7 I consider however, as I have said further on (p. 320), that the treatment in the older logics of Probable syllogisms, and Dialectic syllogisms, came to somewhat the same thing as this, though they looked at the matter from a different point of view, and expressed it in very different language.
8 The distinction is however by no means entirely neglected. Thus Smiglecius, when discussing the modal affections of certainty and necessity, says, “certitudo ad cognitionem spectat: necessitas vero est in re” (Disputationes; Disp. XIII., Quæst. XII.).
9 It may be remarked that Whately (Logic, Bk. II.[ TN: space] ch. II.[ TN: space] § 2) speaks of necessary, impossible and contingent matter, without any apparent suspicion that they belong entirely to an obsolete point of view.
10 Formal Logic, p. 233.
11 The subject was sometimes altogether omitted, as by Wolf. He says a good deal however about probable propositions and syllogisms, and, like Leibnitz before him, looked forward to a “logica probabilium” as something new and desirable. I imagine that he had been influenced by the writers on Chances, as of the few who had already treated that subject nearly all the most important are referred to in one passage (Philosophia Rationalis sive Logica, § 593).
Lambert stands quite apart. In this respect, as in most others where mathematical conceptions and symbols are involved, his logical attitude is thoroughly unconventional. See, for instance, his chapter ‘Von dem Wahrscheinlichen’, in his Neues Organon.
12 I cannot find the slightest authority for the statement in the elaborate history of Logic by Prantl.
13 “Hi quatuor modi magnam censeri solent analogiam habere cum quadruplici propositionum in quantitate et qualitate varietate” (Wallis's Instit.[ TN: space] Logic.[ TN: space] Bk. II.[ TN: space] ch. 8).
14 Laws of Thought, § 118.
15 “Haud scio magis ne doctrinam modalium scholastici exercuerint, quam ea illos vexarit. Certe usque adeo sudatum hic fuit, ut dicterio locus sit datus; De modalibus non gustabit asinus.” Keckermann, Syst.[ TN: space] Log.[ TN: space] Bk. II.[ TN: space] ch. 3.
16 Smiglecii Disputationes, Ingolstadt, 1618.
See also Prantl's Geschichte der Logik (under Occam and Buridan) for accounts of the excessive complication which the subtlety of those learned schoolmen evolved out of such suitable materials.
17 Translation by T. M. Lindsay, p. 439.
18 “The εἰκòς\Grk{e>ik`os} and σημεῖον\Grk{shme~ion} themselves are propositions; the former stating a general probability, the latter a fact, which is known to be an indication, more or less certain, of the truth of some further statement, whether of a single fact, or of a general belief. The former is a general proposition, nearly, though not quite, universal; as ‘most men who envy hate’; the latter is a singular proposition, which however is not regarded as a sign, except relatively to some other proposition, which it is supposed may by inferred from it.” (Mansel's Aldrich; Appendix F, where an account will be found of the Aristotelian enthymeme, and dialectic syllogism. Also, of course, Grote's Aristotle, Topics and elsewhere.)