Page:Our knowledge of the external world.djvu/101

 only exists when it is seen, is still something quite different from the seeing of it: the seeing of it is mental, but the patch of colour is not. This confusion, however, can be avoided without our necessarily abandoning the theory we are examining. The objection to it, I think, lies in its failure to realise the radical nature of the reconstruction demanded by the difficulties to which it points. We cannot speak legitimately of changes in the point of view and the intervening medium until we have already constructed some world more stable than that of momentary sensation. Our discussion of the blue spectacles and the walk round the table has, I hope, made this clear. But what remains far from clear is the nature of the reconstruction required.

Although we cannot rest content with the above theory, in the terms in which it is stated, we must nevertheless treat it with a certain respect, for it is in outline the theory upon which physical science and physiology are built, and it must, therefore, be susceptible of a true interpretation. Let us see how this is to be done.

The first thing to realise is that there are no such things as “illusions of sense.” Objects of sense, even when they occur in dreams, are the most indubitably real objects known to us. What, then, makes us call them unreal in dreams? Merely the unusual nature of their connection with other objects of sense. I dream that I am in America, but I wake up and find myself in England without those intervening days on the Atlantic which, alas! are inseparably connected with a “real” visit to America. Objects of sense are called “real” when they have the kind of connection with other objects of sense which experience has led us to regard as normal; when they fail in this, they are called “illusions.” But what is illusory is only the inferences to which they give rise;