THE TWO TENDENCIES.--As might be expected to happen, and as always
happens, the multiplicity of sects brought about two tendencies, one
consisting in selecting somewhat arbitrarily from each sect what one found
best in it, which is called "eclecticism," the other in thinking that no
school grasped the truth, that the truth is not to be grasped, which is
called "scepticism."

THE ECLECTICS: PLUTARCH.--The Eclectics, who did not form a school,
which would have been difficult in the spirit in which they acted, had only
this in common, that they venerated the great thinkers of ancient Greece,
and that they felt or endeavoured to feel respect and toleration for all
religions. They venerated Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno,
Moses, Jesus, St. Paul, and loved to imagine that they were each a partial
revelation of the great divine thought, and they endeavoured to reconcile
these divergent revelations by proceeding on broad lines and general
considerations. Among them were Moderatus, Nicomachus, Nemesius, etc. The
most illustrious, without being the most profound--though his literary
talent has always kept him prominent--was Plutarch. His chief effort, since
then often renewed, was to reconcile reason and faith (I am writing of the
polytheistic faith). Perceiving in mythology ingenious allegories, he
showed that under the name of allegories covering and containing profound
ideas, all polytheism could be accepted by the reason of a Platonist, an
Aristotelian, or a Stoic. The Eclectics had not much influence, and only
pleased two sorts of minds: those who preferred knowledge rather than
conviction, and found in Eclecticism an agreeable variety of points of
view; and those who liked to believe a little in everything, and possessing
receptive but not steadfast minds were not far from sceptics and who might
be called affirmative sceptics in opposition to the negative sceptics:
sceptics who say, "Heavens, yes," as opposed to sceptics who always say,