[f. ECLECTIC + -ISM.] The eclectic philosophy; the eclectic method applied to speculation or practice.

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1835.  I. Taylor, Spir. Despot., iv. 124. Abstracted selfishness … in its modern guise of philosophic eclecticism.

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1836–7.  Sir W. Hamilton, Metaph. (1877), I. vi. 107. Eclecticism,—conciliation,—union, were, in all things, the grand aim of the Alexandrian school.

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1838.  Emerson, Lit. Ethics, Wks. (Bohn), II. 212. The French Eclecticism, which Cousin esteems so conclusive.

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1881.  Westcott & Hort, N. T. Grk., II. 246. The eclecticism of the Syrian revisers.

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  b.  concr. The product of an eclectic method.

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1841–4.  Emerson, Ess., Ser. I. xii. (1876), 278. What is a man but a finer … landscape than the horizon figures,—nature’s eclecticism?

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