Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/298

284 the icosahedron were discovered by Theaitetos. This sufficiently justifies us in regarding the "fragments of Philolaos" with suspicion, and all the more so as Aristotle does not appear to have seen the work from which these fragments come.

142. We must look, then, for other evidence. From what has been said, it will be clear that it is above all from Plato we can learn to regard Pythagoreanism sympathetically. Aristotle was out of sympathy with Pythagorean ways of thinking, but he took great pains to understand them. This was because they played so great a part in the philosophy of Plato and his successors, and he had to make the relation of the two doctrines as clear as he could to himself and his disciples. What we have to do, then, is to interpret what Aristotle tells us in the spirit of Plato, and then to consider how the doctrine we thus arrive at is related to the systems which preceded it. It is a delicate operation, no doubt, but it has been made much safer by recent discoveries in the early history of mathematics and medicine.