SECT. 19.] Modality. 313 



admitted, I presume, even by those who accept the meta 

 physical or psychological theory upon which it rests, to be a 

 difference which concerns, not the quantity of belief with 

 which the judgments are entertained, but rather the violence 

 which would have to be done to the mind by the attempt to 

 upset them. Each is fully believed, but the one can, and 

 the other cannot, be controverted. The belief with which an 

 assertory judgment is entertained is full belief, else it would 

 not differ from the problematic ; and therefore in regard to 

 the quantity of belief, as distinguished from the quality or 

 character of it, there is no difference between it and the apo- 

 deictic. It is as though, to offer an illustration, the index 

 had been already moved to the top of the scale in the as 

 sertory judgment, and all that was done to convert this into 

 an apodeictic one, was to clamp it there. The only logical 

 difference which then remains is that between problematic 

 and assertory, the former comprehending all the judgments 

 as to the truth of which we have any degree of doubt, and 

 the latter those of which we have no doubt. The whole 

 range of the former, therefore, with which Probability is 

 appropriately occupied, is thrown undivided into a single 

 compartment. We can hardly speak of a division where 

 one class includes everything up to the boundary line, and 

 the other is confined to that boundary line. Practically, 

 therefore, on this view, modality, as the mathematical stu 

 dent of Probability would expect to find it, as completely 

 disappears as if it were intended to reject it. 



19. By less consistent and systematic thinkers, and 

 by those in whom ingenuity was an over prominent feature, 

 .a variety of other arrangements have been accepted or pro 

 posed. There is, of course, some justification for such attempts 

 in the laudable desire to bring our logical forms into better 

 harmony with ordinary thought and language. In practice, 



