Plutarch, Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus
Frank Cole Babbitt, Ed.

Rightly has it been said :

Adjust the stone to fit The line, and not the line to fit the stone.¹

But those who do not adjust their tenets to fit the facts, but rather try to force the facts into an unnatural agreement with their own assumptions, ² have filled philosophy with a great number of difficulties, of which the greatest is that which would assign all men to a general category of badness with the single exception of the absolutely perfect man ; the result of which is to make a puzzle out of what we call progress, since it falls but little short of the uttermost foolishness, and represents men who have been released by it from all kinds of passions and weaknesses as living in a state of equal wretchedness with those who have not yet been freed from a single one of the worst evils. Now these men really refute themselves when, in their lectures, they put the wrongdoing of Aristeides on an equality with that of Phalaris, and the cowardice of Brasidas on an equality with that of Dolon, and the hard-hearted attitude of Plato [p. 407] as actually not differing at all from that of Meletus; whereas in their life and practice they show an aversion for these latter men and avoid them as ruthless, but the former they seem to think are men of great worth, for they cite them with confidence in the most important matters.