KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE 213 



are objects of awarenesses ; up and down, before and 

 after, resemblance, desire, awareness itself, and so on, 

 would seem to be all of them objects of which we can be 

 aware. 



In regard to relations, it might be urged that we are 

 never aware of the universal relation itself, but only of 

 complexes in which it is a constituent. For example, it 

 may be said that we do not know directly such a relation 

 as before, though we understand such a proposition as 

 " this is before that," and may be directly aware of such 

 a complex as " this being before that." This view, how- 

 ever, is difficult to reconcile with the fact that we often 

 know propositions in which the relation is the subject, 

 or in which the relata are not definite given objects, but 

 " anything." For example, we know that if one thing is 

 before another, and the other before a third, then the 

 first is before the third ; and here the things concerned 

 are not definite things, but " anything." It is hard to 

 see how we could know such a fact about " before " 

 unless we were acquainted with " before," and not merely 

 with actual particular cases of one given object being 

 before another given object. And more directly : A 

 judgment such as " this is before that," where this judg- 

 ment is derived from awareness of a complex, constitutes 

 an analysis, and we should not understand the analysis if 

 we were not acquainted with the meaning of the terms 

 employed. Thus we must suppose that we are acquainted 

 with the meaning of " before," and not merely with 

 instances of it. 



There are thus at least two sorts of objects of which we 

 are aware, namely, particulars and universals. Among 

 particulars I include all existents, and all complexes of 

 which one or more constituents are existents, such as 

 this-before-that, this-above-that, the-yellowness-of-this. 



