298 Modality. [CHAP. XIIL 



and has it not been attempted by the same device to abolish 

 the distinctive characteristic of negative propositions, viz. by 

 shifting the negative particle into the predicate ? It must 

 be admitted that, up to a certain point, something may be 

 done in this way. Given the reasoning, Those who take 

 arsenic will probably die ; A has taken it, therefore he will 

 probably die ; it is easy to convert this into an ordinary 

 syllogism of the pure type, by simply wording the major, 

 Those who take arsenic are people-who-will-probably-die/ 

 when the conclusion follows in the same form, A is one 

 who-will-probably-die. But this device will only carry us 

 a very little way. Suppose that the minor premise also is 

 of the same modal description, e.g. A has probably taken 

 arsenic, and it will be seen that we cannot relegate the 

 modality here also to the predicate without being brought to 

 a stop by finding that there are four terms in the syllogism. 



But even if there were not this particular objection, it 

 does not appear that anything is to be gained in the way of 

 intelligibility or method by such a device as the above. For 



amples as *A killed B unjustly, in material modality and the genuine 



which the killing of B by A was kind formal modality . The former 



sometimes said to be asserted not included all the cases in which the 



simply but with a modification. modification belonged by right either 



(Hamilton s Logic, i. 256.) It is to the predicate or to the subject ; 



obvious that the modification in the latter was reserved for the cases 



such cases is by rights merely a in which the modification affected 



part of the predicate, there being no the real conjunction of the predicate 



formal distinction between A is the with the subject. (Keckermann. 



killer of B and A is the unjust Systema Logics, Lib. n. ch. 3.) It 



killer of B. Indeed some logicians was, I believe, a common scholastic 



who were too conservative to reject distinction. 



the generic name of modality in this For some account of the dispute 



application adopted the common ex- as to whether the negative particle 



pedient of introducing a specific dis- was to be considered to belong to 



tinction which did away with its the copula or to the predicate, see 



meaning, terming the spurious kind Hamilton s Logic, i. 253. 



