could, to make the judgement which Bismarck alone can make, namely,
the judgement of which he himself is a constituent. In this we are
necessarily defeated, since the actual Bismarck is unknown to us. But
we know that there is an object B, called Bismarck, and that B was an
astute diplomatist. We can thus _describe_ the proposition we should
like to affirm, namely, 'B was an astute diplomatist', where B is the
object which was Bismarck. If we are describing Bismarck as 'the first
Chancellor of the German Empire', the proposition we should like to
affirm may be described as 'the proposition asserting, concerning the
actual object which was the first Chancellor of the German Empire, that
this object was an astute diplomatist'. What enables us to communicate
in spite of the varying descriptions we employ is that we know there is
a true proposition concerning the actual Bismarck, and that however we
may vary the description (so long as the description is correct) the
proposition described is still the same. This proposition, which is
described and is known to be true, is what interests us; but we are not
acquainted with the proposition itself, and do not know it, though we
know it is true.

It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from
acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him;
Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with
the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further
removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to
acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second,
we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do
not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many
propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact
that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing
beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There
is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals,
like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here,
as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by
description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is
known by acquaintance.

The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing
descriptions is this: _Every proposition which we can understand must be
composed wholly of constituents with