KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE 229 



identity. We have seen also that the common denotation. 

 namely Scott, is not a constituent of this proposition, 

 while the meanings (if any) of &quot; the author of Waverley &quot; 

 and &quot; the author of Marmion &quot; are not identical. We 

 have seen also that, in any sense in which the meaning of 

 a word is a constituent of a proposition in whose verbal 

 expression the word occurs, &quot; Scott &quot; means the 

 actual man Scott, in the same sense (so far as concerns 

 our present discussion) in which &quot; author &quot; means 

 a certain universal. Thus, if &quot; the author of Waverley &quot; 

 were a subordinate complex in the above proposition, its 

 meaning would have to be what was said to be identical 

 with the meaning of &quot; the author of Marmion.&quot; This is 

 plainly not the case ; and the only escape is to say that 

 &quot; the author of Waverley &quot; does not, by itself, have a 

 meaning, though phrases of which it is part do have a 

 meaning. That is, in a right analysis of the above pro 

 position, &quot; the author of Waverley &quot; must disappear. 

 This is effected when the above proposition is analysed 

 as meaning : &quot; Some one wrote Waverley and no one 

 else did, and that some one also wrote Marmion and no 

 one else did.&quot; This may be more simply expressed by 

 saying that the prepositional function &quot; x wrote Waverley 

 and Marmion, and no one else did &quot; is capable of truth, 

 i.e. some value of x makes it true, but no other value 

 does. Thus the true subject of our judgment is a 

 prepositional function, i.e. a complex containing an 

 undetermined constituent, and becoming a proposition as 

 soon as this constituent is determined. 



We may now define the denotation of a phrase. If we 

 know that the proposition &quot; a is the so-and-so &quot; is true, 

 i.e. that a is so-and-so and nothing else is, we call a the 

 denotation of the phrase &quot; the so-and-so.&quot; A very great 

 many of the propositions we naturally make about &quot; the 

 p 



