realities in such terms that they make us feel that we are living the story ourselves. Stevenson has some wise words on this subject in his essay, "A Gossip on Romance." The doctrine holds true for the making of arguments.

Even where as in Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America," abstractness is not vagueness, the style would be more effective for the richer feeling that hangs over and around a concrete vocabulary. The great vividness of Macaulay's style, and its bold over so many readers, is largely due to his unfailing use of the specific word. If you will take the trouble to notice what arguments in the last few months have seemed to you especially persuasive, you will be surprised to find how definite and concrete the terms are that they use.

Accordingly, if you wish to keep the readers of your argument awake and attentive, use terms that touch their everyday experience. If you are arguing for the establishment of a commission form of government, give in dollars and cents the sum that it cost under the old system to pave the three hundred yards of A Street, between 12th and 13th streets. The late Mr. Godkin of the New York Evening Post, in his lifelong campaign against corrupt government, to bring home to his readers the actual state of their city government and the character of the men who ran it, used their nicknames; "Long John" Corrigan, for example (if there had been such a personage); and "Bath-house John Somebody" has been a feature of campaigns in Chicago. The value of such names when skillfully used is that by their associations and connotation they do stir feeling. Likewise if you are arguing before an audience of graduates for a change from a group system to a free elective system in your college, you would use the names of courses with which they would be familiar and the names of professors under whom they had studied. If you were arguing for the introduction of manual training into a school, you would make taxpayers take an interest in the matter if you gave them the exact numbers of pupils from that school who have gone directly into mills or other work of the kind, and if you describe vividly just what is meant by manual training. If your description is in general terms they may grant you your principle, and then out of mere inertia and a vague feeling against change vote the other way.

A rough test for concreteness is your vocabulary: if your words are mostly Anglo-Saxon you will usually be talking about concrete things; if it is Latinate and polysyllabic it is probably abstract and general. Most of the things and actions of everyday life, the individual things like "walls" and "puppies," "summer" and "boys," "buying" and "selling," "praying" and "singing," have names belonging to the Anglo-Saxon part of the language; and though there are many exceptions, like "tables," and "telephones," and "professors," yet the more your vocabulary consists of the non-Latinate words, the more likely it is to be concrete, and therefore to keep your readers' attention and feelings alive. Use the simple terms of everyday life, therefore, rather than the learned words which would serve you if you were generalizing from many cases. Stick to the single case before you and to the interests of the particular people you are trying to win over. To touch their feelings remember that you must talk about the things they have feelings about.