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.
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