ABSTRACT
I must first of all make it clear that the phenomena of everyday life cannot be ‘parcelled up’ according to whether they relate to knowledge, to contact or to personality. If I utter the words ‘dispute’ or ‘game’ I am referring to two phenomena which have to do with knowledge and which are of no small importance in the development of the personality. It might look arbitrary to analyse them in a chapter on everyday contacts. But some degree of arbitrariness is unavoidable if we want to apprehend theoretically a sphere which is essentially heterogeneous, in which every phenomenon is a part of a heterogeneous complex. Of course, this arbitrariness is only relative. In the following pages we shall discuss those phenomena which have primarily and decisively to do with contact (though they may well have other aspects as well) or which it is desirable to approach from the angle of contact.
