14. The point in question is sometimes urged as follows. Suppose a man with two, and only two, alternatives before him, one of which he knows must involve success and the other failure. He knows nothing more about them than this, and he is forced to act. Would he not regard them with absolutely similar and equal feelings of confidence, without the necessity of referring them to any real or imaginary series? If so, is not this equivalent to saying that his belief of either, since one of them must come to pass, is equal to that of the other, and therefore that his belief of each is one-half of full confidence? Similarly if there are more than two alternatives: let it be supposed that there are any number of them, amongst which no distinctions whatever can be discerned except in such particulars as we know for certain will not affect the result; should we not feel equally confident in respect of each of them? and so here again should we riot have a fractional estimate of our absolute amount of belief? It is thus attempted to lay the basis of a pure science of Probability, determining the distribution and combination of our belief hypothetically; viz. _if_ the contingencies are exactly alike, then our belief is so apportioned, the question whether the contingencies are equal being of course decided as the objective data of Logic or Mathematics are decided. To discuss this question fully would require a statement at some length of the reasons in favour of the objective or material view of Logic, as opposed to the Formal or Conceptualist. I shall have to speak on this subject in another chapter, and will not therefore enter upon it here. But one conclusive objection which is applicable more peculiarly to Probability may be offered at once. To pursue the line of enquiry just indicated, is, as already remarked, to desert the strictly logical ground, and to take up that appropriate to psychology; the proper question, in all these cases, being not what _do_ men believe, but what ought they to believe? Admitting, as was done above, that in the case of Formal Logic these two enquiries, or rather those corresponding to them, practically run into one, owing to the fact that men cannot consciously 'think' wrongly; it cannot be too strongly insisted on that in Probability the two are perfectly separable and distinct. It is of no use saying what men do or will believe, we want to know what they will be right in believing; and this can never be settled without an appeal to the phenomena themselves.