CHAPTER IIWHAT DEBATE REALLY IS
I have failed in my argument so far unless I have accomplished two things. First, and most important, I must have convinced you that I am right as far as I have gone. Second, to have my argument really worth while, I must have done more—I must have made you want to debate. For an argument is only half an argument unless it brings you to the point of doing. In this particular it differs from many other kinds of speaking—contention for example.
In contention, the contender has very little hope as a rule of changing his adversary’s mind. He is not arguing; he is simply sticking up for his point. How much of what passes for argument belongs to this class of effort! You hear it in the street every day, and on the baseball diamond—did you ever hear the discussion over a disputed decision by the umpire? Did you ever hear anyargumentthere? Did Captain Jack, or Captain Frank, or Captain Chance, or Captain McGraw, ever really think he could convince any jury, either of players, umpires or spectators, that he was really right?
Argument Differs Also From Persuasion.—There are other forms of mental effort expressed in spoken word, perfectly legitimate in themselves, which are not arguments, although generally classed as such. There is a difference between argument and persuasion.
Can you remember when you were trying to get your friend Bob or perhaps your whole crowd to follow your suggestion? How you coaxed and urged and teased. Of course that was many years ago but your argument (!) ran something like this, didn’t it?
“Oh, I say, Bob, come on down to the creek.”
“Let’s go in swimming!”
“Oh, yes!”
“Let’s!”
“Say, it’s just fun!”
“Oh, never mind getting in that kindling, you can do it after we get back—sure you can! You’ll have plenty of time, and besides your mother won’t care very much.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Don’t be a fraid cat!”
“You are a regular sissy! You dassn’t go—you have to stay close home! I tell you, I just do as I please—my ma lets me do just as I want to. She knows I would, anyway.”
“Oh, come on, Bob, be a good fellow!”
And so it would run on—not a particle of argument,nothing but appeal to the emotions, and those not of the loftiest kind.
But is that scene too boyish for you to remember? How about that time only a little while ago when you were not urging Bob to go down to the “old swimming hole,” but to a place not quite so harmless as that, the place where the creek backed up into a pond, muddy and actually shallow it must be confessed, but none the less better than any marble bath of emperor or king. Bob didn’t want to play pool with you in that pool-room your father said was no place for a boy, but you teased him into going. Your sneers at his desire to keep himself clean and sweet and “mind his mother” maybe were not quite so obvious as those earlier boyish effusions but they were none the less appeals to the weaker instincts.
And can you remember that hot day in July away back, when you were only a youngster you know? How you wanted the worst way to go fishing but Bob wanted to lie on the ground under the tree and readCampmates? How it just seemed to you as though you simply must go fishing, and yet how equally determined you were that you would not go alone but that Bob must go too, book or no book? You can remember how you teased and coaxed and urged, and finally how youbribedhim by offering to give him that trade on the book he had wanted so long. You carried your point, but was it argument?
Can’t you remember, too, how you capped your final urgings of Bob only a few days ago by offering to introduce him to your cousin Nellie who had come from Fairfield to visit you? You knew Bob admired her greatly and you imagined that if you couldn’t get Bob to agree to your plan by your urging and coaxing, you could easily win him over, if you could promise him the coveted introduction.
No, lad, these scenes are not too boyish. They frame a point for you. The truth is that, so far as the fact of conviction or persuasion in argument is concerned, the bribe of the book and of the introduction to Nellie is on the same plane in the argument as the logic of the offer of money to the legislator to influence his mind in the debate wherein he engages.
Argument, therefore, is addressed in the first instance to reason alone; it may or may not be combined with persuasion but the two are absolutely different. The perfect argument will be so absolutely convincing, its logic will be so unanswerable that its hearers will be compelled by its very force to follow its conclusions since they can not escape them.
Blackhawk’s Appeal.—Generally, however, to the reasoning of the argument must be added the persuasion of the appeal to the instincts of love, duty, patriotism and the like. Now when this appeal is used or is the essential part of the so-called argumentit is outside of true debate; it falls into a class that in some cases is higher than debate but nevertheless distinct. So when in our earlier history Blackhawk, as we say, debated the cause of his Sacs and Foxes, he did not really argue their case with cold calm reason but appealed to the sentiment of his hearers, to their sense of patriotism. Pontiac and Osceola never presented a series of logical reasons why their Indian brothers should be treated differently, but they did, as did other notable chieftains, often in passionate oratory, appeal to those emotions which dwell not in reason but in sentiment. If the questions between the red man and the white man were debated, reason would say that the red man had failed to use his heritage to the best advantage. It would argue that he had kept millions of acres of land in an uncultivated state so that the game which formed his meat supply could roam undisturbed over hills and plains which could support in comfort millions of people. It would insist that a God of bounty and love could never have intended that His gifts should be so wasted, and His providence so abused. It would show how the very virtues—if virtues they were—called for by a savage life, hardness, insensibility to pain and suffering, fierceness, made men more brutal and savage in their intercourse among themselves. From all these arguments and from others like them, reason would say that the red man hadnot justified his ownership of the soil and that he must yield its control to the white.
The appeal of the Indian orator, on the other hand, would depict a sylvan scene of hunting lodge or trapper’s camp. He would picture the primæval red man, erect, haughty, stern, proud, and possessed of all those virtues found so plentifully in Cooper’s novels—and so seldom anywhere else. He would show the simple qualities of the savage brain and the nobler traits which dwell among uncivilized peoples. He could construct a passionately moving appeal to the white man to allow this unlettered savage, his red brother, to remain upon the lands over which his fathers had hunted and where his tribal lodges had been pitched since “grass grew and water ran.” The first appeal would be an argument addressed to the hearer’s logical powers; the second would appeal to the hearer’s sentiment and emotion.
It must be remembered that often the most awful results follow some forms of persuasion, some appeals which do not aim at the higher motives but to passion and prejudice. The hateful story of many a mob shows the effect of persuasion addressed to the lowest instead of the higher instincts and emotions, but the persuasion had nothing to do with argument.