"Arguments, like children, should be like the subject that begets them"
About this Quote
Arguments should grow out of their subject the way children resemble their parents. The image is playful but precise: a sound case bears the features, temper, and proportions of the matter that produced it. If the topic is grave, the reasoning should be sober; if it is straightforward, the reasoning should be plain; if it is intricate, the reasoning should be patient and layered. When arguments do not resemble their subject, they risk becoming rhetorical bastards, begotten not by evidence but by vanity, prejudice, or mere verbal flourish.
The metaphor also points to legitimacy. In early modern English culture, lineage and rightful descent mattered. By casting arguments as offspring, Thomas Dekker suggests that persuasion has a pedigree that can be traced. A claim is credible when it can show its parentage in facts, causes, and context; it is suspect when its ancestry vanishes into distraction, irrelevant authorities, or emotional heat. The warning is against non sequitur and overreach, against letting style outpace substance.
Dekker knew the world of words where such temptations abound. Writing in Elizabethan and Jacobean London as a playwright and pamphleteer, he moved through the noisy marketplace of sermons, satires, and civic quarrels. Classical rhetoric prized decorum, the fit between subject, speaker, and audience. Dekker recasts that rule through domestic imagery familiar to his readers, making the principle felt as common sense: an argument ought to carry the features of what it is about.
There is also a moral undercurrent. Parents are responsible for the children they bring into the world; writers and speakers are responsible for the conclusions they set loose. Careless begetting yields unruly offspring. To argue well, then, is to let the subject itself do the generating, to midwife conclusions that look like their source, and to resist importing borrowed plumage that dazzles but does not belong.
The metaphor also points to legitimacy. In early modern English culture, lineage and rightful descent mattered. By casting arguments as offspring, Thomas Dekker suggests that persuasion has a pedigree that can be traced. A claim is credible when it can show its parentage in facts, causes, and context; it is suspect when its ancestry vanishes into distraction, irrelevant authorities, or emotional heat. The warning is against non sequitur and overreach, against letting style outpace substance.
Dekker knew the world of words where such temptations abound. Writing in Elizabethan and Jacobean London as a playwright and pamphleteer, he moved through the noisy marketplace of sermons, satires, and civic quarrels. Classical rhetoric prized decorum, the fit between subject, speaker, and audience. Dekker recasts that rule through domestic imagery familiar to his readers, making the principle felt as common sense: an argument ought to carry the features of what it is about.
There is also a moral undercurrent. Parents are responsible for the children they bring into the world; writers and speakers are responsible for the conclusions they set loose. Careless begetting yields unruly offspring. To argue well, then, is to let the subject itself do the generating, to midwife conclusions that look like their source, and to resist importing borrowed plumage that dazzles but does not belong.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|
More Quotes by Thomas
Add to List
