SECT. 17.] Modality. 311 



been followed by many logicians, not only by those who may 

 be called followers of Kant, but by almost all who have felt 

 his influence. Ueberweg, for instance, who is altogether at 

 issue with Kant on some fundamental points, adopts it. 



17. The next question to be discussed is, How many 

 subdivisions of modality are to be recognized ? The Aristo 

 telian or scholastic logicians, as we have seen, adopted a four 

 fold division. The exact relations of some of these to each 

 other, especially the possible and the contingent, is an ex 

 tremely obscure point, and one about which the commenta 

 tors are by no means agreed. As, however, it seems tolerably 

 clear that it was not consciously intended by the use of these 

 four terms to exhibit a graduated scale of intensity of con 

 viction, their correspondence with the province of modern 

 probability is but slight, and the discussion of them, there 

 fore, becomes rather a matter of special or antiquarian in 

 terest. De Morgan, indeed (Formal Logic, p. 232), says that 

 the schoolmen understood by contingent more likely than 

 not, and by possible less likely than not. I do not know 

 on what authority this statement rests, but it credits them 

 with a much nearer approach to the modern views of proba 

 bility than one would have expected, and decidedly nearer than 

 that of most of their successors 1 . The general conclusion at 

 which I have arrived, after a reasonable amount of investiga 

 tion, is that there were two prevalent views on the subject. 

 Some (e.g. Burgersdyck, Bk. I. ch. 32) admitted that there 

 were at bottom only two kinds of modality ; the contingent 

 and the possible being equipollent, as also the necessary and 

 the impossible, provided the one asserts and the other 

 denies. This is the view to which those would naturally 

 be led who looked mainly to the nature of the subject-matter. 



1 I cannot find the slightest authority for the statement in the 

 elaborate history of Logic by Prantl. 



