You can see how then each proposition of your argument must be supported by adequate evidence. I don’t intend to carry the illustrations further.
The amount of evidence you produce will be governed largely by where the burden of proof lies. That is rather a mysterious expression and often debaters spend a great deal of energy in trying to shift or dodge something they are not quite sure about, but they are sure it is something awful. It is really a very simple thing—its meaning is only that he who asserts must prove. If I say a certain thing is so, I must prove it. I cannot expect or ask you to prove that it is not so. Do you see the point? If you say it is 444 miles from Pecatonica to Readville, you must prove it is just 444 miles. You must bring up a surveyor or a table of distances of recognized authority or show in some authoritative way that you are correct. If you have made the definite statement you must prove it in a way equally definite—it’s no concern of mine to show that it is 445 miles or only five miles.
You will notice that this brief contains two classes of arguments—one which seems to anticipate possible contentions of the other side and the other which brings forward positive and direct contentions. The first class can best be catalogued as rebuttal and refutation and will be considered in the next chapter.
Some arguments, however, although of the nature of refutation of possible positions of your opponents may often be well introduced in the beginning of your main argument. For example, Proposition I: “Child labor is unnecessary for there is an ample supply of adult labor entirely adequate to the demands of factory work” is practically an answer to a possible argument of your opponent that child labor is necessary because some mills could not run without it. Suppose he had prepared himself with an elaborate argument to prove his position and you had knowingly or unknowingly anticipated his effort and established the opposite, he would find himself in a very awkward position. He would talk to an audience—or judge—already convinced by your arguments, or he would be compelled at least to destroy the force of your arguments before he could hope to implant his own in their place.
I only refer to this class of argument to show how your brief will contain the full body of your argument so that you will have all your tools ready and sharpened for your use. When you actually get to work, you may not use all of them after all. But if you find your opponent presents a tough, knotty problem for you to saw, your implement is ready. If it is only a pine lath of course a very different tool may be ample. But you will be ready and as you grow experienced in debate your facility will be shown in the ease with which you select now this, now that tool, or discard both of them.
CHAPTER IX
REFUTATION
Not only will your careful analysis of the question formulate your own argument, but it will prepare you to refute that of your opponent. Put just as much care into this part of your preparation as into any other. State to yourself his probable points just as strongly and clearly as you can. If you can put his case better than he, when you come to your refutation, so much the better, provided you are equipped to answer adequately. Of course you can’t spend time enough to answer every point he has made—make up your mind which are the essential ones and strike at them. This selection will be comparatively simple if you have properly analyzed your question in the first place, but will be impossible if you have slighted that part of your work.
Do not be misled, however, into thinking that refutation itself is easy or of slight importance. It is neither. It calls for the exercise of all of your skill in selecting the essentials and ignoring the non-essentials. The young debater, moreover, is often impaled upon one or the other horn of the dilemma—too much or too little. If you see no side of the case but your own, your beautifully constructed argument may fall to pieces when your opponent, perhaps using some unpretentious fact which you, in your innocence, had entirely overlooked, knocks out the keystone of your arch of logic and your structure falls to ruin. On the other hand, you may demolish one after the other of your opponent’s positions and yet present no counter claims for your own side of the case. If you prove your opponent to be all wrong, you do not thereby prove yourself all right. You must establish your own position and not content yourself merely with destroying that of your enemy—you must be constructive as well as destructive.
Here again the analogy between debate and the later debate of life runs close and sure. The man who in the activity of his group—whether his lodge, his club, his society, his church, his city, or his State—has nothing but criticism to offer is of but little value. It is easy to say “you can’t, you can’t.” Such a statement is as valueless as it is easy.