It will be replied that we talk at every moment about these non-existent things, and consequently judge them. But here care must be taken not to confuse absolute with relative non-existence, which latter is non-existent only in name. The absolutely non-existent is what is excluded from the judgment, implicitly in the affirmative formula, explicitly in the negative formula. To him who speaks of the mountain of gold, of the possession of a hundred dollars, and of Pamela as existing realities, we reply by denying these existences, that is to say, by denying them in an absolute manner; and of those negated existences it is not possible to judge, or even to talk, precisely because they are altogether negated. Here, in fact, we are speaking of the individual judgment, which excludes its contradictory from itself, as, for that matter, is also the case with the judgment of definition. But in that absolute affirmation and negation there is also made, explicitly or implicitly, a relative affirmation or negation; as when we say, in the examples given: "The mountain of gold, the hundred dollars, Pamela, do not exist," we say at the same time: "There do exist phantasms, products of the fancy or of the imagination, of a mountain of gold, of a hundred dollars, and of a virtuous Pamela." Now the mountain, the dollars, and Pamela are, as such, not the absolutely non-existent, but certain facts, _subjects_ of judgment, of which the predicate is expressed by the word "non-existent," which in this case is equivalent to "existing as phantasms." The absolutely non-existent is the contradictory, true and proper nothingness; the relatively non-existent (which is precisely that of the individual judgment) is an existence, _different_ from that which the same individual judgment affirms.