Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

450 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDan absence of the keen aim and high desire whichsuch a grasp betokens. It is a confession that 110one system possesses the truth : in which state cthings nothing remains for the individual but tochoose for himself out of different systems thosemorsels of truth which approve themselves most tohis taste or tact, or, as he would term it, his truth-seeking sincerity.ut it is not too much to say that the wholespirit of later antiquity, so far as it interesteditself in the discovery of truth, from the time thatGreek philosophy was diffused over the Romanworld, leant more or less to eclecticism. Its mostable, most distinguished, and most interesting representativeis Cicero.37 He lived at a time whenrival criticism had searched out and exposed everyweak point in the different systems of thought.To found new systems there was no further creativeforce ; his eclectic position was the necessaryresult. His genius supplied him with no meansto overcome it. His philosophical writings arescarcely more than transcripts from various Gre-cian sources, wherein he uses his skill as a rhetoricianand his unfailing wealth of words to set forthwith lawyerlike balancing the arguments of differentschools. We can yet detect the originals,from which in the short intervals of enforced ab-seinemEklekticismus in dem letzten Jahrlrandert vor dem Anfang unsererZeitrechnung."m