300 Modality. [CHAP. xm. 



the term, belong to a range of considerations somewhat alien 

 to Hamilton s and Hansel s way of regarding the science. 

 The complete justification of our inferences is a matter 

 which involves their truth or falsehood, a point with which 

 these writers do not much concern themselves, being only 

 occupied with the consistency of our reasonings, not with 

 their conformity with fact. Were I speaking as a Hamil- 

 tonian I should say that modality is formal rather than 

 material, for though we cannot justify the degree of our 

 belief of a proposition without appeal to the matter, we can 

 to a moderate degree of accuracy estimate it without any 

 such appeal ; and this would seem to be quite enough to 

 warrant its being regarded as formal. 



It must be admitted that Hamilton s account of the 

 matter when he is recommending the rejection of the modals, 

 is not by any means clear and consistent. He not only fails, 

 as already remarked, to distinguish between the formal and 

 the material (in other words, the true and the false) mo 

 dality ; but when treating of the former he fails to distinguish 

 between the extremely diverse aspects of modality when 

 viewed from the Aristotelian and the Kantian stand-points. 

 Of the amount and significance of this difference we shall 

 speak presently, but it may be just pointed out here that 

 Hamilton begins (Vol. i. p. 257) by rejecting the modals on 

 the ground that the distinctions between the necessary, the 

 contingent, the possible, and the impossible, must be wholly 

 rested on an appeal to the matter of the propositions, in 

 which he is, I think, quite correct. But then a little further 

 on (p. 260), in explaining the meaning of three terms which 

 are used in relation to pure and modal propositions, he gives 

 the widely different Kantian, or threefold division into the 

 apodeictic, the assertory, and the problematic. He does not 

 take the precaution of pointing out to his hearers the very 



