Fouillée endeavours to unite the purely ideal aspect of ethics—that is to say, its notion of what ought to be, with the more positive view of ethics as dealing with what now is. His ethic is, therefore, an attempt to relate more intimately the twin spheres of Renouvier, _l’état de guerre_ with _l’état de paix_, for it is concerned not only with what _is_, but with that which _tends_ to be and which _can_ be by the simple fact that it is _thought_. As, however, what _can_ be is a matter of intense interest to us, we are inevitably led from this to consider what _ought_ to be—that is to say, what is better, or of more worth or value. The ethical application of the philosophy of _idées-forces_ is at once theoretical and practical, that philosophy being concerned both with ideas and values. As in his treatment of freedom we found Fouillée beginning with the _idea_ of freedom, so here in a parallel manner he lays down the _idea_ of an end of action as an incontestable fact of experience, although the existence of such an end is contested and is a separate question. This idea operates in consciousness as a power of will (_volonté de conscience_). Intelligence, power, love and happiness-in short, the highest conscious life—are involved in it, not only for us, but for all. Thus it comes about that the conscious subject, just because he finds himself confronted by nature and by over-individual ends, proposes to himself an ideal, and imposes at the same time upon himself the obligation to act in conformity with this full consciousness which is in all, as in him, and thus he allows universal consciousness to operate in his own individual life. Here we have conscience, the idea of duty or obligation, accounted for, and the principle of autonomy of the moral person laid down. The ethical life is shown as the conscious will in action, finding within itself its own end and rule of action, finding also the conscious wills of others like itself. Morality is the indefinite extension of the conscious will which brings about the condition that others tend to become “me.” Through the increasing power of intellectual disinterestedness and social sympathy, the old formula “_cogito, conscius sum_” gives place to that of “_conscii sumus_,” and this is no mere intellectual speculation, but a concrete principle of action and feeling which is itself akin to the highest and best in all religions. One of the features of this ethic is its insistence upon the primacy of self-consciousness. Indeed, it has its central point in the doctrine of self-consciousness, which, according to Fouillée, implies the consciousness of others and of the whole unity of mankind. Emphasising his gospel of _idées-forces_, he outlines a morality in which the ideal shall attract men persuasively, and not dominate them in what he regards as the arbitrary and rather despotic manner of Kant.