Practical Essays, Alexander Bain [reading e books .txt] 📗

the rivalry and from the sympathy of his fellows, is the exception; mutual criticism and mutual encouragement are the rule. The social stimulants are of avail in knowledge and in truth as well as everything else.

A comparison of the state of speculation in the golden age of debate, with the state of the sciences in the present day, both metaphysical and physical, shows us clearly enough, what are the fields where polemic is most profitable. I set aside the struggles of politics and theology, and look to the scientific form of knowledge, which is, after all, the type of our highest certainty everywhere. Now, undoubtedly, it is in classifying, generalising, defining, and in the so-called logical processes--induction and deduction--that a man can be least left to himself. Until many men have gone over the same field of facts, a classification, a definition, or an induction, cannot be held as safe and sound. In modern science, there are numerous matters that have passed through the fiery furnace of iterated criticism, seven times purified; but there are, attaching to every science, a number of things still in the furnace. Most of all does this apply to the metaphysical or subject sciences, where, according to the popular belief, nothing has yet passed finally out of the fiery trial. In psychology, in logic, in eudaemonics, in sociology, in ethics, the facts are nearly all around our feet; the question is how to classify, define, generalise, express them. This was the situation of Zeno, Socrates, and Plato, for which they invoked the militant ardour of the mind. Man, they saw, is a fighting being; if fighting will do a thing, he will do it well.

[MOST USEFUL CLASSES OF DEBATES.]

In conformity with this view, the foremost class of debates, and certainly not the least profitable, are such as discuss the meanings of important terms. The genius of Socrates perceived that this was the beginning of all valid knowledge, and, in seeing this, laid the foundation of reasoned truth. I need not repeat the leading terms of metaphysical philosophy; but you can at once understand the form of proceeding by such an instance as "consciousness," debated so as to bring out the question whether, as Hamilton supposed, it is necessarily grounded on knowledge.

Next to the leading terms are the broader and more fundamental generalities: for example, the law of relativity; the laws of memory and its conditions, such as the intensity of the present consciousness; Hamilton's inverse relationship of sensation and perception. These are a few psychological instances. The value of a debate on any of these questions depends entirely upon its resolving itself into an inductive survey of the facts, and such surveys are never without fruit.

A debating society that includes logic in its sphere should cultivate the methods of debate; setting an example to other societies and to mankind in general. The "Topica" of Aristotle shows an immensity of power expended on this object, doubtless without corresponding results. Nevertheless the attempt, if resumed at the present day, with our clearer and wider views of logical method, would not be barren. This is too little thought of by us; and we may say that polemic, as an art, is still immature. The best examples of procedure are to be found in the Law Courts, some of whose methods might be borrowed in other debates. For one thing, I think that each of the two leaders should provide the members beforehand with a synopsis of the leading arguments or positions to be set forth in the debate. This, I believe, should be insisted on everywhere, not even excepting the debates of Parliament.

It is the custom of debating societies to alternate the Debate and the Essay: a very important distinction, as it seems to me; and I will endeavour to indicate how it should be maintained. Frequently there is no substantial distinction observed; an essay is simply the opening of a debate, and a debate the criticism of an essay. I should like to see the two carried out each on its own principle, as I shall now endeavour to explain.

[THE DEBATE: A FIGHT FOR MASTERY.]

The Debate is _the fight for mastery_ as between two sides. The combatants strain their powers to say everything that can be said so as to shake the case of their opponents. The debate is a field-day, a challenge to a trial of strength. Now, while I admit that the intellectual powers may be quickened to unusual perspicacity under the sound of the trumpet and the shock of arms, I also see in the operation many perils and shortcomings, when the subject of contest is truth. In a heated controversy, only the more glaring and prominent facts, considerations, doctrines, distinctions, can obtain a footing. Now truth is the still small voice; it subsists often upon delicate differences, unobtrusive instances, fine calculations. Whether or not man is a wholly selfish being, may be submitted to a contentious debate, because the facts and appearances on both sides are broad and palpable; but whether all our actions are, in the last resort or final analysis, self-regarding, is almost too delicate for debate. Chalmers upholds, as a thesis, the intrinsic misery of the vicious affections: there could not be a finer topic of pure debate.

My conception of the Essay, on the other hand, is that it should represent _amicable co-operation_, with an eye to the truth. By it you should rise from the lower or competitive, to the higher or communistic attitude. There may be a loss of energy, but there is a gain in the manner of applying it. The essayist should set himself to ascertain the truth upon a subject; he should not be anxious to make a case. The listeners, in the same spirit, should welcome all his suggestions, help him out where he is in difficulties, be indulgent to his failings, endeavour to see good in everything. If there be a real occasion for debate, it should be purposely forborne and reserved. In propounding subjects, the respective fitness for the debate and for the essay might be taken into account.

