The thought of Alfred Fouillée (1838-1913)_(_92_)_ and Jean [pg 187] Marie Guyau (1854-1888)_(_93_)_ also circles round the conception of ethics as higher life-affirmation. They too conceive of the ethical as devotion, that is to say, as life-affirmation within which life-denial is present, but they dig deeper than the English and American representatives of the ethic of self-perfecting, in that they seek to conceive of ethics within a nature-philosophy. Hence questions come to be discussed which remain unnoticed in the former. The problems of the basic principle of the moral and that of the optimistic-ethical world-view are once more opened up and, for the first time, in a comprehensive and elemental way. Fouillée philosophises in a noble way about the will-to-live. The ideas which arise in us, directed towards ethical ideals, are (he says), like our ideas generally, not simply something produced by thought, but are the expression of forces which press within us towards making existence full and complete._(_94_)_ Speaking generally, we must in this matter clearly understand that the evolution which in the course of the world produces and maintains existence is the work of re-presentative forces (_idées-forces_), and is therefore to be explained in the last analysis as psychic. It reaches its highest point in man’s ideas, which will their ends with clear consciousness. In this highest being, man, reality gets so far as to produce ideals which go out beyond reality, and by their means to be led on beyond itself. Ethics are therefore a result of the evolution of the world. The idea of self-perfecting through devotion, which we experience as the puzzling element within us, is after all a natural manifestation of the will-to-live. The ego which has reached the farthest height of willing and representing enlarges itself by overflowing upon other human existences. Devotion is, therefore, not a surrender of the self, but a [pg 188] manifestation of its expansion._(_95_)_ The man who analyses himself more deeply learns by experience that the highest life-affirmation comes about, not by the natural will-to-live simply rising into will-to-power, but by its “expanding.” “Act towards others as if you became conscious of them at the same time as you become conscious of yourself.”_(_96_)_