In Znaniecki's own words: ""an observer of cultural life can understand the data observed only if taken with the "humanistic coefficient"", only if he does not limit his observation to his own direct experience of the data but reconstructs the experience and the data in the social context of the people involved". Elsewhere he wrote: ""This essential character of cultural data we call the humanistic coefficient, because such data, as objects of the student's theoretic reflection, already belong to somebody's else's experience and are such as this active experience makes them.""