OWABLE."--It is very important to recognize
that we must not go on talking about appearance and reality, as if our
words really meant something, when we have quite turned our backs upon
our experience of appearances and the realities which they represent.

That appearances and realities are connected we know very well, for we
perceive them to be connected. What we see, we can touch. And we not
only know that appearances and realities are connected, but we know
with much detail what appearances are to be taken as signs of what
realities. The visual experience which I call the house as seen from a
distance I never think of taking for a representative of the hat which
I hold in my hand. This visual experience I refer to its own
appropriate touch thing, and not to another. If what _looks like_ a
beefsteak could _really be_ a fork or a mountain or a kitten
indifferently,--but I must not even finish the sentence, for the words
"look like" and "could really be" lose all significance when we loosen
the bond between appearances and the realities to which they are
properly referred.

Each appearance, then, must be referred to some particular real thing
and not to any other. This is true of the appearances which we
recognize as such in common life, and it is equally true of the
appearances recognized as such in science. The pen which I feel
between my fingers I may regard as appearance and refer to a swarm of
moving atoms. But it would be silly for me to refer it to atoms "in
general." The reality to which I refer the appearance in question is a
particular group of atoms existing at a particular point in space. The
chemist never supposes that the atoms within the walls of his test-tube
are identical with those in the vial on the shelf. Neither in common
life nor in science would the distinction between appearances and real
things be of the smallest service were it not possible to distinguish
between this appearance and that, and this reality and that, and to
refer each appearance to its appropriate reality. Indeed, it is
inconceivable that, under such circumstances, the distinction should
have been drawn at all.

These points ought to be strongly insisted upon, for we find certain
philosophic writers falling constantly into a very curious abuse of the
distinction and making much capital of it. It is argued that what we
see, what we touch, what we conceive as a result of scientific
observation and reflection--all is