THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 149 



ent and the absent, is at once the root and the 

 type of that peculiar paradoxical relation between 

 existence and meaning which Bradley insists upon 

 as the essence of judgment. It is not irrational 

 in the sense that we are dealing with appearance 

 wholesale, but it is non-rational an evidence that 

 we are dealing with a practical affair. 



& &quot;&quot;The intellectual or reflective and logical is a 

 statement of this conflict: an attempt to describe 

 and define it. It is, as it were, the practical clash 

 held off at arm s length for inspection and in 

 vestigation. In this way brute blind reaction 

 against the unsatisfactoriness of the situation is 

 suspended. Action is turned into the channel of 

 observing, of inferring, of reasoning, or defining 

 means and end. It is this change in the quality 

 of activity, from directly overt, to indirect, or in 

 quiring with view to stating, that constitutes the 

 specific nature of reflective practice to which Mr. 

 Bradley calls attention. The discovery of the na 

 ture of the conflict supplies materials for the fact 

 or existence side of the judgment. The concep 

 tion or projection of the object in which the con 

 flict would be terminated furnishes material for 

 the meaning side of the judgment. It is ideal 

 because anticipatory, just as the fact side is 

 existential, because reminiscent or recording. 

 Hence the two are necessarily both distin 

 guished from and yet referred to each other: only 



