How to Debate

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... V ARGUMENTS--CONSTRUCTIVE AS we have seen, facts are necessary in debate, * but this is not all. The debater must learn to use his facts, to reason with and from them--a thing that many erudite men never do learn. That is, a given proposition is to be established or overthrown "by a process of reasoning from facts closely related to the facts in issue." Hence the efforts of writers on argumentation, since the days of Aristotle, to classify the operations of the reasoning faculties. Obviously, any attempted classification has its difficulties and limitations. One process of reasoning easily runs into another; a given process may be one kind of argument, or another, depending upon the point of view; and processes of reasoning are so complex that no hard and fast line can be drawn which will enable us to pigeonhole arguments into mutually exclusive kinds. However, the classification itself is of no great importance. The advantage in some sort of a classification lies in the opportunity it affords of studying the more common forms of reasoning by themselves, and more especially the opportunity it affords of learning what it is in a given argument that makes it strong or weak. To that end, let us look at some of the principal kinds of arguments from the viewpoint of the debater. It must not be forgotten that Proof includes both Evidence and Argument, and that the presentation of evidence alone is all that is sometimes needed to convince the mind of the truth or falsity of a proposition. However, most evidence is used for the purpose of establishing new truths through the process of reasoning. Again, there are certain propositions that are self-evident, --axioms, the mathematicians call them, or assumptions, as they are spoken of by...