Other questions are impracticable because of vagueness.  Such questions as, Should a practical man read poetry, Are lawyers a useful class in the community, Are the American people deteriorating, furnish excellent material for lively and witty talk, but no one expects them to lead to any conclusion, and they are therefore valueless as a basis for the rigorous and muscular training which an argument ought to give.  There are many questions of this sort which serve admirably for the friendly dispute which makes up so much of our daily life with our friends, but which dissolve when we try to pin them down.

Some questions which cannot be profitably argued when phrased in general terms become more practicable when they are applied to a definite class or to a single person.  Such questions as, Is it better to go to a small college or a large one, Is it better to live in the country or in the city, Is it wise to go into farming, all lead nowhere if they are argued in this general form.  But if they are applied to a single person, they change character:  in this specific form they not only are arguable, but they constantly are argued out with direct and practical results, and even for a small and strictly defined class of persons they may provide good material for a formal argument.  For example, the question, “Is it better for a boy of good intellectual ability and capacity for making friends, who lives in a small country town, to go to a small college or a large,” provides moderately good material for an argument on either side; though even here the limiting phrases are none too definite.  In a debate on such a subject it would be easy for the two sides to pass each other by without ever coming to a direct issue, because of differing understanding of the terms.  On the whole it seems wiser not to take risks with such questions, but to choose from those which will unquestionably give you the training for which you are seeking.

Roughly speaking, subjects for an argument which are sure to be profitable may be divided into three classes:  (1) those for which the material is drawn from personal experience; (2) those for which the material is provided by reading; and (3) those which combine the first two.  Of these there can be no question that the last are the most profitable.  Of the first class we may take for an example such a question as, Should interscholastic athletics be maintained in——­ school?  Here is a question on which some parents and teachers at any rate will disagree with most boys, and a question which must be settled one way or the other.  The material for the discussion must come from the personal knowledge of those who make the arguments, reenforced by what information and opinion they can collect from teachers and townspeople.  In Chapter II we shall come to a consideration of possible sources for material for these and other arguments.  There is much to be said for the practice gained by hunting up pertinent material for arguments of this sort; but they tend to run over into irreconcilable differences of opinion, in which an argument is of no practical value.