Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/665

Rh  1em 1em 1em  ECKHEL, (1737-1798), one of the most distinguished numismatists, was born at Enzersfeld in Lower Austria, January 13, 1737. His father was farm-steward to Count Ziuzendorf, and he received his early education at the Jesuit s College, Vienna. Here at the age of fourteen he was admitted into the order, still pursu ing his studies with earnestness, and especially devoting himself to antiquities and numismatics. After being engaged as professor of poetry and rhetoric, first at Steyer and afterwards at Vienna, he was appointed in 1772 keeper of the cabinet of coins at the Jesuit s College, and in the same year he went to Italy for the puipose of personal inspection and study of antiquities and coins. At Florence he was employed to arrange the collection of the grand duke of Tuscany ; and the first fruits of his study of this and other collections appeared in his Numi Veteres Anecdoti, published in 1775. On the dissolution of the order of Jesuits in 1773, Eckhel was appointed by the empress Maria Theresa professor of antiquities and numismatics at the university of Vienna, and this post he held for twenty-four years. He was in the following year made keeper of the imperial cabinet of coins, and in 1779 appeared his Catalogus Vindobonensis Numorum Veterum. Eckhel s great work is the Doctrina Numorum Veterum, in 8 vols., the first of which was published in 1792, and the last in 1798. The author s rich learning, comprehensive grasp of his subject, admirable order and precision of statement in this master piece drew from Heyne enthusiastic praise, and the acknow ledgment that Eckhel, as the Coryphaeus of numismatists, had, out of the mass of previously loose and confused facts, constituted a true science. A volume of Addenda, prepared by Steinbuchel from Eckhel s papers after his death, was published in 1826. Among the other works of this great scholar are Choix de Pierres gravees du Cabinet Imperial des Antiques (1788), a useful school-book on coins entitled Kurzgefasate Anfangsgrunde zur alien Numismatik (1787), of which a French version enlarged by Jacob appeared in 1825, &c. Eckhel died at Vienna, May 16, 1798.  ECLECTIC (from eKXe yw, I select), a term of which the most important application is in philosophy, denotes a thinker whose views are borrowed partly from one, partly from another, of his predecessors. It perhaps requires to be ^noted that, where the characteristic doctrines of a philosophy are not thus merely adopted, but are the modified products of a blending of the systems from which it takes its rise, the philosophy is not properly eclectic. The history both of ancient and of modern eclecticism shows that eclecticism naturally springs up when, while literary culture makes the doctrines of the chief philosophies familiar and preserves an interest in philosophy, the first pursuit of thinkers is not purely speculative truth. In the, a remarkable tendency toward eclecticism began to manifest itself. The longing to arrive at the one explanation of all things which had inspired the older philosophers, became less earnest ; the belief, indeed, that any such explanation was attainable began to fail ; and thus men, not feeling the need of one complete logical system, came to adopt from all systems the doctrines which best pleased them. In Pansetins we find one of the earliest examples of the modification of Stoicism by the eclectic spirit and about the same time the same spirit displayed itself among the Peripatetics. The philosophy that took root in Rome, where philo sophy never became other than a secondary pursuit, was naturally for the most part eclectic ; of this Cicero is the most striking illustration, his philosophical works consisting of a mixture, with little or no blending, of doctrines borrowed from Stoicism, Peripateticism, and the scepticism of the Middle Academy. And, not to mention numerous names of minor importance, eclecticism had another representative at Rome in the school of Sextius and Sotion, who were half Stoic, half Pythagorean. In the last stage of Greek philosophy the eclectic spirit produced remarkable results outside the philosophies of those properly called eclectics. Thinkers chose their doctrines from many sources from the venerated teaching of Aristotle and Plato, from that of the Pythagoreans and of the Stoics, from the old Greek mythology, and from the Jewish and other Oriental systems. Yet, it must be observed that neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and the other systems which are grouped under the name Alexandrian, were not truly eclectic, consisting, as they did, nob of a mere syncretism of Greek and Oriental thought, but of a mutual modification of the two. It is true that several of the neo-Platonists professed to accept all the teaching both, of Plato and of Aristotle, but, in fact, they arbitrarily interpreted Aristotle so as to make him agree with Plato, and Plato so as to make his teachings consistent with the Oriental doctrines which they had adopted, in the same manner as the schoolmen attempted to reconcile Aristotle with the doctrines of the church. Among the early Christians, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Sinesius were eclectics in philosophy. The eclectics of modern philosophy are too numerous to name. Of Italian philosophers the eclectics form a large proportion. Among the German we may mention (though details cannot here be given) Wolf and his followers, as well as Mendelssohn, Eberhard, Plainer, and to some extent Schelling, whom, however, it would be incorrect to describe as merely an eclectic. In the first place he cannot be denied the praise of originality ; and, in the second place, it is not so much that his views of anytime were borrowed from a number of philosophers, as that his thinking was influenced first by one philosopher then by another. But, during, the term eclectic has come to be specially applied to a number of French philo sophers who- differ considerably from one another. Of these the earliest were Royer-Collard, who was mainly a follower of Reid, and Maine de Biran ; but the name is still more appropriately given to the school of which the most distinguished members are Victor Cousin, Theodore Jouffroy, Damircn, St Hilaire, Remusat, Gamier, and Ravaisson. Cousin, whose views varied considerably at different periods of his life, not only adopted freely what pleased him in the doctrines of Laromiguiere, Royer-Collard, and Maine de Biran, of Kant, Schelling, aud Hegel, and of 