The Making of Arguments

When we argue we write or speak with an active purpose of making other people take our view of a case; that is the only essential difference between argument and other modes of writing. Between exposition and argument there is no certain line. In Professor Lamont's excellent little book",Specimens of Exposition", there are two examples which might be used in this book as examples of argument; in one of them, Huxley's essay on "The Physical Basis of Life", Huxley himself toward the end uses the words",as I have endeavored to prove to you"; and Matthew Arnold's essay on "Wordsworth" is an elaborate effort to prove that Wordsworth is the greatest English poet after Shakespeare and Milton.