The ancient schools, if they maintained a formal individuality even to the days of Justinian,(1572) had worked themselves out. A host of scholarchs, from all the cities of the Greek East, failed to break fresh ground, and were content to guard the most precious or the least vulnerable parts of an ancient tradition. Moreover, the scrutiny of the long course of speculation, issuing in such various conclusions, with no criterion to decide between their claims, gave birth to a scepticism which sheltered itself even under the great name of the Academy. And as the faith in the truth of systems dwindled, the marks of demarcation between them faded; men were less inclined to dogmatise, and began to select and combine elements from long discordant schools. In this movement the eclectic and the sceptic had very much the same object in view—the support and culture of the individual moral life.(1573) The sceptic sought his ideal in restrained suspense of judgment and in moral calm. The eclectic, without regard to speculative consistency, and with only a secondary interest in speculation, sought for doctrines from any quarter which provided a basis for the moral life, and, in the conflict of systems on the deeper questions, would fall back, like Cicero, on intuition and the consent of consciousness.(1574) Creative power in philosophy was no more. Speculative curiosity, as pictured in the _Phaedo_ or the _Theaetetus_, had lost its keenness. The imperious craving was for some guide of life, some medicine for the deeply-felt maladies of the soul.