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Each of the foregoing circumstances, considered separately, tells against the current idea that the Galatea was published at Madrid in 1584, and it might have been hoped that an intelligent consideration of their cumulative effect would ensure the right conclusion: that the story is a myth. But, so Donoso Cortésssss1 maintained, man has an almost invincible propensity to error, and the discussion on so plain a matter as the bibliography of the Galatea lends colour to this view. The amount of confusion introduced into the debate is extraordinary. It is occasionally difficult to gather what a partisan of the alleged 1584 edition holds; his pages blaze with contradictions: his theory is half-heartedly advanced, hastily abandoned, and confidently re-stated in a bewildering fashion.ssss1 Again, what was originally put forward as a pious opinion is transfigured into a dogma. Just as there are some who, when writing on the bibliography of Don Quixote, insist that the 1608 edition of that book "must have been revised by the author,"ssss1 so there are some who, when writing on the bibliography of the Galatea, insist with equal positiveness that there "must have been an edition of 1584."ssss1 This emphasis is out of place in both cases; but it is interesting and instructive to note that these two opinions are practically inseparable from each other. The coincidence can scarcely be accidental, and it may prove advantageous: for, obviously, the refutation of the one thesis must tend to discredit the other. If a writer be convicted of error in a very simple matter which can be tested in a moment, it would clearly be imprudent to accept his unsupported statement concerning a far more complex matter to which no direct test can be applied. And, as it happens, we are now enabled to measure the accuracy of the assertion that the princeps of the Galatea was published at Madrid in 1584.