bodies, and that our bodies are
acted upon by others, we have no evidence that what we call our
sensations are due to messages which come from "external things" and
are conducted along the nerves. It is then, absurd to talk of such
"external things" as though they existed, and to call them the reality
to which sensations, as appearances, must be referred,

(3) In other words, if there is perceived to be a telephone exchange
with its wires and subscribers, we may refer the messages received to
the subscribers, and call this, if we choose, a reference of appearance
to reality.

But if there is perceived no telephone exchange, and if it is concluded
that any wires or subscribers of which it means anything to speak must
be composed of what we have heretofore called "messages," then it is
palpably absurd to refer the "messages" as a whole to subscribers not
supposed to be composed of "messages"; and it is a blunder to go on
calling the things that we know "messages," as though we had evidence
that they came from, and must be referred to, something beyond
themselves.

We must recognize that, with the general demolition of the exchange, we
lose not only known subscribers, but the very notion of a subscriber.
It will not do to try to save from this wreck some "unknowable"
subscriber, and still pin our faith to him.

(4) We have seen that the relation of appearance to reality is that of
certain experiences to certain other experiences. When we take the
liberty of calling the Unknowable a _reality_, we blunder in our use of
the word. The Unknowable cannot be an experience either actual,
possible, or conceived as possible, and it cannot possibly hold the
relation to any of our experiences that a real thing of any kind holds
to the appearances that stand as its signs.

(5) Finally, no man has ever made an assumption more perfectly useless
and purposeless than the assumption of the Unknowable. We have seen
that the distinction between appearance and reality is a serviceable
one, and it has been pointed out that it would be of no service
whatever if it were not possible to refer particular appearances to
their own appropriate realities. The realities to which we actually
refer appearances serve to explain them. Thus, when I ask: Why do I
perceive that tree now as faint and blue and now as vivid and green?
the answer to the question is found in the notion of distance and
position in space; it is found, in other words, in a