58

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better than the life of Pythagoras. Here I can only
make a conjecture which I predict that future
discoveries will confirm in its main features as
far as those discoveries shall go. This theory will make no pretension
to being knowledge, but only to being a good guess,
which we may strongly and confidently hope will
be confirmed. [Here let those go who have to go]

Almost all our information about Pythagoras
comes from three writers who lived some five
hundred years later. Just think what that means!
Two of these three writers are known otherwise to be about
as careless as any in that uncritical age.
The third, who is the principal witness, is a
superstitious romancer who sets forth
supernatural narratives as simple historical