In the midst of these confusing movements, the endeavor was made to cull a system of philosophy which should include what was true and beneficial in them all. It succeeded for a time and its teachers were distinguished for their probity, learning, and other superior endowments. In the first years of the third century Ammonius Sakkas began to teach in Alexandria. He had been instructed in the catachetical school in earlier life, but he chose instead the broader field of philosophy. His rare learning, spiritual endowments and mental exaltation won for him the name of Theodidaktos, or God-taught, but he followed the modest example of Pythagoras, and only assumed the designation Philalethes, or friend of Truth. His followers were sometimes distinguished as Analogetists; probably because they interpreted the Sacred writings, legends, narratives, myths and mystic dramas, by the principle of analogy or correspondence, making events that were described in the external world to relate solely or chiefly to operations and experiences of the soul. They were also termed Eclectics, because many of their doctrines had been taken from different philosophic systems. It was the aim of Ammonius to overlook the incongruous elements, regarding them as artificial accretions, and to retain every thing in all faiths and speculations that was really useful. But he committed nothing to writing. He is known to us only through his disciples, in whose utterances we may trace somewhat of his opinions and methods. He appears to have followed the ancient example, inculcating moral truths to his auditors, while he imparted his more recondite doctrines to persons who had been duly initiated and disciplined. What he taught we know partly from a few treatises of his friends that have escaped destruction, but more, perhaps, from the assertions of his adversaries.