52. It was this too, no doubt, that led Pythagoras to say all things were numbers. We shall see that, at a later date, the Pythagoreans identified these numbers with geometrical figures; but the mere fact that they called them “numbers,” when taken in connexion with what we are told about the method of Eurytos, is sufficient to show this was not the original sense of the doctrine. It is enough to suppose that Pythagoras reasoned somewhat as follows. If musical sounds can be reduced to numbers, why should not everything else? There are many likenesses to number in things, and it may well be that a lucky experiment, like that by which the octave was discovered, will reveal their true numerical nature. The Neopythagorean writers, going back in this as in other matters to the earliest tradition of the school, indulge their fancy in tracing out analogies between things and numbers in endless variety; but we are fortunately dispensed from following them in these vagaries. Aristotle tells us distinctly that the Pythagoreans explained only a few things by means of numbers,[250] which means that Pythagoras himself left no developed doctrine on the subject, while the Pythagoreans of the fifth century did not care to add anything of the sort to the school tradition. Aristotle does imply, however, that, according to them the “right time” (καιρός) was seven, justice was four, and marriage three. These identifications, with a few others like them, we may safely refer to Pythagoras or his immediate successors; but we must not attach much importance to them. They are mere sports of the analogical fancy. If we wish to understand the cosmology of Pythagoras, we must start, not from them, but from any statements we can find that present points of contact with the teaching of the Milesian school. These, we may fairly infer, belong to the system in its most primitive form. Footnote 250: Arist. _Met._ Μ, 4. 1078 b 21 (R. P. 78); Zeller, p. 390, n. 2. The _Theologumena Arithmetica_, wrongly attributed to Nikomachos of Gerasa, is full of fanciful doctrine on this subject (R. P. 78 a). Alexander _in Met._ p. 38, 8, gives a few definitions which may be old (R. P. 78 c). [Sidenote: Cosmology.]