In the 2nd century B.C. 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. Thus men came to adopt from all systems the doctrines which best pleased them. In Panaetius we find one of the earliest examples of the modification of Stoicism by the eclectic spirit; about the same time the same spirit displayed itself among the Peripatetics. In Rome philosophy never became more than a secondary pursuit; naturally, therefore, the Roman thinkers were for the most part eclectic. Of this tendency Cicero is the most striking illustration--his philosophical works consisting of an aggregation, with little or no blending, of doctrines borrowed from Stoicism, Peripateticism, and the scepticism of the Middle Academy. 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 Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and the other systems which are grouped under the name Alexandrian, were not truly eclectic, consisting, as they did, not of a mere syncretism of Greek and Oriental thought, but of a mutual modification of the two. It is true that several of the Neoplatonists professed to accept all the teaching both of Plato and of Aristotle, whereas, 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 Synesius 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 Wolf and his followers, as well as Mendelssohn, J.A. Eberhard, Ernst Platner, and to some extent Schelling, whom, however, it would be incorrect to describe as merely an eclectic. In the first place, his speculations were largely original; and in the second place, it is not so much that his views of any time were borrowed from a number of philosophers, as that his thinking was influenced first by one philosopher, then by another.