296 Modality. [CHAP. xm. 



been some reference to quantity of belief; enough perhaps 

 to justify De Morgan s 1 remark, that Probability was &quot;the 

 unknown God whom the schoolmen ignorant ly worshipped 

 when they so dealt with this species of enunciation, that it 

 was said to be beyond human determination whether they 

 most tortured the modals, or the modals them.&quot; But this 

 reference to quantity of belief has sometimes been direct and 

 immediate, sometimes indirect and arising out of the nature 

 of the subject-matter of the proposition. The fact is, that 

 that distinction between the purely subjective and purely ob 

 jective views of logic, which I have endeavoured to bring out 

 into prominence in the eleventh chapter, was not by any 

 means clearly recognized in early times, nor indeed before 

 the time of Kant, and the view to be taken of modality 

 naturally shared in the consequent confusion. This will, I 

 hope, be made clear in the course of the following chapter, 

 which is intended to give a brief sketch of the principal 

 different ways in which the modality of propositions has 

 been treated in logic. As it is not proposed to give any 

 thing like a regular history of the subject, there will be no 

 necessity to adhere to any strict sequence of time, or to 

 discuss the opinions of any writers, except those who may be 

 taken as representative of tolerably distinct views. The 

 outcome of such investigation will be, I hope, to convince 

 the reader (if, indeed, he had not come to that conviction 

 before), that the logicians, after having had a long and fair 

 trial, have failed to make anything satisfactory out of this 

 subject of the modals by their methods of enquiry and treat 

 ment ; and that it ought, therefore, to be banished entirely 

 from that science, and relegated to Probability. 



3. From the earliest study of the syllogistic process 

 it was seen that, complete as that process is within its own 



1 Formal Logic, p. 232. 



