60

102

That is no way to search out these things. You
must have some definite and rational theory
of how the witness was led to assert the particular
untruth he does assert,— supposing it to be
untruth. You must take that hypothesis which
best unifies all the facts,— the facts that such and such assertions have been made
by such and such writers; and that is the
best conjecture possible. That is as near the
truth as it is possible at present to come.

The least uncertain date in the life
of Pythagoras is that he went to Italy at
the age of forty in the year 532 B.C. So
says Cicero, who was a very careful man. Less
precisely Aulus Gellius and Iamblichus say the