Sentence:  And he could recognize , by touch alone , articles which he had handled immediately before , even though they <WSD>were</WSD> altogether unfamiliar to him and could not be identified by him ; that is , he was unaware what kind of objects they were or what their use was . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)