118 How to Win Every Argument
was the slogan, with sleepy scenes and pictures of cobwebs on
the packets. In Britain, Hovis bread, instead of being new and
improved, featured sepia-tinted ads of rural simplicity.
Both fallacies have powerful appeal, but ad novitam had gone
too far. Now there is a balance between the two. The simplest
country boy wears clothes looking roughly like a space-suit,
while those brought up in Glasgow tenements now look back on
entirely false childhood memories of country smells and fresh
brown eggs.
When using the ad novitam, remember the conflicting appeal
of the two fallacies, and confine it to areas where the ad antiq-
uitam is unwelcome. You cannot support housing because it is
new, since people will prefer the old. But you can support eco-
nomic theories because they are new. After all, what good ever
came of the old ones?
Just as yours is the 'new economies', so are your social and
moral convictions part of the 'new awareness'. An audience
would much prefer to be brought up-to-date and given new
information, rather than being hectored to change their minds.
Are we to continue in the ways of the old acquisitiveness by allowing
commercial development on the site, or are we to respond to a new
awareness of social needs by building a modern community centre for
the unemployed?
(With arguments like this, you'll win easily. You'll get a community
centre for those who would have been employed by the commercial
development.)Numeram, argumentum ad
Not many people like to be out on a limb. Many prefer instead
the comfort of solid numbers behind them, feeling there is less