" It would be a good separate exercise to call for
such detailed presentation of evidence on some single point in the
argument. With most classes, however, the instructor cannot do much more
than rule out wholly unsupported assertion, and insist that the
distinction between fact and inference from fact shall be kept in sight.
The second of the results which an instructor in a course in
argumentation should aim for is the power to analyze complicated masses
of facts and so arrange them and present them as to bring order out of
confusion. President Taft has said that Justice Hughes "won his
reputation at the bar by his gift of boring to the innermost core of a
subject"; and that is what the drill on the introduction to the brief
should to some degree impart to students. The orderly analysis of the
question, step by step, according to the admirable scheme devised by
Professor Baker, cannot help implanting some understanding of what it
means to go to the heart of a question. Every man sooner or later, must
face complicated and puzzling questions; and the ordinary man will give
himself a long start if he will thus put down on paper the points that
can be urged on the two sides of a question, and then study them until
the real points at issue emerge.
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