THIRD CHAPTER

PROVING THE PROPOSITION: EVIDENCE

"Even the most cultivated portion of our species have not yet learned to abstain from drawing conclusions for which the evidence is insufficient." - MILL.

HAVING first phrased the proposition with clearness and precision, and having next discovered by analysis the main issues involved, we have before us the problem of establishing or overthrowing the proposition: having determined just what must be proved, we have next to consider the means of proof.

"Proof is the sufficient reason for assenting to a proposition as true." 1 The material of Proof is Evidence. Evidence is everything which ought to bring or tend to bring the mind to the conviction of the truth or falsity of a proposition. The finding and employing of Evidence is the business of argumentation. In proving the proposition, then, we meet at once the necessity for Evidence.

I. THE NECESSITY FOR EVIDENCE

Washington Irving says, in the Salmagundi Papers, that Straddle "became at once a man of taste, for he put his malediction on everything; and his arguments were conclusive, for he supported every assertion with a bet." Straddle's method was not original, and it is not obsolete. On the contrary, it is the main reliance of the great body of people who are unable to prove their con1 Wharton's Criminal Evidence, p. 3.

tentions with evidence. Sweeping condemnation and vehement assertion are offered in place of proof. No fault is commoner in argumentation than unsupported assertion.

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Any one who hopes to produce conviction in the minds of others must remember that evidence is the only material of proof. He must guard his every statement with eternal vigilance, lest he fall into the fatal weakness of asking his audience to believe that things are so merely because he says they are so. A man's mere say-so" has value under one condition and only one, namely, when he is accepted by the audience as an authority on the question at issue. Unless a student of argumentation is sure that he has attained that eminence, he had best challenge every statement in his own work as well as in the work of his adversaries, to make sure that the statement is supported by evidence, and that the evidence is sufficient.1

Let the student remember, then, that for purposes of proof, we do not care what he thinks. The reasons why he holds certain opinions may interest us, but as evidence the opinions are absolutely worthless. William Black says that in reading the proofs of his novel Wolfenberg, he discovered that the printer had made his heroine, who was to die of an overdose of opium, die of an overdose of opinion. Debates, stump-speeches, sermons, editorials, are every day dying of an overdose of opinion. Shun, therefore, all such phrases as “I think," "I believe," "It seems to me." They point to the weak spots of mere assertion.

The first attitude toward the material of proof should

1 For an effective reply to the assertiveness of opponents in debate, the reader will do well at this point to turn to the first paragraph of the First Rebuttal Speech for the Negative in Appendix VIII.

be scientific. Huxley says, "Scientific men get an awkward habit-no, I shall not call it that, for it is a valuable habit of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as . illogical but as immoral." 1

Every one, even though he make no pretense at public speaking, should form the valuable habit of accepting nothing and offering nothing for the truth without sufficient evidence. Columbus and his crew swore that the island of Cuba was the mainland, and any one on the ship who dared to contradict this was to have his tongue slit. As though any amount of assertion could make a continent! Yet the folly of Columbus is the folly of every man who rests any essential step in his argument on mere assertion. Whatever is to stand must rest on something which is verifiable, that is to say, on sufficient evidence. "That a story will account for certain facts, that we wish to think it true, nay, that many have formerly thought it true and have grown faithful, humble, charitable, and so on, by thus doing, does not make the story true if it is not, and cannot prevent men after a certain time from seeing that it is not. And on such a time we are now entering."

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For the purpose of weakening the arguments of the other side, assertion is equally useless. Much of the so-called rebuttal in debating closely resembles a childish dispute: ""Tis." ""Tain't." ""Tis." ""Tain't." At the end of an entire evening of such quarreling, neither side has accomplished anything. As rebuttal, assertion in debate is about as effective as when a mother, who is cornered in error by the persistent questioning of a 1 American Addresses, p. 21.

2 Matthew Arnold, God and the Bible.

child, sweeps the whole discussion away with the remark, “You are not old enough to understand."

Lincoln, after pointing out what seemed to be the logical reason why Judge Douglas and his friends refused to adopt the Chase amendment, said:

And now I say again, if this was not the reason, it will avail the judge much more to calmly and good-humoredly point out to these people what that other reason was for voting the amendment down, than swelling himself up to vociferate that he may be provoked to call somebody a liar. . . . If I have brought forward anything not a fact, if he will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it back. But if he will not point out anything erroneous in the evidence, is it not rather for him to show by a comparison of the evidence that I have reasoned falsely, than to call the "kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar? If I have reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of an able debater to show by argument that I have wandered to an erroneous conclusion.1

Only when the speaker is accepted by the particular audience as an authority on the particular point at issue is his assertion of any value whatever as evidence. Any other man who offers his own statement as sufficient evidence has something in common with a certain conceited lawyer. A man said to him, "Who is the most able and eminent lawyer in this city?"

"I am," replied the lawyer.

"But where is your proof?" rejoined the other.

"I don't require any proof," said the lawyer, “I admit it."

Concerning the worth of an assertion, there can be no appeal from the decision of the audience. If they question the authority or the veracity of the speaker, his statements are mere assertion, and as such, regardless 1 Lincoln's Complete Works, The Century Company, vol. i, p. 294.

of their truth or falsity, require the support of evidence acceptable to the doubting audience. Imperfect analysis and unsupported assertion are the two great weaknesses of the beginner in argumentation; and of these the more insidious and deadly is unsupported assertion.

II. TWO KINDS OF EVIDENCE

In each of the following paragraphs, the bare assertion of the opening sentence is supported by evidence:

(1) Some of the simpler forms recommended by the Simplified Spelling Board merit adoption. More than one half are preferred by Webster's Dictionary, more than six tenths are preferred by the Century Dictionary, and two thirds are preferred by the Standard Dictionary. Nearly all the rest are allowed by all three dictionaries as alternative spellings in good usage. And if the authority of the dictionaries is not sufficient, why not accept the authority of the greatest names in English literature? The appearance of the simpler forms, blest, dropt, stept, stopt, and the like, in the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, and the rest, was no innovation, but was the accepted usage of the age. Besides the forms mentioned in the list, Spenser has askt, laught, purchast, and the like in endless profusion. Shakespeare has similar forms on every page of the original texts. Ben Jonson (in his Workes, 1616) has checkt, dismist, lockt, and the like. Milton, Fuller, Bunyan, Cowley, Butler, Dryden, Addison, Pope, Thomson, Goldsmith, and all their contemporaries use similar forms, as do such modern writers as Scott, Keats, Lamb, Landor, and Tennyson. Surely the common or frequent use of a spelling by nearly all the standard authors justifies its acceptance or resumption by present writers.

(2) The anomalies and perversities of English spelling call loudly for simplification. There is a widespread conviction that the English language, in its progress toward becoming an international language, is hampered by this one thing, its intricate and disordered spelling, which makes