There is therefore no doubt that existence, if it be something that is affirmed or denied, cannot be anything but a predicate; it can only be asked what sort of predicate it is, that is to say, what is the precise content or concept of existence, and this has already been indicated or at least sketched in the preceding explications. Objections have been made to the conceptual and predicative character of existence, such as that which maintains that if it were a predicate it would be necessary in the judgment "A is" to be able to think the two terms--A and existence--separately, whereas in the thought of A, A is already existentialized. But these objections show themselves to be sophistical; because outside the judgment A is not thinkable, but only representable, and therefore without existentiality, which predicate it only acquires in the act of judgment. [Sidenote: _Absurd consequences of those doctrines._] For the rest, the difficulties that befall those who conceive existentiality in the individual judgment as something _sui generis,_ are illustrated by the theory to which they find themselves led, of a double kind of judgment, the existential and the categorical, without their being able to justify this duality. This is at bottom the most apparent manifestation of their more or less unconscious _metaphysical dualism,_ which assumes an object external to the spirit, and makes the spirit apprehend it with an _act of faith_ and afterwards reason about it with an act of _thought._ Why not always continue with an act of faith? Or why not also extend the act of thought to the initial judgment? We have either to continue upon the same path, or to change it altogether--this is the dilemma which imposes itself here. [Sidenote: _The predicate of existence as not sufficing to constitute a judgment._]