in life.
Knowledge of things in that intimate and emotional sense suggested by
the word acquaintance is a precipitate from our employing them with a
purpose. We have acted with or upon the thing so frequently that we can
anticipate how it will act and react--such is the meaning of familiar
acquaintance. We are ready for a familiar thing; it does not catch us
napping, or play unexpected tricks with us. This attitude carries with
it a sense of congeniality or friendliness, of ease and illumination;
while the things with which we are not accustomed to deal are strange,
foreign, cold, remote, "abstract."

II. But it is likely that elaborate statements regarding this primary
stage of knowledge will darken understanding. It includes practically
all of our knowledge which is not the result of deliberate technical
study. Modes of purposeful doing include dealings with persons as well
as things. Impulses of communication and habits of intercourse have to
be adapted to maintaining successful connections with others; a large
fund of social knowledge accrues. As a part of this intercommunication
one learns much from others. They tell of their experiences and of the
experiences which, in turn, have been told them. In so far as one is
interested or concerned in these communications, their matter becomes a
part of one's own experience. Active connections with others are such
an intimate and vital part of our own concerns that it is impossible to
draw sharp lines, such as would enable us to say, "Here my experience
ends; there yours begins." In so far as we are partners in common
undertakings, the things which others communicate to us as the
consequences of their particular share in the enterprise blend at once
into the experience resulting from our own special doings. The ear is as
much an organ of experience as the eye or hand; the eye is available
for reading reports of what happens beyond its horizon. Things remote in
space and time affect the issue of our actions quite as much as
things which we can smell and handle. They really concern us, and,
consequently, any account of them which assists us in dealing with
things at hand falls within personal experience.

Information is the name usually given to this kind of subject matter.
The place of communication in personal doing supplies us with a
criterion for estimating the value of informational material in school.
Does it grow naturally out of some question with which the student