But these philosophers, though they deny matter as opposed to mind,
nevertheless, in another sense, admit matter. It will be remembered that
we asked two questions; namely, (1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If
so, what sort of object can it be? Now both Berkeley and Leibniz admit
that there is a real table, but Berkeley says it is certain ideas in the
mind of God, and Leibniz says it is a colony of souls. Thus both of them
answer our first question in the affirmative, and only diverge from the
views of ordinary mortals in their answer to our second question. In
fact, almost all philosophers seem to be agreed that there is a real
table: they almost all agree that, however much our sense-data--colour,
shape, smoothness, etc.--may depend upon us, yet their occurrence is
a sign of something existing independently of us, something differing,
perhaps, completely from our sense-data, and yet to be regarded as
causing those sense-data whenever we are in a suitable relation to the
real table.

Now obviously this point in which the philosophers are agreed--the view
that there _is_ a real table, whatever its nature may be--is vitally
important, and it will be worth while to consider what reasons there are
for accepting this view before we go on to the further question as
to the nature of the real table. Our next chapter, therefore, will be
concerned with the reasons for supposing that there is a real table at
all.

Before we go farther it will be well to consider for a moment what it
is that we have discovered so far. It has appeared that, if we take any
common object of the sort that is supposed to be known by the senses,
what the senses _immediately_ tell us is not the truth about the object
as it is apart from us, but only the truth about certain sense-data
which, so far as we can see, depend upon the relations between us and
the object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance',
which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind. But if the
reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there
is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what
it is like?

Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even
the strangest hypotheses may not be true. Thus our familiar table,
which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a
problem full of surprising possibilities. The one thing we know about it
is that it is not what it