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Updated: May 21, 2025
Consider, indeed, the inextricable embarrassments, the contradictions, the absurdities, the incredible nonsense, in which the bold defenders of property so lightly involve themselves. I choose the eclectics, because, those killed, the others cannot survive. M. Troplong, jurist, passes for a philosopher in the eyes of the editors of "Le Droit."
Before him, M. de Bonald thought he had discovered it in language. Quite recently, M. Buchez has proposed morality; and, to harmonize them all, the eclectics have said that it was absurd to seek for an absolute criterion, since there were as many criteria as special orders of knowledge.
The Eclectics of Bologna, in the seventeenth century, sought to combine Raphael's perfection of drawing and composition, Michelangelo's sublimity and his mastery of the figure, and Correggio's sweet sentiment and his supremacy in the rendering of light and shade, fondly supposing thus that the sum of excellent parts is equivalent to an excellence of the whole. This is false idealism.
I need the hypothesis of God to prove my good-will towards a multitude of sects, whose opinions I do not share, but whose malice I fear: theists; I know one who, in the cause of God, would be ready to draw sword, and, like Robespierre, use the guillotine until the last atheist should be destroyed, not dreaming that that atheist would be himself; mystics, whose party, largely made up of students and women marching under the banner of MM. Lamennais, Quinet, Leroux, and others, has taken for a motto, "Like master, like man;" like God, like people; and, to regulate the wages of the workingman, begins by restoring religion; spiritualists, who, should I overlook the rights of spirit, would accuse me of establishing the worship of matter, against which I protest with all the strength of my soul; sensualists and materialists, to whom the divine dogma is the symbol of constraint and the principle of enslavement of the passions, outside of which, they say, there is for man neither pleasure, nor virtue, nor genius; eclectics and sceptics, sellers and publishers of all the old philosophies, but not philosophers themselves, united in one vast brotherhood, with approbation and privilege, against whoever thinks, believes, or affirms without their permission; conservatives finally, retrogressives, egotists, and hypocrites, preaching the love of God by hatred of their neighbor, attributing to liberty the world's misfortunes since the deluge, and scandalizing reason by their foolishness.
But the Homeopaths take a widely different view of the matter, their definition of it being "similia similibus curantur," which is, practically, the law of agreement; while the Eclectics declare that "sanative medication" is the law.
The original aims of the Eclectics are well summed up in a sonnet by Agostino Carracci, which has been translated as follows: "Let him who wishes to be a good painter acquire the design of Rome, Venetian action and Venetian management of shade, the dignified color of Lombardy that is of Leonardo da Vinci the terrible manner of Michael Angelo, Titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio's style and the just symmetry of a Raphael, the decorum and well-grounded study of Tibaldi, the invention of the learned Primaticcio, and a little of Parmigianino's grace; but without so much study and weary labor let him apply himself to imitate the works which our Niccolò dell Abbate left us here."
Instead of the Rhodian eclectics men began to recur to the genuine Attic orators especially to Lysias and Demosthenes, and sought to naturalize a more vigorous and masculine eloquence in Rome.
Even Adrian, whom I must confess to have regarded as an unblushing egotist, seldom delivered himself of an egotistical opinion. "We don't despise the Eclectics," said he. And "We prefer the Lombardic architecture to the purely Venetian," said Doria. And "we" found good in Italian wines and "we" found nothing but hideousness in Murano glass.
Certainly, "science for the sake of science," is a formula very satisfactory to the avowed conservatives and that is only logical and also to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of "science for life's sake" and, therefore, thinks that "the ripeness of the times" and "the new economic arrangement" will certainly not be realized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to act, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this realization to pass.
Ignorant eclectics have been known to object to the inequality of knowledge, and I should not be surprised if some one should yet rebel against the inequality of virtue. Aristotle was banished, Socrates drank the hemlock, Epaminondas was called to account, for having proved superior in intelligence and virtue to some dissolute and foolish demagogues.
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