It is the predicate which first gives the subject, which till then was on its own account a bare mental representation or an empty name, its specific character and content. In judgments like 'God is the most real of all things,' or 'The Absolute is the self-identical,' God and the Absolute are mere names; what they _are_ we only learn in the predicate. What the subject may be in other respects, as a concrete thing, is no concern of _this_ judgment. (Cp. § 31.) To define the subject as that of which something is said, and the predicate as what is said about it, is mere trifling. It gives no information about the distinction between the two. In point of thought, the subject is primarily the individual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal,--the latter the additional significations of particular and individual. Thus while the same names are given to the two terms of the judgment, their meaning passes through a series of changes. 170.] We now go closer into the speciality of subject and predicate. The subject as negative self-relation (§§ 163, 166) is the stable substratum in which the predicate has its subsistence and where it is ideally present. The predicate, as the phrase is, _inheres_ in the subject. Further, as the subject is in general and immediately concrete, the specific connotation of the predicate is only one of the numerous characters of the subject. Thus the subject is ampler and wider than the predicate. Conversely, the predicate as universal is self-subsistent, and indifferent whether this subject is or not. The predicate outflanks the subject, subsuming it under itself: and hence on its side is wider than the subject. The specific content of the predicate (§ 169) alone constitutes the identity of the two.