Eclecticism is in our eyes the true historical method, and it has for us all the importance of the history of philosophy; but there is something which we place above the history of philosophy, and, consequently, above eclecticism,--philosophy itself. The history of philosophy does not carry its own light with it, it is not its own end. How could eclecticism, which has no other field than history, be our only, our primary, object? It is, doubtless, just, it is of the highest utility, to discriminate in each system what there is true in it from what there is false in it; first, in order to appreciate this system rightly; then, in order to render the false of no account, to disengage and re-collect the true, and thus to enrich and aggrandize philosophy by history. But you conceive that we must already know what truth is, in order to recognize it, and to distinguish it from the error with which it is mixed; so that the criticism of systems almost demands a system, so that the history of philosophy is constrained to first borrow from philosophy the light which it must one day return to it with usury. In fine, the history of philosophy is only a branch, or rather an instrument, of philosophical science. Surely it is the interest which we feel for philosophy that alone attaches us to its history; it is the love of truth which makes us everywhere pursue its vestiges, and interrogate with a passionate curiosity those who before us have also loved and sought truth. Thus philosophy is at once the supreme object and the torch of the history of philosophy. By this double title it has a right to preside over our instruction. In regard to this, one word of explanation, I beg you. He who is speaking before you to-day is, it is true, officially charged only with the course of the history of philosophy; in that is our task, and in that, once more, our guide shall be eclecticism.[16] But, we confess, if philosophy has not the right to present itself here in some sort on the first plan; if it should appear only behind its history, it in reality holds dominion; and to it all our wishes, as well as all our efforts, are related. We hold, doubtless, in great esteem, both Brucker and Tennemann,[17] so wise, so judicious; nevertheless our models, our veritable masters, always present to our thought, are, in antiquity, Plato and Socrates, among the moderns, Descartes, and, why should I hesitate to say it, among us, and in our times, the illustrious man who has been pleased to call us to this chair. M. Royer-Collard was also only a professor of the history of philosophy; but he rightly pretended to have an opinion in philosophy; he served a cause which he has transmitted to us, and we will serve it in our turn.