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For if perchance any one should say that Cato would not have come forward as an accuser if he had not previously made up his mind about the justice of the cause, he will then be laying down a most unjust law, O judges, and establishing a miserable condition for men in their danger, if he thinks that the opinion of an accuser is to have against a defendant the weight of a previous investigation legally conducted. I, O Cato, do not venture to find fault with your intentions, by reason of my extraordinarily high opinion of your virtue; but in some particulars I may perhaps be able slightly to amend and reform them. “You are not very wrong,” said an aged tutor to a very brave man; “but if you are wrong, I can set you right.” But I can say with the greatest truth that you never do wrong, and that your conduct is never such in any point as to need correction, but only such as occasionally to require being guided a little. For nature has herself formed you for honesty, and gravity, and moderation, and magnanimity, and justice; and for all the virtues required to make a great and noble man. To all these qualities are added an education not moderate, nor mild, but as it seems to me, a little harsh and severe, more so than either truth or nature would permit.
