Such being the case, an examination of Mr. Bradley’s method and criterion may have far-reaching implications. First, let us set before ourselves the general points of Mr. Bradley’s indictment of intellectualism.[20] Knowledge or judgment works by means of thought; it is predication of idea (meaning) of existence as its subject. Its final aim is to effect a complete union or harmony of existence and meaning. But it is fore-doomed to failure, for in realizing its end it must employ means which contradict its own purpose. This inherent incapacity lurks in judgment with respect to subject, predicate, and copula. The predicate or meaning necessary to complete the reality presented in the subject can be referred to the latter and united with it only by being itself alienated from existence. It heals the wounds or deficiencies of its own subject (and in the end all deficiencies are to the modern idealist discrepancies) only on condition of inflicting another wound,--only by sundering meaning from a prior union with existence in some other phase. This latter existence, therefore, is always left out in the cold. It is as if we wanted to get all the cloth in the world into one garment and our only way of accomplishing this were to tear off a portion from one piece of goods in order to patch it on to another. The subject of the judgment, moreover, as well as the predicate, stands in the way of judgment fulfilling its own task. It has “sensuous infinitude” and it has “immediacy,” but these two traits contradict each other. The details of the subject always go beyond itself, being indefinitely related to something beyond. “In its given content it has relations which do not terminate within that content” (_ibid._, p. 176), while in its immediacy it presents an undivided union of existence and meaning. No subject can be mere existence any more than it can be mere meaning. It is always existent or embodied meaning. As such it claims individuality or the character of a single subsistent whole. But this indispensable claim is inconsistent with its ragged-edged character, its indefinite external reference, which is indispensable to it as subject that it may require and receive further meaning from predication.