APPEARANCES AND REALITIES 19.

THINGS AND THEIR APPEARANCES .-- We have seen in the last chapter that there is an external world and that it is given in our experience.
There is an objective order, and we are all capable of distinguishing between it and the subjective.

He who says that we perceive only sensations and ideas flies in the face of the common experience of mankind.
But we are not yet through with the subject.

We all make a distinction between things as they _appear_ and things as they _really are_.
If we ask the plain man, What is the real external world?
the first answer that seems to present itself to his mind is this: Whatever we can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell may be regarded as belonging to the real world.

What we merely imagine does not belong to it.
That this answer is not a very satisfactory one occurred to men's minds very early in the history of reflective thought.