ably, desist at his bidding. He would show him the law of Congress, the Treasury instruction, and his own oath of office. He would say he should perform his duty, come what might. . . . Direct collision, therefore, between force and force is the unavoidable result of that remedy for the revision of unconstitutional laws which the gentleman contends for. It must happen in the very first case to which it is applied.1

A form of the reductio ad absurdum is that of "enforcing the consequences," or, as we commonly say, such and such an argument "proves too much." It proves not only its own conclusion, but also one or more others which are absurd. The refuter shows that an opponent's argument leads to undesirable conditions or results over and beyond the matter under immediate discussion. Thus, in the debate in the United States Senate relative to the Philippine question, in 1900, replying to the argument of Senator Beveridge, that to establish a good colonial government abroad would stimulate good government at home, Senator Hoar said:

If I understood him correctly, he said also that he thought it was not necessary to wait until we could get the very best of government here, but if we established it abroad under some commissioners to be appointed by some executive authority, they would govern so well that they would furnish a good example for us at home, and we should improve. I suppose, though he did not say it, that he thinks also we had better not have free speech here in the United States Senate until

1 The Great Debate, pp. 208-211.

they have got it out among the Filipinos, to see whether it works there, and then it may come back to us in a way which would gradually permit us to use it here, in a sort of diluted form.

The reductio ad absurdum is the most commonly used, perhaps, of all the methods of refutation. By reason of its simplicity and directness, together with a flavor of humor that frequently accompanies its use, the method is, when well conceived and carried out, very effective.

2. Adopting an opponent's evidence. This method is commonly called "turning the tables." It consists in taking the evidence which was submitted by an opponent and using it to support your own contention or to refute his. This is an effective weapon in the hands of an alert debater. The opportunity presents itself when an opponent does not grasp the full significance of the evidence he submits and its ultimate bearing on the question at issue. Thus, in a debate on The Abolition of Capital Punishment, the affirmative cited the Mosaic law which declared the doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." The negative accepted the Mosaic law and turned the tables by quoting the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."

Lincoln used this method in turning the warning of Washington against those who had used it against abolition:

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before

Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an Act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territory, which Act embodied the policy of the Government upon the subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since risen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect the warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.1

3. Exposing inconsistencies.—We saw in Chapter IV that evidence should be consistent with (1) itself, (2) other facts in the case, (3) ordinary experience. In any debate inconsistencies may readily appear either in the evidence itself or in the conclusions inferred from the evidence. Every debater should carefully guard his own evidence and make it consistent with that offered by his colleague, and then watch for any inconsistencies in the proof submitted by his opponents.

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Douglas had maintained that slavery could be lawfully excluded

1 Lincoln's Cooper Institute Speech, Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

from a territory in spite of the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln exposes the inconsistency as follows:

The Dred Scott Decision expressly gives every citizen of the United States a right to carry his slaves into the United States Territories. Now, there was some inconsistency in saying that the decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the territory could lawfully drive slavery out again. When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter, was cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was bare absurdity: no less than a thing may be lawfully driven away from a place where it has a lawful right to be. Clear it of all the verbiage, and that is the naked truth of his proposition, that a thing may be lawfully driven from the place where it has a lawful right to be.1

4. Amplifying and diminishing.-To amplify and diminish one uses both direct argument and refutation, but the effect is largely that of refutation. The method consists in magnifying (amplifying) your own argument, and at the same time belittling (diminishing) that of your opponent. It is, therefore, a balancing process, the arguments pro and con being placed in juxtaposition with the object of giving a more favorable view to your side of the case. To cite a standard example, Burke refutes Lord North's plan for conciliating the American colonies by amplifying his own plan and diminishing that of Lord North's:

Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and simple; the other full of perplexed and intricate

1 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 379.

mazes. This is mild; that harsh. This is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a new project. This is universal; the other calculated for certain colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the other remote, contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling peoplegratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as a matter of bargain and sale.

Demosthenes uses this method in his speech On the Crown. It was really a debate between Demosthenes and Æschines, the loser to be exiled:

Contrast now the circumstances of your life and mine, Æschines, and then ask these people whose fortunes they would each of them prefer. You taught reading, I went to school; you performed initiations, I received them; you danced in the chorus, I furnished it; you were assembly clerk, I was speaker; you acted third parts, I heard you; you broke down, and I hissed; you have worked as a statesman for the enemy, I for my country.

This method of Amplifying and Diminishing is of service as a summary at the close of a debate. The arguments of the opposition may be profitably contrasted with your own, the effort being, of course, to show the greater strength of your own arguments.

EXERCISES

Let the student point out the general method of refutation and the fallacies, if any, in the following arguments:

1. It is said that the control of trusts by the Federal Government is unjustifiable and unconstitutional. But why should not the Government control such monopolistic and unjustifiable combinations?