THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 117 



these types of experience. It is neither an affair 

 of meaningless existence nor of existence self-lumi 

 nous with fulfilled meaning. All things that we 

 experience have some meaning, but that meaning 

 is always so partially embodied in things that we 

 cannot rest in them. They point beyond them 

 selves; they indicate meanings which they do not 

 fulfil; they suggest values which they fail to em 

 body, and when we go to other things for the 

 fruition of what is denied, we either find the same 

 situation of division over again, or we find even 

 more positive disappointment and frustration we 

 find contrary meanings set up. Now all thinking 

 grows out of this discrepancy between existence 

 and the meaning which it partially embodies and 

 partially refuses, which it suggests but declines to 

 express. Yet thinking, the mode of bringing ex 

 istence and meaning into harmony with each other, 

 always works by selection, by abstraction; it sets 

 up and projects meanings which are ideal only, 

 footless, in the air, matters of thought only, not of 

 sentiency or immediate existence. It emphasizes 

 the ideal of a completed union of existence and 

 meaning, but is helpless to effect it. And this 

 helplessness (according to Mr. Bradley) is not due 

 to external pressure but to the very structure of 

 thought itself. 



From every point of view knowledge operates 

 under conditions, (and these not externally imposed 



