The proper aim of a political party is to persuade, and to persuade it must have a rhetoric. As far as mere methods go, there is nothing to object to in the argument from circumstance, for undeniably it has a power to move. Yet it has this power through a widely shared human weakness, which turns out on examination to be shortsightedness. This shortsightedness leads a party to positions where it has no policy, or only the policy of opposing an incumbent. When all the criteria are brought to bear, then, this is an inferior source of argument, which reflects adversely upon any habitual user and generally punishes with failure. Since, as we have seen, it is grounded in the nature of a situation rather than in the nature of things, its opposition will not be a dialectically opposed opposition, any more than was Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution. And here, in substance, I would say, is the great reason why Burke should not be taken as prophet by the political conservatives. True, he has left many wonderful materials which they should assimilate. His insights into human nature are quite solid propositions to build with, and his eloquence is a lesson for all time in the effective power of energy and imagery. Yet these are the auxiliary rhetorical appeals. For the rhetorical appeal on which it will stake its life, a cause must have some primary source of argument which will not be embarrassed by abstractions or even by absolutes—the general ideas mentioned by Tocqueville. Burke was magnificent at embellishment, but of clear rational principle he had a mortal distrust. It could almost be said that he raised “muddling through” to the height of a science, though in actuality it can never be a science. In the most critical undertaking of all, the choice of one’s source of argument, it would be blindness to take him as mentor. To find what Burke lacked, we now turn to the American Abraham Lincoln, who despite an imperfect education, discovered that political arguments must ultimately be based on genus or definition. Chapter IV ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DEFINITION