We've now determined that the object studied by philosophy consists of the states of consciousness and their conditions. But how should philosophy proceed? What should be its method?

Different philosophical systems have advanced different philosophical methods. A contemporary school – the eclectic – maintains that the best of these methods is to reconcile the competing systems. In antiquity, eclecticism – although not yet organized as a school – was championed by Cicero and the New Academy, and more recently by Leibniz, who often recommended its basic principles. But eclecticism didn't become a distinct school of thought until Victor Cousin made it so. This famous philosopher gave eclecticism both a method and – what had not yet been coherently laid out – a set of principles to follow. Here's what Cousin's eclecticism is all about.

According to Cousin, there's no longer any need to search for the truth, because it has already been found and is dispersed among the various philosophical systems. All we need do is extract the fragments of truth – scattered and intermingled with error – from these systems and then reunite them to form a system whose doctrines will be truth itself. For this, of course, we need some criterion that will allow us to distinguish truth from error. What is this criterion? According to Cousin, existing philosophical systems have erred by being too narrow-minded.