situation in which he is acting.

Language is, as we have already seen (ante, p. 15) a case of this
joint reference of our own action and that of another to a common
situation. Hence its unrivaled significance as a means of social
direction. But language would not be this efficacious instrument
were it not that it takes place upon a background of coarser and
more tangible use of physical means to accomplish results. A
child sees persons with whom he lives using chairs, hats, tables,
spades, saws, plows, horses, money in certain ways. If he has
any share at all in what they are doing, he is led thereby to use
things in the same way, or to use other things in a way which
will fit in. If a chair is drawn up to a table, it is a sign
that he is to sit in it; if a person extends his right hand, he
is to extend his; and so on in a never ending stream of detail.
The prevailing habits of using the products of human art and the
raw materials of nature constitute by all odds the deepest and
most pervasive mode of social control. When children go to
school, they already have "minds" -- they have knowledge and
dispositions of judgment which may be appealed to through the use
of language. But these "minds" are the organized habits of
intelligent response which they have previously required by
putting things to use in connection with the way other persons
use things. The control is inescapable; it saturates
disposition. The net outcome of the discussion is that the
fundamental means of control is not personal but intellectual.
It is not "moral" in the sense that a person is moved by direct
personal appeal from others, important as is this method at
critical junctures. It consists in the habits of understanding,
which are set up in using objects in correspondence with others,