R I

WHAT WE ARGUE ABOUT, AND WHY

1. What Argument is. When we argue we write or speak with an active
purpose of making other people take our view of a case; that is the only
essential difference between argument and other modes of writing.
Between exposition and argument there is no certain line. In Professor
Lamont's excellent little book, "Specimens of Exposition," there are two
examples which might be used in this book as examples of argument; in
one of them, Huxley's essay on "The Physical Basis of Life," Huxley
himself toward the end uses the words, "as I have endeavored to prove to
you"; and Matthew Arnold's essay on "Wordsworth" is an elaborate effort
to prove that Wordsworth is the greatest English poet after Shakespeare
and Milton. Or, to take quite different examples, in any question of law
where judges of the court disagree, as in the Income Tax Case, or in the
Insular cases which decided the status of Porto Rico and the
Philippines, both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinions of
the judges are argumentative in form; though the majority opinion, at
any rate, is in theory an exposition of the law. The real difference
between argument and exposition lies in the difference of attitude
toward the subject in hand: when we are explaining we tacitly assume
that there is only one view to be taken of the subject; when we argue we
recognize that other people look on it differently. And the differences
in form are only those which are necessary to throw the critical points
of an argument into high relief and to warm the feelings of the readers.

2. Conviction and Persuasion. This active purpose of making other
people take your view of the case in hand, then, is the distinguishing
essence of argument. To accomplish this purpose you have two tools or
weapons, or perhaps one should say two sides to the same weapon,
_conviction_ and _persuasion_. In an argument you aim in the first place
to make clear to your audience that your view of the case is the truer
or sounder, or your proposal the more expedient; and in most arguments
you aim also so to touch the practical or moral feelings of your readers
as to make them more or less warm partisans of your view. If you are
trying to make some one see that the shape of the hills in New England
is due to glacial action, you never think of his feelings; here any
attempt at persuading him, as distinguished from convincing him, would
be an impertinence. On the other han