In the next chapter we shall see in what senses the word "reality" may properly be used, and in what sense it may not.

There is a danger in using it loosely and vaguely.
16.

MAY WE CALL "THINGS" GROUPS OF SENSATIONS ?--Now, the external world seems to the plain man to be directly given in his sense experiences.
He is willing to admit that the table in the next room, of which he is merely thinking, is known at one remove, so to speak.

But this desk here before him: is it not known directly?
Not the mental image, the mere representative, but the desk itself, a something that is physical and not mental?
And the psychologist, whatever his theory of the relation between the mind and the world, seems to support him, at least, in so far as to maintain that in sensation the external world is known as directly as it is possible for the external world to be known, and that one can get no more of it than is presented in sensation.

If a sense is lacking, an aspect of the world as given is also lacking; if a sense is defective, as in the color-blind, the defect is reflected in the world upon which one gazes.
Such considerations, especially when taken together with what has been said at the close of the last section about the futility of looking for a reality behind our sensations, may easily suggest rather a startling possibility.