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 " the author of Waverley ' 

 and ' the author of Marmion ' 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, ' Scott ' means the 

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

 our present discussion) in which " author ' means 

 a certain universal. Thus, if " the author of Waverley ' 

 were a subordinate complex in the above proposition, its 

 meaning would have to be what was said to be identical 

 with the meaning of " the author of Marmion." This is 

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

 " the author of Waverley ' 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, ' the author of Waverley ' must disappear. 

 This is effected when the above proposition is analysed 

 as meaning : " Some one wrote Waverley and no one 

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

 one else did." This may be more simply expressed by 

 saying that the prepositional function " x wrote Waverley 

 and Marmion, and no one else did " 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 " a is the so-and-so " is true, 

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

 denotation of the phrase " the so-and-so." A very great 

 many of the propositions we naturally make about " the 

 p 



