For example, I praised the system prevailing in China, where there is no such thing as hereditary nobility, and offices are bestowed only on those who succeed in competitive examinations.  My opponent maintained that learning, as little as the privilege of birth (of which he had a high opinion) fits a man for office.  We argued, and he got the worst of it.  Then he made a diversion, and declared that in China all ranks were punished with the bastinado, which he connected with the immoderate indulgence in tea, and proceeded to make both of them a subject of reproach to the Chinese.  To follow him into all this would have been to allow oneself to be drawn into a surrender of the victory which had already been won.

The diversion is mere impudence if it completely abandons the point in dispute, and raises, for instance, some such objection as “Yes, and you also said just now,” and so on.  For then the argument becomes to some extent personal; of the kind which will be treated of in the last section.  Strictly speaking, it is half-way between the argumentum ad personam, which will there be discussed, and the argumentum ad hominem.

How very innate this trick is, may be seen in every quarrel between common people.  If one of the parties makes some personal reproach against the other, the latter, instead of answering it by refuting it, allows it to stand,—­as it were, admits it; and replies by reproaching his antagonist on some other ground.  This is a stratagem like that pursued by Scipio when he attacked the Carthaginians, not in Italy, but in Africa.  In war, diversions of this kind may be profitable; but in a quarrel they are poor expedients, because the reproaches remain, and those who look on hear the worst that can be said of both parties.  It is a trick that should be used only faute de mieux.

XXX.

This is the argumentum ad verecundiam.  It consists in making an appeal to authority rather than reason, and in using such an authority as may suit the degree of knowledge possessed by your opponent.

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment, says Seneca; and it is therefore an easy matter if you have an authority on your side which your opponent respects.  The more limited his capacity and knowledge, the greater is the number of the authorities who weigh with him.  But if his capacity and knowledge are of a high order, there are very few; indeed, hardly any at all.  He may, perhaps, admit the authority of professional men versed in a science or an art or a handicraft of which he knows little or nothing; but even so he will regard it with suspicion.  Contrarily, ordinary folk have a deep respect for professional men of every kind.  They are unaware that a man who makes a profession of a thing loves it not for the thing itself, but for the money he makes by it; or that it is rare for a man who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it.