Word: argument
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...writer in the Crimson tacitly assumes that the antiquity of the custom of class-tree exercises is the only argument in its favor. The intense radical spirit at present prevailing here, which says that all that is old in ways and beliefs is consequently wrong, and whatever new, right, would condemn this plea of antiquity as worse than none, forgetting that change and improvement are not always synonymous terms, any more than antiquity and perfection are. The variety which a Harvard Class Day furnishes in the way of entertainment is one of the pleasant features...
...like policemen's billies, and a series of clownish actions that would disgrace school-boys of ten years old, may not seem the fittest exhibition of ourselves we can make to our friends. We have dwelt sufficiently, however, on the fallacy of confusing facts with ideas. It needs no argument to withstand the enthusiasm of innovation. The nature of its error is apparent to all of us who have howled in the Yard in our Freshman year, who were properly drunk at the class supper in our Sophomore year, and who, finally, are determined to give a last exhibition...
...sent for the last two years, since she can hardly expect to send better ones than these. "And, after all, it is strange that Harvard should wish to row again with Yale alone, against whom she has made so many charges of foul play and ungentlemanly conduct"; and this argument under other circumstances would really have some weight, but at present it is useless. It is expected that Princeton's captain, who wishes to withdraw, will succeed in persuading his college to join Harvard, and it is possible that there may be one other college, Columbia; and, in the second...
...remaining part of the article, which takes up the question of the evil influence of the Nation on the student mind, has so many of the peculiar faults of that journal, that it must necessarily have some of its excellences; but the argument is most curiously inconsistent. After condemning several student characteristics in a manner truly searching and Nationesque, the writer suddenly turns around and condemns that journal for the very faults which are most conspicious in his own article. He actually out Nations the Nation in pessimism, and then, probably remembering the Golden Rule, quotes the Nation's words...
...conclusion, one cannot but be struck by the fundamental inconsistency of the argument. The object of intellectual life is to discover truth, - "the love of truth for the sake of truth." He admits that the Nation seeks and attains truth, both of fact and opinion, and then asserts that the influence of the Nation is bad, because, to act, we must delude ourselves into believing that things are better than they really are. He asserts that it is better to hold wrong opinions than to have our opinions corrected; in other words, the sole object of life is ideal truth...