For the most part, the arts of persuasion are beyond the power of the rhetorician to teach. There is, as yet, neither a science nor an art of persuasion. Such persuasive arts and devices as are recognized and practised depend for their efficacy mostly upon the personal gifts of those who use them. These gifts will, in the case of one speaker, render effective what would, in the case of another, be a totally ineffective argument. In written argumentation, to be sure, the personal magnetism which a speaker may exert does not count; nevertheless, there may still be an individuality in a writer's style whereby what he says may win its way to the hearts of his readers, when the same arguments, differently expressed, would fall flat.

In general, the great thing in persuasion is the winning of the sympathy of the reader. The reader must be made to feel with the writer, to be willing not only to hear what he has to say, but to follow him in a spirit of open-mindedness, or readiness to be persuaded. This means that the writer himself must be fair-minded, earnest, and sincere. Nothing will more quickly breed distrust in the reader, and hence render the task of winning assent from him difficult, if not impossible, than an appearance of unfairness or insincerity on the part of the writer. The reader cannot be made to believe what the writer himself does not believe. Nor can he be made to feel much enthusiasm about a subject if the writer displays no such feeling on his own part. The reader, in short, takes his cue from the writer. The argumentative writer who would succeed, therefore, should first try

to get his readers into as favorable an attitude toward him as possible, and then throw himself into his subject with as much vigor as he can. The rest will depend upon the cogency of his reasoning.

In studying the methods of convincing the understanding, we are on much firmer ground than when dealing with persuasion. Logic, which is the science that treats of the nature and laws of thought, has investigated the process of thinking and has laid down the general conditions under which reasoning must proceed in order to be correct. We can here call logic to our aid, whereas in persuasion we have no such guide to fall back upon.

3. THE PROPOSITION

Every argumentation implies a proposition. In arguing, we affirm or deny that something is true and then proceed to give reasons why it should or should not be regarded as true. In other words, we lay down a "proposition" and then " "' it by prove adducing arguments in support of it. We cannot argue a term "; we must have an assertion with regard to it before we can bring it within the scope of argumentation.

66

The point is well illustrated by the comment which Newman makes upon the composition of a certain student whose father had submitted it to him for criticism:

The subject is "Fortes fortuna adjuvat "; now this is a proposition; it states a certain general principle, and this is just what an ordinary boy would be sure to miss,

and Robert does miss it. He goes off at once on the word "fortuna." "Fortuna 99 was not his subject; the thesis was intended to guide him for his own good; he refuses to be put into leading strings; he breaks loose, and runs off in his own fashion on the broad field and in wild chase of "fortuna," instead of closing with a subject, which, as being definite, would have supported him.

It would have been very cruel to have told a boy to write on 66 fortuna "; it would have been like asking him his opinion of things in general. Fortune is good, bad, capricious, unexpected, ten thousand things all at once . . . and one of them as much as the other. Ten thousand things may be said of it; give me one of them, and I will write upon it; I cannot write on more than one.1

Fortuna is a term;" fortune favors the brave,' is a proposition. The first may be made the subject of an exposition; the second, only, can be argued. It should be noted that a term is not necessarily a single word. "A logical term may consist of any number of nouns, substantive or objective, with the articles, prepositions, and conjunctions required to join them together; still it is only a term if it points out, or makes us think of a single object or collection, or class of objects. A term may thus be often of considerable length, as for example the following: "The Bearing of the Monroe Doctrine upon the Venezuela Incident and its Influence upon the Relations between England and the United States."

2

As arguing implies difference of opinion, the proposition should not, of course, be the statement of an 1 From The Idea of a University. 2 Jevons, Primer of Logic, p. 12.

obvious or universally admitted truth. In framing the proposition, therefore, care should be taken to see that it is one upon which there may be real divergence of opinion. The student should note that a question-begging epithet introduced into the proposition, as sometimes happens in debates, will, if accepted, often remove all ground for argument. For instance, on the proposition, "The brutal game of football should be suppressed," there can scarcely be two opinions. If the game is brutal, it should of course be suppressed. The brutality of the game, however, may be questioned. In that case, the debatable proposition would be simply, Football is a brutal game.

4. DEFINING THE ISSUES

Every argumentative composition must, as we have seen, have a proposition, and that proposition must be one as to the truth of which there may legitimately be some doubt. Except in debate, which is a special kind of argumentation, it is not necessary that the proposition be formulated in precise terms. But if it is not so formulated, it should at least be clearly implied. The person addressed must be able to gather what it is that he is expected to give his assent to, otherwise there will be small chance of producing anything like conviction in his mind.

It is usual in argumentative compositions to devote some space at the beginning to such preliminary explanations as may be felt to be necessary or desirable. In this introduction the precise meaning of the proposition may be made clear, or, if there is not likely to

be doubt as to that, the special points which must be proved before the proposition can be established may be indicated. Ordinarily, misapprehension as to the meaning of a proposition will be the result of some ambiguity lurking in the meaning of the terms used. This of course should be guarded against; and the best possible way of guarding against it is to define carefully all terms about which there is the least likelihood of there being any misunderstanding.

The importance of this preliminary explanation is obvious. In argumentation there must always be a certain common ground upon which both parties may meet in agreement, and from which they may proceed to the point in dispute. The larger the area of this common ground, the less, naturally, will be the distance to travel over debatable ground. Hence a little explanation will often save a great deal of argument, and in many cases it may render argument almost, if not wholly, superfluous.

The necessity of coming to an agreement as to the meaning of terms used in controversy is well illustrated in the following passage from Matthew Arnold's essay on Literature and Science, in which he defends himself against Huxley's attack upon his theory of culture:

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine which has been the object of a good deal of comment; an observation to the effect that in our culture, the aim being to know ourselves and the world, we have, as the means to this end, to know the best which has been thought and said in this world. A man of science, who is also an excellent writer and the very prince of debaters, Professor