KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE 231 



tinguishing two sorts of knowledge of objects, namely, 

 knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. 

 Of these it is only the former that brings the object itself 

 before the mind. We have acquaintance with sense-data, 

 with many universals, and possibly with ourselves, but 

 not with physical objects or other minds. We have 

 descriptive knowledge of an object when we know that it 

 is the object having some property or properties with 

 which we are acquainted ; that is to say, when we know 

 that the property or properties in question belong to one 

 object and no more, we are said to hav3 knowledge of 

 that one object by description, whether or not we are 

 acquainted with the object. Our knowledge of physical 

 objects and of other minds is only knowledge by descrip 

 tion, the descriptions involved being usually such as 

 involve sense-data. All propositions intelligible to us, 

 whether or not they primarily concern things only known 

 to us by description, are composed wholly of constituents 

 with which we are acquainted, for a constituent with which 

 we are not acquainted is unintelligible to us. A judgment, 

 we found, is not composed of mental constituents called 

 &quot; ideas,&quot; but consists of an occurrence whose con 

 stituents are a mind 1 and certain objects, particulars 

 or universals. (One at least must be a universal.) When 

 a judgment is rightly analysed, the objects which are con 

 stituents of it must all be objects with which the mind 

 which is a constituent of it is acquainted. This con 

 clusion forces us to analyse descriptive phrases occurring 

 in propositions, and to say that the objects denoted by 

 such phrases are not constituents of judgments in which 

 such phrases occur (unless these objects are explicitly 



1 I use this phrase merely to denote the something psychological 

 which enters into judgment, without intending to prejudge the 

 question as to what this something is. 



