An American writer of satirical essays and short stories, Ambrose Bierce is best known today for his collection of misanthropic definitions, The Devil's Dictionary (1906). In "The Art of Controversy," Bierce examines the irrational appeals underlying most arguments. What's more important than winning an argument, Bierce says, is defeating an opponent and entertaining the audience.
The Art of Controversy
by Ambrose Bierce
One who has not lived a life of controversy, yet has some knowledge of its laws and methods, would, I think, find a difficulty in conceiving the infantile ignorance of the race in general as to what constitutes argument, evidence and proof. Even lawyers and judges, whose profession it is to consider evidence, to sift it and pass upon it, are but little wiser in that way than others when the matter in hand is philosophy, or religion, or something outside the written law. Concerning these high themes, I have heard from the lips of hoary benchers so idiotic argument based on so meaningless evidence as made me shudder at the thought of being tried before them on an indictment charging me with having swallowed a neighbor's step-ladder. Yet doubtless in a matter of mere law these venerable babes would deliver judgment that would be roughly reasonable and approximately right. The theologian, on the contrary, is never so irrational as in his own trade; for, whatever religion may be, theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure, an invention of the devil. It is to religion what law is to justice, what etiquette is to courtesy, astrology to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry and medicine to hygiene. The theologian can not reason, for persons who can reason do not go in for theology. Its name refutes it: theology means discourse of God, concerning whom some of its expounders say that he has no existence and all the others that he can not be known.
I set out to show the folly of men who think they think to give a few typical examples of what they are pleased to call "evidence" supporting their views. I shall take them from the work of a man of far more than the average intelligence dealing with the doctrine of immortality. He is a believer and thinks it possible that immortal human souls are on an endless journey from star to star, inhabiting them in turn. And he "proves" it thus:
No one thinks of space without knowing that it can be traversed; consequently the conception of space implies the ability to traverse it.But how far? He could as cogently say:
No one thinks of the ocean without knowing that it can be swum in; consequently the conception of ocean implies the ability to swim from New York to Liverpool.Here is another precious bit of testimony:
The fact that man can conceive the idea of space without beginning or end implies that man is on a journey without beginning or end. In fact, it is strong evidence of the immortality of man."Now observe the possibilities in that kind of "reasoning": The fact that a pig can conceive the idea of a turnip implies that the pig is climbing a tree bearing turnips which is strong evidence that the pig is a fish. In each of the gentleman's dicta the first part no more "implies" what follows than it implies a weeping baboon on a crimson iceberg.
Of the same unearthly sort are two more of this innocent's deliveries:
The fact that we do not remember our former lives is no proof of our never having existed. We would remember them if we had accomplished something worth remembering.Note the unconscious petitio principii [circular argument] involved in the first "our" and the pure assumption in the second sentence.
We all know that character, traits and habits are as distinct in young children as in adults. This shows that if we had no preexistence all men would have the same character and traits and appearance, and would be turned out on the same model.As apples are, for example, or pebbles, or cats. Unfortunately we do not "all" know, nor does any of us know, nor is it true, that young children have as much individuality as adults. And if we did all know it, or if any of us knew it, or if it were true, neither the fact itself nor the knowledge of it would "show" any such thing as that the differences could be produced by pre-existence only. They might be due to the will of God, or to some agency that no man has ever thought about, or has thought about but has not known to have that effect. In point of fact, we know that such peculiarities of character and disposition as a young child has are not brought from a former life across a gulf whose brinks are death and birth, but are endowments from the lives of others here. They are not individual, but hereditary; not vestigial, but ancestral.
Concluded on page two
