[f. as prec. + -ITY. Cf. F. extériorité.]
1. The state or fact of being outward or outside, or of having an external existence; outwardness.
1611. Cotgr., Exterieureté, exterioritie, outwardness.
1664. H. More, Myst. Iniq., xvi. 56. The exteriority and palpability of the exercise of their affections.
1803. Edin. Rev., I. 261. Interiority and exteriority, by which is meant, the distinction of the attributes of an object as originally existing in itself or as acquired from without.
1836–7. Sir W. Hamilton, Metaph., xxviii. (1859), II. 174. The sense of touch, by itself,… is not even cognisant of local exteriority (oertliches Auseinanderseyn).
1864. Webster, Exteriority, surface, superficies.
2. In religious sense occas.: Devotion to the external instead of to the inward and spiritual.
1872. Bp. Forbes, in Auth. Rep. Ch. Congress, 375 (O.). And this leads on to a third point, which hinders progress, and that is what, for want of a better word, I must term exteriority.
1885. E. C. Bissell, Pentateuch, 311. These men of God in the olden time in the midst of a tendency to pure exteriority.
3. ‘The psychical act by which sensations are referred to the external world, as when an impression on the retina is referred to an object outside and not to the place of sensation’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
