to tell what they are really like?

Now, before one sets out to answer a question it is well to find out
whether it is a sensible question to ask and a sensible question to try
to answer. He who asks: Where is the middle of an infinite line? When
did all time begin? Where is space as a whole? does not deserve a
serious answer to his questions. And it is well to remember that he
who asks: What is the external world like? must keep his question a
significant one, if he is to retain his right to look for an answer at
all. He has manifestly no right to ask us: How does the external world
look when no one is looking? How do things feel when no one feels
them? How shall I think of things, not as I think of them, but as they
are?

If we are to give an account of the external world at all, it must
evidently be _an account_ of the external world; _i.e._ it must be
given in terms of our experience of things. The only legitimate
problem is to give a true account instead of a false one, to
distinguish between what only appears and is not real and what both
appears and is real.

Bearing this in mind, let us come back to the plain man's experience of
the world. He certainly seems to himself to perceive a real world of
things, and he constantly distinguishes, in a way very serviceable to
himself, between the merely apparent and the real. There is, of
course, a sense in which every experience is real; it is, at least, an
experience; but when he contrasts real and apparent he means something
more than this. Experiences are not relegated to this class or to that
merely at random, but the final decision is the outcome of a long
experience of the differences which characterize different individual
experiences and is an expression of the relations which are observed to
hold between them. Certain experiences are accepted as signs, and
certain others come to take the more dignified position of thing
signified; the mind rests in them and regards them as the real.

We have seen above that the world of real things in which the plain man
finds himself is a world of objects revealed in experiences of touch.
When he asks regarding anything: How far away is it? How big is it?
In what direction is it? it is always the touch thing that interests
him. What is given to the other senses is only a sign of this.

We have also seen (section 8) that the world of atoms and molecules of
which the man of science tells us is nothing more than