THE ARGUFYING MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume X, Issue 2788, 4 January 1873, Page 3

THE ARGUFYING MAN.

(l-KOII THH "eLOBE.") Anything- will do for him to contradict you about. He runs counter to every ordinary or sensible opinion, not only upon principle, but upon system. It i$ hie nature to. Hβ will prove to you, before your face, that you were a fool for differing with him, and yet he likes —he almost smueks his lips over—a tough antagonist. Indeed, he will oft6n turn round, as it were, upon an unfortunate man who argues with him, prematurely, for the sake of peace, and who, to his dismay, finds that he has, after all, gained nothing by the surrender, hie torturer having simply shifted the ground of contention in order to renew the battle. A story is told of a confirmed and inveterate argufyer who, on one occasion, acted on a jury. The caso was plain enough, and eleven were for a verdict one way, but the Bi-gufyer held out. At length he weaned and bullied the lot into his view ; —they thought their release was at hand. To their horror, he said it suddenly struck him that they were ria*ht in the first iuatance, and that he would now sooner eat his boots than be at one with them. Here was a typical illustration of the argufying method, 'this, however, is a rough and common instance. Another species of the same bore is of a learned turn. He has Whately and Mills at his fingers' ends, and he will be down on you immediately if you do not formulate your logic according to rule. He cannot grant you that premiss; your major or your minor proposition is out of gear ; the conclusion is you are an ass, and you do not know what you are talking of. Q.E.D. He cannot imagine how you came by such and such notion. You only required a capacity a degree above that of a congenital idiot to perceive how the mailer really stood, For the argufying man is horribly abusive. He pretends to be cool, and he is cooler than he knows ; but he has a taste for indulging in spite under the false pretence of imparting instruction. And, with his constant proclamation of reasoning according to art and ecience, he is as slippery and elusive as an eel in a wet meadow when you try to take him up fairly. He will shirk the"question, confuse the question, play hauky-panky with it, and substitute another for it —condescend to every controversial subterfuge sooner than acknowledge himself beaten. Of course he does acquire a certain linguistic dexterity from the constant employment of his tonjjue in the recreation of quibbling. But, if you could ouly appoint an umpire, the number of points that could be scored against him would surprise those who are in the habit of venerating him a= Sir Oracle.

The argufying man has his admirers. People who estimate him :it his own value, people who are imposed upon by his volubility and hie abnormal flux of words. " Mr. Theodore," remarks an old lady in a novel we came across the other day, " Mr. Theodore is such a ' langimgpous' person"—and your argufying man is, by disposition and culture, languageOU3. Now, there Iβ a great deal of respect in the world for what is coarsely but very significantly called jaw. On one stumping tour of Mr. Gladstone's the torrent of that orator's eloquence flooded six or eight columns of the Times every morning, and vastly increased the. wonder of uis abilities in the minds of old ladies and others who have a reverential feeling for the " languageous." And so with the argufying man. There must be eometing in him, people think, when eo much comes out —forgetting how very litile there is in a drum. And it is noticeable how difficult it is even to restrain the argufying nature even in its superior levels. The quarrels of theologians have become proverbial. Men of science will wrangle on conic sections with ferocity, and will fight over the spot 3 Oα the suu'e face as our forefathers would fight at the charge of a blot on their private escutcheons. But these encounters serve, perhaps, to vitalise and animate discussion. It is to the social argufyer that we must lodge our objections. He has no more right to bring his disputatious crankiness into violent and unsolicited opposition to our humours than he has to assault 113 bodily. We have our opinion, and he will not let us have it in peace. We must have Ilia, and swallow it upon compulsion, without a particle of courtesy to take the bitterness out of the dose. He ie allowed extraordinary liberties. Long ago there wa3 a chance of his being shot by a gentleman who did not care to bo described as a liar or a dolt, infereutiaUy or otherwise ; but now a man in an argument may almost say anything, and he receives encouragement from the immunity he enjoys for impertinence.

What renders it so difficult to put up with tho argufying men is the circumstance that he never contends for truth, but for triumph. This is plain enough from the dishonestand uncandid way in which he goes to work. He will grant nothing; never confe33 to the most palpable hit, though you have bent your foil against his pad half a dozen times in a* many minutes; and he never knows when to Btop. He is not satisfied with an imaginaryvietory. Whenever he thinks you are down because you are silent, he gives you a sort of verbal kick to rouse you for another combat. Loyola was a simpleton to him in casuistry. He ha 9 the trick of escape possessed by that fish who can hide from his enemies by exuding a preparation which renders the water around him dark and obscure. Without having a specific acquaintance with a topic- which, it may be in your line or your bent to understand) he is still ready to contradict a doctor in medicine, or a composer in counterpoint. He bristles with paradoxes, and he is an artful impostor in the method in which he conducts his business. He starts -with knowing little or nothing of the subject on which he desires to argufy. But, as the AttorneyGeneral said of the claimant, be picks your brains as you go along- Besides, if he can only confound you with your own words and statements, his elation is all the greater. " Stop now, sir ! I h.wo you there,, sir. Just now you said that, and now you say that the two things cannot be true." This, you will perceive, he may effect, though in total ignorance of the theme on which he has driven you. into an engagement. On the whole, the araufvin" man, it is obvious enough, is a personagS to be avoided. Fly him, if you cas at all with convenience.