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THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.449they might fit into his daily life, not as coherentsystems of thought. The spirit therefore in whichhe rearded their differences was to select fromthem what best suited his tastes and feelings. Ifhe had no power to originate, he could choose.But such likewise had been the result among theeeks themselves of two centuries of conflict, inwhich the rival systems of Stoicism, Epicureanism,and Scepticism had stood over against each other.They sprung from the same soil; they might evenbe termed three branches of one stem,35 inasmuchas their common root was the desire to find for*the individual man something which would givehim tranquillity of mind, happiness in fact, independentof his civil circumstances. In this theyall took up a practical rather than a theoreticalground, the ground indeed which is now assignedto religion. Utterly opposed, then, as they werein their means, they sought the same end, and itwas not in nature that the collision of their variousarguments should not at length kindle thepirit of eclecticism. Thus the temper of than statesman and noble, and the course ofGreek philosophy itself, combined to produce thisspirit, which from the beginning of the first centurybefore Christ pervaded the thinkers of theGreco-Roman world.36 But eclecticism betokens aweakening of the philosophic mind, that wearinesswhich is unable to take a firm grasp of truth,35 Zeller, vol. iii. part 1, p. 436. " Ibid. pp. 482, 492.II.GG