With these thoughts in mind I set myself to write this discourse—I who am no longer in
the prime of youth but in my eighty-second year. Wherefore, you may well forgive me if my
speech appears to be less vigorous
For, I assure you, it has not been an easy nor a simple task, but one of great difficulty; for while some things in my discourse are appropriate to be spoken in a court-room, others are out of place amid such controversies, being frank discussions about philosophy and expositions of its power. There is in it, also, matter which it would be well for young men to hear before they set out to gain knowledge and an education; and there is much, besides, of what I have written in the past, inserted in the present discussion, not without reason nor without fitness, but with due appropriateness to the subject in hand.