ces of speakers who have indulged in such personal opinions
when they might or should have offered arguments.

While argumentation is not so easily assembled as running conversation
is, it may be made quite as fascinating as the latter, and just as
surely as a person can have his conversational ability developed so
can a person have his argumentative power strengthened.

Conviction. What should be the first requisite of a speaker of
argumentation? Should it be conviction in the truth or right of the
position he takes and the proposition he supports? At first thought
one would answer emphatically "yes." A great deal of discredit has
been brought upon the study of argumentation by the practice of
speakers to pretend to have opinions which in reality they do not
sincerely believe. The practical instance is the willingness of paid
lawyers to defend men of whose guilt they must be sure. Such criticism
does not apply to cases in which there are reasonable chances for
opposing interpretations, nor to those cases in which our law decrees
that every person accused of crime shall be provided with counsel, but
to those practices to which Lincoln referred when he recommended the
lawyer not to court litigation. Nor should this criticism deter a
student of public speaking from trying his skill in defense of the
other side, when he feels that such practice will help him in weighing
his own arguments. In every instance of this highly commendable double
method of preparation which the author has seen in classrooms, the
speaker, after his speech has been commented upon, has always declared
his real position and explained why he advocated the opposite. Even
school and college debating has been criticized in the same way for
becoming not an attempt to discover or establish the truth or right of
a proposition, but a mere game with formal rules, a set of scoring
regulations, and a victory or defeat with consequent good or bad
effects upon the whole practice of undergraduate debating. If such
contests are understood in their true significance, as practice in
training, and the assumption of conviction by a student is not
continued after graduation so that he will in real life defend and
support opinions he really does not believe, the danger is not so
great. The man who has no fixed principles, who can argue equally
glibly on any side of a matter, whose talents are at any man's command
of service, is untrustworthy. Convictions are worthy elem