Dewey says: "The fixed ideal is as distinctly the bane of ethical science today as the fixed universe of mediaevalism was the bane of the natural science of the Renascence."[115] This is a strong statement, which indicates how wide was the gulf which now separated Dewey from Green, whom he formerly acknowledged as his master. Dewey's interpretation of Green's ideal self is far from satisfactory, largely because of its lack of insight and appreciation. The reduction of thought to a 'form of activity' renders a purely theoretical inquiry impossible. The 'present activity,' the biological situation, becomes the measure of all things, even of thought. Ideals, in his own words, have nothing to do with present action, "except as they enable us to take deeper account of the present activity." Dewey's self and Green's are incommensurable. The former is the biological organism, with a capacity for indirect activity called thinking; the latter is a not-natural being, whose reality escapes the logic of descriptive science, because of the fulness of its content. Dewey's failure to understand this difference is significant. His acquaintance with Green seems to have been formal from the beginning, never intimate, and the articles just reviewed mark the end of Dewey's idealistic discipleship. His psychological idealism, in fact, was fundamentally antithetical to the Neo-Hegelianism which he had sought to espouse, and the development of his own standpoint brought out the vital differences which had been hidden from his earlier understanding. The idealism which seeks to view reality together and as a whole is forever incompatible with a method which seeks to interpret the whole in terms of one of its parts. FOOTNOTES: [75] Vol. I, pp. 186-203. [76] _Ibid._, p. 186. [77] _Ibid._ [78] _Op. cit._, p. 187. [79] _Ibid._, p. 188. [80] _Ibid._ [81] _Ibid._, p. 191 f. [82] _Op. cit._, p. 189. [83] _Ibid._, p. 194. Author's Italics. [84] _Ibid._ [85] _Op. cit._, p. 195. [86] _Ibid._, p. 198. [87] _Op. cit._ [88] _Ibid._, p. 202. [89] _Ibid._, p. 203. [90] _Philosophical Review_, Vol. I, 1892, pp. 593-612. [91] _Op. cit._, p. 596. [92] _Ibid._, p. 597. [93] _History of Philosophy_, p. 555. [94] _Philosophical Review_, Vol. I, 1892, p. 598. [95] _Ibid._ [96] _Ibid._, p. 599. [97] _Ibid._ Compare with the passage in "Psychology as Philosophic Method," _Mind_, Vol. XI, p. 9. [98] _Op. cit._, p. 600. [99] _Ibid._, p. 601. [100] _Ibid._, p. 602. [101] _Prolegomena to Ethics_, third ed., p. 103. [102] _Ibid._, p. 104. [103] Vol. II, pp. 652-664. [104] _Ibid._, p. 653. [105] _Ibid._, p. 655. [106] _Op. cit._, p. 656. [107] _Ibid._, p. 657. [108] _Ibid._ [109] _Ibid._, p. 658. Author's italics. [110] _Ibid._ [111] _Op. cit._, note. [112] _Ibid._, p. 663. [113] _Ibid._ [114] _Op. cit._, p. 659. [115] _Ibid._, p. 664. CHAPTER IV FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY