If M. Cousin never called his philosophical system eclecticism, why did he defend it from the objections brought on against it, that, i. Eclecticism is a syncretism--all systems mingled together; 2. Eclecticism approves of everything, the true and the false, the good and the bad; 3. Eclecticism is fatalism; 4. Eclecticism is the absence of all system? Why did he not say at once that he did not profess eclecticism, instead of saying and endeavoring to prove that the eclectic method is at once philosophical and historical? [Footnote 32] [Footnote 32: See _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. 39-42.] Everybody knows that he professed eclecticism and defended it. As a method, do you say? Be it so. Does he not maintain, from first to last, that a philosopher's whole system is in his method? Does he not say, "Given a philosopher's method, we can foretell his whole system"? And is not his whole course of the history of philosophy based on this assumption? We wrote our article for those who knew Cousin's writings, not for those who knew them not. There is nothing in the passage quoted from the reviewer, quoted from Cousin, that contradicts what we said. We did not say that he always called philosophy eclecticism, or pretend that it was the principle of his system. We said: {97} "There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold; but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the philosopher. _M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as the real and original method of constructing philosophy_. The name was therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard." (_Catholic World_, p. 335.) Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that we criticised it as such.