[CO-OPERATIVE DISCUSSION IN THE ESSAY.]

When questions have been often debated without coming nearer to a conclusion, it should be regarded as a sign that they are too delicate and subtle for debate. A trial should then be made of the amicable or co-operative treatment represented by the Essay. The Freedom of the Will might, I think, be adjusted by friendly accommodation, but not by force of contention. External Perception is beyond the province of debate. It is fair and legitimate to try all problems by debate, in the first instance, because the excitement quickens the intelligence, and leads to new suggestions; but if the question involves an adjustment of various considerations and minute differences, the contending sides will be contentious still.

A society that really aims at the furtherance of knowledge, might test its operations by now and then preparing a report of progress; setting forth what problems had been debated, what themes elucidated, and with what results. It would be very refreshing to see a candid avowal that after several attempts--both debate and essay--some leading topic of the department remained exactly where it stood at the outset. After such a confession, the Society might well resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole House, to consider its ways, and indeed its entire position, with a view to a new start on some more hopeful track.

My closing remark is, as to avoiding debates that are in their very nature interminable. It is easy to fix upon a few salient features that make all the difference between a hopeful and a hopeless controversy. For one thing, there is a certain intensity of emotion, interest, bias, or prejudice if you will, that can neither reason nor be reasoned with. On the purely intellectual side, the disqualifying circumstances are complexity and vagueness. If a topic necessarily hauls in numerous other topics of difficulty, the essay may do something for it, but not the debate. Worst of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, or unsettled terms, of which there are still plenty in our department. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several defects each perhaps in a small degree. A tinge of predilection or party, a double or triple complication of doctrines, and one or two hazy terms, will make a debate that is pretty sure to end as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to appearance, may contain within it capacities of misunderstanding, cross-purposes, and pointless issues, sufficient to occupy the long night of Pandemonium, or beguile the journey to the nearest fixed star.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: An Address, delivered on the 28th of March, 1877, to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society. CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, April, 1877.]

[Footnote 13: This very plausible utterance begs every question. There would be some difficulty in condensing an equal amount of fallacy, confusion of thought, in so few words.

In the first place, it assumes that the three requisites--health, freedom from debt, and a good conscience--are matters of easy and general attainment; that they are, in fact, the rule among human beings. Is this really so?

Take Health, a word of very wide import. There is a certain small amount, such as is marked by being out of the physician's hands, but implying very little of the energy needed for the labours and the enjoyment of life. There is a high and resplendent degree that renders toil easy, and responds to the commonest stimulants, so that enjoyment cannot be quashed without unusually unfavourable circumstances. The first kind is widely diffused; the second is very rare, except in the earlier portion of life. Most men and women, as they pass middle age, lose the elasticity required for easy and spontaneous enjoyment, and, even if they keep the appearance of health, have too little animal spirits for enjoyment under cheap and ordinary excitements.

But there is more to be said. In order to obtain, and to retain, health, freedom from debt, and a good conscience, there are pre-supposed very considerable advantages. We cannot continue healthy and out of debt, unless we have a fair start in life, that is, unless we have a tolerable provision to begin with; a circumstance that the maxim keeps out of sight.

Yet farther. The conditions named are of themselves mere negatives; they imply simply the absence of certain decided causes of unhappiness--ill-health, poverty, and bad conduct. There is a farther stealthy assumption, namely, that the individual is placed in a situation otherwise conducive to happiness. Health, absence of debt, and a good conscience will not make happiness, under severe or ungenial toil, irritation, ill-usage, affliction, sorrow,--- even if they could be long maintained under such circumstances. Nor even, in the case of exemption from the worst ills of life, can we be happy without some positive agreeables--family, general society, amusements, and gratifications. There is a certain degree of loneliness, seclusion, dulness, that destroys happiness without sapping health, or miming us into debt and vice.

The maxim, as expressed, professes to aim at happiness, but it more properly belongs to duty. If we fail in the conditions mentioned, we run the risk rather of neglecting our duties than of missing our pleasures. It is not every form of ill-health that makes us miserable; and we may become seared to debt and ill-conduct, so as to suffer only the incidental misery of being dunned, which many can take with great composure.

The definition of happiness by Paley is vague and incomplete; but it does not omit the positive conditions. After health, Paley enumerates the exercise of the affections and some engaging occupation or pursuit; both which are highly relevant to the attainment of happiness. Indeed with an