The Problems of Philosophy | Page 2

out a wooden sound. Any one else who sees and feels and hears the table will agree
with this description, so that it might seem as if no difficulty would arise; but as soon as

we try to be more precise our troubles begin. Although I believe that the table is 'really' of
the same colour all over, the parts that reflect the light look much brighter than the other
parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light. I know that, if I move, the
parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution of colours on
the table will change. It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same
moment, no two of them will see exactly the same distribution of colours, because no two
can see it from exactly the same point of view, and any change in the point of view
makes some change in the way the light is reflected.
For most practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are
all-important: the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the
colour which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things
as they appear. Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause
most trouble in philosophy--the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality', between
what things seem to be and what they are. The painter wants to know what things seem to
be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the
philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more troubled
by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour
which pre-eminently appears to be the colour of the table, or even of any one particular
part of the table--it appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and
there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And
we know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial
light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark
there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged.
This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending
upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in
ordinary life, we speak of the colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it
will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual
conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just
as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are
compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.
The same thing applies to the texture. With the naked eye one can see the grain, but
otherwise the table looks smooth and even. If we looked at it through a microscope, we
should see roughnesses and hills and valleys, and all sorts of differences that are
imperceptible to the naked eye. Which of these is the 'real' table? We are naturally
tempted to say that what we see through the microscope is more real, but that in turn
would be changed by a still more powerful microscope. If, then, we cannot trust what we
see with the naked eye, why should we trust what we see through a microscope? Thus,
again, the confidence in our senses with which we began deserts us.
The shape of the table is no better. We are all in the habit of judging as to the 'real' shapes
of things, and we do this so unreflectingly that we come to think we actually see the real
shapes. But, in fact, as we all have to learn if we try to draw, a given thing looks different
in shape from every different point of view. If our table is 'really' rectangular, it will look,
from almost all points of view, as if it had two acute angles and two obtuse angles. If
opposite sides are parallel, they will look as if they converged to a point away from the
spectator; if they are of equal length, they will look as if the nearer side were longer. All

these things are not commonly noticed in looking at a table, because experience has
taught us to construct the 'real' shape from the apparent shape, and the 'real' shape