62

Logic IV. 70
history [foreign text] for not occupying itself with them. But since he has not been able to find for himself nor to learn from others any means of ascertaining the final causes of things like a be calmed he has recourse to a second mode of advance [foreign text]99D. Probably this second method was supposed to be the presumption of a hypothesis but Plato does not know enough logic to define it clearly and when we come to his practice its characeterstic is of a more special description. His general statement of this method is a logical curiosity: I began by supporting on each occasion a reason such as I would deem most strong and whatever seemed to me to harmonize with that I set down as being true whether seemed not to do so I set down as not true [foreign text]