2. In spite, however, of these differences of treatment, there has always been some community of subject-matter in the discussions upon this topic. There has almost always been some reference to quantity of belief; enough perhaps to justify De Morgan's[1] remark, that Probability was "the unknown God whom the schoolmen ignorantly worshipped when they so dealt with this species of enunciation, that it was said to be beyond human determination whether they most tortured the modals, or the modals them." But this reference to quantity of belief has sometimes been direct and immediate, sometimes indirect and arising out of the nature of the subject-matter of the proposition. The fact is, that that distinction between the purely subjective and purely objective views of logic, which I have endeavoured to bring out into prominence in the eleventh chapter, was not by any means clearly recognized in early times, nor indeed before the time of Kant, and the view to be taken of modality naturally shared in the consequent confusion. This will, I hope, be made clear in the course of the following chapter, which is intended to give a brief sketch of the principal different ways in which the modality of propositions has been treated in logic. As it is not proposed to give anything like a regular history of the subject, there will be no necessity to adhere to any strict sequence of time, or to discuss the opinions of any writers, except those who may be taken as representative of tolerably distinct views. The outcome of such investigation will be, I hope, to convince the reader (if, indeed, he had not come to that conviction before), that the logicians, after having had a long and fair trial, have failed to make anything satisfactory out of this subject of the modals by their methods of enquiry and treatment; and that it ought, therefore, to be banished entirely from that science, and relegated to Probability.