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14 temporary physical entities. This type is the experience of the immediate world around us, a world decorated by sense-data dependent on the immediate states of relevant parts of our own bodies. Physiology establishes this latter fact conclusively; but the physiological details are irrelevant to the present philosophical discussion, and only confuse the issue. ‘Sense-datum’ is a modern term: Hume uses the word ‘impression.’

For human beings, this type of experience is vivid, and is especially distinct in its exhibition of the spatial regions and relationships within the contemporary world.

The familiar language which I have used in speaking of the ‘projection of our sensations’ is very misleading. There are no bare sensations which are first experienced and then ‘projected’ into our feet as their feelings, or onto the opposite wall as its colour. The projection is an integral part of the situation, quite as original as the sense-data. It would be just as accurate, and equally misleading, to speak of a projection on the wall which is then characterized as such-and-such a colour. The use of the term ‘wall’ is equally misleading by its suggestion of information derived symbolically from another mode of perception.