William Atkinson - The Essential Works of William Walker Atkinson - 50+ Books in One Edition

Hyslop says, regarding Inference: “We cannot infer anything we please from any premises we please. We must conform to certain definite rules or principles. Any violation of them will be a fallacy. * * * There are, then, two simple rules which should not be violated. (1) The subject-matter in the conclusion should be of the same general kind, as in the premises . (2) The facts constituting the premises must be accepted, and must not be fictitious .”

If we may be pardoned for venturing an additional rule after these of the two eminent authorities just mentioned, we should say: Beware of too hasty generalization; beware of false generalization . Because one woman is a coquette, it is not just to accuse all women of a tendency to indulge in flirtation. Because one man has lied to you, it is not just to assert that “all men are liars.” Because one Irishman has red hair and blue eyes, it is not right to generalize that all Irishmen have fiery locks and violet eyes. Because you may handle a large blue-bottle fly with impunity, it does not follow that you can do the same with a bumble-bee which is about the same size, flies in a similar manner, and makes about the same kind of noise. Hasty generalization is the sign of an untrained mind—children are particularly addicted to it. And argument based on hasty generalization is often false by reason of its false premises. Argument, like the house in the parable, must be built upon the solid rock of a valid premise, and not on the shifting sand of fictitious and unaccepted premises arising from hasty generalization and inference. If the foundation is false, the structure is false. Be sure that your fundamental facts are right—then “go ahead.”

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THE FIFTH step in Argumentative Discourse is that known as the Appeal to the Emotions . To many this may appear to be outside of the true province of the Argument, and in the nature of an unwarranted artifice by means of which the understanding is clouded by the force of feeling. But it must be remembered that the majority of people really employ their reasoning faculties to a comparatively limited degree, and that they are dependent to a considerable extent upon the moving force of their feelings or emotions in forming a judgment or in taking action. It has been said by thoughtful men that the majority of the race employ reason merely as a means of justifying their feelings or excusing their actions, instead of as a means of determining judgment and action. They fail to observe the rule laid down by Caird that: “That which enters the heart must first be discerned by the intelligence to be true . It must be seen as having in its own nature a right to dominate feeling and as constituting the principle by which feeling must be judged.”

It has been said that “men do not seek reasons —they demand only excuses to justify the feelings and actions.” Halleck says: “Belief is a mental state which might as well be classed under emotion as under thinking, for it combines both elements. Belief is part inference from the known to the unknown, and part feeling or emotion. Wherever the proof of anything is not absolute, but where the probability seems to our minds to be of the strongest kind, we are said to believe . We can absolutely prove much that has occurred in the past. It is not a matter of belief, but of absolute knowledge, that a certain building was burned, that a certain man died, that it rained yesterday, that there was ice last winter. When we come to consider the future, we are thrown more or less on a state of belief. From the thought processes involved in comparing and inferring, we find ourselves feeling more or less sure that certain things will happen in the future. Ask a farmer who is sowing a certain crop if he is absolutely sure that sufficient rain will fall for the crop, and he will reply that he is not sure, but that he believes that there will be rain. * * * So long as the world does not stagnate, it will always act on belief in the most weighty matters, whether of religion or of business.”

The same authority also says regarding the effect of emotion upon intellectual action: “On the one hand, the emotions are favorable to intellectual action, since they supply the interest one feels in study. One may feel intensely concerning a certain subject and be all the better student. Hence the emotions are not, as was formerly thought, entirely hostile to intellectual action. Emotion often quickens the perception, burns things indelibly into the memory, and doubles the rapidity of thought. On the other hand, strong feelings often vitiate every operation of the intellect. They cause us to see only what we wish to, to remember only what we wish to, to remember only what interests our narrow feelings at the time, and to reason from selfish data only * * * Emotion puts the magnifying end of the telescope to our intellectual eye where our own interests are concerned, the minimizing end when we are looking at the interests of others.”

What is true of the individual regarding the effect and power of feeling and emotion, is doubly true of the crowd. Those who have studied the subject of “the psychology of the crowd” know that when people are gathered together in a crowd or assemblage they are peculiarly liable to emotional excitement, and “emotional contagion.” As Prof. Davenport says: “The mind of the crowd is strangely like that of primitive man. Most of the people in it may be far from primitive in emotion, in thought, in character; nevertheless, the result always tends to be the same. Stimulation immediately begets action. Reason is in abeyance. The cool, rational speaker has little chance beside the skillful, emotional orator. The crowd thinks in images, and speech must take this form to be accessible to it. The images are not connected by any natural bond, and they take each other’s place like the slides of a magic lantern. It follows from this, of course, that appeals to the imagination have paramount influence. The crowd is united and governed by emotion rather than by reason. Emotion is the natural bond, for men differ much less in this respect than in intellect. It is also true that in a crowd of a thousand men the amount of emotion actually generated and existing is far greater than the sum which might conceivably be obtained by adding together the emotion of the individuals taken by themselves. * * * As in the case of the primitive mind, imagination has unlocked the floodgates of emotion, which on occasion may become wild enthusiasm or demoniac frenzy.”

Recognizing the psychological effect of appeals to the emotion and feelings, the best authorities are of the opinion that it would be folly to leave this effective weapon in the hands of unscrupulous demagogues, and to unworthy causes. They feel that the weapon should be employed for good and worthy purposes as well as for those of the opposite character. And so we find that the best speakers employ this phase of discoursive expression, often with great effect.

Burke says: “In painting, we may represent any fine figure we please; but we never can give it those enlivening touches which we may receive from words. To represent an angel in a picture, you can only draw a beautiful young man winged, but what painting can furnish us any thing so grand as the addition of one word, ‘the angel of the Lord? ’ * * * Now as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of the things about which they are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always used by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch and move us more than those which far more clearly and distinctly express the subject matter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description.”