i8o THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



intelligible object than upon that of the intelligent subject. If you ask a Kantian 

 philosopher why we cannot help thinking that &quot;whatever begins to be has a 

 cause,&quot; he will answer : Because the mind is so constituted ; because it is en 

 dowed with a certain form or category (&quot; causality &quot;), which compels us to 

 think things in that way. If you ask a Scholastic philosopher, his answer will 

 simply be : Because things are that way, and therefore compel us to think 

 them in that way. 



But how can the same being or reality which reveals itself, through our 

 external and internal senses, to our understanding, as existing subject to all 

 the conditions of time and space and change, and as the basis of judgments in 

 materia contingent, be also the basis of judgments that have the opposite 

 characteristics of universal necessity, immutability, and eternity ? This ultimate 

 question belongs also to metaphysics. The answer given by Scholastics will 

 explain why they call the latter class of judgments metaphysical and the 

 former class physical. Physics studies being as revealed to the senses, i.e. as 

 subject to change, and as existing in the concrete conditions of time and 

 space : physical judgments, therefore, are in materia contingent. But the 

 human mind has the power of abstracting from those changing conditions of 

 concrete existence in time and space, and of considering the essences and 

 attributes of things in a purely ideal or possible condition non-temporal, non- 

 spatial, non-changeable, and absolutely static. It does so in metaphysics ; * 

 and, manifestly, Being, when considered in that static condition, can and does 

 give rise to those necessary judgments, which Scholastics accordingly call 

 metaphysical? 



89. MODALITY IN CATEGORICAL JUDGMENTS. A /^^/(cate 

 gorical) proposition {propositio &quot; de modo&quot;) is one which states 

 explicitly not merely that the predicate does or does not agree 

 with the subject, but also how it does or does not agree with the 

 latter ; whether, namely, it is a necessity (or an impossibility) or 

 only a contingency (or mere possibility) that 6&quot; be P. 



The &quot;pure&quot; or non-modal proposition (propositio &quot; de znesse&quot;), 

 which merely asserts that the predicate does or does not agree 

 with the subject, may be called, as distinguished from the modal, 

 an assertoric proposition. 3 



1 Judgments of pure mathematics have the same characteristics, for they, too, 

 abstract from change. 



2 C/&quot;. Introd., 3-6; and section 249, below. 



3 Some of the authors who distinguish between the pure or non-modal and the 

 assertoric judgment, and who set down the latter as a form of the modal, ascribe to 

 it the function of deliberately re-asserting the pure judgment, after the mind has 

 searched for the real ground or cause (causa essendi) of the fact stated, without being 

 able to discover such cause : &quot; Some men detect water with the divining-rod. That 

 is very extraordinary ; how do you account for it ? I can t, but they detect it &quot; (JOSEPH, 

 Logic, p. 171 ; cf. p. 172). The former of these judgments would be pure or non- 

 modal, the latter an &quot; assertoric modal &quot;. There does not seem to be any sufficient 

 reason for such a distinction. Of course, reflection on the grounds we have for assert 

 ing something as a fact (causa cognoscendi) may lead us to doubt their sufficiency, and 



