This conviction is produced by a series of inter-related works—chiefly academic manuals of ethics. Their authors are of the opinion that ethics can be built, like the arch of a bridge, upon two piers. One of their piers is the natural ethical disposition of man; the other they allow themselves to find in those needs of society which influence the spirit and temper of individuals. They consider their task to be the bringing into actual existence of the arch (the possibility of completing which they take for granted), with the solid material of modern psychology, biology, and sociology, and the dividing of the load in the best calculated way between the two piers. Fundamentally they do nothing beyond restoring with new means the standpoint of Hume. The following writers try to carry through this adjustment of the ethics which start from the standpoint of [pg 182] ethical personality and those which start from that of society: Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900),_(_76_)_ Leslie Stephen (1832-1904),_(_77_)_ Samuel Alexander (b. 1859),_(_78_)_ Wilhelm Wundt (b. 1832),_(_79_)_ Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908),_(_80_)_ Friedrich Jodl (b. 1849),_(_81_)_ Georg von Gizyki (1851-1895),_(_82_)_ Harald Höffding (b. 1843),_(_83_)_ and others. Of these ethical writers who, in spite of the variety of experience they bring to bear on the subject, are essentially related to one another, the most original is Leslie Stephen, the scientifically soundest is Wilhelm Wundt, the most ethical is Harald Höffding. Höffding makes the ethical originate partly out of a consideration which limits the sovereignty of the present minute. “An action (he says) is good which preserves the totality of life and gives fulness and life to its content; an action is bad which has a more or less decided tendency to break into and narrow the totality of life and its content.” Supporting this consideration come also instincts of sympathy, which make us feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, and pain at their pain. The aim of ethics is general prosperity.