experiences of touch and movement, and
when we speak of real positions, distances, and magnitudes, we are
always referring to this world. But this is a world revealed in our
experience, and it does not seem a hopeless task to discover what may
properly be called real and what should be described as merely
apparent, when both the real and the apparent are open to our
inspection.

Can we not find in this analysis a satisfactory explanation of the
plain man's claim that under certain circumstances he sees the tree as
it is and under others he does not? What he is really asserting is
that one visual experience gives him better information regarding the
real thing, the touch thing, than does another.

But what shall we say of his claim that the tree is really green, and
only looks blue under certain circumstances? Is it not just as true
that the tree only looks green under certain circumstances? Is color
any part of the touch thing? Is it ever more than a sign of the touch
thing? How can one color be more real than another?

Now, we may hold to Berkeley's analysis and maintain that, in general,
the real world, as contrasted with the apparent, means to us the world
that is revealed in experiences of touch and movement; and yet we may
admit that the word "real" is sometimes used in rather different senses.

It does not seem absurd for a woman to Say: This piece of silk really
is yellow; it only looks white under this light. We all admit that a
white house may look pink under the rays of the setting sun, and we
never call it a pink house. We have seen that it is not unnatural to
say: That tree is really green; it is only its distance that makes it
look blue.

When one reflects upon these uses of the word "real," one recognizes
the fact that, among all the experiences in which things are revealed
to us, certain experiences impress us as being more prominent or
important or serviceable than certain others, and they come to be
called _real_. Things are not commonly seen by artificial light; the
sun is not always setting; the tree looks green when it is seen most
satisfactorily. In each case, the real color of the thing is the color
that it has under circumstances that strike us as normal or as
important. We cannot say that we always regard as most real that
aspect under which we most commonly perceive things, for if a more
unusual experience is more serviceable and really gives us more
information about the thing