To sum up Dewey's conclusions so far: Logic is the study of the function of knowing in relation to the other functions of experience. The wider logic distinguishes the function of knowing from other activities, and discovers its general purpose; the narrower logic examines the function of knowing in itself, with the object of determining its structure and operation. The aim of logic as a whole is to understand the operations of the concrete activity called knowing, with the purpose of rendering it more efficient. This concrete treatment of thought contrasts sharply with the 'epistemological' method, which sets thought over against the concrete processes of experience, and thus generates the false problem of the relation of thought in general to reality in general. Having stated his position, we might expect Dewey, in the course of the next three chapters, to enter upon a consideration of one phase or other of his logic. On the contrary, he proposes to take up "some of the considerations that lie on the borderland between the larger and the narrower conceptions of logical theory."[190] First, he will consider the antecedent conditions and cues of the thought-process; the conditions which lead up to and into the function of knowing. These conditions lie between the thought-process and the preceding function (in order of time), and are therefore on the borderland between the wider and narrower spheres of logic. In defining the conditions which precede and evoke thought, Dewey says: "There is always as antecedent to thought an experience of some subject-matter of the physical or social world, or organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each other--so much so that they threaten to disrupt the entire experience, which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate re-definition and re-relation of its tensional parts."[191] Thought is always called into action by the whole concrete situation in which it occurs, not by any particular sensation, idea, or feeling. The opposite interpretation of the nature of the antecedents of thought is furnished by Lotze, who makes them consist in bare impressions, 'moods of ourselves,' mere states of consciousness. Dewey is quite right in calling these bare impressions purely fictitious, though the observation is by no means original. From the manner in which he approaches the study of the "antecedents of thought" it appears, however, that Dewey has something in common with Lotze. The functional theory, that is, allows a certain initial detachment of thought from reality, which must be bridged over by an empirical demonstration of its natural connection with preceding processes.