If we tell him that his sensations _are_ the things, it shocks his common sense.

He answers: Do you mean to tell me that complexes of sensation can be on a shelf or in a drawer?
can be cut with a knife or broken with the hands?
He feels that there must be some real distinction between sensations and the things without him.
Now, the notions of the plain man on such matters as these are not very clear, and what he says about sensations and things is not always edifying.

But it is clear that he feels strongly that the man who would identify them is obliterating a distinction to which his experience testifies unequivocally.

We must not hastily disregard his protest.

He is sometimes right in his feeling that things are not identical, even when he cannot prove it.
In the second place, I remark that, in this instance, the plain man is in the right, and can be shown to be in the right.