SECTION II.-ARGUMENTATION.

EXERCISE XLVI.

ARGUMENT FROM SELF-EVIDENT FACTS.

Subject:

Groundlessness of Popular Superstitions.

Belief, as we commonly understand the term, is not knowledge. If we could not have the first without the second, considering how very deficient we are in the second, we should be in a deplorable state. For it certainly is well for the average man that he should believe something in order that he may be able to decide and act at all. It is even an open question whether it is not better for the most of us that we should believe® what is actually false rather than be in continual harassing doubt. But when knowledge and belief shall be co-extensive, if that time ever comes; when we shall positively know to be true all that we believe to be true; then we shall have reached an ideal state. No less than this are the broad scope and the high purpose of argumentation.

Exposition, we have seen, is concerned with what things are that is, with truth embodied in facts and relations. Argumentation goes a step farther. It not

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only seeks to discover truth and impart a knowledge of it, but it further insists that this truth is truth, and strives to enforce a knowledge of it and thus inspire an active belief in it. Men adopt beliefs on the strength of prejudices or of insufficient knowledge. They even come to believe things because they have desired to believe them. These beliefs become second nature and are clung to with a pertinacity which even the disclosure of truth itself sometimes seems unavailing to remove. If it were not so, if men withheld belief until knowledge came, and rested it on that alone, there would be no need for argumentation as we have defined it. Simple exposition would suffice. Exposition is addressed to ignorance which needs enlightenment. Argumentation is addressed to error which needs correction. Argumentation exposes the false as well as the true. It strives to overcome prejudice. Its purpose is thus twofold: it knocks down old error in order to set up new truth.

"To err is human." The obverse of every advance toward higher wisdom is a deeper sense of the prevalence not only of ignorance but of actual error, until it may well-nigh seem that error is of indigenous growth For it flourishes even in the presence of among men. the most evident and incontrovertible facts. Where this is the case, argument may indeed seem of little avail, for all argument must rest immediately or ultimately on facts. If a Brother Jasper declares that the earth is flat and "the sun do move," how shall you convince him of the contrary? The gambler may change his cards a dozen times without succeeding in changing his luck, yet, declaring his belief in the charm, will change them the thirteenth time. There is

little encouragement for one to try to meet such obstinacy and such utter disregard of reason by any appeal to facts. Still we make the attempt, and we should make it too without any resort to ridicule until kindness and forbearance have proved unavailing.

Take some of the superstitions of the day and deal with them in the light of facts that are accessible and evident to all. Much the same subject was proposed in the section devoted to exposition. But the intention there was merely to ferret out and explain these superstitions and treat of them in a desultory but entertaining style; the object here is to deal with them rigorously and inquiringly, and to show that they are without ground in easily observable facts.

EXERCISE XLVII.

ARGUMENT BY CAREFUL EXPOSITION.

Subject:

Selfishness the Mainspring of Human Action..

Many an error has arisen and been perpetuated merely through a misunderstanding of the terms involved, due either to ignorance of the facts or to a misinterpretation of them. And many an unpleasant dispute may be avoided if the disputants will only take the trouble at first to make sure that they have a like understanding of the terms in the question, and that they are approaching it from the same point of view. One person declares that a piece of metal is

warm to the touch and another declares that it is cold. They only need to have explained to them that warm and cold are relative terms, and they will understand how both assertions may be right. There is the old story of a dispute over a sign-board which one person declared to be red and another, blue. Had some one suggested that a sign-board has two sides, further trouble might have been saved. Is interest on money, usury? is the taking of interest, extortion? It was held so once, but a clear exposition of the nature of money and of interest has reversed the opinion. Is money, capital? Well, what do we mean by money, and what do we mean by capital? A clear definition of these terms is about all that is needed. The logical process by which the question will then be answered is so simple that it scarcely needs elucidation.

When we find people disposed to argue about things they do not comprehend, or to make declarations of truths when they do not understand the things which the truths concern, it is evident that we shall have to meet them with simple but forcible exposition. Take the old question: When a cart is moving forward does the uppermost portion of the tire of a wheel move faster than the portion on the ground? Put the question to your friends and see how they will argue it. They will never come to an agreement, or at least will not arrive at a correct conclusion, until they settle the meaning of the terms motion and velocity. Is the one absolute or relative? Is the other calculated from some point absolutely at rest or not? Relatively to the axle, both points are moving with the same velocity. Relatively to the earth, the motion of the

axle may accelerate the velocity of one portion and retard that of another, and so on. Similar is the question, Can a man walk around a monkey when the monkey keeps turning so as to face the man? The only argument necessary is the determination of what is meant by "going around."

Enough has been said perhaps to impress the necessity of first of all clearly defining terms. This necessity is fully apparent in many of the larger questions of the day. In a current number of the Educational Review appears an article by Brander Matthews, entitled Can English Literature Be Taught? Much of the article is taken up with an exposition of the term teaching, and we quote from that portion as follows:

One thing more an American discovers in reading Mr. Collins's pages, and the discovery thus made is confirmed by reading the reviews which the book has had in the British journals and this is that the custom of examining for honors has obtained so long in Great Britain, and has been carried to such extremes that a confusion has arisen between the end and the means. In other words, British writers on education, like Mr. Collins, and like Mr. Andrew Lang, who reviewed Mr. Collins's book in the Illustrated London News, seem no longer able to distinguish between teaching and examining. When Mr. Collins asks the question which stands at the head of this paper and answers it in the affirmative, and when Mr. Lang answers it in the negative, both of them interpret the question to mean "Can English literature be examined on?"

This insistence on examinations, this substitution of one of the instruments of teaching for the teaching itself, this exaltation of the means above the end, has apparently the same result in the universities of England that it has in the public schools of New York City. A strict application of the marking system is little likely to encourage culture either in a university