1 82 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



The modal proposition interprets the meaning of the judg 

 ment in regard to the intension of its concepts. The apodeictic 

 asserts that there is a necessary relation between the concepts 

 compared : that the attributes connoted by P are necessarily 

 involved in (or excluded from) any reality which embodies the at 

 tributes connoted by 5. ^te problematic denies that there is any 

 such necessary relation, by asserting that the attributes in ques 

 tion may be found united, or separated, in the reality. Neither 

 form seems to convey as part of its meaning any information as 

 to whether, or in what state, the attributes connoted by 5 and P 

 actually exist in reality (130). 



The assertoric proposition, on the other hand, is the natural 

 expression of the judgment about facts, the judgment which 

 states simply what is or is not, without concerning itself with 

 what must be, or what may be, what need not be, or what 

 cannot be. And all such judgments of experience bring into 

 prominence before our minds the denotation or extension of their 

 subjects (100). 



Of course, the assertoric form of proposition is often used to 

 express though inadequately what is really a modal judgment, 

 and may, therefore, be interpreted modally. 1 But the judgment 

 which simply asserts (or denies) a matter of contingent fact, is 

 clearly different from the judgment which asserts or denies the 

 existence of a necessary law. It is, of course, the aim of scientific 

 progress to pass from the former to the latter in every depart 

 ment from the study of facts to the discovery of laws. 2 But 

 the immediate ground we have for forming the modal judgment 

 is different from that for the assertoric. In the former case it is 

 an analysis of the concepts compared ; in the latter it is experi 

 ence of actual fact, or inference therefrom. 



Whether a judgment of fact, based upon experience, should be expressed 

 as a necessary or as a contingent modal, will depend upon the nature of the 

 fact in question. Though the facts of our experience lead us to the know 

 ledge of one Necessary Fact the Deity, they are themselves all contingent. 

 Judgments about such facts will, therefore, be contingent or problematic in 

 their modality so long as they are grounded on experience, and not on the 

 apprehension of some element, in the intension of either concept, which 



1 We can of course immediately infer possibility from actuality, and non- 

 actuality from impossibility : Abactu ad posse valet consecutio,sed non vice versa; A 

 non-posse ad non-actutn valet consecutio, sed non vice versa. 



3 C/. JOSEPH, Logic, p. 170. 



