Eclecticism. The eclectic is a philosopher who, treading underfoot prejudice, tradition, age, universal agreement, authority, in short everything that subjugates the mass of minds, dares to think for himself, to go back to the clearest general principles, to examine them, discuss them, and admit nothing except on the testimony of his experience and his reason, and from all the philosophies which he has analysed without deference or partiality, creates an individual and private philosophy which is his own. I say an individual and private philosophy because the ambition of the eclectic is less to be the preceptor of humankind than its disciple; less to reform others than reform himself; to know the truth rather than to teach it. He is not a man who plants or sows; he is a man who gathers and sifts. He would peacefully enjoy the harvest he has reaped, he would live happily and die unknown, if enthusiasm, vanity or perhaps a more noble sentiment did not make him abandon that role.